siliconindia | | February 20209CONSULTANTSThis trend has already started with office buildings getting bigger and better. The floor plates, in China and to some extent in India, are consist-ently moving towards Giga Floors (half million Sq.ft. and above) from the humble super floors and Mega Floors (200,000 Sq.ft. and above). These Mega Buildings, armed with hi-tech data gathering tools are giv-ing a better experimental data for the researcher to unravel the mysteries of office space ­ Open Office versus Cabins, Collaboration vs Connection, Flexibility vs Adaptability, Health vs Wellness, etc.The buildings are no longer `hard-ware' and only a `space' to occupy but are becoming `software' with im-mersive and `just in time' data points to provide deep insights into behav-iour and psychology of occupiers, resulting in increase of productivity, efficiency and providing actionable inputs for wellness, innovation and better quality of life.Armed with more of such data, the CRE sector, in the future, will no longer be about Facility, the build-ing or the equipment it is, but will be about People Management and their welfare. The diminishing `idea of of-fice spaces segregated' by role, de-partment and job description is prob-ably the first sign of the impact AI/disruptive technology is having on the future of CRE.Impact of AI in EmployabilityIn the early stage of AI development and use, in my opinion, the profes-sions that will suffer the most will be mundane jobs like Junior Level Lawyers, Journalists, Drivers, Chefs, Telemarketers, Customer Service Ex-ecutives, Medics, Construction Work-ers, Manual Laborers, amongst oth-ers. Then AI will move on to fill the next level of skillsets for profession-als like Consultants, who tradition-ally collate information and provide answers based on human intelligence and the power of logical analysis. As the various traditionally defined roles continue to merge e.g. roles of Admin and Facility managers, itis believed to become one seamless activity in the near future. This convergence will slowly become a tidal wave of change across multiple roles.The initial impact of AI in the CRE will be on roles like the junior level of supervisors, engineers, colla-tors of information, compilers, main-tenance and service managers, etc. It is expected that the various junior level operation roles will merge into a kind of command center module - taking inputs and the data through drones, sensors and RFID chips, etc. spread across the campus. Many of the repetitive tasks will be automated and taken over by machines and their next-generation counterparts, which will learn on the job, and probably prove to be far more efficient and ef-fective than human beings.Yet not all is lost ­the Future Em-ployability in CRE Sector is bright.Every five years, CRE faces disrup-tion and every 10 years the Real es-tate turns around and changes the way it does business. Presently we are seeing structural changes in the CRE sector with Co-working, Co-living, and Real Estate Aggregators ­ posi-tioned to be the next landlords, which is providing new opportunities with demands of a new skill set in place. This demand, we saw first in case of the industrial revolution and more recently when Internet evolved and automation technology made various roles redundant like in Banking Sec-tor (ATM), Travel Sector (Ticketing, Transport, Hospitality). The advent of AI in the real estate sector, I am sure, will release the whole genera-tion of knowledge workers who will command high position and growth and in turn create new opportunities for creativity and innovation.The future is bright for the CRE professional, who would embrace technology, up-skill and redefine their job description to the kind roles which use AI / Technology as an enabler. Currently, only one tenth of the companies in the field of AI have been able to develop viable products and only three per cent of them are successful in the Commercial Real Estate sector (CRE)Shashidhar Sharma, Associate Director
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