We have more data than any other real estate company. Upskilling our teams with the ability to analyse that data is essential.

If you’re the largest real estate company in the world, then you have a lot of data. “We have more data than any other real estate company,” said Ricky Bartlett, CBRE’s UK Lead for AI & Automation. “Upskilling our teams with the ability to analyse that data is essential.”

That ambition is the reason Multiverse apprentices from across CBRE recently came together for a one-day hackathon, organised around a single question: how can AI tools help reduce time spent on administrative tasks?

Learning by doing

Hackathons are a hallmark of Multiverse apprenticeships. Instead of learning in the abstract, apprentices apply their new AI and data skills to live business problems, working in teams, at pace and against the clock. Often they’re collaborating with colleagues they’ve never met, which is also part of the point.

“We've seen people who've never met each other before brought together on this common idea, and we've seen them collaborate so well and start to share ideas,” said Graeme McClelland, COO at CBRE. “That's really helped as we try and roll new ideas out across the organization.”

Less paperwork, more site work

The challenge of reducing time spent on admin was chosen because it’s a real — and persistent — pain point. In the facilities management industry significant time is dedicated to writing reports, coordinating contractors, updating systems and generating client updates. That’s time that could be better spent on spending time with clients and proactively responding to their needs.

Over the course of the day, teams designed practical AI workflows to claw that time back. Ideas the teams explored and developed included using AI to:

• Draft defect reports from photos or voice notes
• Auto-categorise work orders
• Generate client updates 
• Create summary dashboards 

George Whittaker, a duty manager, has enthusiastically embraced the apprenticeship programme and brought the same energy to the hackathon. “I enjoy AI — I'm Mr. Gadget,” he said. “I would like to automate everything. It'll give people time to focus on what they need to focus on.”

Others arrived with problems already in hand, and left with solutions. “I came to the event with an idea of an agent that I wanted to build that I've been hitting some walls with by myself,” said Alan Dunne, National Technical Manager. “Just as a byproduct of today, I've found a workaround to get past the blockers I've been seeing.”

Impact that benefits customers

For McClelland, the measure of success for the hackathon and beyond is simple: “If we’re delighting our customers, they want to keep working with us and we continue to grow. So anything we do with AI has got to be benefiting our customers.” 

And that’s a journey that CBRE isn’t making alone. “The challenge that we see around AI is the speed at which everything is changing — the landscape is shifting constantly,” concluded Bartlett. “So we wanted to work with somebody in a partnership to try and navigate what's going on with artificial intelligence. And we really do see that with Multiverse.”

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