Ireland continues to be suffocated by issues facing its property sector. As the housing crisis continues to grow like an all-consuming monster, all stakeholders involved grapple to find the answers on how to tackle it. Thousands take to the streets and put pressure on the government by protesting against homelessness and high rents. Others gather in hotels to discuss the current situation and the best way to move towards solutions.

One such event took place at the end of 2019. In the Alex Hotel on Fenian Street, Property District Ireland, a PR agency for the planning, construction, property and prop-tech industries, held the Dublin Residential & Affordable Housing Review in association with digital media group BisNow. Speakers included developers such as Michael O’Flynn, Ballymore’s Director of Corporate Finance Patrick Phelan, and Bronagh D’Arcy, Deputy CEO of Tuath, a not-for-profit approved housing body providing long-term social housing.

They discussed issues such as viability and affordability in the property sector, plus the “not in my backyard’’ (nimbyism) mentality. While they spoke for a few hours, listening in the crowd were several of Ireland’s leading prop-tech companies. 

“These are all issues that are quite profitable to solve, if they can be solved,” says CEO of Property District Carol Tallon on the opportunities for prop-tech start-ups in Ireland. 

Property technology (prop-tech) is a new industry focused on providing digital solutions to problems that stakeholders face in real estate and the renting sector.

Prop-tech thrives when the property industry fails. For example, on issues that continue to rise such as landlord transparency and engagement between developers and the public to speed up the planning process and the building of proposed developments.

While Britain is in a state of flux with Brexit, Tallon says that when it comes to prop-tech, people are looking straight to the Irish rather than the UK market.

“Most of the start-ups that are in the marketplace now will have formed knowing that Brexit was on the horizon and it means it has been baked into their business models and their future expansion strategies,” she says. 

Many prop-tech companies are now falling into the realm of the SPaaS (Space as a Service) industry. The relationship between estate agents, buyers, sellers, renters and landlords is changing and the need for digital solutions to problems in the property sector is growing. 

The prop-tech sector is relatively new to Ireland and only started to develop four or five years ago. This means it does not have a strong dependence on the UK market as it evolved in parallel to Brexit.

While Ireland’s market grows, many prop-tech companies look to other global markets such as Portugal, the US and Asia. The Asian market, in particular, is leading the way, according to Tallon. Awareness and investment in prop-tech continue to grow rapidly in the region as indicated in the recent Urban Land Institute and PwC Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific (APAC) 2020 report. 

“Start-ups in Ireland – unlike almost every other country – from day one, they need to be gearing towards export,” says Tallon. She adds that a lot of the prop-tech companies that originate out of Ireland are quite strong because they have to be to survive in more competitive markets such as the US. 

Tallon says that there is challenge and opportunity in equal measure for prop-tech in Ireland. Apart from obvious problems with the housing sector, some issues are stunting its growth. 

The venture capitalist eco-system is not as developed and well resourced as it should be, she believes.  Tallon says that investments are relatively low. Typically, pre-seed funding is provided by bodies like Enterprise Ireland rather than VCs. 

“There’s plenty of things that need to change to incentivise taxpayers to get involved in investing in start-ups. We don’t really have the incentives here for private individuals to invest in businesses,” says Tallon. 

Despite these road-blocks, Ireland is still recognised around the globe for its involvement in prop-tech. Tallon is one of the international judges for the global prop-tech competition called Leading Cities, based out of Boston. Former Taoiseach Enda Kenny is also on the board for this competition for prop-tech solutions from all over the world. 

Tallon is also a founder of the PropTech Ireland accelerator programme. It was established in 2016 to support and promote this emerging sector, and connects innovators with the industry and investors. 

Many prop-tech companies are now falling into the realm of the SPaaS (Space as a Service) industry. The relationship between estate agents, buyers, sellers, renters and landlords is changing and the need for digital solutions to problems in the property sector is growing. That’s where prop-tech comes in.

These digital solutions are broken into separate categories within the sector: smart planning, smart asset management, smart transaction, smart design, smart build, and smart city. Smart city does not deal directly in technical solutions for real estate, but creates solutions for property around the city.

