Over the past 12 months, Gloucester-based leading national chartered surveyors Bruton Knowles has invested £800k in technology across the business to drive forward its impressive digital transformation plans.

This has improved client report turnaround times by 150 per cent and set the stage for the next phase of the firm's post-pandemic ambitions.

While other companies within the sector were looking at cost-saving exercises at the height of the Covid crisis, Bruton Knowles was prioritising where investment was immediately required to future proof the business.

Its forward-looking executive team sought to expedite these significant infrastructure plans as part of the overall drive to maximise productivity and operational efficiency whilst also easing the transition to hybrid working.

Following a pilot phase, this new approach has now been rolled out across the business to the 200-strong workforce, operating within Bruton Knowles' four national teams, and at the firm's 10 UK sites: including in Gloucester at Olympus House, Olympus Park in Quedgeley.

James Bailey, managing partner at Bruton Knowles, explained: "Our approach has been all about providing everyone with the means to work smarter and more effectively to deliver better outcomes for our clients.

"Necessity is the mother of invention, and like so many businesses, the pandemic forced us to rethink our business model. We needed to ensure greater resilience to future economic shocks, attract more talent, and deliver a better balance for our teams.

"Our digital transformation marks so much more than just a significant Information and Communications Technology investment. It shows we are committed to modernising our services and the way we deliver them, in order to boost productivity.

"By giving our teams the right tools to work in the most efficient and flexible way, we are finding we are exceeding client expectations because our staff have also been able to embrace the radical shift in working practices."

In introducing the new digital approach, Bruton Knowles took a phased approach to implementation. During the last half of 2021, it focused on adoption across the Valuation and Building Consultancy National Teams before moving on to the Utilities & Infrastructure, and Commercial National Teams between January to June 2022.

Using an off-the-shelf system called GoReport , which has been tailored to meet Bruton Knowles' commercial needs, staff now have access to new hardware and software which is streamlining and customising workflows whilst also enhancing collaboration.

The greater availability of background data also means everyone now has quicker access to key information - such as previous survey reports or existing asset knowledge - to make the reporting process easier through greater standardisation.

For the business overall, these technical advancements form part of the bigger plan to reimagine the workplace and allow existing staff and new recruits the flexibility to work in a way that best suits them.

Bruton Knowles' investment comes at a crucial time for the construction and real estate sector which continues to play catch-up in the area of digitalisation. Pre-Covid, property technology was only just emerging, because the industry had been slow to embrace the end-to-end benefits that fully integrated digital capabilities could deliver.

Now, the sector cannot move quickly enough, and is one of the fastest growing tech adopters across the globe. More companies, of all sizes, operating within the built environment are reporting that digitalisation has shot up the agenda and is one of their most important strategic priorities.

It is anticipated the overall impacts of Bruton Knowles' digital transformation programme will materialise fully over the next year. Benefits are already being seen in the national valuation team which has been able to provide on-the-spot surveying advice to clients as additional capacity within the team has been freed up.