MODUS Asia-Pacific Edition | Q2 2019

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Q2/19 02/19 ASIA-PACIFIC EDITION THE PUBLIC SPACE ISSUE

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“ WE NEED BETTER INFRASTRUCTURE, AND NOBODY KNOWS HOW THE COST WILL BE MET ”

O

ver the past 30 years, progress, peace and globalisation have increased prosperity throughout the world. This period of stability has made it possible to focus upon the essentials of modern civilisation: clean water, a reliable power supply, being

connected both physically and digitally, and a place to call home.

Investment in basic infrastructure means that children in cities such

FOR RICS Rory Tufano and Jeanie Chan (Asia Pacific)

as Mexico City, Delhi and Shenzhen are born with the opportunity to

Stephanie Bentley (UK)

live well, rather than simply surviving. However, there is still a long way

FOR SUNDAY

to go if we are to achieve this more universally.

Editor Oliver Parsons Art Director Sam Walker Deputy Editor Andy Plowman Contributing Editor Alex Frew McMillan Designer Katie Wilkinson Creative Director Matt Beaven Account Director Karen Jenner Senior Account Manager James Cannon Asia Advertising Bryan Chan Production Manager Michael Wood Managing Director Toby Smeeton Repro F1 Colour Printers ROF Media Cover Irena Gajic

Published by Sunday, 207 Union Street, London SE1 0LN wearesunday.com Advertising enquiries Bryan Chan, ROF Media, +852 3150 8912

For those in wealthier cities, life is becoming expensive, congested and polluted. From ancient sewers to overcrowded train stations, much of the infrastructure of the developed world needs an upgrade.

The consultant McKinsey predicts a major shortfall in infrastructure spending to 2035. Meanwhile, traditional investors are wary of funding modern infrastructure or using new technologies to improve existing assets, and rising instability is slowing down project development.

The simple point? The world needs more and better infrastructure, and nobody is sure how the cost will be met.

We must innovate to find an answer, and this is where RICS has a key role. Through our work exploring the future of our profession, we seek

Views expressed in Modus are those of the named author and are not necessarily those of RICS or the publisher. The contents of this magazine are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form without the prior permission of the publisher. All information correct at time of going to press. All rights reserved. The publisher cannot accept liability for errors or omissions. RICS does not accept

to identify the skills and resources needed to address this challenge.

If we can find ways to de-risk the way in which infrastructure is built and managed, then I believe we will truly be fulfilling our obligation to work for the public advantage.

responsibility for loss, injury or damage or costs that result from, or are connected in any way to, the use of products or services advertised. All editions of Modus are printed on paper sourced from sustainable, properly managed forests. This magazine can be recycled for use in newspapers and packaging. Please dispose of it at your local collection point. The polythene and paper in this pack are recyclable.

CHRIS BROOKE FRICS RICS PRESIDENT

RICS Awards 2019 Southeast Asia 11 July, Singapore Tickets to attend are now available The RICS Awards showcase the most inspirational industry projects and individuals in land, construction, real estate and infrastructure.

Join us as we announce the winners of each category and handover the coveted RICS Awards trophies.

rics.org/seaawards

INTELLIGENCE

FEATURES

06

12

Re-thinking / Is Oyo’s ownership model the future of the hotel market in Asia?

08

20

Review of the year / Profiling the winners of the RICS Awards 2019 for Hong Kong and China

Does it matter who owns our public space? / We assess whether people’s wariness over privately owned public spaces is misplaced

26

32

Our space / How is the fourth industrial revolution helping to reshape cities for the future?

The car and the city / If Mobility as a Service catches on, what will we do with all those unused parking spaces?

36

40

The new tools of the trade / Ten of the best new productivity apps for the profession – whatever your specialism

Digital twin / How BIM is playing a vital role in a building’s operational phase, as well as its construction

Opinion / Harry Tan on what makes a city relevant, as well as resilient

09

Chartered territory / Privately owned public spaces: good or bad? We get your views

10

Deconstructed / How does New Zealand build new houses in a construction skills crisis?

EXPERIENCE

44

How to … / … perfect the art of placemaking, in the words of its top practitioners

47-49

News and events / Including the RICS and MacDonald & Co Rewards and Attitudes Survey 2019

50

What if? / Artificial intelligence could be used to manage construction projects

INTELLIGENCE

Is this the future of hotels? / Resilient cities / Privately owned public spaces / Auckland’s skills shortage /

GR AN D OP EN IN G

RETHINKING

THE OYO MODEL: HERE T O S TAY? Oyo Rooms has $1bn in backing, and some big expansion plans.

But can it revolutionise the Asian hotel? Daniel Voellm says it’s enough to give the industry’s entrenched players sleepless nights

2018. But competing with traditional hotels in developed markets will be a challenge.

The barrier to entry for international expansion comes in the form of stricter building codes in other countries. In India, its consumer-oriented, plug-and-play model allows for the adaptive reuse and “upcycling” of lodging facilities at limited cost. But these might not qualify for hotel licenses in other markets, for a host of factors, suggesting that expansion will be chiefly in markets that are less regulated.

ILLUSTR ATION BY S ALLY C AULWELL-FOLIO ART

Determining value

The hotel industry is, like many others, in a period of reinvention. Established models are failing, replaced by start-ups keen to exploit inefficiencies and maximise underused assets. And Oyo Rooms is at the forefront of that reinvention. On the face of it, it has similarities with its latest backer, Airbnb, which has invested a reported $150m in the Indian company – both are “unicorns” that have disrupted a legacy industry, exploiting a previously uncontested market by using technology to their advantage. Like Airbnb, it also seeks out underused real estate, particularly in the case of its home-rental platform.

Oyo began life as an aggregator, leasing and reselling hotels rooms, but it has since shifted to branding entire hotels under a franchise model – similar to Chinese operators such as 7 Days Inn – which is how it now generates 90% of its revenue.

Even more so than Airbnb, Oyo brings software and applications to help owners operate small-size hotels, integrating and centralising data and management. This model allows Oyo to define its own set of brand standards, well suited to modern emerging-market travellers that give hotel owners flexibility in terms of real estate, while simultaneously providing a consistent experience for Oyo customers.

And acknowledging that control is a key element in the tech space, Oyo controls almost all the “touch points” in the

customer’s journey, as well as the back-ofhouse systems. Its one-stop-shop app, for example, lets you order room service or a cab, as well as booking a room.

Fragmented ownership

Oyo has targeted distressed real estate, normally in the form of non-performing or underperforming existing hotels. So far, it has been most successful in India’s highly fragmented hotel market. In this environment, Oyo plays to its strengths by centralising operations, standards, analytics, distribution and customer-relationship management, leaving owners with limited negotiating power. Its fees are not uncommon for tech service firms and, in the absence of competitors, go uncontested.

In India, Oyo also benefits from the inexperience of hotel owners. Many essentially see their fixed asset as a sunk cost. They view Oyo’s involvement as a way to enhance their cashflow, while Oyo can offer loans for renovations. Hotel owners are charged a commission of around 20% on franchise room sales. For inexperienced owners, this 80:20 split is appealing in light of the technology they’re provided with.

But this imbalance in power, where owners have limited recourse, has led to trouble with platforms in other industries before.

In 2017, Oyo launched its own boutique brand of urban hotels, Oyo Townhouse, which it launched in Britain in September

How does this model affect valuations? As with any hotel, surveyors need to evaluate thoroughly the quality of the underlying asset, as well as the terms of the agreement with the operator. Should the agreement end, are there any alternative operators that can drive the same performance?

This model is a highly successful shortterm growth engine. As seen in the US and Chinese lodging sectors, as well as other highly standardised businesses such as fast food, franchising gives the fastest growth trajectory. It also provides small investors with a strong and immediate business opportunity. But many cities have moved against platforms such as Airbnb, limiting the length of rentals or total nights per year, which could affect valuations, particularly if a property is zoned as residential. Basing the value on income projections is more suitable for long-established hotel businesses – and this type of regulatory pressure challenges those projections.

Investing in an Oyo property, or the company itself, is similar to investing in other budget chains such as Super 8 and Wyndham. However, tech firms, as disruptors, do not always follow industry standards, and can introduce changes without notice. This risk should be carefully evaluated by any investor.

Daniel Voellm MRICS is managing partner of the Asia-Pacific region for hospitality consulting company HVS Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 7

INTELLIGENCE

“ A CITY THAT IS RELEVANT AS WELL AS RESILIENT WILL ATTRACT INVESTMENT ” HARRY TAN HE AD OF RESE ARCH, ASIA-PACIFIC, NUVEEN RE AL ESTATE

Real estate needs to be relevant as well as resilient to retain its long-term appeal to an investor. Both factors must combine to ensure that a city is successful now, and for decades to come. That’s the kind of timeline that an institution must consider when investing money that other people have entrusted to us.

We looked at a range of factors – scale, transparency, stability and the impact of structural megatrends – to find the world’s most relevant cities. Only 2% of them globally make the cut, 17 of which are in Asia-Pacific. These cities are economically and environmentally resilient, and investment in their real estate markets can help to futureproof our portfolio.

The cities break down into two camps.

First, there are principal investment cities with very liquid and transparent property markets, which score well on scale, growth and soft measures. These can form the heart of any resilient portfolio. Then, there are progressive investment cities that have smaller or less transparent markets, but still post impressive growth scores. These are domestically important and dynamic but warrant only selective activity, which we monitor for improving fundamentals.

Tokyo is a great example of a principal city. It is the world’s biggest metropolis by output and population, and still will be in 10 years’ time. It deserves the attention of income-driven investors.

Shenzhen, on the other hand, is a good example of a progressive city. With more than 64.5m ft2 (6m m2) coming on to the market by 2022, the pace of development is triple that of Tokyo’s, and would overwhelm most markets. Yet Shenzhen is fast growing and maturing. It will be a principal city in tomorrow’s world. Selecting it now will help a portfolio deliver optimum returns.

The growth of the financial and business services sector is forecast to outpace office supply in all of the region’s cities, bar Tokyo. The gap is widest in Singapore, Beijing and Brisbane, which will support ongoing rental growth in all three.

Thanks to its broadly low level of available stock, Sydney is expected to post a sharp increase in future supply compared with the previous five years, to meet rising demand from the expanding services sector. Seoul’s office pipeline will grow by 20% in the next five years. But that should be viewed as a normalisation in supply, after 14% of stock came off the market between 2012 and 2017. In Singapore, rents are expected to rise through to 2021 in Marina Bay, at which point 100,000 m2 (1.076. ft2) will come to the market.

Based on our criteria, at present, Tokyo is Asia-Pacific’s most solid defensive city.

Its rental cycle might be peaking but income is proving durable, and finance costs are low. Seoul and Singapore have supportive markets as past pressure eases. Hong Kong and Shanghai require a highly selective approach while prices are driven up by Chinese occupiers in search of trophy assets. Australia’s cities should reward an aggressive investment stance, with only low rental growth in Melbourne and Sydney, and sustained higher rents in Brisbane.

But the rate of new supply is manageable, and the local governance supportive.

Asia-Pacific’s key markets continue to be an attractive investment proposition.

The current high pricing may suppress total returns, but finding the right asset with a stable income will be a strong anchor to a long-term portfolio. This is all the more important at a time when the world’s property markets are awash with capital, making it harder to get true value for money.

