‘my7cents’: David Butler offers ‘no excuses’ to make the digitization a top priority

Dave Butler is the CEO of the UK Apartment Association (UKAA), the organization for everyone interested in the UK Build To Rent sector. Prior to joining the UKAA, Dave was Director of Strategy and Change at Grainger plc, one of the UK’s largest professional landlords. Over the course of his career, Dave has worked in many sectors from waste management to shopping centres and from financial services to grocery retailing, usually leading IT, strategy or operational teams.

Find out what he has to say about the digitization of the real estate sector, in our interview series “my7cents”.

What do you think is completely underestimated when discussing the digitization of the real estate sector?

Too often digitization is discussed in terms of solutions to specific problems or elements of the value chain. What’s missing is an understanding of the entire real estate value chain and the myriad of organizations and interests that make up the real estate universe. To unlock the full potential of digitization we must find a way to digitize all the transactions and interactions. Furthermore, this must be based on a common agreed set of data standards, that are mandated as the basis for transactions and legal approvals.

The complexity and competing interests across this value chain is underestimated by those with a knowledge of only one part of it. They can forget that possessing more information than those with whom you are negotiating a transaction, is a source of value.

The difficulty of agreeing common data standards is underestimated as the struggles of projects like the Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate attest. The UKAA initiative to introduce transparency to Build To Rent (BTR) operating costs and rental, starts off from this same position of trying to reconcile Multiple Charts of accounts to enable comparison of meaningful data.

Which jobs within the real estate sector won’t exist anymore in the next 5-10 years? Which jobs will be created?

I am sure that the traditional property manager role will disappear – the individual who sits at a desk waiting for tenants to report issues and reacts as best they can to fix them. Any problems with buildings will either be prevented in the first place, or self-reported and diagnosed. Where further intervention is required, artificial intelligence (AI) will take over.

The nature of the property manager’s role will change to include managing the customer experience. This will bring to the fore the softer and more people-orientated skills and knowledge that the best property managers have always possessed.

We Work has made co-working spaces popular. What will be the next concept that uses technology to share resources?

I have a hunch that live/work has the potential to make a real difference. By live/work, I mean that distinction between the place you live and the place you work increasingly disappearing. This is more than just working from home – remote working is only part of the work experience. We need interaction and collaboration with our colleagues, and we need access to the technology that the offices has – coffee bars and hotel lobbies don’t provide either.

Firstly, digitization offers the potential for remote working to feel like office working. You can create a virtual office where you can interact effectively with your colleagues rather than struggling with Skype.

Secondly, BTR schemes can provide the scale of infrastructure needed to provide office-level facilities that you and your colleagues, neighbours and friends actually need to be efficient.

Finally, the coming revolution in city transport is likely to mean that the need for an office in a central location will diminish.

If you were a property manager: what would you stop immediately with the help of digital tools?

I would stop using my time and energy to play whack-a-mole and trying to respond to uncontrolled demand for responsive repairs. That’s easier said than done if you don’t have the digital tools or a building with a proper asset register that’s been built up from Building Information Modelling (BIM) during development. But even so, there are lots of tools out there to assist and there are more being created all the time, so there are no excuses to not look about.

If you were a property developer: how would you use the opportunities of the digitization for your business?

Start at the beginning of the development by insisting that everything is digital and that BIM is the core of the development, so that as the project goes through each stage of design, it is managed digitally. However, this will really only justify itself if the ultimate owner also values the digitization of the building and manages the asset using the data that has been gathered during development.

Ideally there should be a single continued interest in place from development, through construction and long-term ownership and management as offered by BTR. The fragmented nature of the traditional property life-cycle has tended to diminish the interest in digitization; somewhat ironically given that it is at the point of a transfer of interests that some of the greatest benefits of digitization can be obtained.

If you were to work in a public authority and could make a change in order to speed up the digitization in the real estate industry: what would it be?

I would mandate the use of digital data as both the inputs into the planning process and as the planning process itself. Only when the value chain and approval processes are joined up and mandatory will real estate realize that there are no excuses.

There are some great initiatives out there like the Local Digital Declaration and the more that they and other organizations can do, the better.

If you could start again from scratch and had an unlimited amount of money to your disposal: what company would you create?

I used to be an avid sci-fi fan and one organization, from a story by Norman Spinrad has always stuck in my mind. It was called ‘Stuff Central’ and it worked when people went to a screen in their home and ordered whatever they wanted or needed. It was then delivered either by teleportation or by some underground transport system.

The rise and rise of Amazon reminds me more each day of ‘Stuff Central’ but without the white vans and without the need to exchange money. As someone who ultimately believes that man’s ingenuity and technology can solve the world’s problems, I really look forward to the day that Amazon metamorphoses into ‘Stuff Central’, and I only wish that I had Jeff Bezos’ vison and drive.

About UKAA

The UK Apartment Association is the organisation for everyone involved in the Build To Rent Sector (BTR) – the fastest growing segment in the UK property industry.

Our vision is to make Build To Rent a lifestyle of choice for our customers by:

• Spreading the message about the benefits of Build To Rent;
• Communicating how Build To Rent can help address the UK’s housing crisis;
• Developing best practice amongst our members, raising standards and focussing on our customers;
• Enabling our members to learn from each other and from 40 years of experience from the USA;
• Creating the authoritative source for information on Build To Rent in the UK.

We have over 180 members and are growing at the rate of 100 members per year. The UKAA is a Global Alliance Partner of the NAA (National Apartment Association) in the US. The NAA have been in existence for 80 years and represent over 9.5 million rented units.