This article looks at how prop-tech companies can: 

• Provide immersive technology to see exactly what proposed developments would look like. A start-up in this piece used a proposal by the Ronan Group as an example.
• Use sound technology to create virtual keys that can be used through WhatsApp.
• Automate bookings with landlords and provide ways of being a more transparent landlord. 
• Offer a 24/7 online bidding process for property. 
• Use AI to predict if a development is running the risk of going over budget or is not compliant with health and safety regulations. 

Smart planning

Carol Tallon is a trailblazer in the Irish prop-tech market. As well as her wider involvement in the industry, she created her own product called PLACEengage, which aims to deal with common problems when it comes to planning.

PLACEengage comes from her parent company Property District and is a platform that acts as a virtual town hall designed to combat nimby objections with the intention of speeding up planning.

“Right now, the objections to planning are slowing down the delivery of vital new homes and infrastructure,” says Tallon.

PLACEengage was set up to offer a more digital approach to planning applications. These applications need to be printed, and Tallon stated that the cost of printing the planning application of a large development is upwards of some €50-80,000.

“What’s interesting is that we knew the developers didn’t trust planners. We knew people didn’t trust developers. But what we really didn’t realise is how much property developers don’t trust the community.”

Carol Tallon

“That just doesn’t make sense in this day and age. So we want to see a digital submission,” says Tallon. 

PLACEengage offers a digital alternative to printed documents. This is only one function of Tallon’s company. The main purpose of PLACEengage is to provide a virtual reality walk-through, or drone footage, of a proposed site. “Things that actually help with the decision-making process,” says Tallon. She thinks this is more useful than flat images of the proposed development that can only be seen on paper.

“We came across the problem of planning objections slowing down the delivery of new homes long before we came up with a solution,” says Tallon. Several options fell flat before they came up with the virtual town hall idea.

“What’s interesting is that we knew the developers didn’t trust planners. We knew people didn’t trust developers. But what we really didn’t realise is how much property developers don’t trust the community,” says Tallon. PLACEengage wants to promote engagement between the property developer and the public. 

PLACEengage helps create augmented reality of what a proposed development on a site will actually look like and then creates a platform for developers, planners and the public to engage in a conversation with each other about this development.

Public consultation is a statutory requirement for proposed planning in Ireland. All project owners have to do it whether they are the state, an approved housing authority or other bodies. PLACEengage wants to digitise this process. 

“Planning is a public function so we need the people to be able to use their voice,” says Tallon.

Tallon wants to provide a space for people to express their concerns about a development where the project owner will be able to hear them – rather than endless commenting on social media. However, this space can only be used for the public to voice valid concerns under set criteria. For example, these concerns could be on the grounds of traffic flow or aesthetic of the building.

“We also have a safeguard built in there that if members of the community petition us to get a project uploaded that a developer doesn’t want, once we have more than three unrelated people putting forward submissions we’ll upload that project,” says Tallon. This would be at no cost to the community.

“In real-time, we can issue a report on what that community or the stakeholders feel,” says Tallon. “In order to get people engaged, we want them to see the development before it’s built.” 

This is where the immersive technology plays a part. PLACEengage uses augmented reality so that the user can look at a proposed building through the camera on their phone while using it.

“You hold up the camera as if you’re standing on the site of the proposed development, and then in full 360 you will see a reality of what it could look like.”

Carol Tallon

“We can take the proposed building and put that into a reality that is visible through your smartphone or device. You hold up the camera as if you’re standing on the site of the proposed development, and then in full 360 you will see a reality of what it could look like,” says Tallon. This view would include the existing elements of where you’re standing, such as trees and cars but will also include a full view of what the proposed building will look like. 

This is useful when it comes to building heights as people can see the impact the building would have on its surroundings much more accurately than a CGI image can show, according to Tallon. 

Tallon and her team won Dublin’s First 3D City Data Hackathon, which was run in conjunction with Hibernia Reit, in 2019. They won by showcasing this feature of her product, PLACEengage, using the example of the contentious proposal by Johnny Ronan’s Ronan Group Real Estate (RGRE) to raise the height of the Salesforce Tower on Spencer Dock.