Read more commercial insights in RICS’ quarterly Global Commercial Property Monitor. Go to rics.org/APACcpm

ILLUSTR ATION BY DANILO AGU TOLI

OPINION: RESILIENT CITIES

CHARTERED TERRITORY

PRI VAT ELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACES ARE…

#RICSMODUS ON T WIT TER @CALGARYBOOTS As an organisation which prides itself on its environmental credentials isn’t it time Modus was delivered in starch based wrappers rather than plastic? #RICSMODUS

This month’s feature on privately owned public spaces (see p20), challenges the public perception that they are a “bad thing”.

To coincide with this, we took to Twitter to find out how deep this feeling runs …

19%

A NECESSARY E VIL

@VINCENT_PEGG It’s been a busy few weeks, great to sit down and catch up on this month’s #RICSModus! @RICSnews #Chartered Surveyor

@ATAMVERDI Excellent breadth of thought provoking articles in #RICS #Modus #Ethics

39% BAD FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES

17%

NO BIG DE AL

25%

GRE AT PL ACEMAKING Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 9

INTELLIGENCE

DECONSTRUCTED

HOME HELP REQUIRED

IMAGE BY GE T T Y

Auckland is finally tackling its chronic housing shortage, but doesn’t have enough construction workers to meet the shortfall, says David Norman

Like many coastal cities with good climates, relative safety, well-developed service sectors and solid land-ownership rights, Auckland’s population has grown rapidly over the last 10 years – by about 20%.

This has created huge demand for housing.

The city now needs a new dwelling for every three people.

Unfortunately, for several years following the global financial crisis, the rate of housebuilding simply did not keep pace with the growth in population.

Despite a massive surge in approvals for new dwellings, we have a long way to go.

We are now approving more than 13,000 dwellings a year in Auckland. Half of those are apartments or terraced houses, which are not typical for New Zealand. As a consequence, there’s a shortage of specialist skills for high-rise apartment construction. The situation has been exacerbated by a building boom in commercial property, which competes for these workers. Many developers have resorted to bringing in teams of labourers from overseas,

but the real challenge is at the skilled end of the spectrum.

Auckland underwent a rezoning in November 2016 that exponentially increased the development potential of thousands of properties across the city. The new zones have encouraged development in brownfield areas and allow for quadruple the number of dwellings in the city. But we have little influence over immigration and New Zealand’s ability to attract skilled people.

Auckland’s population boom has been driven by net migration, including from overseas. Another factor is that New Zealanders are not emigrating to Australia in the numbers they once were. These people are staying put, or are coming back mainly for work opportunities. The high level of employment raises overall labour-force participation and reduces the unemployment rate.

The phenomenon also increases the supply of workers, resulting in lower wage increases.

The construction industry in Auckland has not benefitted from New Zealand’s work-visa

programme as much as hoped.

Only two of the top 12 occupations for new work visas in 2018 were construction related. This means that those already employed in the sector must be more productive, which is a good thing. But it also means that the gap between new projects being approved and completed is widening, due to capacity constraints.

The ban on overseas residents buying existing homes, which came into effect last August, will have a limited impact on the city’s housing market. In central Auckland, one dwelling in six goes to a foreign buyer, triple the rate in the rest of the city. The rate of foreign ownership is even higher in the apartment market.

So we may see a little less interest in the apartment market from foreign buyers. A large number of dwellings are still purchased through opaque mechanisms like trusts and corporations, where country of residence is indeterminate.

We may see more overseas owners using these types of loopholes if they are strongly motivated to buy in Auckland.

The change in ownership rules has undoubtedly removed some speculation from a hot property market. But it does little to dampen overall demand from New Zealand occupiers, which is still strong, suggesting the skills shortage will persist.

David Norman is chief economist of Auckland Council. Read RICS’ APAC Construction and Infrastructure Survey at rics.org/apacconstruction

VITAL STATISTICS

35%

SHARE OF NE W ZE AL AND ’ S 4.9 MILLION POPUL ATION WHO LIVE IN AUCKL AND

46K

SHORTFALL IN DWELLINGS FACED

BY THE CIT Y OF AUCKL AND

25%

SURGE IN DWELLING APPROVALS IN THE 12 MONTHS TO FEBRUARY 2019

4.2%

UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN AUCKL AND

2.4%

WAGE GROW TH IN NE W ZE AL AND CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY IN 2018

6%

DWELLINGS SOLD IN AUCKL AND TO FOREIGN RESIDENTS IN Q4 2018 Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 11

RICS AWARDS 2019:

REVIEW OF THE YEAR It’s been another year of outstanding achievement for professionals in the built environment, exemplified by the projects and people honoured at the RICS Awards in Hong Kong and China WORDS BY ALE X FRE W MCMILL AN

RICS AWARDS HONG KONG 2019: THE WINNERS OFFICE TEAM Swire Properties – One Taikoo Place (1) RESIDENTIAL TEAM Wheelock Properties Limited – Oasis Kai Tak (2) RETAIL TEAM Knight Frank – Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage & Arts (3) FACILITIES MANAGEMENT TEAM JLL – Hang Seng Bank PROPERTY MANAGEMENT TEAM Savills Services Group – Gaw Capital Partners

REBIRTH AND RENEWAL IN HONG KONG It is a sign of Asia’s new-found sense of self and placemaking that The Mills is one of the projects recognised in the RICS Awards Hong Kong 2019. Hong Kong’s award winners often harked back to the city’s history in creating new contributions to its cityscape.

The Mills is a revitalisation project in the gritty industrial district of Tsuen Wan. It dates back to Hong Kong’s heyday in the 1960s as one of Asia’s vital hubs of textile production. That form of manufacturing at one point employed more than half of Hong Kong’s workforce. But it decamped across the border in the decades since.

The Nan Fung Group has taken its own former factory complex, Nan Fung Cotton Mills, which formed the roots of the company back in 1954, and transformed it into an innovative, contiguous space. The project houses the incubator Fabrica, a heritage centre for the textiles industry, “experiential” retail space devoted largely to hand-made goods, and artisanal restaurants.

Nan Fung Development took home the prize for “Refurbishment/Revitalisation Team of the Year”for its efforts. The Mills is a project estimated to have an economic impact of HK$3.34bn ($425m) in a HK$14bn ($1.8bn) regeneration of the Chai Wan Kok district.

Knight Frank won Retail Team of the Year for its 13-year involvement advising on the trade and tenant

PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANCY SERVICES TEAM Arcadis – Urban Renewal Authority CONSTRUCTION PROJECT MANAGEMENT TEAM Swire Properties – One Taikoo Place REFURBISHMENT/ REVITALISATION TEAM Nan Fung Development The Mills (4) RESEARCH TEAM CBRE – WORK_IT: Technology / Workplace / Jobs series SUSTAINABILITY ACHIEVEMENT Swire Properties – One Taikoo Place BEST DEAL Cushman & Wakefield and Link CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY PROJECT Wheelock Properties Limited YOUNG SURVEYOR Alvin Leung MRICS, director, JLL capital markets team LIFETIME ACHIEVER Sir Gordon Wu, chairman, Hopewell Holdings

RICS AWARDS 2019

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RICS AWARDS HONG KONG 2019: THE JURY HEAD JUROR – ALAN DALGLEISH FRICS Chief executive, ANREV JURORS CHRIS BROOKE FRICS RICS President and co-founder, Brooke Husband

DR WILLIAM CHAN FRICS Chief operating officer, West Kowloon Cultural District Authority KENNETH FOO Executive director, Hongkong Land

GERRY KIPLING FRICS Managing director, Oak Tree Property Services

Department of Urban Planning and Design, University of Hong Kong

Urban Renewal Authority

STEWART CK LEUNG Vice-chairman, Wheelock and Company

PHILIP LO FRICS Consultant, Rider Levett Bucknall

LING KAR-KAN Honorary professor,

IR WAI CHI SING Managing director,

YU TAK CHEUNG JP Deputy director of buildings, building department, Hong Kong SAR Government

ADA WONG KA KI FRICS CEO, Champion REIT

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 13

mix and revenue projections of the commercial elements of the Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage & Arts. The project has transformed 16 heritage buildings in the old Victorian prison complex in the heart of Central on Hong Kong island. Knight Frank also acted as sole leasing agent for all retail space, helping to breathe new life into “Big Station”, as the Central Police Station was not necessarily affectionately known.

Recognising the need to overhaul existing property stock at a city-wide level, Arcadis won Professional Consultancy Services Team of the Year. By 2046, Arcadis notes, almost half of Hong Kong’s building stock will be over half a century old. That represents a HK$1.9tr ($242bn) maintenance liability. It is an issue that Arcadis will now aim to control in its newly appointed role as technical solutions consultant to the Urban Renewal Authority. Arcadis is tasked with extending the operational life of buildings and informing policy on building rehabilitation.

Although it’s a new 48-storey skyscraper that stands on the site of a demolished office tower, One Taikoo Place also has echoes of its past. The watercourses that will line the streets outside are a nod to the quays of the former Taikoo Dockyards that stood on site. The 69,000 ft2 (6,410 m2) of greenery in two gardens matches the size of Statue Square in Central – open space more at home in Hong Kong’s distant past than this now-crammed city. The building, which recycled 75% of the waste produced in demolition and 60% of that caused during construction, has won RICS Sustainability Achievement of the Year for owner Swire Properties. The 1m ft2 (92,900 m2) tower has drawn tenants such as EY, Baker McKenzie and Facebook. It also houses the Blueprint shared-office space, with an affiliated accelerator programme New Ventures.

Swire is a treble winner in this year’s awards, also taking home the prize for Office Team of the Year and Construction Project Management Team of the Year.

Another venerable name among Hong Kong developers, Wheelock Properties, picked up two awards: Residential Team of the Year for its Oasis Kai Tak apartment project at Hong Kong’s old airport; and Corporate Social Responsibility Project of the Year for its commitment to the community. Wheelock’s Project WeCan initiative helps fund higher studies and provide internships for disadvantaged students. The developer also collaborates with Hong Kong Science Park to support startups, and has an incubator programme for emerging artists with the Wheelock Interior Design Internship.

Hopewell Holdings chairman and co-founder Sir Gordon Wu was recognised with the Lifetime Achiever award for his five decades of service. Hopewell had a hand in the vast majority of the key infrastructure projects around what’s now known as the Greater Bay Area in Guangdong Province. It was partly Wu’s vision that helped drive the now-realised dream of the Hong KongZhuhai-Macau Bridge.

For full coverage of the event, including descriptions of all the winners, and pictures from the awards ceremony, go to rics.org/hkawards

INNOVATION DRIVES CHANGE IN CHINA It is noteworthy that the Jury’s Award for Sustainability Achievement at the RICS Awards China 2019 went to a bamboo bridge. The Yi Xin Qiao Project, in Dujia Village near Chongqing, is a bridge to the past, of course. Using freely available local materials such as moso bamboo, processed with pesticides and preservatives for durability, it’s intended as a model project for isolated villages in China’s often mountainous hinterland.

But it is equally a bridge to the future. Four Chinese universities combined to build the bridge at a breakneck pace of two months. It’s the longest bamboo bridge ever built in China, at 21 metres, and a breakthrough in the construction technology of this fast-growing renewable resource. Bamboo typically cracks easily, is not that durable and is hard to build with structural integrity.

Those are issues the project, backed by the State Forestry Administration of China and the China Bamboo Industry Association, has worked to resolve.

