With over two decades of experience in commercial real estate, Petr Machula has witnessed—and helped shape—the industry's transformation from analogue chaos to digital sophistication. Now spearheading business development at SINGU, a leading CAFM platform, Machula reveals how cutting-edge AI, ESG integration, and deep user insight are redefining facility management. In this interview, he shares how SINGU is not just keeping up with the times but setting the pace for the future of operational real estate across Central and Eastern Europe.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has released a new edition of its Global Red Book, which features several crucial updates on AI use in valuation and the mandatory implementation of ESG principles.

The opening panel at the SEE Property Forum, held in Bucharest by Property Forum, focused on the future of real estate in the context of advancing technology and sustainability demands, both for new and existing properties. Moderated by James Dearsley, CEO of EMEA Verv, the panel featured industry leaders, including Hubert Abt, Max Beard, Costin Bănică, and Emma Toma, who discussed evolving tenant needs, sustainable development, and the impact of technology.

Panattoni is constructing a fully robotic BTS (built-to-suit) distribution centre for Auchan Polska. The centre in Wilcza Góra near Warsaw is to service Auchan’s customers from its updated internet platform. Within the centre, all operations are to be automated using proprietary systems from Ocado based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

Romanian industrial developer Global Vision has launched a new technology and innovation division, with a strategic aim of implementing custom AI solutions across its portfolio of real estate and green energy projects. 

Drees & Sommer has released its Innovation Scouting Report 2024 this week. This year, in terms of technology trends and relevance, Trend Radar1 has placed AI first with 23.4%, big data analytics second with 15.3%, and Internet of Things (IoT) third with 11.9%, followed closely by cloud computing and digital twin.

The 4-day workweek is becoming an increasingly hot topic. Although in Poland it still appears to be a thing of the future, recent years have shown how quickly labour market trends are changing. AI is also broadly expected to have a significant effect on the workplace. BNP Paribas Real Estate experts are wondering, how will all of this impact the commercial real estate market.

Latest technological innovations may cut time and cost significantly in preparing real estate projects. Property Forum asked Béla Markovich, CEO of construction giant Mapei’s Hungarian subsidiary about the ways the company uses VR and AI to reach higher efficiency and about R+D activity to produce eco-friendly construction materials.

According to Antony Slumbers, one of the keynote speakers of Budapest PropTech Forum 2019, the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) is probably larger than that of electricity or the steam engine. In the world of real estate, AI can make the design, construction, management, lease and sale of buildings much more efficient.

Advances in AI applications are already causing revolutionary changes in the commercial real estate field, and we’ll continue to see a shift in the way real estate professionals do business in the years to come. With PropTech start-ups increasingly offering technologically innovative products and business strategies for the real estate market, Instant Offices looked at some of the top predicted AI trends that PropTech companies will be bringing into the real estate market in the next two years.