Ronan has been in the headlines again recently for thrice proposing building two more stories onto Salesforce’s new European headquarters on Spencer Dock in Dublin. His bids were rejected because of height restrictions. 

For the Hackathon, PLACEengage used virtual reality to show the building at its current height of nine stories and then increased it to 11. Tallon said that even at 11 stories it did not look imposing next to Ireland’s banking regulator, the Central Bank. The fact that increasing the height may affect the aesthetic of the Central Bank next to it was one of the reasons the proposition was denied. Using immersive technology, PLACEengage provided the view of the proposed extension from a standing point on Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

The main function of her product is to inform people so that they are more likely to offer critiques about the planning proposal rather than lodging an objection and outright saying they do not want it. Tallon says it’s mainly people over 45 that engage with planning proposals, but hopes that PLACEengage will entice a younger generation to become more involved in civic society as they can use it on their smart devices.

“For most property developers, there’s an element of ego, but there’s an element of pride as well. They absolutely want to deliver good stuff. They don’t want to deliver rubbish,” says Tallon.

PLACEengage is only two years old and is mainly trialling most of its features, but Tallon’s team is already working with property developers. It initially got off the ground by participating in an Enterprise Ireland-backed programme in the Dublin City University (DCU)’s Ryan Academy. One of 10 companies chosen to participate in the mentoring programme, PLACEengage won a pitch competition at the end of it.

Tallon and her team deliberately did not look for seed funding or other investment. Instead, they chose to bootstrap the business. They can afford to do this as they already provide some of their services, such as dealing with public consultation for property developers, to customers through the parent company Property District. PLACEengage is their product that hopes to digitise all of their services.

They are based in Citywest but the office for PLACEengage was originally on Dawson Street in Dublin. Due to the price of parking and the time lost in traffic, Tallon thought it was only logical to move. Property District has two founding members and has gained four other employees.

Tallon mentioned some plans set out for PLACEengage in 2020, including partnering with a large project in the city of Dublin. Details of which she did not want to make public for the moment.

“We are currently seeking a forward-thinking urban planner to join us,” says Tallon.

Tallon and her team will also be working with Dublin City Council (DCC) on the concept of using gamification to promote good citizenship. For example, people could take a photo of rubbish on the ground, send it to DCC and they would be rewarded with points which could get them discounts on facilities provided by the city. This would be a smart city initiative. 

Smart asset management

Damien Browne, a former owner of a commercial real estate investment firm, created Standard Access, a digital cloud solution that provides security and administration tools for buildings for both tenants and landlords.

“I was trying to think for a few years, how could I use technology basically to improve the efficiencies of running a property portfolio, but also give my tenants, my clients the highest level of security.”

Damien Browne

It is an app which allows landlords and property managers to manage their assets or properties remotely anywhere in the world and reduces the need for on-site time. This makes it easier to oversee large-scale properties such as office and apartment blocks. The main feature of the app is to provide high-tech security for people who are living in or using these buildings. 

“I used to be a landlord myself so the problems I faced every day were the same that every landlord in the world faces,” says Browne. He wanted a solution to be able to manage his assets here in Ireland, in the UK and in Spain. 

During the recession, Browne says he lost a lot of his tenants. He was trying to take care efficiently of all his properties, existing tenants and collect rent across 15 locations in three countries. 

“Obviously you can’t be in more than one place at the one time,” says Browne. 

Rent collection, building security, maintenance management and tenant issues can all be taken care of through this app. It is mainly used for those in the private rental sector (PRS), co-living and social housing. 

“I was trying to think for a few years, how could I use technology basically to improve the efficiencies of running a property portfolio but also give my tenants, my clients the highest level of security,” Browne asked himself. 

One of the main features of Standard Access is the virtual key, provided through the app, that can be used for a specific door in a building. The key is created using unique encrypted audio technology. The tenant can use the sound sent from their phone to unlock their door. 

“The two most important things for Standard Access are privacy and security. We actually don’t know who is the user of the phone going through the door,” says Browne. 

“If someone had the ability to hack the server, which is based in Canada, basically all they’d find is letters and numbers per user. They wouldn’t find a person’s name, they wouldn’t find an address, they wouldn’t find a phone number or any personal details,” he adds.