Further recognition for Sustainability Achievement of the Year went to TaiKoo Hui Guangzhou. The 3.84m ft2 (356,705 m2) project uses glass and steel to give an airy and open feel to the retail mall, topped with a roof garden that uses rainwater runoff to reduce the heat-island effect.

Shanghai ESG Consultancy also won this award for its partnership with McDonald’s China. The fast-food chain will ensure that more than 1,800 restaurants win LEED certification by 2022. Coming up with a sound implementation plan for a project of that sheer size earned them recognition.

Regeneration Team of the Year went to the Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Existing Building Function Enhancement. This R&D team does a deep dive into the science behind building renovation technology.

Its work on the potential of materials at an industrialchain level is yielding results in urban regeneration.

“In with the new” was order of the day for other winners of the RICS Awards China.

Innovative use of BIM won a team of K&Z and Shenkang Healthcare a share of the Best BIM Application of the Year Award, for their work on their ¥5bn ($740m)

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2019年RICS中国年度大奖评审委员会

RICS AWARDS CHINA 2019: THE JURY HEAD JUROR – HE QINGHUA FRICS Professor, doctor supervisor, Construction Management and Real Estate Department, School of Economics and Management; deputy dean, Research Institute of Complex Engineering & Management, Tongji University

executive director, China Jinmao

JURORS CAO JIAMING Vice chairman, Architectural Society of China; chairman, Architectural Society of Shanghai

TIM WANG Head of real estate, China and senior MD, Blackstone

STANLEY CHING Senior managing director, managing partner and head of real estate, CITIC Capital

ANDY TO MRICS Managing director, North Asia, US Green Building Council RAYMOND WANG FRICS Executive director, ZhongRong International Trust; CEO and president, ZRiver Capital Investment and Management Co

WANG WUREN Deputy chairman and general manager, CITIC Heye Investment Co

GARY FOK YIP SANG MRICS Chief asset management officer (China), Link Asset Management

JING WU Associate professor, head, Department of Construction Management, Tsinghua University; acting director, Hang Lung Center for Real Estate, Tsinghua University

GAO SHIBIN MRICS Member, RICS Asia Commercial Property Professional Group Board; independent non-

ZHANG JUNJIE President and chief architect, East China Architectural Design & Research Institute

主席 – 何清 华FRICS 同济 大学经济与管 理学院建设管 理与房地产系 教授、博士生 导师，同济大 学复杂工程管 理研究院副 院长 评委 曹嘉明 中国 建筑学会副理 事长，上海市 建筑学会理 事长

程骁远 中信 资本高级董事 总经理、房地 产部执行合伙 人及主管

霍业生 MRICS 领展资产管理 有限公司首席 资产管理执行 官（中国）

高世斌 MRICS RICS亚洲区 商用物业专业 理事会理事， 中国金茂独立 非执行董事

杜日生 MRICS 美国绿色 建筑委员会 USGBC北亚 区董事总经理 王宇涛 FRICS 中融信托执行 总裁、中融长 河资本总裁兼 首席执行官

王天兵 黑石 集团高级董事 总经理，中国 房地产部总裁 王伍仁 中信 和业投资有 限公司副董事 长、总经理

吴璟 副教 授，清华大学 建设管理系系 主任，清华大 学恒隆房地产 研究中心执行 主任 张俊杰 华东 建筑设计研究 总院院长，总 建筑师

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 15

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RICS AWARDS CHINA 2019: THE WINNERS PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANCY SERVICE TEAM – CONSTRUCTION China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp – Tianfu International Conference Center economic consulting team K&Z – Project central controlling and management consulting team of Shanghai Media Port PROFESSIONAL CONSULTANCY SERVICE TEAM – REAL ESTATE Cushman & Wakefield consulting team RESEARCH TEAM Tongji University – Research Institute of Complex Engineering & Management FACILITY MANAGEMENT TEAM WeWork – Greater China building operations team (2) JLL – integrated FM team REGENERATION TEAM East China Architectural Design Institute Co – Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Existing Building Function Enhancement CONSTRUCTION PROJECT CITIC Heye Investment Co – CITIC Tower (5)

COMMERCIAL PROJECT Vanke Service – Qibao Vanke Mall (4) Wharf China Estates – Changsha International Finance Square RESIDENTIAL PROJECT Shanghai RuiHongXinCheng – Ruihongxincheng The Gallery BEST DEAL CapitaLand & CBRE – Star Harbour International Center JLL markets team – ByteDance’s office leasing BEST BIM APPLICATION K&Z/Shenkang Healthcare – project lifecycle BIM+ service practices for Shanghai Municipal Hospitals Shanghai International Theme Park Co, JCM International Engineering Tech Co and Shanghai Construction Group Co., Ltd. – Shanghai Disney Resort, Disney Pixar Toy Story Land SUSTAINABILITY ACHIEVEMENT Taikoo Hui (Guangzhou) Development Company – TaiKoo Hui Guangzhou (3) McDonald’s China & ESG Consultancy – McDonald’s Restaurants Jury’s Award CUHK, THU, CQJTU and CQU – Yi Xin Qiao project (1)

2019年RICS中国年度大奖冠军公司&团队 年度专业咨询服务团队-建 造领域 中国建筑西南设计研究院 有限公司 – 天府国际会议 中心经济咨询团队 科瑞真诚 – 上海西岸传媒 港项目总控和项目管理咨 询团队

年度专业咨询服务团队-地 产领域 戴德梁行 – 策略发展顾 问团队 年度研究团队 同济大学 – 复杂工程管理 研究院

年度设施管理团队 WeWork – 大中华区楼宇 运营管理团队 仲量联行 – 综合设施管理 部团队 年度城市更新团队 华东建筑设计研究院有限 公司 – 上海既有建筑功能 提升工程技术研究中心 年度建造项目 中和业投资有限公司 – 中信大厦

年度商业地产项目 万科物业 – 七宝万科广场

九龙仓中国置业有限公司 – 长沙国金中心

年度住宅项目 上海瑞虹新城有限公司 – 瑞虹新城悦庭 年度最佳交易 凯德&世邦魏理仕 – 星港 国际中心交易项目 仲量联行商业地产部 – 字节跳动办公楼租赁

年度BIM最佳应用 科瑞真诚&申康基建 – 上海市级医院项目全过程 BIM+服务实践 上海国际主题乐园有限公 司 & 联合建管国际工程科 技有限责任公司& 上海建 工集团股份有限公司 – 上 海迪士尼度假区“迪士尼· 皮克斯玩具总动员”项目

年度可持续发展成就 太古汇（广州）发展有限公 司 – 广州太古汇项目 金拱门（中国）有限公司& 上海伊塞古环境工程咨询 有限公司 – 麦当劳餐厅 评委会特别奖：香港中文 大学&清华大学&重庆交通 大学&重庆大学 – “一心 桥”项目

RICS AWARDS 2019

中国市场-创新推动变革

development of 10 municipal hospitals in Shanghai.

They shared this hotly contested prize with the team that brought together the dazzling new Disney Pixar Toy Story Land at Shanghai Disney Resort. This complex international project is using BIM in an integrated way for the whole lifecycle of the project.

K&Z is a double winner in this year’s China awards, also picking up a share of the prize for Professional Consultancy Service Team in Construction. K&Z wins for its work at Shanghai Media Port, where it has helped in the management of design, costing, contracts and construction. It shared the prize with the China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp, for its work on the Tianfu International Conference Center in Chengdu. This new project will lie at the heart of the city’s Tianfu New Area, with the team having developed a new pre-project consulting mode to match issues such as design guidance and risk management.

BIM is also a centrepiece of the work at Tongji University, where the Research Institute of Complex Engineering & Management won Research Team of the Year. The team examines thorny issues surrounding engineering-management theory, lean construction, organisation simulation and pre-planning. It has developed its own platform for engineering management that has been put to use in projects nationwide.

China and Hong Kong recognise the importance of their history in building their future. The achievements of those projects and teams that we honour here can only inspire us to even greater success in 2020. n For full coverage of the event, including descriptions and pictures of all the winners, go to rics.org/chinaawards

值得注意的是，2019年RICS中国年度大奖可持续发 展成就奖项下特别设立了评委会特别奖，授予了“一 心桥”项目。这座竹桥位于重庆市杜家村，是一座通 往过去的桥梁。这座桥利用当地常见的毛竹建造而 成，再经过杀虫和防腐处理提高耐久性，旨在成为中 国偏僻山区民生改善的示范项目。 但它同样也是一座通往未来的桥梁，由四所中国高 校在两个月内联合修建完成，速度惊人。这座桥是目 前中国最长的竹桥，跨度21米，是使用毛竹这一生长 速度很快的可再生资源进行建造的技术突破。竹材易 裂、耐久性差、结构跨越能力不足是本项目面临的核 心问题，在中国国家林业局和中国竹业协会的支持下 这些问题得到妥善解决。 年度可持续发展成就大奖的另一获得者是广州太 古汇项目。改项目总楼面面积约384万平方尺（356 ，705平方米），其商场采用玻璃及钢材结构，中庭高 敞开阔，顶部的屋顶花园，有助减少雨水径流、舒缓 热岛效应。 上海伊塞古环境工程咨询有限公司联合麦当劳中国 也赢得了这一奖项。这一快餐连锁品牌承诺从2018年 底至2022年超过1800家新建餐厅将获得LEED认证。 为此所建立的完善执行方案和质量控制过程协助该项 目赢得殊荣。 年度城市更新团队冠军花落上海既有建筑功能提升 工程技术研究中心。该研究团队专项进行建筑改造技 术研发、咨询和成果转化，形成完整产业链，在城市更 新领域取得丰富成果。 “与时俱进”是2019年RICS中国年度大奖所有获 奖团队的主旋律。 BIM的创新应用为科瑞真诚和申康基建赢得年度 BIM最佳应用冠军大奖，获奖项目为总投资约50亿元 的10家医院典型工程。该奖项竞争最为激烈，因此颁 出两座冠军奖杯，另一座被上海迪士尼度假区“迪士 尼·皮克斯玩具总动员”项目摘得。这一复杂国际项目 实现了BIM在其项目生命全周期系统性的整合应用。 科瑞真诚是今年RICS中国年度大奖的双料冠军，还 斩获了年度专业咨询服务团队-建造领域大奖。获奖项 目是上海西岸传媒港，科瑞真诚团队为该项目提供开 发模式策划、规划设计、成本合约、施工管理服务。该 奖项的另一大奖获得者是中国建筑西南设计研究院 有限公司的天府国际会议中心经济咨询团队。该新建 项目位于成都市天府新区核心位置，获奖团队为此开 发了项目前期咨询新模型，以解决其在设计引导和风 险管理方面的问题。 BIM应用同样也是同济大学的核心工作之一。这一 高校的经济与管理学院复杂工程管理研究院研究团 队赢得了年度研究团队冠军大奖。该团队认真钻研复 杂工程管理理论、精益建设、工程组织仿真、前期策 划等棘手问题。其自主开发的复杂工程案例库等平台 系统已应用于全国各地的诸多工程项目。 中国大陆和香港都已经意识到过往成就对于建设 未来的重要性。我们在此表彰获奖项目和团队所取得 的成就，必将激励我们在2020年获得更大成功。 若想了解颁奖典礼更多信息，包括冠军团队的项目 信息和图片，敬请访问rics.org/chinaawards。 Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 17

WORDS BY CL ARE DOWDY ILLUS TR ATION BY MAT TEO BERTON

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Many cities’ most well-known public spaces are privately owned – and the number is rising.

