NAIOP Talks Prop Tech
Last week NAIOP Philadelphia hosted a webinar “How COVID-19 has Impacted the Adoption of PropTech” with a panel of industry leaders talking about the recent adoption of new technologies that maximize and sanitize commercial real estate.
Dan Ryan Ceo and Co-founder of Vergesense, a spatial censor that provides information on how space is used and can be analyzed to make real estate decisions. Their business has grown over the past few years focusing on creating space that fosters collaboration and interaction however COVID has quickly changed that. He kicked off the panel by sharing that COVID has pushed their clients towards new ways to look at their space. Optimizing existing space, changing footprint based on space utilization. agile seating plans and flipping the priorities from providing space for collision to providing space to keep employees at a safe distance from one another. The average building utilization pre-covid was 40%, citing examples like the break room and water cooler areas as spaces that are budgeted but not necessarily used for their intended purpose or for an amount of time justifiable to make it dedicated for one thing. Post-covid it is about adding space for distancing and preventing clustering (like at the water cooler).
Jim Kurek from Brandywine Realty Trust, the region’s largest office building owner, shared his insights from the building ownership and management perspective. Pre-covid his proptech focus was on animation of the corporate IT side. Post-covid the focus is on the experience, or rather how people experience the proptech at their buildings. This means the tenants and customers must have a clean interface and ease of use to manage spaces remotely and account for new COVID safety protocols in an operational role. He gave the example of implementing the automation of building alerts. Checking on a building and building systems remotely if you cant be there physically has been a growing request from companies in their buildings. Jim doubled this a "digital twin". He talked about how tenant services are also changing and how they are providing amenities in a new way. For example, you can’t just got to the gym, there will probably be and ipad to reserve rooms and less cafeterias but more online food ordering and pick up.
Bridgette Daniel from Wilco Electronic Enterprises shared the latest trends in hardware and products that property owners are adopting in response to covid. For example, keyless entry via a phone app has been growing in popularity however now it is considered a necessity to reduce touch points. The highest hurdle for her industry has been the up front costs for installation and implementation however Bridgettte explains that the up front cost will save the organization money on the operational side once everything is in place.
Some other key points:
Startups are providing great new tech during COVID
Building owners had been lagging in prop tech but now they are leading thinking of their spaces as more of a product and using it to differentiate
Chris Wink, Cofounder, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher of Technical.ly closed the panel with a wise insight sayin there are people who say everything will change in the future and there are people who say nothing will change in the future and it looks like proptech post-covid is somewhere in the middle.