Browne explained that the authentication process starts and ends with the tenant’s phone. Facial recognition or fingerprint detection is not used with Standard Access as Browne believes they are not secure enough. Through sound technology, anyone with a phone can use this virtual security software. An upgrade or a certain type of phone is not needed to use Standard Access, as long as it is a smart device.

“Even Nokias can use it,” says Browne. 

Being able to directly send virtual keys is more secure, Browne believes. People would no longer need to leave keys outside under a mat or with a neighbour for other people to get access to a building. These keys cannot be duplicated, which protects landlords from having tenants they never knew existed, such as sub-letters. 

Other features of Standard Access allow the tenant to report maintenance issues to the property manager. There are also ways of ordering food, taxis and getting your laundry done. Notifications of discounts in local restaurants or facilities are sent through the app as well. Plus, the landlord is able to send alerts to the tenants. 

“It saves money so people will make back the price of the technology within maybe a year and a half or two years.”

Damien Browne

Based out of Kerry, Standard Access does not outsource anything to do with the product. All of the design, manufacturing and software development is done in-house. The company also has offices in Limerick and Bucharest. Its head of software is originally from Bucharest. Although he moved to Ireland last year, a section of the team stays in Bucharest to develop the software. Everything they use to create their product is sourced within the European Union and America. Currently, seven people work in Standard Access. Their main office in Kerry is being expanded and, once there is more space available, Browne hopes the team will grow by 10 more people this year. 

Browne is not limiting the app’s use to tenants and landlords. He is selling the product to those who manage office blocks. The app would enable users to operate the heating and lighting of a building. This would be used in the instance that an employee would be coming back into the office at a time no one else is there. They could heat the building before entering or turn off the lights if they forgot to on the way out. The long-term aim is to manage the space more efficiently and reduce the cost of heating and lighting as well as reducing emissions, according to Browne.

“It saves money so people will make back the price of the technology within maybe a year and a half or two years,” says Browne. 

When Browne came up with the idea for Standard Access, he went to Enterprise Ireland to get advice on how it could be developed. They pointed him in the direction of Tralee IT and they built him a prototype. They created a dashboard where the user could select the type, location and size of a property, their budget, and how long they need to use it for. The user would then be given options after this process. After choosing one and making a payment, the user would then be given a virtual key for this property. There are three parts to this key. One part is kept on the person’s phone, another in the door the key is allocated to and the last part is kept in the cloud.

Browne got the company off the ground by investing in it himself and receiving investments from friends and family. Enterprise Ireland gave seed funding at the start, which amounted to €275,000. As of yet, he has not received any other outside funding. At the moment Browne’s company has not entered into any business partnerships, but is speaking with some universities about doing research projects together. He is looking to the UK and Ireland to enter into some other partnerships but could not discuss the details, for now. In total, Browne has secured three deals here in Ireland but most of his success has been in the UK market.

Browne is currently tendering Standard Access for some PRS and co-living buildings in Ireland and the UK. He is also in conversations about getting student accommodation to use Standard Access. Students would be able to access the same features in the tenant app for the residential and office buildings. However, there would be the added option of sharing keys through the app, if the landlord or the university is on board with this.

“You could send your Mam, or whoever was coming to visit to stay with you for a night, a key. They don’t have to download the app, they can just use the key through WhatsApp. It’d be time restricted as well. And that person couldn’t forward it on to anyone else,” says Browne. 

Currently, some clients in the UK are using this feature of Standard Access for their maintenance teams. By doing this, keys do not need to be physically given to other people to open doors. Instead, the keys can be sent virtually to allow people such as a real estate agent or maintenance teams to enter the building.

Browne says that this key created through sound technology would be useful for pharmacies to use, as it provides security but does not use Bluetooth radio waves that could be damaging for drugs in stock. Browne is in talks with airports, too, who expressed interest in using his product. He does say that his focus is very much on the residential sector, but he will consider branching out to other areas this year or the year after.

Standard Access currently has patents pending in other countries but its markets for now are in Ireland and the UK, where Browne has set up a subsidiary company. He is looking at opportunities to enter into partnerships in America as well. 