But is the disdain they’re being met with justified?

P

rivately owned public spaces (POPS) have a terrible image.

The press and social media love to highlight the sometimes bizarre rules of behaviour and heavy-handed security that the public can be subject to. In 2017, UK newspaper the Guardian described “the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London”. Oh, for the good old days – the story goes – when citizens could roam freely over publicly owned parts of the city.

Where does this anathema come from? As Matthew Carmona, professor of planning and urban design at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London (UCL), explains, the feeling is that public spaces in cities are becoming commercialised, privatised, securitised, homogenised and exclusionary, because they are shaped by the narrow interests of the few (the developers) instead of the many (society as a whole). “These arguments even extend to those public spaces that are owned by the public sector, on the basis that they are subject to similar pressures because of the way their management is increasingly contracted out or unduly influenced by the private sector,” says Carmona.

But are POPS – from the atrium of Trump Tower in New York City, to More London on the UK capital’s south bank – un-civic or just misunderstood? The story of POPS is not that simple.

Several myths have risen up, some of which are ripe for debunking.

Private or partially private ownership of parts of the public realm is not a recent phenomenon; there are rules of conduct for virtually everywhere the public can go. Some POPS have been created out of neglected, inaccessible land, some are created because municipalities no longer have the funds to make and (more importantly) maintain public spaces. All of which suggests that a better understanding of the complexities of POPS would benefit everyone.

“If you go back in time, pretty much everything was either privately owned, such as garden squares with keys, or public – such as squares run by the council. That was straightforward,”says past RICS president John Hughes FRICS, partner at Hemson Consulting in Toronto.

Having originated in the US, POPS have gone global. They arrived in the UK in the 1980s, with London’s Canary Wharf and Broadgate estate among the first large, secure, privately controlled public places.

Since then, space has been reduced in cities across the world.“As you get denser cities, the ability to create new public space is difficult,” says Hughes. And this is where POPS can come into their own.“You can squeeze a POPS into a smaller development area rather than a public park. It’s a little easier to find the space for that.”

Couple that with squeezed municipal budgets around the world, and it’s easy to see why there’s more awareness of new POPS than new publicly owned spaces. Hughes cites two projects in Toronto that illustrate funding differences: CIBC Square and Rail Deck Park.

“CIBC Square is a fine example of an extremely valuable and needed piece of public space being created and paid for by a developer as part of a big office development,”he says. Joint-led by developers Ivanhoé Cambridge and Hines, CIBC Square comprises a pair of office towers

“ IT MATTERS LITTLE WHO OWNS AND MANAGES IT. WHAT MATTERS IS THAT CITIZENS’ RIGHTS ARE SAFEGUARDED ” MAT THE W CARMONA BARTLE T T SCHOOL OF PL ANNING

on a 3m ft2 (278,709 m2) downtown campus, with an elevated park connecting them to Greater Toronto. With its slopes and hills, horticulture, gardens, shade groves, balconies and viewing points, the park “will provide a space to convene and refresh, and for corporate tenants to host memorable events”, according to the development partners.

Meanwhile, Rail Deck Park is a proposal endorsed by the city council to cover over a rail corridor in the centre of the city with 21 acres (8.5 ha) of parkland. The council states the intention is for the park to “transform this unused air space into Toronto’s next great gathering space for recreation, culture and celebration”.

“It’s an ambitious plan to create a public park, but it faces funding challenges,” Hughes says of Rail Deck Park. The current estimated development cost is C$1.66bn (£989.5m). “It’s a work in progress without a clear future, because of the challenge of capital acquisition and operating funds.”

It’s vital to recognise the difference between the cost of funding a park and then spending more on maintaining space over the years, warns Hughes.“Unfortunately, you can end up with nicely designed and finished parks, but after 10 years the paving breaks down, and you end up with a patch of asphalt. That’s city-owned facilities.

However, a very successful office development won’t want to see deterioration of the land, so they would want to retain control and look after it.”

The POPS with obvious civic credentials are those built on previously inaccessible land. Carmona cites London’s Canary Wharf

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and Greenwich Peninsular. “Those places were never public spaces; they were ex-industrial areas that didn’t have public access.”

Likewise, the new district of Barangaroo is being built on a disused stretch of Sydney’s dockyards. At 54 acres (22 ha), it’s the city’s largest urban renewal project since the 2000 Olympic Games. When completed, more than half the site will be open public space, and the whole 2.2km foreshore walk will be accessible to the public.

While some existing POPS – such as More London – have shed their overbearing or petty restrictions, the latest generation is likely to be more easy-going from the outset. Carmona, who focuses on the design and management of public space, is researching London, Oslo, Copenhagen and Malmö.“The Harbour Promenade in Oslo is a good example of a combination of privately and publicly owned spaces, where the restrictions, if there are any, are not obvious.”

Likewise, the 67 acres (27 ha) being regenerated by developer Argent in London’s King’s Cross. Featuring public spaces, retail, leisure, offices and contributions from designers such as Thomas Heatherwick, the massive mixed-use project is 67.5% owned by pension fund AustralianSuper. “Generally, we allow the public realm to be used as any other part of London,” says Julia Finlayson, project director of public realm at Argent, who manages the public realm design at King’s Cross. “It’s about creating another piece of London, not an exclusive place.”

She explains the reasoning behind this approach. “It wouldn’t be successful if access were restricted. Retail and food and beverage operators rely on footfall. Residential and office tenants like to be

In addition to retail and public transport space, CIBC Square in Toronto will comprise two office towers due to complete in 2020 and 2023 respectively.

The buildings will be linked by an elevated 1 acre (0.4 ha) park that the developers hope will become a hub for the city’s social and cultural activities

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 23

Landscaped out of a defunct container port, Sydney’s Barangaroo Reserve park opened in 2015 and forms part of a wider district being developed by private companies – among them Lendlease – for the local government.

Once complete, more than half the site will be designated as public space

in a vibrant location; that’s one of the reasons office users come to the site, that’s part of the selling point.”

Hughes argues that the King’s Cross mindset isn’t shared by everyone. “It’s not in developers’ interests – the reality is there’s a preference to restrict public access. A park would be nicer if it’s for exclusive use of the residents, without the hoi polloi. It wouldn’t naturally be developers’ inclination [to include the public].”

Before Argent put in the application for outline planning, it went through extensive community consultation, says Finlayson. The Glass-House Community Led Design is a UK charity that supports communities, organisations and networks to work together on the design of buildings, open spaces, homes and neighbourhoods. Its chief executive, Sophia de Sousa, stresses how tricky it is to take into consideration all the roles of a public space and the needs of all its users and stakeholders.“When you add the layer of privately owned and managed public space, the combination of private and financial interests and creating social value for the general public make the design process even more complex and important.”

She advises the creators of POPS to “be clear in the design process and the management regime that follows about where the space sits on the public-private spectrum for users. Otherwise, there will be conflicts that arise from that lack of understanding.”

Carmona suggests the adoption of a Charter of Public Space Rights and Responsibilities.“Such a charter would apply to all spaces, both existing and still to be built, that a reasonable person would regard as public, whether privately or publicly owned,”he writes in his blog.

CASE STUDY: THE CUBE, ASIA SQUARE, SINGAPORE Until recently most public spaces in Singapore were managed by government agencies. This changed with the introduction of the Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) initiative, by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) in 2017.

Through the initiative, URA aims to encourage property developers to build and maintain public spaces. It has developed a set of mandatory design guidelines that include: regulations on the size, configuration, access and location, operations of these POPS; recommendations for seating, amenities and shading; and provision of signs making clear the public nature of the space. The URA has also developed a good-practice guide to ensure these spaces are well utilised and add to the liveability of Singapore.

A pioneering example of POPS in Singapore is The Cube on the ground floor of the mixeduse Asia Square development in the CBD. The Cube acts as the main arrival and events plaza, and was conceived as a “City Room”. Spread over 100,000 ft2 (9,300 m2), the covered area offers respite from the island’s tropical climate.

The space hosts events and activities such as music and art performances, yoga, teambuilding exercises and promotional events.

Most of these take place on weekdays and are tailored to attract nearby workers.

Developments that include POPS can qualify for a gross-floor-area exemption for these spaces if they are frequented by the public. The dilemma for the developer is to balance any cost savings from exemption in floor area with the reduction in leasable space.

“This would cover all spaces that during daylight hours are (usually) open and free to enter. The critical point [at which] the state needs to intervene is when planning permission is given.”Because, Carmona believes, “it matters little who owns and manages it. What matters is that citizens’ rights are safeguarded. But these long-term management issues are not given proper consideration.”

Hughes agrees that the“bare minimum is to agree rules at planning stage. But it requires goodwill on all sides. Consistency is obviously easier [across cities] but, to some extent, every site varies. You can have some broad principles but you’re always going to have specific agreements regarding each site. There’s not an off-the-shelf answer for [each one].”

After all, it’s not just POPS that have rules. “Trafalgar Square is publicly owned, but the bylaws are longer than your arm,” says Carmona. And, in east London, woe betide anyone planning on doing some household chores in Hackney’s parks: “No person shall in any open space shake or beat any carpet, mat or other thing, or place any clothes or other things for the purpose of drying or bleaching,” reads one bylaw.

Rules of engagement The issues are not so much about ownership, but rather about how POPS are managed and the public’s expectations, says Antonia Layard, professor of law at the University of Bristol. She has a particular interest in urban law, and the legal provisions and practices involved in large-scale regeneration and infrastructure projects.

London’s Garden Bridge debacle was, in part, a result of the complexities of rule-setting. The public was outraged at the prospect of a private organisation setting rules for a public space, particularly as it was going to be part-funded by the UK taxpayer. The Heatherwick-designed project was axed in August 2017, leaving those aforementioned taxpayers £46m out of pocket. Layard points out that “there’s nowhere you can do whatever you like. I struggle to think of a piece of land where there aren’t rules … beaches?”

And what happens when wider legislation changes? Hughes points to the recent legalisation of cannabis in Canada.“Do they want people smoking, sitting on a bench? Or will they get moved on?”he ponders.

“It’s the right of a [land] owner to have a certain degree of control.”

A second area of controversy playing out in Toronto is that of data ownership and control. The waterside neighbourhood Quayside is being developed through a partnership with Google’s sister company, Sidewalk Labs. It’s intended to serve as a smart city prototype to be studied and replicated across the globe to solve urban issues.“There’s been a real tug of war about the issue of data,” says Hughes, with questions arising over how this new wired-in community would collect and protect the data of its occupants. He predicts “data ownership and control is going to be an increasingly important issue”.

The argument goes that there is nothing inherently immoral about privately owned and managed public spaces. But, even in the 1960s, the nature of “public” was being addressed. As the architect and academic Denise Scott Brown said in her 2018 Soane Medal Lecture: “Architects often talk about designing public space, but I wanted them to learn, before designing, how people actually use such spaces, and listen when social planners warn that it isn’t public unless the public uses it.” n Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 25

BIG DATA

Welcome to the age of the citizen planner. By sharing our real-time data we can tell place-makers exactly how we’re using our cities. And we’re building better public realm as a result

OUR SPACE WORDS BY GEORGE BULL ILLUSTRATIONS BY EDWARD TUCKWELL

F

or architect Carlo Ratti, everything in life is about feedback loops. On your way to work, you see a traffic jam and take a different route. By the end of the month, the city transport administration has detected recurring jam patterns and decided to change the programming of the traffic lights. Over the next few years, the city’s urban planners decide the data suggests major public works are needed; a new road perhaps, or underpass.

