Sustainability Award winner: Converge
Headline partner DAC Beachcroft

As the world moves towards a more sustainable future, Converge is poised to help the construction industry in that transition. Our AI-powered construction intelligence and wireless smart sensors empower our customers to build the future more efficiently, safely and sustainably by making green construction methods and innovations more viable.

A recent pilot in Australia demonstrated a 5% reduction in embodied CO₂ across five projects, and this is only one of the many ways that Converge can improve sustainability in construction. As we grow, we will continue to increase the scale and diversity of our datasets, allowing us to generate further insights that can help drive towards a more sustainable future for the construction industry, and by extension the planet.

Other finalists

• AET Flexible Space
• BrainBox AI
• CIM
• ECOncrete
• Incube Space

Innovation Award (product) winner: Desana
Partnered by EG Radius

Other finalists

• Converge
• Hollis
• Incube Space
• Obligo
• OpenSpace
• RenKap

Innovation Award (building) winner: AXA IM Alts – 22 Bishopsgate
Partnered by essensys

22 Bishopsgate is a new, people-focused workplace which has adopted a technology-first approach to achieving its central goals of ensuring wellbeing and community to allow occupiers to benefit from the direct correlation between happiness at work and quality of workplace with increased productivity and creativity.

As a smart building, 22 Bishopsgate uses state-of-the-art technology to increase efficiency, reduce points of friction for residents and improve sustainability.

Utilising innovative partnerships with some of the world’s leading technology providers has been crucial in allowing 22 Bishopsgate to become one of the first buildings globally to embody the structural, cultural and technological shifts in how people work and live, and deliver what occupiers now expect, all of which has only accelerated as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Other finalists

• AshbyCapital and U+I, The Future Works
• British Land, 100 Liverpool Street
• Great Portland Estates, The Hickman

Innovation Award (business) winner: Smart Spaces
Partnered by Ility

2020 was a record year, resulting in Smart Spaces technology now powering 20m sq ft of UK real estate. We witnessed our sales enquiries increase by 400%, with real estate companies and occupiers wanting to adopt smart tech to deliver healthier and more sustainable buildings. We’ve developed new technologies and successfully delivered a fully active smart building at The Future Works, Slough, a truly tangible example of how smart technology operates. In the wake of Covid-19, smart technology is a vital component in delivering healthy buildings of the future.

Other finalists

• Great Portland Estates
• Plentific
• Student Cribs
• VTS
• VU.CITY

Rapid Response Award winner: UnderTheDoormat
Partnered by NLA

Homes for NHS was an initiative that was executed from an idea into a reality in just a few days. Our team and the other partners worked tirelessly to sort through the offers of homes from owners, requests from NHS staff as guests and to place them in the homes that were as close as possible to their hospital.

All the homes were cleaned and prepared in the same way as for regular paying guests, and the NHS staff and homeowners expressed their gratitude for the initiative.

Everyone at UnderTheDoormat worked as a team to onboard new homes, place guests and ensure requests were fulfilled all during the early days of the pandemic when everything had shut down.

Merilee Karr led the entire initiative as founder & chief executive of UnderTheDoormat and as chair of the industry body UK Short Term Accommodation Association.

Other finalists

• Arthur
• innDex
• Student Cribs
• VTS

Construction Award winner: OpenSpace
In partnership with Great Portland Estates

OpenSpace is transforming construction with a simple, fast and easy-to-use job site capture solution. We combine off-the-shelf 360-degree cameras and AI to make it incredibly easy to capture a complete visual record of any space, share it via the cloud, track progress over time, and manage the site without having to physically be on site.

Put another way: our tech is one part teleporter, one part time machine. Founded in 2017, our customers have already used our platform to capture billions of square feet of active construction projects, across thousands of sites, in dozens of countries.

And all this data is now powering our next-generation ClearSight analytics platform that automatically tracks and analyses work in place and site conditions.

Other finalists

• innDex
• Modulous

Infrastructure Award winner: Node
Partnered by Hollis

Node is the leading fibre infrastructure adviser and service partner in the built environment.

We employ technical expertise, alongside RICS-accredited real estate professionals, to deliver unique asset management based, independent fibre consultancy and managed solutions. This approach informs development/ repositioning projects, as well as the retrofitting of buildings in partnership with forward-thinking landlords, by providing best-in-class infrastructure design and management.

Our team integrates alongside asset managers to offer a comprehensive, customised solution, adaptable to the changing dynamics of the digital and smart solutions markets in responding to occupier requirements for full fibre. A Node-managed solution enable gains in productivity and revenue generation, while reducing the reputational and financial risk associated to fibre provision.

Node buildings benefit from the removal of wayleaves, while providing full access to the ISP market, physical cyber security and make full fibre affordable for all businesses by significantly reducing tenant costs on a like-for-like basis.

Other finalists

• AirWorks
• Buro Happold’s SmartViz, developed in partnership with Microsoft
• Qlue Smart City

Investment Award winner: OakNorth Bank
Partnered by Revvis

The ON Credit Intelligence Suite, which currently has circa. $1tn of assets under management, is unique in the way it delivers intuitive and simple user experiences, each designed with the needs of critical users in mind – relationship managers, credit analysts, underwriters, portfolio managers and credit executives.

There are three central parts to the ON Credit Intelligence Suite:

• Portfolio Insights: instantly segments portfolio and rate loans based on level of vulnerability
• Credit Analysis: 360-degree view of borrowers with instant financial forecasting, sector insights, and peer analysis
• Portfolio Monitoring: easily track industry trends and set early warning alerts for potential covenant breaches

As a result of these key features to the ON Credit Intelligence Suite, lenders are able to lend smarter, lend faster and lend more.