*****

Michelle Ang founded her prop-tech consultancy company Accenver at the start of 2019 to help those in PRS manage their assets more efficiently. Ang’s prop-tech product is at such early stages that it is yet to be named – yet she is clear on what she wants it to do. It will automate the process of booking property viewings.

“The most frustrating thing that I’ve seen in the industry is chasing people. Be it chasing tenants for references or chasing updates from leasing agents or property agents. So there’s always an element, maybe 40 per cent or 50 per cent of our time as an asset manager, spent chasing for stuff,” says Ang.

If you are a renter, Ang explained the first thing you do is make a booking directly with the landlord or the estate agent. If the renter has questions for the landlord or vice versa, it can result in numerous emails or phone calls. Ang hopes the end result of her product will make this process easier through automation. 

“There’s a lot of work that asset managers or agents are doing on a day-to-day basis that can really be done by automation. Done by machines. So you can free up time for what’s more important, which is building relationships with tenants or building relationships with landlords,” says Ang. 

“One thing I don’t really like doing is time wasting. So if I’m at the idea stage, I want to be certain that it’s investable first. That there’s an underlying product before I reach out to investors.”

Michelle Ang

Ang has spent more than seven years in the Irish property industry, working as an asset manager and investment analyst for Green Reit. She officially finished working there full-time in 2019 but stayed on as a third-party consultant until it was sold in November 2019 to UK-based Henderson Park for €1.34 billion. Since January 2019, she has been self-employed with Accenver.

For the moment, Ang is not associating her company or her product with any other brand and works independently. She did speak with the Local Enterprise Office (LEO) and they gave her advice, however she has not received or sought any seed investment and does not intend to for a specific reason. 

“One thing I don’t really like doing is time-wasting. So if I’m at the idea stage, I want to be certain that it’s investable first. That there’s an underlying product before I reach out to investors,” says Ang. She believes that speaking with customers is key before looking for funding, because she must be certain her product is filling a market gap.

Ang joins an unfortunately unique group in Ireland. Usually, the number of women in the tech industry is around 30 per cent. In Ireland this falls to five per cent, according to Carol Tallon.

To date, she has bootstrapped her company and the development of her product. She has no employees and outsources everything she needs, from designers to legal work. Although she is a team of one, she bases herself out of Molesworth Street in Dublin because she believes you need to be out of the house and meeting people for a business venture to be successful.

Although one of the main features of her product will be booking automation, she aims to create a prop-tech product that will provide information to the landlord about their tenant such as where they work, how often do they pay, and the various expenditures of each place or unit they are letting. It will also provide performance metrics for each unit in a property portfolio. Her target market will be those in PRS due to the scale of many landlords’ portfolios in that sector.

Ang joins an unfortunately small group in Ireland. Usually, the number of women in the tech industry is around 30 per cent. In Ireland, this falls to five per cent, according to Carol Tallon. 

Smart transaction

Healy Hynes entered into a seed fundraising round, which is still currently open, in the hope of securing investment early this year to grow his online bidding start-up.

Hynes created a bidding engine called Beagel, which enables online property transactions and connects estate agents, buyers and sellers. His flagship product to the Irish market, Beagel Bid, allows estate agents to conduct property sales live 24 hours a day, seven days of the week. 

“Roughly 70 per cent of the bidding that’s done is done outside normal office hours.”

Healy Hynes

Users can see the bid history on a specific property and they also get notifications if another offer comes in. The agents then conduct normal due diligence to screen any buyer that showed interest in the property through Beagel. Once that’s done, they can let people make offers for the property.

“They’re not waiting for estate agents to call and say ‘we’ve had a higher offer’, they can actually make their decisions in their own time,” says Hynes.

Like many of his other colleagues in this piece, Hynes came up with his digital solution, Beagel, to remedy a common human problem he found while working in the property sector.

Under Irish legislation, estate agents are required to keep a record of bidding and must go back to underbidders and let them know the bids. Beagel aims to make this simpler and more efficient. As well as live online bids, Beagel makes it easier to track legal conveyances.

“Solicitors in Ireland have been very slow to embrace new technology. We really should be transferring property now using blockchain (technology that supports digital currency and allows digital information to be distributed, but not copied) and that’s not really happening,” says Carol Tallon.