“Planning is inherently dynamic and based on feedback loops,” says Ratti, who heads up the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Over a century ago, the great French geographer and anarchist Élisée Reclus claimed that all planning had to start from surveying and the collection of data. The difference today is that we have access to a staggering amount of robust, real-time data.”

That real-time data, in the hands of city governments, designers and citizens, is now starting to influence the urban dynamics of cities – and, as a consequence, public space. Traditionally, the idea has been to design spaces to guide people’s behaviour in one way or another. Often, the most data an architect or urban designer could expect to get their hands on at the start of a public-realm project would be from the transport department, which could be used to understand traffic and pedestrian movement in an area. Once built, managers of those public spaces rely on observation techniques to understand how people use the space, the counting of visitors, or by conducting surveys.

A new reality is slowly coming into focus.

For designers, it means being able to construct an intimate picture of a space in real time – where people stop to chat, where they get an Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 27

“ IN A BUILDING, EVERY SQUARE FOOT IS WORKING HARD TO JUSTIFY ITSELF. CITIES NEED TO BE DOING THE SAME ” NICK EDWARDS BDP

Uber from when it rains, where they take the most selfies, or feel happy or sad. For citizens, it means having a say in that process.

This is being made possible by big-data sets, such as Transport for London’s Open Data system (which makes all Oyster travel card activity publicly available), crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap, and social network data – but also emerging technologies, such as sensors and video recognition, that generate “small data” at the single public square or park level, say.

Making them really useful, though, means finding ways to collect, combine and visualise different data streams.

Being able to do this in real time was Ratti’s ambition with LIVE Singapore! – an experimental research project he leads as part of the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, which is also working with the Committee on Autonomous Road Transport for Singapore. “We want to investigate how big data can be used to improve life in cities for inhabitants, as opposed to being collected for sole use by governments and private corporations,” he says. “Therefore, we thought of putting that data in the hands of those who create it.”

To date, LIVE Singapore! has collected and mapped the use of taxis on days with

rainfall; texting patterns on days when there are big events on in the city, such as the Formula One grand prix; the length of time it takes for people to get home throughout the day; the relation between energy consumption and temperature around the city; and the traffic in and out of Singapore’s port and airport, which are among the busiest in the world (see opposite). The data is made available on an open platform that anyone can use to create applications.

Greater integration and openness of data sets is a step in the right direction, believes Ratti, but it also needs to happen “across the digital and physical dimensions of a city”. A few years ago, Barcelona pioneered a new position to combine its roles of city architect and chief technology officer, and Ratti cites this as a positive example of breaking down silos within city government.

“Having a single, open platform for a variety of data sources can help streamline city-wide objectives by providing evidence-based policy, allowing different departments to collaborate around actual data.”

Nick Edwards, the London-based principal chair of landscape architecture at BDP, agrees and says he would welcome more public sector involvement in making more, and richer, data available. He thinks the urban

design professions could be further ahead on this. “In a building, every square foot is working hard to justify itself. As cities get denser, we need to be doing the same.”

The advantage of creating and having access to open data projects such as LIVE Singapore!, says Edwards, is “it gives you a much richer definition of public space”. Even specific localised data can be revealing. For public realm work in Westminster, London, Edwards and his team used parking space sensors to gather data on how much they were actually being used by residents. “In Westminster, [decisions] are informed by the residential vote so, politically, it’s very hard to remove parking spaces. But the data showed they were under-occupied. They were being used as commuter spaces. This makes you think it might not be the best way to use the space.”

This also highlights one of the problems with consultation: often a vocal minority emerges during the process. They may not be necessarily representative of the day-to-day experience of what might be called “the silent majority”. Real-time data can help to reveal that.

Mass uptake of autonomous vehicles could have interesting knock-on effects for public space, such as on-street parking.

The efficiency of the system could mean that only one-way traffic flows are necessary, for example, which could allow pavements to be broadened, making more room for people.

“This can change your whole starting point for design,” says Edwards. “A lot of places have been designed based on traffic data and servicing a volume of cars. Pedestrian data is conspicuous by its absence. What if we could start with,‘can that footpath have at least two people walking side by side so they [can] chat?’ Could you encourage two people to hold their meeting while they are walking?

This is one of the things we need to do.”

Making the numbers work Rick Robinson, digital property and cities leader at Arup in the UK Midlands, says available data tends to be on a project-byproject basis, and often depends on finding an operational business case to pay for gathering data in the first place – that is, how it can be commercially useful for other applications as well. He believes this will need to be widely incentivised before we see an iterative planning and replanning of the urban environment.

“One thing we do is manage complicated infrastructure projects and, in these cases, there’s immense value to having a combined

BIG DATA

LIVE WIRED The LIVE Singapore! project taps into data generated by the city’s users – such as taxi journey times and cargo movements – and makes it accessible on an open platform that anyone can use to

SOURCE: LIVE SING APORE!

create applications that help improve the lives of its inhabitants

IT ’ S RAINING TA XIS

RACING POSTS

Getting a taxi can be difficult at the best of times, and the platform provides real-time data demonstrating the impact that rainfall has on this transportation system. The aim is to use this information to help ensure supply and demand is better met and streamlined in the future.

Live events that take place in the city, such as the street-based Formula One Singapore Grand Prix, have a significant impact on people’s behaviour. The LIVE! platform enables users to see responses to such events, by using colour and size to highlight the level of text messaging during such occasions.

ALL THE INS AND OUTS

FARE SHARING

Singapore’s airport and sea port are two of the busiest in the world, acting as a stop-off point for carriers from all continents. This live map provides an insight into how the city manages such a huge level of incoming and outgoing cargo, where it’s coming from, and how much stays in the region.

Sometimes, what appears to be the shortest route isn’t necessarily the quickest. Thanks to data obtained from taxis, this unique look at the city’s roads enables users to see the reality of travel times, and the impact that evolving conditions and new developments are having on urban mobility.

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 29

BIG DATA

THREE APPS THAT ARE USING DATA VISUALISATION TO ENGAGE THE PUBLIC IN THE PL ANNING PROCESS

1/

URBANPL ANAR Currently being developed by Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University, this app uses augmented reality to simulate new buildings before construction. Users will be able to point their smartphone at a site and see a visualisation of the proposal come to life.

2/

URBAN INTELLIGENCE This start-up is combing national and neighbourhood policies for planning applications. Users can click on a site in the interactive map and access all the relevant documents in one place.

3/

CIT YSWIPE Residents receive images of potential scenarios accompanied by either a yes, no, or “which do you prefer?” question. The proposals could be as simple as a street with more public benches or trees, for example. To give feedback on the suggested scenario, users simply swipe right for yes or left for no.

database of information; not least because we’re required to give local businesses information about how they’ll be affected,” says Robinson.“But now we’re asking:‘What can we do with it? Can we open it up and share it with the local authority?’ There are privacy and trust issues to consider, and we need to make it clear what the data is and that it’s safe to share. The primary blocker is [local authorities] understanding that data is a good thing.”

Not everyone needs persuading. The city government in Copenhagen has engaged data consultant Backscatter to analyse a backlog of anonymised emails from citizens. The data is textural – people writing in about potholes, for example – and thus difficult to work with; but, once aggregated, it is a potential gold mine of information about how people feel about the city, their concerns and how these change seasonally. It could inform how the city delivers services, including organising the public realm.

Backscatter partner Anders Koed Madsen, who is also an associate professor of the Techno-Anthropology Lab (TANTLab) at the University of Aalborg in Copenhagen, says that kind of granular data allows you“to build categorisations from below”, shifting the data to tell you what a place is used for and by whom, rather than determining that in a top-down way. One example of this is the Atlas of Danish Facebook Culture, a project the lab is running to understand the dynamics of interactions on public Danish Facebook pages from 2012-2018.

Working with six years of public post data on Facebook, TANTLab identified a “very large” number of what it calls “antagonists” – pairings of anonymised user IDs who, judging by their Facebook activity, are political opposites, but attended the same events. The lab looks at where the events were held, and what common traits those spaces share. “We are trying to pick out spaces in the city that are meeting grounds for political opposites,” explains Koed Madsen. “That’s a very different starting point than [traditional] demographic categories.”

“This gives clues about how to design more inclusive, fair spaces, and how to learn from areas that bring people together,” adds Jeff Risom, partner at Gehl Architects in Copenhagen, who is working with TANTLab. For Koed Madsen, “granular” data challenges the smart-city fixation on the public realm as physical space and objects.

Space is as much about what you perceive it to be. A public square may look the same day

“ YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF A CITY IS BUILT BY ENGAGING WITH CITIZENS IN IT ” ANDERS KOED MADSEN BACKSCAT TER

to day, but usage data can show it’s different things to different people at different times.

“Your understanding of a city is built by engaging with citizens in it,” he says.

Risom believes Gehl has a way of framing the city that’s different to everyone else, called “public life outcomes”. It is a complex protocol, available for any city government or individual to download from its website, but is essentially a way of measuring how well cities are performing for people.“We’re more interested in where people are spending time than optimising pedestrian flows,” he says. “We want to design ‘sticky places’, where people slow down and spend time.”

Although Gehl uses all sorts of data in public space projects, the differentiator, says Risom, is integrating that with traditional methods such as observational ethnography, where it will train local stakeholders, mayors, landlords and volunteers to go out into the city and ask questions. “We’re still doing it, because we find it exceptionally valuable and we think it only gets stronger when used in parallel [with big data].”

He says the key is having really specific questions: “What do you want to know, and how do you want to use this data? Less than 0.5% of the smart city data is actually ever analysed. We only want to measure stuff we know we are going to use – because that’s what’s going to make us better designers.” n Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 31

CARS OCCUPY

UP TO

20%

OF OUR CITIES’

PUBLIC SPACE.

IMAGINE WHAT

WE COULD DO

WITH IT

IF WE

TOOK THEM

OFF THE ROADS?

MOBILITY AS A SERVICE

WORDS BY KATIE PUCKETT PHOTOGRAPHY BY WILSON HENNESSEY

W

hat would it take for you to give up your car? Better public transport? A really good bike or car-sharing scheme? Being able to summon a driverless car to pick you up from your door and take you wherever you want? Or how about all these things and more, accessed via a single smartphone app that would allow you to plan any number of journeys in your area, using any combination of methods, all for a flat monthly fee?

This is mobility-as-a-service or MaaS, coming soon to a city, town or even village near you. MaaS is the logical, some say inevitable, conclusion as the millennial-led “sharing economy” converges with innovations in the automotive sector, cloud data processing and mobile communications.

It’s often overshadowed by autonomous vehicles (AVs), but it’s a far more radical concept that could consign vehicle ownership to the past, thus massively reducing the number of vehicles on the road. There are therefore profound implications for a built environment that has been overwhelmingly designed around the car, and the need for parking spaces, on-street or otherwise.

“The transport network is the skeleton of the city. If demand changes, it would be kind of strange if the city didn’t change as well,” says Sampo Hietanen, co-founder of Finnish start-up MaaS Global, which operates the world’s first MaaS service through the Whim app in Helsinki, the UK’s West Midlands, Antwerp and, soon, Singapore.

