The real estate development sector in the UAE has begun to use data analytics to plan projects so that they will give the highest return on investment when they proceed to market, a leading figure in the country’s real estate industry has said.
Mubarik Hussain, director of IT for Bloom Holding, an Abu Dhabi-based real estate developer, told Big Project ME that developers are even using data analytics during the execution phase of projects to analyse the performance of projects, so that they complete within time and on budget.
“There are valuable hidden insights that can maximise the value of developments that are traditionally not available through mainstream analysis, as well as getting insights into areas of developments that are overrunning on cost, and thus being able to value engineer and maximise the profitability of a development,” he explained during an email interview.
“To extract these insights requires expertise across industries and skillsets from technology, construction, development. Having people with the right combination of technological and business skills is a challenge,” Hussain warned, adding that only a fraction of the data that is generated and available is currently being analysed and that there is a large amount of potential to expand on this.
“We are in a period of accelerating technological expertise within development and construction companies, and the deployment of more solutions such as blockchain payments, smart contracts, machine learning, artificial intelligence, which will generate even further data and insights for partners within the construction ecosystem,” he said, highlighting that technology solutions that use machine learning and artificial intelligence to extract and analyse data from a variety of sources provide insights into how viable a potential project can be, and how it can be tailored for customers to increase their satisfaction and demand.
“Along with solutions for managing the project, smart contract, blockchain payments, will help to minimise the risks for taking on the projects and will help to reduce and control costs as the projects are being executed,” he added.
“Considering developments can costs hundreds of millions or billions of dollars to execute, the rewards for ensuring that projects are being executed optimally is highly beneficial for master developers and contractors. Contractors can use analysis across multiple areas of construction from property developments to construction in other fields such as civil works, oil and gas to reduce and control the costs of their projects as small deviations can results in large differences to the overall profitability of projects,” he concluded.