Harnessing the power of AI for real estate

In advance of a panel discussion being hosted by Verco at UKREiiF 2025, we spoke with Matt Penton, Director of Google Data and AI at BIP, about how AI is affecting the real estate sector.

Keen to share his views on how AI can drive progress and maximise efficiency, and how it is something to be mastered, not feared, Matt touched on some of the topics he’ll discuss at the event.

What interests you about working with AI?

My background is in applied statistics. In the past, I worked on Google Cloud for the largest Google-only provider in EMEA. My passion is in ‘big data’ (the kind of data humans can’t process easily by themselves). When you start talking about 16 billion events a day with hundreds of dimensions each, no human can possibly make sense of all those data points, let alone use and combine them efficiently. Humans can’t spot patterns at such a scale, but it’s easily possible for Generative AI and ML. And this is far from the only positive use of these highly intelligent tools.

How has AI changed the way businesses function today?

We’re right in the middle of a transformative era. The major players such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini have made it possible for anyone to ask challenging questions and have the answers explained to them. AI can also take on repetitive admin work, affording people at all levels of an organisation the freed-up capacity to learn new things and apply that knowledge to their roles. The improved levels of productivity speak for themselves, generating new ideas, new products and forward progress.

What about real estate? How can AI be used to improve processes?

AI can take connected buildings, process all the different forms of their data, clean it, make sure it's meaningful and then use predictive modelling to forecast results. For instance, during the COVID pandemic, population density needed to be monitored, but single data sets like keycard access were incapable of giving an accurate view. Instead, we needed to look at multiple forms of data – WiFi usage, cell coverage coming in and out of buildings, washroom cleaning sensor cycles, etc. Once we had all this information, we needed to cross-reference it to answer questions such as how many meeting rooms were needed, and what times of day lights could be turned off to ensure energy efficiency. AI is very good at making connections between disparate things, so it made the whole process faster than it had been when it was manual. Using AI provided greater insight than our customer had ever seen before.

We can now also create digital twins of buildings to simulate weather effects, material behavior changes and the potential impact of energy efficiency projects. AI can spot anomalies and safety risks that the human eye might gloss over as being too small (or just in human error). And there are many more sector-specific uses for AI besides these.

What are the main challenges for real estate companies looking to use AI?

A key challenge for real estate companies is to make sure their whole supply chain is operating at a similar level. At all stages of the process, stakeholders need to embrace modern methods and avoid reverting back to large volumes of irregularly formatted spreadsheets sent by email. All of us need to get comfortable with change.

AI isn’t going away, so we need to quell the fear that it will replace humans by showcasing how it can help humans instead. That’s what we’re trying to do at BIP and Verco as we help clients set baselines and targets, record their progress and keep track of it via a platform that makes sense of the data (MyVerco).

What are you looking forward to about UKREiiF 2025?

I’m excited to bring the topics we’ve discussed here, and others, to the panel discussion hosted by Verco. Each of the other experts – from leading organisations like La Salle, CQuel and Invesco – will share their experiences of using AI to accelerate the journey to net zero. It will be really valuable to explore and learn from their experiences, so I’m looking forward to being there.

Matt will be on a panel titled ‘Accelerate your net zero delivery with digital and AI’, hosted by Verco at UKREiiF 2025. The panel will take place on Wednesday 21st May at 11.00-12.00. You can find them on the Newsroom Stage.

Find out more about Verco's attendance at UKREiiF

Matt Penton interview with UKREiiF

Matt has recently written an article for UKREiiF ahead of the Verco panel session on 21st May.

Take a look at the UKREiiF interview here