In the immediate future, the most obvious impact of MaaS will be a reduction in the space needed for roads, parking and driveways. Transport researcher Paul Barter estimates that around the world, the typical car is parked for 96% of the time. With an intelligent management and distribution system uniting all modes of transport, it should be possible to achieve far higher utilisation rates, especially when connected autonomous vehicles can move from fare to fare on their own, drive more closely together and park in far tighter spaces.“MaaS is likely to be the preferred model for cities in the future, because it has the potential to optimise the transport system, not only of the city but of the suburb and out into rural areas,” says Dr Maria Kamargianni, head of University College London’s MaaSLab

research team.“It offers a future where there is no need for private vehicles, so we will have an opportunity to reallocate space to make more room for people.”

The 2016 white paper Making Better Places: Autonomous vehicles and future opportunities, by architect Farrells and engineer WSP envisages future towns and cities with narrower, safer roads and wider areas for pedestrians, cyclists, leisure use and greenery. Road signs and traffic lights would no longer be needed, and designing out on-street parking would create 15-20% additional land at ground level for more valuable uses. Using government data on residential land value uplifts, they estimate that a 100ha (274 acre) AV zone could gain more than £1.25bn in central London, £300m in outer London or £15m-£75m across the rest of the UK. “One of the biggest issues in all urban settlements is the integration of vehicles,” says the report’s co-author Nigel Bidwell, now director at London-based architect JTP.“There is going to be a different social contract with public space. At the moment, the priority is very much given to cars, but making healthy places is dependent Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 33

PARKING METRES Moovel Lab’s What the Street!? project uses OpenStreetMap to work out how much space in a city is given over to parking.

While not an exact science, the resulting visualisations help us to understand how much space could potentially be put to better use

AMSTERDAM 2 7.63m m

BARCELONA 2 6.94m m

BEIJING 2 24.78m m

BERLIN 2 48m m

BOSTON 2 11.39m m CHICAGO 2 47.07m m

BUDAPEST 2 17.86m m

JAKARTA 2 19.24m m

HONG KONG 2 19.35m m

HELSINKI 2 7.53m m

COPENHAGEN 2 5.78m m

JOHANNESBURG 2 53.63m m

LONDON 2 67.9m m LOS ANGELES 2 104.18m m

MOSCOW 2 28.8m m

NEW YORK 2 85.66m m

SINGAPORE 2 26.79m m

ROME 37.8M M² TOKYO 2 17.74m m

SOURCE: MOOVEL L AB, 2017

SAN FRANCISCO 2 13.82m m

MOBILITY AS A SERVICE

The growth of MaaS will reduce the need for parking, creating opportunities to repurpose spaces into more flexible commercial and leisure uses, such as returning town squares back to their original intended uses as market places

on prioritising pedestrians and creating places where people want to walk and to sit.”

There is a tension here, and planners will face a dilemma over how newly available sites in high-value locations should be used, says Oxford Policy Management’s director of urban economics, Jim Coleman. There will be pressure to increase density, but also a greater need for open spaces to mitigate overheating and flooding caused by climate change. “We need to think carefully about the balance between development and green infrastructure. The latter is a public good, so there could be a role for government to fund that alongside the private sector.”

In housing areas, paved driveways could be turned back into gardens – the white paper estimates that this could reclaim around 14,000ha (34,600 acres) across the UK, an area equivalent to 100 of London’s Hyde Park. Llewelyn Morgan, head of innovation at Oxfordshire County Council, is already talking to developers about building car clubs into new housing schemes: “It might not reduce the need to have a car, but you might not need to have two. In 10-20 years, you will probably just be thinking about where to put shared vehicles or pick-up points, so if you’ve got a development with a 15-year build out, the later phases could look very different.”

MaaS will be easiest to implement in large cities, but it’s in less well-served towns, suburbs and rural areas where the availability of rich, real-time data could bring the greatest benefits. Rural areas often have the lowest utilisation rates of public transport, with buses running near empty, so on-demand services would improve both efficiency and accessibility, and potentially make such areas more viable for development. Morgan points out that local authorities are big spenders on both public transport and on moving people

around to access social care and health services. He has set up a study to see whether this investment could be used to lay the foundations for MaaS: “You’re spending so much money running the transport because the commercial model can’t work here, so why not actively invest to leave some sort of legacy? For us, it’s a massive opportunity.”

Introducing MaaS could also unlock development in lower-value locations, says Coleman.“Some sites are difficult to develop because the developer would have to fund new roads. But if the road system can be used more efficiently, maybe you don’t need to.”

He also suggests that MaaS could reshape the retail sector, removing the divide between out-of-town shopping malls and high streets. Swathes of parking in retail parks could be redeveloped as leisure, residential or office space: “You could see places that are just retail destinations becoming mixed-use, or more like settlements.” Self-driving electric vehicles will transform retail logistics too, enabling 24-hour deliveries even in city centres:“That will reduce the need for warehousing because vehicles will be moving pretty constantly.”

Road hog Car-parking spaces are another massive opportunity, accounting for a startling amount of a city’s land use. Moovel Lab’s What the Street?! project (see opposite) analysed open-source map data to reveal that 94% of Los Angeles is given over to parking space. This won’t all become redundant: even self-driving cars will need to be stored somewhere between journeys, and electric vehicles will have to charge, ideally close to passengers. Paul Gallagher, car park consultant at JLL in London, believes car parks will still have a future, but they will be

much smaller – with no need for aisles or gaps between vehicles – and some will evolve into transit hubs.“You might drive in or car share into a car park and then do the last mile on a scooter or bike or walking.”Car park operators may themselves evolve into MaaS providers, he suggests, pointing to a spate of high-value acquisitions as investors target car parks as sources of income, data and portfolios of prime land.

Surplus car park structures could be converted into office, residential or selfstorage space, depending on location, demand and the buildings themselves.

“Some developers in the US are building parking garages with increased floor heights so they can be repurposed,” says Revathi Greenwood, Americas head of research at CBRE. But she warns that this will present some tough calls for real estate advisers:“It’s expensive to do and there’s an optionality premium that you have to pay for flexibility.

The real debate is whether it’s worth paying the price, and that will depend on the city.”

The opportunities of MaaS come with some very significant risks, particularly given the difficulty of accurately predicting when the tipping point will occur. Hietanen estimates that it will be around 2025 – “but to be honest, I always say a different year”.

The greatest unknown is the transition, says Coleman: “One thing designing for the automobile has taught us is that it’s very difficult to anticipate how technology will change movement. We’ve got this strange dichotomy, where the technology is available but the built environment is always going to lag behind. We could redesign it for another model and end up with the wrong built environment again because the technology always leaps ahead. I don’t think there’s any answer to that.” n Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 35

THE NEW TOOLS OF THE TRADE Save yourself a load of time, hassle and – most importantly – money, with these latest technological innovations WORDS BY BRENDON HOOPER ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMES GRAHAM

01

02

03

For multi-tasking surveyors: Taskful

For site managers: Trackunit

For team players: Trello

If you give yourself an incentive, you could complete more tasks. Taskful’s “smart to-do list” app and task manager helps you stay on track and meet your deadlines through the use of colourful and interactive checklists.

Simply add in a task and the date it needs to be completed by, and the app will let you know what you need to complete each day in order to meet the deadline. The task could be anything, from work quotas, reading a set number of pages in a book, to exercising for a certain number of minutes per week. When you’ve finished each “sub-task”, check it off and move to the next. taskful.com

Now… where did I leave that excavator?

With the Trackunit Go app, you can track your entire organisation’s vehicle fleet or the whereabouts of construction equipment, and view which assets are working, moving or stopped. Increasing knowledge of your machinery’s downtime helps raise efficiency and reduce costs. With the “Manager” version, you can also obtain an overview of the health of your fleet – what requires maintenance and when – and set alarms to reduce concern around theft or unauthorised equipment use: you’ll receive a warning if a vehicle moves without your permission. trackunit.com

Ever wish you could do away with those lengthy email chains or cumbersome spreadsheets to track and manage work?

Trello’s free, flexible app is a great way to visualise your projects and organise the workflow of your entire team. Think of Trello as a communal notice board where colleagues can share ideas, identify who’s doing what, check when it’s been completed, see which tasks are outstanding, and review what’s in the pipeline. You can also write comments, or add photos, videos or PDFs to tasks, which automatically sync to everyone’s devices and save to the cloud. trello.com

TECHNOLOGY

04

05

06

For tech-savvy teams: BIM Academy

For building managers: Locale

For those on the go: Klipboard

Co-founded by Northumbria University and Ryder Architecture, BIM Academy helps project teams experience the full lifecycle of a building information modelling (BIM) project in the safe confines of virtual reality.

It allows organisations to model and analyse their existing estates or projects in 3D, 4D and even 5D – which incorporates live cost modelling as the virtual model is subjected to changes – all without the risks or costs that arise on a real project. Teams can also be trained in specific BIM software, and the academy’s network of global offices are able to offer guidance to firms around the world. bimacademy.global

Whether you are an owner or manager, the day-to-day running of a building can be time consuming. Based securely in the cloud, Locale’s property management software helps you manage a building more effectively by providing visibility over everything, from facilities booking and building maintenance to deliveries and signing in visitors. It also helps occupiers stay in the loop with their local community via announcments and news. In addition, the software can also be customised to offer commercial or residential clients a branded portal, specific to the information and services they require. locale.co.uk

Businesses with highly mobile workforces can wave goodbye to the piles of paperwork that usually come with having employees out in the field. Aside from keeping track of employees and designating tasks, Klipboard helps you create and manage mobile forms for assessments, audit reports, maintenance records, inspections or surveys – anything where large amounts of data are captured out on site – and stores them securely in the cloud. Customer reports and invoices can also be branded for a personal touch, while signatures and images can be added to forms as proof of work or general compliance. klipboard.io Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 37

The RICS Technology Affiliate Programme is open to any business in the built and natural environments that provides data and technology solutions.

Find out more at rics.org/tap

07

08

For proper ty surveyors: GoRepor t

For your clients: Seeable

By using your iPhone or iPad, GoReport helps professionals capture building surveying and project management data quicker and easier than with the traditional pen, paper, camera and dictaphone. GoReport uses one device to capture all your notes, images, videos and sketches for a property survey, then stores this data in the cloud; making it accessible anywhere and to anyone on the team who has permission.

The “SmartPins” function is also ideal for linking information to a specific location on an image, plan or site layout, so clients can better understand their data. goreport.com

To help clients visualise projects, 3D models have become essential for surveying and construction firms. But what if clients could interact with them, too? Seeable makes 3D models accessible to a wider audience by incorporating elements of interactivity and exploration, via a technique called i3D. This allows users to explore a 3D environment without glasses, goggles or mobile device cameras, by using a mouse or touchscreen.

More captivating than a slide show or video presentation, interactive 3D is a great way to impressively showcase a building, site or town masterplan. seeable.co.uk

09

10

For investors: Harness Property

For quantity surveyors: CostX

We’re all familiar with seeing little or no results returned when looking for property to buy or rent online that fit our specific criteria. Harness, though, wants to do things a bit differently. By using a scoring system, users can easily obtain better information on how well properties match their specific needs. Rather than limiting your options, Harness scores a range of best matches from one to 10, based on your criteria, and unique to your search. Better matches have higher scores, so it should provide wider scope and help you efficiently decide whether a property is worth looking at. harnessproperty.com

Many quantity surveyors still use paperbased methods for measurement works, including taking-off from construction drawings and transferring dimensions into spreadsheets to produce cost reports.

