AI Assets turns physical property assets into digital data

The launch of new asset data capture technology by AI Assets is set to revolutionise the frequency and accuracy of asset reporting by allowing commercial property assets to be identified and captured in a fraction of the time of traditional methods.

Previously in beta, the major upgrade is the result of more than 12 months of development and delivers some significant improvements to commercial property owners and property consultants, allowing teams to capture asset data consistently across sites 80% more efficiently than traditional methods.

The CEO and founder of AI Assets, Wayne Herbert, said that while commercial property is a $1 trillion asset class in Australia, aging asset registers and traditional methods of asset data management are costing landlords millions of dollars in lost value and property downtime.

“Most property owners have their asset registers updated every five to 10 years because they take so long to create using traditional methods,” said Wayne. 

“It means that at least 90% of Australian commercial property asset registers are seriously out of date and that any budgeting or lifecycle management is based on old data. That makes it pretty hard to accurately predict when repairs will be needed and owners need to accommodate contingency costs in their budgets.”

AI Assets has two parts. In the field, an iPad app allows assets to be inspected and recorded by going through the space, assets and details. Innovative features include talk-to-text functionality to create notes without the need to stop and type, the ability to take photographs or scan barcodes within the system which removes the need to manually add data and more than 1800 pre-identified assets. 

“The iPad app is designed to help those in the field capture great quality data quickly, easily and consistently,” said Wayne, who has more than 25 years of experience in asset management and facilities management consulting. 

‘I personally know how frustrating it can be having to manually type in all the details for every asset – and sometimes it’s even dangerous. So we’ve designed the iPad app to get people through sites really quickly while still improving the quality of the data captured.”

With all assets and information saved internally, the iPad app works offline which means it is suitable for underground, remote or hazardous sites. Data is synced back to the cloud-based web portal once the user is able to access wifi. 

The new cloud-based web portal has been significantly updated to deliver instantaneous asset reports. The upgrade allows property owners and facilities managers a complete view of their asset portfolio including the ability to see at a glance, the total number of assets, the percentage that are in poor or very poor condition, the total dollar value of repair costs and the total number of repair tasks. 

From here, they can filter it to look at individual buildings, examine individual asset status across their portfolio or look at the repair tasks required by either urgency or type. 

“All of the asset names, details and costs are editable and customisable so there is full flexibility for teams to run their businesses as they wish,” said Wayne. “There’s no need to relearn the names of assets or be locked into any supplier pricing. And you can edit either via the dashboard, or via spreadsheets mode.”

Wayne said usage of the AI Assets data capture app had demonstrated that asset register projects that had previously taken months to complete, could now be executed in just hours. 

“Our clients have created and updated asset registers five times faster than traditional methods and save up to 80% of their time on-site,” Wayne said. “We’re able to record thousands of assets in a fraction of the time, and as soon as the asset is identified, you can create reports including maintenance reports, capex and opex budgets.

AI Assets technology has been used on projects for bluechip property owners including the Australian Government, Commonwealth Bank and Woolworths and is used by some of Australia’s best property consultants.