EMIDIO PIERMARINI

Consultant, Buro Happold

Emidio is an Associate Director at Buro Happold where he leads its Consulting Division in Asia.  He consults clients in all stages of the real estate life cycle, mixing concepts from design, big data, data science, and analytics to realize solutions to their most complex problems.   Buro Happold’s clients vary from property developers and investment managers who want to use big data insights for their valuation models, to contractors who want to use empirical methods to quantitatively reduce risk, to asset managers keen to make better use of collected data to increase tenant satisfaction.  In all these cases, Emidio works closely with clients to understand their unique problems, and uses data and bespoke algorithms to gain a competitive advantage in the market. 

When people think about proptech, there is a trend that proptech is always associated with products – hardware of software.  Given that Emidio works with code, people in PropTech often ask him what app, software, or platform that he can create for them.  While his team and himself create software, it’s not the kind of ‘app’ that you would typically use.  Emidio’s team and himself code modular tools which can be deployed in a flexible manner.  Emidio and his team use those tools themselves to solve problems that are too big for off-the-shelf software. 

As opposed to a software company who will spend a significant portion of their time on UX/UI design, the focus is on the engine of these tools more than anything, allowing them to remain flexible, yet powerful.  These tools are not the product itself, but instead are a modular kit of parts which can be converted into custom software for bespoke, complex problems.  The reason for this is simple – there is always some give and take with off-the-shelf software.  On one hand, you get a tool that is easy to use and helps you do a task faster than you could do it before.  On the other hand, software companies engineer their products to be optimal for a certain market, which usually means their software solves one type of problem well but lacks flexibility.  This can present an issue for real estate, where every building is unique in its own way and solutions related to a building’s financing, development, and operations will need to be somewhat tailored, so mass-produced software often comes up short.  This is Emidio’s domain – the space between software and raw data – where an off-the-shelf app isn’t the economical solution to your data problem