CostX’s software automates processes to help speed up the preparation of estimates, tenders and bills of quantity. It can perform accurate and efficient measurements from data files of 2D drawings, and generate automatic quantities from BIM or 3D models. Ultimately, it can help teams reduce errors, improve design quality and add value across all processes during construction. n exactal.com

BIM’s value to a project doesn’t stop at the end of the construction phase. Used throughout a building’s whole lifecycle, it becomes a

DIGITAL

IMAGE BY TECHCRE TE

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

TWIN that can help surveyors operate, market and even improve the assets under their care. Robyn Wilson explains how.

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 41

T

he benefits of using BIM (building information modelling) during the design and construction phase of a built asset are now widely accepted.

BIM, after all, has been shown to be an effective tool in providing cost and programme efficiencies on many highprofile schemes, of which the V&A Dundee musem in Scotland (previous page) is a notable recent example.

Less well known, however, is the longterm value that BIM can bring to the operation of an asset after handover, which is often overlooked when the upfront cost of investing in the technology is so high.

But, although lesser known, there are a number of ways that BIM can provide asset managers with efficiencies throughout the operation phase, while at the same time empowering facilities managers and property surveyors in their roles.

Central to this is the creation and sharing of quality information through BIM for the building operator, as Edonis Jesus, consulting BIM leader at developer Leadlease, explains: “The use of BIM can greatly help asset

Great Portland Estates used BIM to create a 3D flythrough of its 160 Old Street development in London, which was used to market the space to prospective occupiers

managers save time and money by enabling quicker access to asset information, [resulting in a] higher proportion of preventative maintenance and less inventory.” She adds that BIM enables faster access to the asset information model, which compiles the data and information necessary to support asset management.

Jesus’ point is echoed by David Philp FRICS, Aecom’s London-based director of BIM for EMEA and India. “The provision of accurate and complete computer-readable information at handover, including objectorientated models, can undoubtedly be exploited by those that undertake asset management activities.”

Philp, who is also an RICS Certified BIM Manager, adds that BIM is most effective in handing power to facilities managers and surveyors when it is coupled with additional software and technology. “When BIM is integrated with other asset management systems such as computer-assisted facilities management platforms, building management systems and additional performance-related telemetry interfaces,

we can create a dynamic digital twin where there is substantial value.

“This dynamic digital twin unlocks benefits that are both quantitative, such as cost and carbon, but also qualitative in terms of better operational decision-making.

Having a digital twin of an individual asset or portfolio really improves an organisation’s credentials, as reliable information leads to better service provision.”

BIM can also enhance the “storytelling experience” for clients when attracting new tenants, Philp believes, by enabling them to walk customers through the building early on in the design phase.

This can be seen at one of Great Portland Estates’ offices in central London, says the developer’s director of workplace and innovation, James Pellatt MRICS. “We were able to use the BIM model to assist us in the marketing of our scheme at 160 Old Street. As it was a complex refurbishment, it was difficult for potential occupiers to visualise the building during construction.

“By using the BIM model to form the basis of our 3D flythrough, we were able to give our

occupiers a better understanding of what they were going to receive at completion. This assisted us in securing Turner Broadcasting – a significant tenant – before completion.”

Similarly, at the £2.3bn Elephant Park regeneration scheme in south London, Lendlease invested in a 360º virtual-reality room which, when coupled with BIM, was able to provide prospective residents with an insight into the development.

Jesus says visualisation was key in helping future tenants get a clearer understanding of the overall design. “The ‘VRoom’ allows people to walk, drive or even fly around detailed 3D models for the massive central London regeneration project.

“As well as helping to give residents and other stakeholders a chance to see the plans and give their opinions on them, it allows the teams of engineers, designers and safety experts to work together and examine every aspect of the project in detail.”

When it comes to assessing BIM’s ability to enhance an investment, however, opinion is divided. Jesus believes that BIM can enhance value for asset managers by creating efficiencies such as: scheduling asset maintenance and replacement works; forecasting capital and operational expenditure; monitoring energy use and building performance; delivering enhanced service to building tenants by responding quickly to issues; and maintaining and updating records.

Operational uncertainty Although he is a firm believer in using BIM – and in the benefits it can bring before and during delivery – Pellatt is less convinced about its impact during the operation phase.

“Great Portland has used BIM on every major development since 2011. We firmly believe that it adds significant value to the development process, in that it allows us to consistently deliver high-quality buildings on time and to budget.

“We’ve found that our investment in BIM has saved money in that it has been offset by appropriate reduction in contingencies and allocation of risk. However, we haven’t seen any significant improvement in performance of the asset either in reduced FM costs or increased value.”

There is a consensus, however, that BIM is most successful in the operation phase when aligned with other software and systems. As Philp says: “There needs to be better alignment between those creating the models during the design and construction stages and those receiving and using them during the operational phase.”

“ THE USE OF BIM CAN HELP ASSET MANAGERS SAVE TIME AND MONEY

BY ENABLING QUICKER ACCESS TO ASSET INFORMATION ” EDONIS JESUS LENDLE ASE

It’s important to stop thinking of BIM in isolation, adds Philp. Instead, we need to take more of a “master data management approach” when considering the integration of BIM with other asset management systems for near real-time performance measurement and analysis.

For Jesus, the main hurdles that remain are both technological and procedural.“In terms of technology, asset management systems need to be improved to integrate BIM models and to fully use its data and geometry, so that asset owners or operators can fully achieve whole lifecycle performance efficiencies from their assets.”

On process, she adds: “It would be greatly beneficial if asset operators were more involved with the design and construction process, as it would ensure the information and data they need is recorded in BIM models for later use.”

Clearly there is a way to go before the entire benefits of BIM to a building’s operation are realised but, once they are, there’s a good chance they could enable a new generation of facilities managers and commercial property surveyors to unleash the full potential of the assets under their care. n Find out more about the benefits of BIM at our Digital Built Environment Conference.

Visit rics.org/digitalconference for details

ASSET MANAGEMENT

CASE STUDY: MASON BROTHERS COMMERCIAL WORKSPACE, AUCKL AND Precinct Properties redeveloped the Mason Brothers commercial workspace in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2016 with a view to integrating data collection and asset management. Working with digital asset information management partners Beca, the hope was this would achieve greater accuracy in forecasting operating costs and capital expenditure.

During construction, asset information was captured on site using mobile devices and uploaded to a cloud-based asset management system, providing a link between the construction phase and a live asset management database. This data included supply chain information, essential documents, 3D models and tailored information for the client’s FM and asset needs, such as mechanical plant and equipment information.

Barcodes were also placed on specific assets, so they could be scanned with mobile devices to pull up specific information within the building operations about an asset’s history. Beca then provided a complete digital handover of this asset information once the project was complete.

As a result, the operations teams were able to instantly access Mason Brothers’ 3D models, documents and asset information.

Precinct’s development manager, Dave Luxton, said at the time: “Many people talk about the benefits that BIM can deliver to a project in design and construction. Fewer talk about the benefits that BIM can bring to the asset management and operations stages, where the most benefit can be achieved. Beca has delivered something tangible that will provide real ongoing value to Precinct Properties’ asset management.”

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 43

EXPERIENCE

Create perfect places Placemaking is an important method of capitalising on a community’s assets and strengthening the psychological connection between people and the places they share. Modus picked the brains of five professionals who are helping to create healthier, more pleasant and valuable neighbourhoods.

ENSURE YOU RETAIN THE IDENTITY THAT MAKES A LOCATION UNIQUE

CREATE A FEELING OF COMFORT, SAFETY AND COMMUNITY

Jane Henshaw MRICS is head of building surveying of the London estate Cadogan

Tim Neal FRICS is president and CEO of global architecture and design practice CallisonRTKL

Placemaking simply means taking a holistic approach to creating or enhancing a location – making everything that can be seen, heard, touched, smelled and tasted intentionally appropriate. For us, it means ensuring that a neighbourhood maintains its special and distinct feel, so that its spirit and rich history continue to thrive through the physical environment.

Right now, Cadogan is working on £500m of construction and refurbishment projects in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to enhance the area. As an example, we’re transforming Pavilion Road into a new “village heart” – including refurbishing historic Victorian-era mews houses and local shops such as a butcher, baker, cheesemonger and restaurants with al fresco dining. Creating a sense of place in turn supports the community and nurtures cultural endeavours.

The most common errors developers and planners make regarding placemaking usually revolve around quick fixes and by taking a building-by-building approach – placemaking must always be a holistic and cohesive process. It is essential to link up with other local landowners to discuss ideas, and to keep all stakeholders in the dialogue loop. Placemaking works best when there is a buzz, and news of your exciting community will soon spread by word of mouth and social media.

A sense of place is like good wine – hard to define but you generally know it when you experience it. To be more specific, placemaking can be defined as creating a meaningful connection between a user and the built environment in a way that benefits both. Often this has to do with tapping into a community’s ethos or cultural foundation, or creating a public place that celebrates the messy vitality of the civic square. But it can also involve creating somewhere that makes people feel comfortable, safe and part of a community.

We’ve spent decades trying to understand the cultural anthropology of placemaking, but a few core attributes include: a good sense of building scale; a diverse mixture of spaces, with some large open areas for crowds and some more intimate and private spaces; and, by far the least tangible aspect, a place that connects with the community. We see this often in historic places, but it can also be more personal or civic focused through a commercial offer or neighbourhood purpose.

We have come to a point where we have to understand the balance among the built environment, the natural environment and humans in such a way that all benefit, thrive and endure. This is no longer a luxury, or something that cannot be quantified, but an “urgency” that we have to design for and see realised in everything we do.

INTERVIE W S BY BRENDON HOOPER; ILLUSTR ATION BY SERGIO MEMBRILL A S

HOW TO…

KEY INFRASTRUCTURE EACH LOCATION NEEDS TO BE FUNCTIONAL WILL NEED ITS OWN AND UNOBTRUSIVE BESPOKE SOLUTIONS

LISTEN TO THE COMMUNITY, BOTH SOCIAL AND BUSINESS

Tony Mulhall MRICS is associate director of the Land Professional Group at RICS

Laura Davy is principal consultant in GVA’s regeneration and spatial planning team in London

Louise Brooke-Smith FRICS is partner and UK head of development and strategic planning at Arcadis

Placemaking goes well beyond the formal appearance of a place. It is about creating spaces that enable people to live safe and fulfilling lives. And that doesn’t just refer to the physical shape of a place, but also to the types of uses and the combination of these uses in a way that enables diverse interactions. It is about how supporting infrastructure such as transportation meets residents’ needs without dominating the environment. At a functional level, the place has to work well, with schools, shops, medical services and recreational facilities accessible and delivered in a timely manner.

One of the big challenges is resolving the tension between increased density, a lack of adequate public transport, and the need for independent car transport, resulting in a lack of adequate provision for car parking.

A regular complaint from residents of highdensity developments, which are conceived on the basis of walkable communities, is the lack of car parking facilities.

