Artificial intelligence, from construction to management 500 billion in 10 years

From sales to property management, from market analysis (cross-referencing data streams on prices, rents, sales and the identikit of those living there) to predictive maintenance, artificial intelligence (AI) has long been transforming an industry as analogue as real estate until a few years ago.

According to estimates by Scenari Immobiliari - presented at the last Innovation Forum, in collaboration with Dils - thanks to the innovation factor, in 2035 the combined activities of construction, development, management and valorisation of real estate assets will be able to generate around 535 billion euro of wealth for the country, of which more than 5% for the construction sector, almost 2.5% for development and more than 14% for real estate activities. Values that could reach EUR 800 billion by 2050, with a range of between 8 and 10 per cent from construction, between 3 and 3.5 per cent from development and between 17 and 19 per cent from real estate activities.
As also shown by the latest Jll "Future of Work" global survey - which explores the priorities, challenges and strategies adopted by companies - for 93 per cent of Italian managers the application of artificial intelligence solutions will be an important driver in tackling the challenges of the real estate sector, a result that is even higher than the global average measured by the survey (87 per cent).

Not only. "In the latest survey on the subject," explained Alberico Radice Fossati, Country Leader Italy for Jll, "if 90% of those who deal with real estate use Ia, 60% responded that they have already initiated projects and solutions. The same percentage claims to have already started training programmes. After all, artificial intelligence is not just a set of solutions but an architecture that permeates the entire process of the company and the supply chain and brings multiple benefits. It ranges from floor plans and renderings that facilitate the creation or rationalisation of spaces and furnishings within a building, to predictive market analysis, resulting from solutions that allow a fast and complete reading of data flows. The real estate market can be mapped street by street. Fully automated management then makes it possible to respond quickly to a tenant's needs, to minimise vacancy, and to optimise the savings of an ESG-compliant building by up to 50-60% compared to one that is not. But it is not all gold.
"The Ia," continues Radice Fossati, "works if the tool that has to do the analysis receives true and reliable data streams. Without good data, good feedback cannot be processed. Investments and implementation costs, then, are, especially at the beginning, important. Finally, there is a lack of talent. Professionals with the right skills are still insufficient compared to the demands of the market'.

The Generali Real Estate team (36.7 billion in assets under management and over 2,000 buildings), led by Costanza Balboni Cestelli, head of innovation & data, was instead created in 2019. "The 'Technology' function," explained Balboni Cestelli, "was conceived to run parallel to the business, with the aim of rethinking it. We have thus become the second European real estate asset manager to have a unit dedicated to the development and management of proprietary machine learning applications, developing more than four proprietary data science products along the entire real estate asset management value chain, reinventing market research, and redesigning data engineering'. With a greenfield approach, Balboni Cestelli added, "we began experimenting with machine learning to demonstrate its value by familiarising the organisation with a different approach to reading data, particularly in key processes such as investment management. We made data more accessible while optimising costs. We have initiated the production of market insights to support day-to-day business functions, improving decision-making capabilities". And for the future? "By 2027," he concludes, "we aim to use technology to simplify and increase data efficiency and quality, supporting our value generation processes for our tenants and investors.

Even in a hyper-traditional sector such as construction, the impact of Ia is evolving processes and facilitating the work of enterprises, professionals, technicians and companies. From the era of intuition and experience, we are moving into the era of using data for predictive analysis, controlled development and subsequent monitoring. A pioneering case is the initiative of Ance Friuli Venezia Giulia within the framework of the 'Attention' project, which is itself part of the Interreg VI-A Italy-Austria Programme. The builders' association has interpreted the task of activating and coordinating a local innovation hub (one of five planned by the project's five cross-border partner poles), developing an artificial intelligence system at the service of a large information and training platform on the subject of materials, processes, recycling and the reduction of impacts and waste.