Philip Ristevski is out to disrupt the real estate development industry.
Having recently left Manulife Investment Management, where he amassed a platform with a more than $4bn project pipeline, the industry veteran now has launched GigaForge. The new firm touts its use of artificial intelligence as aiming to change the way real estate projects are conceived, designed and executed.
“Things have been so good for so long that we need to be efficient now. We need to find better ways of doing things – to innovate,” Ristevski said. “This industry has been lacking in innovation because there was no need to.”
Green Street News talked with Ristevski about the role AI could play in shaping the real estate development industry going forward.
What are the problems your company is looking to provide solutions for?
There’s unprecedented demand for housing, yet it’s hard to make projects pencil out. So we’re back to economics 101, where the supply/demand curve [for housing] just doesn’t line up.
The problem we’re going to solve is finding ways for projects to pencil out. There are little fixes developers do to make projects more viable, like changing the material of a door, but they’re done way too late in the process.
My aim here is to look at it differently from Day 0, utilizing first principles thinking. Let’s look at it completely differently every step of the way. By utilizing AI analysis throughout the process, we can find opportunities for greater efficiencies and less waste. Doing this across multiple stages of the project cycle and design, the sum of all the changes will lead to a project that will pencil out, and build the housing that’s so badly needed.
How can AI help with that?
AI helps you become an expert in all disciplines, and allows you to go back and really question things.
I can generate savings by analyzing details down to lighting, for example, and determine the most efficient amount of lights needed for the space. With the help of AI, this type of evaluation can be done on a large scale to really drill down on efficiency.
“We’re at a point now where the way forward is to innovate or die”
AI allows the developer to become an expert in every field and better manage their team of consultants. Using AI and first principles thinking will lead to being able to ask the right questions of the team, leading to a better project outcome.
How open to disruption is the commercial real estate industry in Canada?
Extremely. We had a long run of great economic conditions in terms of interest rates, so we didn’t need to be innovative; we haven’t had to push too far.
But we’re at a point now where the way forward is to innovate or die.
The real estate development world, where I come from, is still doing things the way it’s always been done, because it’s what worked in the past.
I think we’re going to see GigaForge — and hopefully others like us — come out and disrupt and become the next generation of real estate developers to build the spaces where we live, work and play across the whole ecosystem.
How can AI-powered solutions optimize site selection and design to streamline construction processes?
Time kills deals, so I think this will help bring a sense of urgency by giving you the ability to move quickly, since we all know this industry doesn’t move quickly.
I’ve built a tool where I can populate any site and get three to five different industrial layout scenarios on that site. When building in a high-level understanding of the market, I can get a very crude rough cost estimate, and do all that in 30 seconds.
It’s evaluating a site I could pursue in 30 seconds, as opposed to one week, by using the AI-based tool I created.
It’s also embracing AI to find efficiencies to do things better in the whole project lifecycle of a development.
What advice do you have for real estate development players when it comes to AI?
Be open minded. We need a paradigm shift across the board. For projects that don’t work, let’s think outside the box.
It’s about doing things differently and finding ways to make things work where they don’t work right now. That’s disruption.