Finally, it is important to give prospective residents confidence about how their place will evolve over time. Good masterplanning needs to engage the local community. Part of the difficulty is that if you are creating a new place for 5,000 residents, with whom should you consult? Placemaking projects take time to complete, but masterplans must be able to adapt to change without losing the qualities originally envisaged.

Whether at an individual site or a townwide scale, placemaking is about bringing together a balanced and diverse mix of uses and amenities that provide for local communities and support vibrancy, activity and interaction. This can be achieved via the regeneration of established places, and through the strategies that create new places such as the town centres supporting new settlements such as garden villages.

Successful placemaking has community engagement at its heart, and draws together regeneration, design, development and planning expertise to develop and deliver positive change for an area, in response to local characteristics and aspirations, with a focus on management and curation over time. It should promote sustainability in social, economic and environmental terms, and should build in flexibility and resilience, reflecting local contexts and character but incorporating new technologies and innovations.

Above all, we must promote a bespoke approach to each location, rather than adopt a one-size-fits-all method. This acknowledges that, although in some contexts we are creating new places for new communities, more often than not we are shaping growth and regeneration of existing places with an established character and identity to which we must respond.

Think of placemaking as listening to the people who live, work and play in a space, discovering their needs and aspirations, then creating a common vision for that place that can bring visual, operational and commercial benefits.

Primarily, placemaking only works with a collaborative approach, where the developer, investor, planning authority, landowner, and all design, environmental and technical advisers listen to the community – both social and business.

Community consultation is paramount, as is an understanding on the part of all stakeholders that the development – not just the built form, but also the spaces between – has funding available to create and maintain the “place”. This could be achieved through commercial funding or philanthropic activities.

However, the biggest challenge is getting all stakeholders working together. A lack of collaboration with the community, and a lack of mutual understanding between developer, investor and planner in the development process, invariably raises concerns and mistrust. While the first group regularly misunderstands the value and importance of fundamental planning guidance and well thought through and appropriate policy, the second group rarely has any understanding of the commercial mechanisms underpinning development.

Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 45

ARCADIS IN CHINA

凯谛思在中国

At Arcadis, we are well positioned to support urban development in China. Whether it’s improving mobility and connectivity, or looking at a city’s resilience, we can provide an integrated solution that brings together our expertise in quantity surveying, project management, design & engineering, contract solutions, environment and water management. 在凯谛思，我们全力支持中国的城市发展。无论是提高流动性与连通性， 还是关注水环境治 理及城市建筑，我们均可提供综合性的解决方案，包括造价咨询、 项目管理、设计与工程、 合同解决方案、环境与水资源管理。

Arcadis. Improving quality of life E: info-cn@arcadis.com

W: www.arcadis.com

@Arcadis_Asia

ArcadisAsia

凯谛思Arcadis

EXPERIENCE

SALARY SURVEY

GENER ATION GAINS This year’s RICS and MacDonald & Co Rewards and Attitudes Survey for AsiaPacific finds the region’s built environment professionals younger and hungrier RICS MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS

GENDER PAY GAP

MALE

31-35

36-45

31-35

36-45

Median basic salary of a property professional in the Asia-Pacific region, down from $110,890 in 2018* – partly because there were a greater number of younger, lessexperienced respondents this year.

The number of respondents who received a pay rise, down from 63% in 2018.

FEMALE

The bonus gap on entry to the profession is negligible, but by ages 46-55 it’s 264%.

27-30

46-55

MALE

$81,293

55%

S AL ARY INCRE A SE 5 4%

NE T WORKING OPPORT UNITIES 62%

GENDER BONUS GAP

FEMALE

Average gender pay gap is 32%, but this is skewed by a lack of data for women aged 56+.

27-30

GLOB AL WORK PA S SPORT 65%

C AREER ADVANCEMENT 7 2%

PROFES SIONAL ACCREDITATION 100%

WORKING TO INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS 78%

The movement towards working to a set of international standards, championed by RICS in all global regions, has really taken hold among Asia-Pacific’s built environment professionals.

5.2% The average salary increase, down from 6.3% last year.

46-55

4

$9,917

3

$36,112

$30,574

2

$28,700

$14,437

$33,562

1 - STRONGLY DIS AGREE

Premium to salary that an MRICSdesignated surveyor commands.

That’s 38% more than someone without a professional qualification.

5 - STRONGLY AGREE

68%

of respondents felt greater recognition from their CEO or board would make them more productive – the biggest factor after salary.

28%

13%

18% 11%

30%

OFFERS JOB SECURIT Y

29%

12%

6%

17%

IS SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE

35%

26%

14%

16% 8%

IS DEDIC ATED TO DIVERSIT Y

36%

27%

15%

6%

18%

HA S GRE AT OFFICE SPACE

35%

16% 25%

17% 9%

HA S GRE AT WORKPL ACE BENEFITS

53%

of built environment professionals valued or very valued in their role.

Less than half the respondents (42%) thought their built-environment-sector employer provided a great office space. Only 46% thought their employer was socially responsible.

3 4%

*MEDIAN REPL ACES AVER AGE FOR 2019 ME THODOLOGY

MY EMPLOYER

$10,416 $9,87 3

$82,140

$103,500

$78,000

$88,800

$55,350

$6 4,800

$42,120

$43,680

£21,272

For further analysis from the survey, go to rics.org/apacsalarysurvey Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 47

EXPERIENCE

NEWS IN BRIEF

ANTI-MONE Y-L AUNDERING RULES MANDATORY FROM SEPTEMBER Following an extensive global consultation period, RICS has published the professional statement Countering bribery and corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing. The statement sets out the obligations for RICS professionals and regulated firms to minimise their exposure to money laundering, bribery and corruption risks, and how to guard against these financial crimes in their day-to-day business operations. The statement comes into effect on 1 September, and compliance is mandatory for all RICS professionals and regulated firms. For more information, go to rics.org/aml.

RULES FOR REGISTRATION AND USE OF RICS LOGO UPDATED The RICS Regulatory Board has approved changes to the Rules for the registration of firms, and the Rules for the use of the RICS logo and designation by firms. The key changes include: the requirement for at least 25% of a firm’s principals to be chartered; the introduction of the Responsible Principal role; and the clarification that only RICS professionals and registered firms can use the RICS logo. Regulated firms must be compliant with the new rules by 1 April 2020. RICS will notify all firms before any actions are required. Review the guidance on the rule changes at rics.org/firmchanges.

DE VELOP YOUR SKILLS WITH A NE W RANGE OF ON-DEMAND COURSES RICS has recently launched a range of new certificate courses for those entering the profession or looking

EVENTS

for cross-sector career progression.

Available on demand, they are a comprehensive way to develop technical skills and knowledge in line with the RICS competency framework in areas such as quantity surveying, project management and commercial real estate. You’ll also earn CPD. To view all certificate courses, visit rics.org/certificates.

FIND OUT HOW OUR PAST IS INFORMING OUR FUTURE More than 13,000 of you voted in our Pride in the Profession campaign, yielding 100 inspiring stories and 10 category winners as we celebrated RICS’ 150th anniversary. Now, we look to the future. What influence can surveyors bring to bear on the issues facing society? From developing truly connected, intelligent cities using the latest sustainable building methods, and from new skills and pioneering technologies to the rapidly expanding commercial value of data, explore the challenges, opportunities and possibilities for what lies ahead in the future of surveying: rics.org/ futureprofession.

FIRM REGUL ATION: STAND OUT IN A COMPE TITIVE MARKE TPL ACE In a complex and rapidly changing marketplace, your clients seek confidence and security. Obtaining “Regulated by RICS” status allows your firm to meet this need. It shows the world that your firm practises to globally recognised ethical and professional standards. Through RICS’ proactive risk-based monitoring and assurance your firm will benefit from our support in embedding best practice. Find out more about registering your firm at rics.org/firmregulation.

RICS Hong Kong BIM Conference 2019 23 July, Cordis Hotel, Mong Kok Themed “BIM as an enabler of digital transformation in the built environment”, this conference will address the use of BIM in transforming how buildings and infrastructure are designed, constructed, and operated. Speakers will share practical cases and benefits of BIM applications.

CPD: 7 hours rics.org/bimconfhk RICS Summit of the Americas 5 June, Los Angeles Topics will include investment trends, the changing workplace, the future of cities, globalization and the built environment, sustainability and more CPD: 8 hours $395 rics.org/sota RICS Building Confidence Conference 1 August, Sydney This conference will look at how chartered surveyors can build trust in the built and natural environment profession.

CPD: 8 hours A$456.45 rics.org/ buildingconfidence

AWARDS CEREMONIES RICS Awards 2019 The RICS Awards showcase the most inspirational initiatives and developments in land, real estate, construction and infrastructure. Join other professionals and firms across Asia-Pacific as we announce who will take home trophies from this year’s awards in each region.

6 June, Melbourne rics.org/auawards 11 July, Singapore rics.org/seaawards 25 July, New Zealand rics.org/nzawards All prices exclusive of VAT or local taxes

For details of conferences, training sessions and CPD seminars near you, go to rics.org/events Q2 2019 / MODUS APAC / 49

EXPERIENCE

W H A T I F…

…AI could manage c o n s t r u c t i o n p r o j e c t s?

Artificial intelligence offers easy access to swathes of data and the ability to troubleshoot before an issue arises

50 / MODUS APAC / Q2 2019

can highlight the potential problems and bring advanced capability. Sometimes, the AI might help confirm an outcome professionals already suspected, but it will give them hard facts corroborated from thousands of points of data.

These days, projects can be worth billions of dollars, all controlled by project directors who want their fingers on the pulse of everything that is happening.

If contentious issues can be spotted early

by AI, millions of dollars could be saved.

It also allows us to simulate future projects.

I don’t believe there is a dramatic risk in turning more control over to AI. AI is not a replacement – all you’re doing is putting information in front of professionals in a faster, easier-to-consume way.

“ AI will give professionals hard facts corroborated from thousands of points of data ”

Leslie Lindgren is vice-president of information management at Fluor Read our insight paper on artificial intelligence at rics.org/aiinsightpaper

INTERVIE W BY BRENDON HOOPER; ILLUSTR ATION BY DENIS C ARRIER

Back in 2011, a contestant called Watson won $1m on the US television game show Jeopardy. Watson, however, wasn’t a human, but an artificial intelligence (AI) system created by IBM. It was a groundbreaking moment in AI development – and that was just for a TV show. Imagine the potential if we apply it to complex environments, such as healthcare or construction.

The power of AI systems first came to our attention at Fluor when we saw how IBM experimented with AI in healthcare.

At a normal initial appointment, a doctor performs a range of tests on the patient’s “pinchpoints”: blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, blood tests. Based on certain alarms that might be raised by the results, the doctors can then go deeper into what specialist treatment might be needed.

Watson was able to do a “deep dive” into medical records, global journals and healthcare data to augment and improve the diagnosis process. It was remarkable, and got us thinking: why not apply the same procedure to construction projects?

AI is now so advanced we can use it to rapidly analyse mountains of historical data to give us a better insight into our projects.

Large, capital developments are complex, with vast amounts of moving parts. They need to be understood to stay on schedule and budget. Developed with IBM, EPC Project Health Diagnostics (EPCPHD) – the system Fluor is testing – analyses trends in construction projects to predict issues that might appear, and it can also identify the impact of changes in the decision-making process, such as estimate analyses, forecast evaluations and project risk assessments.

Processes such as EPCPHD are going to revolutionise the industry. An AI system