AI Assets delivers long term value to Assetwize

AI Assets gives you a much stronger understanding of how the different maintenance systems and assets make up the whole picture of a building’s condition and the work required for updates and repairs.

 

Innovative approach

Assetwize is a team of five property experts who have a passion for the built environment and a reputation for delivering commercial advice with long term value to the property sector.

With offices in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, the proudly independent property consultancy is focused purely on identifying and solving problems for clients, has deep expertise and are highly experienced at collecting and analysing hard data to give informed and reliable advice. 

To this end, Assetwize is always striving for new approaches that provide innovative and market-beating outputs. Assetwize director, Craig Underwood, credits AI Assets as one of the secret weapons behind their success. 

The young proptech has allowed them to punch above their weight, competing with much larger consultancies and working with some of Australia’s largest property owners, including Stockland, RSL Life Care, Charter Hall and the ACT Government. 

The future of property surveying

“This is the future of property surveying and consulting,” Craig said. “We’ve been really successful in using the product and then integrating the data and outputs to create better quality reports that our clients really value.”  

Assetwize integrates the AI Asset system into their service delivery for clients across the commercial and industrial building spectrum for Condition Reports, Lifecycle Costing Exercises, Energy Efficiency and Asset Registers, plus a range of specialisation work. 

Speed of data collection, accuracy and consistency across multiple data sets has always been a challenge in the building industry. 

“When you ask if a client has an asset register they have one from the fire guy, one from the maintenance – it’s all a mix,” Craig said. “The industry has always had multiple different providers and roles and different needs so there has long been an absence of consistency and there has always been a gap in the market between systems that are used in buildings to manage maintenance, what is going on in the building and what its condition is.” 

“But AI Assets helps bring all of that information together which gives you a much stronger understanding of how the different maintenance systems and assets make up the whole picture of a building’s condition and the work required for updates and repairs.

​Craig met AI Assets founder Wayne Herbert about eight years ago and was impressed at the thinking and expertise that went into developing the proptech startup.   

“A notepad, pen and a camera is the original technology that many still use, and there are products that allow you to capture information onsite, but they don’t bring it back into the asset register,” said Craig. 

“AI Assets captures all of the information at the site, and as part of that, it has the condition rating and the lifecycle piece behind it. It means you’re skipping the really time-consuming step of having to produce all the information into a spreadsheet for analysis because the AI Asset system brings it all together.”

From here, Craig and his team are able to download the data, review and update it. This allows them to spend more time on the high-value work of analysing and interrogating the data for insights that can deliver huge value to their clients. 

Massive time savings

As property surveying professionals, Craig says their job entails just three key steps, that belie an extraordinary workload. 

“As a property consultant what we do is survey, review the information and report but inside those three steps are thousands of tasks,” Craig said. 

Craig said that using traditional methods, surveying took up an estimated 50% of the time while reviewing and reporting made up the remainder. 

Using AI Assets, however, Craig says the surveying takes a little longer – around 60% of the task time. 

“That’s because it allows you to be much more thorough,” he said. “With a paper-based system, you tend to cut corners or rely on your past knowledge or experience. But with the data capture, you want to leave the site as close as you can to complete because then you’re not having to remember or trying to transcribe your notes.”

With a more comprehensive survey data set, the review of the data is considerably quicker – at least 20% in time savings, Craig estimates, and this also allows reports to be created – and edited – with lightning-fast speed. 

“It takes about 7-12 steps to change a report using traditional methods, but with AI Assets, because all the data is in the cloud, if you need to change something, it takes seconds.”

Delivering better service, more often

Craig said that one of the additional benefits to AI Assets was that it had allowed Assetwize to deliver projects more frequently for clients. Creating more Condition Assessment Reports more regularly was one of the key examples. 

“Owners need to have them done, but the traditional time they take – and the cost of that time – has typically meant they’d be done once every five years or so,” said Craig. 

“But using the AI Assets system, it’s easy for us to do an update of the data every year. This has meant we can now lock in clients for annual routine updates and that’s been hugely beneficial to the business.”

Nothing else like it on the market

The combination of survey app to capture asset data plus the asset data management system which can also be used by clients means AI Assets stands out in the market. 

“There are other tools that building consultancies are using that they have built themselves or are off the shelf, but they don’t do all the things that AI Assets does,” said Craig. “There are tools that do good reporting but deliver a poor audit, or vice versa – but not both.”

AI Assets has a key advantage in that it combines the two elements of data collection ease and data management which deliver unprecedented control to users. 

“We’ve always said the asset register is the DNA of the building. It’s what’s there. If you can get that right, you can do so many things from it,” Craig said. 

AI Assets brings the data together so that it looks and feels the same, making it easy for clients to understand maintenance spends for future years and allowing much more accurate budgeting. 

Craig said AI Assets is an important part of the business plan of Assetwize. 

“As a business, we’re about helping our clients get wise about their assets. It’s been hugely beneficial for us and our clients to date. 

“This is the time for AI Assets. It’s never been a better time.”

CRAIG UNDERWOOD
Director, Assetwize
https://www.assetwize.com.au/