Other finalists

• Coyote Software
• LDSyoursite.com
• Native Finance

Placemaking Award winner: Built-ID
Partnered by Yardi

With more than 500,000 community preferences and ideas shared and 90,000-plus community changemakers, we have been able to transform thousands of voices into actionable ideas to make it easy to identify data-driven decisions that align projects with community priorities to build trust and better places.

Other finalists

• DevComms
• HqO

Productivity Award winner: VU.CITY
Partnered by WiredScore

More people live in cities than at any point in history. Our resources are under more pressure than ever before with rising global living standards and expectations. This, coupled with an increasing lack of transparency and trust throughout the planning process, is leading to several fractious relationships.

VU.CITY is a key solution to rebuilding trust and supporting built environment professionals in making better design and planning decisions, faster.

As a game-changing, powerful digital twin of our cities, VU.CITY supports creating, refining and sharing the journey of city transformation. The platform provides a shared visual perspective to understand the character of a city; facilitating a city-wide constructive narrative that’s inclusive with change, resulting in a more trusted and efficient planning process which produces cities that are a better representation of the diverse values of the people that live in them.

Other finalists

• Beringar
• Desana
• Equiem
• Plentific

Bridging the Gap Award winner: Lee Butz, chief executive & founder, District Technologies
Partnered by HB Reavis

Other finalists

• Angelica Krystle Donati, chief executive, Donati Immobiliare Group
• Matt Partridge, founder & chief executive, Infabode and chairman, UK PropTech Association
• James Pellatt, director of workplace & innovation, Great Portland Estates
• Russ Shaw CBE, founder, Tech London Advocates & Global Tech Advocates
• Natasha Terinova, program director, REACH UK – Second Century Ventures

Real Estate Digital Legal Adviser Award winner: Simmons & Simmons
Partnered by Search Acumen

In what has been a difficult year for many clients, the ability to quickly deliver clear and incisive advice has been a differentiator for us.

We recognise that our clients are navigating a fast-moving landscape and we are committed to providing them with the tools to do this. Many of the fundamentals remain the same – title information, tenancy schedules and leases – but the challenges are new and methods of delivery need to keep up.

Extracting key information quickly and presenting it intuitively so it can be immediately understood, shared and discussed has been essential. By combining the skills and ability of our lawyers with the know-how of technical experts, we have created a number of such solutions.

The challenge, which we are determined to meet, is to continue to create innovative products to meet our clients’ changing needs and exceed expectations of what a law firm can be.

Other finalists

• Addleshaw Goddard
• CMS

Real Estate Digital Outstanding Achievement Award winners: Brad Greiwe & Brendan Wallace, co-founders of Fifth Wall
Partnered by Twinview

The Big Picture Award: VU.CITY
Partnered by MRI Software

More people live in cities than at any point in history. Our resources are under more pressure than ever before with rising global living standards and expectations. This, coupled with an increasing lack of transparency and trust throughout the planning process, is leading to several fractious relationships.

VU.CITY is a key solution to rebuilding trust and supporting built environment professionals in making better design and planning decisions, faster.

As a game-changing, powerful digital twin of our cities, VU.CITY supports creating, refining and sharing the journey of city transformation. The platform provides a shared visual perspective to understand the character of a city; facilitating a city-wide constructive narrative that’s inclusive with change, resulting in a more trusted and efficient planning process which produces cities that are a better representation of the diverse values of the people that live in them.

Other finalists

• Geovation, Ordnance Survey
• Greater London Authority
• Institute of Residential Property Management
• PropTech for Good
• UK PropTech Association

Real Estate Digital Rising Star Award winner: Sharon Jenkins, senior innovation manager, CMS
Partnered by Retransform

• Nick Christoforou MRICS, founder & director, The ZEUS App
• Charlotte Laing, head of marketing, Metrikus, AirRated and Aerum
• Gonzalo Marquesini FRICS, founder, RenKap
• Aimee Rootes, COO, Cureoscity
• Andy Saull, former head of research and strategy, Pi Labs
• Valentina Shegoyan, managing partner, REACH UK – Second Century Ventures

Wellbeing Technology Award winner: HomeLINK
Partnered by Bidwells

HomeLINK has created the first IoT “open ecosystem” and analytics platforms to empower both social landlords and their residents.

By deploying a suite of IoT sensors and alarms (indoor air-quality indicators, condensation, damp and mould indicators, electricity usage monitors, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms), and funnelling received data through powerful, market-leading machine-learning algorithms, we are able to provide a holistic view of property conditions while enabling a proactive approach to maintenance and wellbeing, allowing us and social landlords to deliver social value whilst generating ROI.

These combined technologies give our users sight where they were previously blind, allowing landlords to streamline maintenance, reduce visits, improve services and better allocate capital investment.

It helps residents to save money, improve their health and better look after their home by becoming energy efficient, reducing poor air quality, avoiding fuel poverty, increasing safety and improving poor living conditions.

Other finalists

• AirRated
• Angel Guard
• SmartONE Solutions Inc

Tech Investment Award winner: Blend Network
Partnered by Pi Labs

Blend Network’s fully automated peer-to-peer property-lending platform is helping bridge the existing funding gap in the UK’s housing market.

The UK’s housing market remains highly dysfunctional. On the one hand, property developers need funding to build more homes but are unable to access funding because banks and traditional lenders do not have an appetite to provide development finance. On the other hand, investors looking for yield are getting close to zero return on their cash deposit at the banks due to very low interest rates. Blend Network solves this issue by connecting lenders and borrowers in the property market through a fully automated and safe electronic platform.

By doing so, it is helping hundreds of SME property developers and small construction companies access the funding they need to build the homes the UK urgently requires and it is helping investors access a good return.

Other finalists

• A/O PropTech
• CEMEX Ventures