“Roughly 70 per cent of the bidding that’s done is done outside normal office hours,” says Hynes and estimated that around €1 billion in bids have been paid through the Beagel system.

Hynes launched the Beagle Bid platform at the beginning of last year. To date, the company bootstrapped itself but received support from Enterprise Ireland through taking part in their New Frontiers programme. Although he has not entered into any business partnerships yet, he and his team are working with Microsoft as part of their start-up programme. This allows them to use tools provided by Microsoft such as artificial intelligence (AI).

Beagel is an Enterprise Ireland high-potential start-up (HPSU). The small team of four behind the company is working out of the Midlands Innovation and Research Centre in Athlone at the moment. Everything to do with the company is done in-house by the team.

Beagel is a B2B company and the revenue model is based on estate agents getting subscriptions. This online platform can then be used in any estate agent’s customer relationship management system (CRM). Beagel charges the estate agents who use but it’s free for potential buyers to use. It can only be used for property sales and does not deal with renters.

Hynes is a former Real Estate Alliance estate agent and previously ran Hynes’ Auctioneers in Athlone. He has over 25 years of experience in the profession.  However, Hynes worked with a marketing company in the past too and developed an interest in technology. There, he familiarised himself with coding.

“I cracked open the laptop and off I went from there,” says Hynes describing how he first began the process of setting up Beagel.

Beagel is similarly spelt to the breed of dog. When asked why Hynes and his team chose the name he said that “a lot of work actually went into it and it took a while to actually come up with it”. They agreed on the name Beagel because beagle dogs are hunting dogs. Hynes wanted a name that is directed towards the people who use his product rather than the business side of the company.

“Beagles are hunting dogs. Helping hunters find what they’re looking for, that’s where the name came from,” says Hynes.

Although other players in the prop-tech industry welcome the current challenges in the housing and property sector as opportunities to find more SPaaS solutions, Hynes and his company Beagel face one of the biggest challenges. Fewer and fewer young professionals are able to afford to buy houses and Beagel only deals with sales, not rents. 

Asked whether he is worried about this problem, Hynes says: “In an existential sense, yes.” 

However, Beagel is not entirely focused on the Irish market, which gives it scope for wider play. Healy added that he is “seeing repeating patterns that are emerging in Ireland and in overseas markets as well.”

“You’re still looking at less than 50,000 transactions per annum and an underbuild of 20,000 units per annum as well. So there are some serious underlying structural issues with the Irish property market that are reflected in some other international markets as well. Particularly if you look at the UK and the US.

“It’s really an underlying supply problem that’s been hanging around for over a decade that’s at the core of it,” says Hynes.

Smart build

Smart build prop-tech start-ups may be created to run project management or smart CRM solutions. They often fall into the bracket of a SPaaS technology as most companies in smart build offer cloud solutions for construction problems.

Smart Build prop-tech companies are using sonar and other technologies to access what is underneath the ground in terms of wires and potential hazards, so someone does not need to be on-site to assess them. This improves health and safety on construction sites. Through using technology on the ground, real-time information can be fed back to surveyors in the office. They can then see what the physical site looks like without being there. 

If this smart build technology was for national developments of this size, it could prevent situations, like the NCH one, from recurring.

AI is commonly used in by smart build companies and can be used for project management data. By using AI in specific ways for a development, it is easier to locate where there may be a higher risk of health and safety non-compliance on a site. Using AI in project management data can also determine if there’s a risk of delays and why. It can estimate if there is a high risk of budget overrun too. 

Smart build is regarded by Tallon as one of the most transformative areas in prop-tech that would benefit from government support. Dr Houssem Jerbi is the founder of Irish prop-tech company SmartPMO, which uses AI on construction data to avoid budget overruns. Tallon believes that if SmartPMO was used during the construction of the National Children’s Hospital (NCH) it may have prevented the large overspend of the project.

If this smart build technology was for national developments of this size, it could prevent situations, like the NCH one, from recurring.

Smart design

A key player in the Irish prop-tech market is C+W O’Brien Architects. It aims to create a digital twin of an entire development. This means that everything that you have in the physical built environment can be seen in a full digital copy, right down to the finer details of what kind of paint is used. 

