The top partnerships using technology to improve the built environment
IndustryHub
This tech start-up, founded by Savannah de Savary, claims to be the epicentre of collaboration in property development. A sort of who’s who of real estate, it enables developers to unearth, connect and work with the professionals involved in projects they admire. Find a building, find all its players, in one place. Build connections and collaborate.
Rialto
More than $11tn (£8.3tn) of assets are managed in manual spreadsheets. One trillion dollars of assets, manually inputted into Excel sounds like the stuff of nightmares. Unless you are Rialto, then it is an opportunity. Its platform provides landlords, agents and developers real-time access to a centralised dashboard, allowing easy collaboration between all parties involved in property management.
PiLabs
Europe’s first property-focused accelerator is bringing property and tech closer together. Now moving into its fourth cohort of budding entrepreneurs seeking to bring property into the 21st century and beyond, the innovation lab brings together mentors, financial backers and a growing marketplace. This year it teamed up with Canada-based Bosa Ventures to provide access to the North American market.
PlaceMake
A maths genius and a hedge fund rising star were always going to make a formidable pair. But Placemake’s Chlump Chatkupt and Nikhil Vadgama have taken collaboration to a whole new level. Their mapping system can take snapshots of a city to identify up-and-coming areas based not only on price and upcoming developments but everything from healthcare facilities to social media check-ins.
Level 39
London’s largest fintec cluster, Canary Wharf Group’s Level 39, has provided more than 200 member companies access to major financial institutions and technology since its establishment in 2013. It has also enabled CWG to create a more collaborative community in the wharf with its own 9,000-strong tech hub.
Insight Residential
Insight Residential is bringing together numerous datasets to identify trends, risks and opportunities across the residential sector. Instead of having to scour several different portals and traipse through local authority planning documents, Insight Residential has brought all that data into a single hub, promising improved investment decisions.
Slack
The collaborative information sharing app of choice – for teams that are changing the world, if you believe the strapline. Slack allows teams to share documents, discuss and share information openly or through private channels – it syncs with services such as Google Drive and Dropbox – and connect all the tools they use in just the one handy place. It picks up the Slack, so you don’t have to.
Pavegen and Westfield
Engineer meets retailer to produce off-grid energy and invaluable data. Pavegen is the company behind a flooring tile that uses kinetic energy to produce off-grid electricity, while at the same time collecting a host of data about the people walking across them. Its collaboration with Westfield Stratford may change the way developers and retailers think about smart buildings.
Strava Metro
One for the property cyclists out there. Millions of cycle and run routes are uploaded to Strava accounts all over the world every week. Strava Metro anonymises and aggregates the data, then partners with city planners to provide real-life information to help improve the movement of people and things around cities, and ultimately create better and healthier places.
Tech City
The ideas marketplace centred on Old Street, EC1, that is championing diversity in all forms and pioneering initiatives to connect with local communities. Tech City is still one of the pioneers in tech collaboration, spawning a tech nation across the UK.
For the second year in a row, a public body has been awarded Estates Gazette’s Collaborators Award. Click here to find out the winner.
- POLITICAL PARTNERSHIPS The local authorities, politicians, councillors and companies whose partnerships caught the eye of this year’s judges.
- SOCIAL SUPERHEROES Working together need not only happen inside the workplace, as these collaborative efforts show
- REAL RELATIONSHIPS The joint efforts driving change in the property industry
- CREATIVE SPACES Collaborating to create the best places to live and work
