What’s next in PropTech?

This year, WiredScore has loved getting involved with the industry’s worldwide opportunities and in-person conferences: looking at what’s happening where, who’s saying what in the world of proptech, and thinking about how our products can adapt and evolve to keep pace with the rest of the industry.

We’ve collated our learnings from our travels around 2022’s must-attend property and tech events, and we’ve come away with some interesting industry insights we thought you’d like to hear.

Read on for more detail on the independent data layer, the UK’s push to full fiber and the coolest emerging tech that’ll be impacting our spaces in the decades to come.

When it comes to property management, data is the undeniable king. It informs better spending, better energy use and, ultimately, drives cost efficiencies and a more enjoyable in-building experience.

But whilst data is an all-powerful, must-use tool, it’s also highly problematic, with data acquisition one of the industry’s biggest challenges in achieving digitisation.

One thing’s certain: We can get data out of buildings. But, to do so, requires a huge amount of effort. What’s more, once the data has been acquired, it becomes difficult to understand who is responsible for managing it, as integrators are often project based and leave sites as soon as the project has been delivered.

Enter: the Independent Data Layer (IDL). The IDL is a new approach which creates a clearer air gap between the responsibilities of the landlord (which is to present data consistently in a structured way) and the onsite service provider or tenant (which is to use that data to deliver better outcomes).

Companies to watch in this space are the likes of Novant and Mapped, who are driving this concept forward, as we see the rise of in-house IT teams as the next generation maintainer of smart building solutions.

Over in the UK, the buzz at Openreach’s commercial developer event was all about BT’s £15 billion commitment to roll out full fiber networks across the UK.

Back in January of this year, Openreach (BT) published the the £15bn rollout plan for their gigabit-capable Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network, promising to add 113 new locations (towns and villages) to their coverage plan, with an aim to reach 25 million premises (80% of the UK) by December 2026.

The point of full fiber? to ensure all households and businesses can get access to superfast internet. This will be crucial to ensuring that all communities can effectively work and study from home, leveling out the digital playing field and boosting productivity across the country.

The new locations Openreach (BT) will cover incorporates a mix of locations, from larger towns like Bolton and Aldershot, to large villages, like Pembury and Langley Mill. But, far from being randomly selected, most of these locations have been placed into specific build windows, with the majority of the near-future locations set to be built between 2022 – 2023/24.

Once live, the boosted service can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, and Giganet, bringing a wider variety of choice to both commercial and domestic consumers throughout the UK. And, with greater choice comes greater flexibility, granting business owners and remote workers better options when it comes to operating on their own terms with the ISP that works for them.

Haptics

Haptic technology delivers the ability to feel even while you’re experiencing things in virtual reality. A revolutionary piece of tech for experiencing an even more true-to-life version of the world in the metaverse, as well as being transformative to the way we work remotely.

Take healthcare, for example. Haptic technology would allow a doctor from the other side of the world to see and feel in real time, allowing them to diagnose with accuracy remotely, or even perform surgery.

The long term impact haptics could have upon real estate is that tenants will begin to think long and hard about where they choose to locate. In a world where you don’t need to be in person to deal with people, would we see a migration away from big cities to areas that have higher quality of life at a fraction of the cost? Or will the nuance of an in-person 1:1 always prevail, no matter how swish the tech? Time will tell here.

Miniature servers

Climate-controlled, portable server rooms are becoming more commonplace as they increase flexibility and an occupier’s ability to customize their space.

Miniature server rooms are essentially servers on wheels that provide the freedom to completely adapt a space to the needs of the individual occupier. They’re also fantastic at allowing businesses to get set up much faster when moving into a building, particularly in the industrial / distribution sectors, helping to facilitate that play-and-play experience, limiting any dips in productivity and facilitating a smoother move-in all round.