The practice could not be contacted before publication.

Smart city

Smart Docklands is referred to as the “smart city test-bed” in Dublin City and was created two years ago by three bodies: DCC, and Science Foundation Ireland’s research programmes Connect and Enable.

Smart city projects use the property of the city they are in. Roads, drains, street lights and other components of the city are used to test smart city technology. The main objective is for citizens to not realise they are living in a smart city environment – yet to be surrounded by these solutions. Its overall aim is to be subtle and practical.

The Smart Docklands area covers about 2 square kilometres and works with companies to trial and test innovative smart city solutions to fix problems the local community face. It also tries to engage with the public on planning.

“The idea was to give the city a way of working with universities, research centres and tech companies such as Google, IBM, Intel and Microsoft,” says Michael Guerin who is the head of the Smart Docklands team of three.

“What you don’t really want is things like passing in back doors with planning decisions. What you want is people to really understand the implications of new planning decisions.”

Michael Guerin

Smart Docklands has also partnered with DCU Alpha, the university’s innovation research unit. There are plans to create a Smart DCU in the coming years where some smart city initiatives can be tested. They are already trying out some solutions at the university for people using scooters – a mode of transport supported by local Fine Gael TD Noel Rock. Smart Docklands can not try out this initiative in its own area as it does not have the space to do so because scooters are still illegal on Irish roads.

Smart Docklands is 50 per cent funded by DCC and 50 per cent funded by the two SFI bodies. The planning for it began in 2017 and was officially launched in February 2018. Smart Docklands itself is an extension to Smart Cities and Smart Dublin. All three are DCC projects. Alan Murphy leads Smart Dublin. This is slightly different from the other two as it was created by local authorities to bring smart city technology across the entire county, not just in the city.

The concept of Smart Docklands came from Jamie Cudden and Linda Doyle. Cudden is the Smart City project manager for Dublin and Linda Doyle is the former director of Connect and is currently the Vice President of research in Trinity College Dublin (TCD). They wanted a specified area and team that would find solutions to problems faced by citizens – and work with companies and explore solutions.

“One of the main reasons people are interested in what we are doing is because it’s based on challenges that have been identified by citizens of Dublin”, says Guerin.

One of the solutions that came out of Smart Docklands is the Gully-Spy. These are sensors that are put into gullies on the road and notifies DCC when a drain is going to overflow so that measures can be taken to unblock the drain. Road flooding can therefore be prevented after large rainfalls. There are now 55,500 gullies in the Dublin City area alone. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) provided funding for this product to be made by Blenheim systems as well as others.

Smart Docklands is working with companies to further develop this idea by creating a product with sensors that you can put in the drains to predict if there’s going to be heavy rainfall tomorrow. This means you can clear the drain even faster and mitigate the risk of flooding.

Smart Dockland is working on another flooding prevention strategy by participating in a European Union Horizon 2020 project called Operandum. It is collaborating with community groups and schools around Ringsend for this. The project is also working with researchers in UCD and looking at historical data to predict flooding patterns and learn how to reduce it.

Across the whole Smart Dublin programme, Guerin estimated there are approximately 70 to 80 projects ongoing at the minute. For DCC specifically, there are about 45.

Another one of these projects is the Smart Bike Lights Programme. Smart Docklands deployed 700 smart bike lights to try and better understand the movement of cyclists around the city, asking Dubliners to take part in their trial. Participants used a light developed by a company called See.Sense. This light uses AI and machine learning to determine surface quality. It can identify where potholes are, where people had accidents or near-misses. Information can then be fed to city planners to improve cycling infrastructure. As a result of this project, DCC changed some of its plans for cycling in the city now that they better understand how cyclists behave at certain junctions.

“A lot of smart cities around the world will just listen to what a technology company says and then they’ll just go and put out that technology.”

Michael Guerin

Smart Docklands is currently looking for a solution around decreasing the amount of time that a lifebuoy is missing when it’s stolen. Approximately 1,500 lifebuoys are stolen or vandalised a year and each one costs €40. This amounted to around €50,000 for local authorities in 2018, and could also result in the death of someone who may need a lifebuoy if they get into trouble in the water. DCC alone replaced 500 lifebuoys in 2018 at a cost of €20,000.

