The beginning of March saw the launch of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS)’ first global professional standard for the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in surveying practice. RLB’s Head of Industry and Service Insights and FRICS, Paul Beeston joined a panel of key expert stakeholders to share his thoughts on how the industry can put the standard into practice.
The standard set requirements across four areas:
- Governance and risk management
- Professional judgement and oversight
- Transparency and client communication
- Responsible development of AI.
Keeping pace with AI’s development
The greatest challenge facing the profession is not data quality, compliance or legal liability. It is pace. All three demand attention, but pace is what keeps him up at night.
“Pace of change — technology is moving fast, meaning our usual way of dealing with digital change needs to adapt. We need to iterate quicker than ever before.”
Beeston identified three distinct dimensions to this challenge:
- Technology itself moves faster than firms can adapt their processes.
- Staff enthusiasm for AI tools often outpaces the governance procedures firms need to follow before onboarding them.
- Clients pull in opposing directions. Some demand faster AI adoption, while others insist on keeping it off their projects.
Beeston found that conversations about data quality and security often bring reluctant clients around. This points to an important role for surveyors: helping clients understand and manage AI-related risk.
The RICS’ AI standard addresses these challenges. It provides a structured framework for firms to govern their AI use, including requirements for risk registers, responsible use policies, and procurement due diligence.
Recognising the opportunity
Paul Beeston challenged the profession to think beyond efficiency as the primary measure of AI’s value.
“Much of the talk now is about efficiency, whereas we should use AI to also focus on better outcomes for our clients. The opportunity to make a positive change in the built and natural environment is not just about efficiency. It will come if we focus on the outcomes that our clients are seeking and looking to improve those.”
Professional judgement: the surveyor’s irreplaceable contribution
The panel returned to one theme above all others: the role of the surveyor’s professional judgement. Beeston described the risk of over-reliance on AI as automation bias.
“I do worry about automation bias — the view that it must be true because the computer says it’s true. The standard helps here as it talks about professional scepticism. This highlights the importance of the Chartered Surveyor (the person adding value to the equation) in curating the inputs and validating the outputs. The standard gives the profession the ability to demonstrate its worth to clients in an AI world.”
The standard embeds this principle throughout: AI assists professional practice; it does not replace it. The surveyor remains accountable for every piece of professional advice, regardless of the tools used to produce it.
Looking ahead: skills and business models will need to evolve
Asked for his boldest prediction about AI’s impact on the quantity surveying profession, Beeston steered away from technology forecasting. Any specific prediction, he noted, would likely be out of date before long. Instead, he focused on people.
“AI will change the skills of the future Chartered Surveyor. We will increasingly need skills like critical and creative thinking alongside empathy. AI is not just a technology change but requires us all to evolve our skills.”
He also pointed to a structural disruption that the profession needs to prepare for. The long-established model of billing by time — whether at an hourly rate or a fixed fee — may not survive the shift that AI makes possible.
“What we are looking at before us now is potentially more disruptive to surveying practice than the abolition of fee scales many decades ago. We will need to adjust business models to suit and increasingly articulate the value we add to our clients.”
This is an article that first appeared on RICS website.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