This month, Smart Docklands conducted a market consultation to try and understand what tech solutions are available for this issue. This year, they are looking to collaborate with companies and trial some of these solutions.

For this project, they are working with Water Safety Ireland. They hope that whatever solution they come up with can be deployed nationally. Any of the local authorities could then buy the solution directly once it’s been tested.

Smart Docklands run 15 workshops with around 250 people in them. The idea behind this is to get the community to tell Smart Docklands what their challenges are. Either living, working or commuting to and from the Docklands. Smart Docklands now has over 300 challenges that were voiced at these workshops.

“A lot of smart cities around the world will just listen to what a technology company says and then they’ll just go and put out that technology”, says Guerin, whereas Smart Docklands want to make sure they have a human problem before they start working on a smart city solution. 

Smart Docklands is planning to introduce 5G wireless connectivity to parts of the city as well by 2024. It is collaborating with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) for this. Over the past few years, concerns are being raised about the strength of 5G and the impact it can have on health. This prompted Smart Docklands to collaborate with these bodies to make sure 5G was put in place correctly.

Street light posts are used to install 5G. Although it has a faster data speed than 4G or 3G, it is quite sensitive to surroundings and can be affected by buildings or trees close by. Smart Docklands did not mention any plans to get rid of trees to install 5G to The Currency.

Smart Docklands is currently working with Tony Boyle’s 5G company Dense Air for this project, although it is looking at other collaborations also. ComReg is going to hold a second 5G licence auction this year. Guerin believes that the company Imagine Communications and Boyle’s Dense Air are the main competitors for this lucrative licence.

Boyle found himself in a similar scenario in the mid-90s when he was a bidder for the historically controversial national mobile phone licence. He lost to media mogul Denis O’Brien’s company Esat Digifone.

Smart Docklands was working on a detailed 3D model of the docklands for some time. It was created for the purpose of getting the public engaged in planning so people could see the new plans for the area through immersive technology – for example, the new pedestrian bridge planned for Sir John Rogerson’s Quay.

“There were some members of the public that were asked in to have a look at the new bridge and the new plans using AR (augmented reality). So they could stand at the side of the quay, walk across the bridge and give feedback”, says Guerin.  More details on the project are to be released later this month.

This immersive technology is a way to see how a development will look at any time of the day, from any angle and in any weather. It is so detailed it can show you how much of a shadow the building would create at sunrise.

Smart Docklands made it into the news recently because of its work with AR. It was used to showcase the plans to develop a white-water-rafting centre at the IFSC in Dublin.

“The white water-rafting has been public for at least a year. It has featured in the media twice,” says Guerin – but discussions around it only began when people saw the Smart Docklands video which brought it to life.

The white-water-rafting plan sparked huge debate and many are opposed. However, the publicity is a win for Smart Docklands as it did exactly what it was intended for. To engage the public. 

“What you don’t really want is things like passing in back doors with planning decisions. What you want is people to really understand the implications of new planning decisions,” says Guerin.

Smart Docklands’s various partners include Google, IBM, Fáilte Ireland and the National Transport Authority (NTA). With SoftBank, they work on flooding prevention initiatives.

Guerin convenes a network of senior representatives from each of these companies on a quarterly basis. He updates them on the challenges voiced by people during the workshops. Then, he and the companies would explore solutions.

Nearly $15 billion in funding

In 2019, the total amount of global prop-tech funding came to $14.85 billion, according to sector platform Unissu. KPMG’s most recent Global PropTech Survey, published in October 2019, found that 64 per cent of real estate companies have some form of SPaaS across their portfolio and 13 per cent are considering it. The prop-tech area of asset management is the area most likely to benefit from investment in IT, digital technology or prop collaboration over the next 12 months, according to 64 per cent of respondents in this survey.

Most who took part stated that the need for more involvement in prop-tech was not led by the desire to increase revenues. Approximately 65 per cent of respondents indicated that investment in digital, IT and prop-tech collaboration is driven by a need for improved efficiencies, 47 per cent referenced cost-reduction, while 44 per cent said it was driven by enhanced decision making.