Carr Properties owns or manages nearly 7 million square feet of office space in Greater Washington, Boston and Austin, Texas, and one of its constant challenges is tracking building maintenance issues and addressing them in a timely manner.
Now, with the aid of artificial intelligence, the D.C. firm believes it has found the solution to that longstanding problem.
Carr recently struck a partnership with the real estate tech startup Visitt to use Visitt's AI-driven software to help it quickly identify problems and fix them before they become even bigger headaches. The company intends to deploy the technology across all of its portfolios, including One Congress, a 1 million-square-foot development in downtown Boston, and in the office component of The Wilson, its 940,000-square-foot development in downtown Bethesda.
The software allows the real estate company to be proactive, instead of reactive, by aggregating tenants' requests for HVAC or plumbing maintenance and, in real time, notifying building managers of the issue, even if they happen to be off-site. Ilan Zachar, Carr's chief technology officer, said Visitt's tech promises to speed response times and, he hopes, improve Carr's overall efficiency and increase customer satisfaction.
Zachar said that what makes Visitt's tech stand out from other property management technology is that it was built from the ground up to address the industry's needs. Think, an app that tenants can use to log requests and property managers can monitor to address work orders on the fly.
"If all you're doing is building an application to satisfy your existing customer base because your old code is going out of date, you're not going to be able to bridge those gaps," he said.
Zachar did not disclose what Carr paid for the Visitt software, but said it was similarly priced to other property management software that he considers to be more bare bones.
The investment in AI is part of a broader tech transformation at Carr Properties. The company has 4,200-square-foot innovation and technology lab at 1615 L Street NW, where it tests a broad range of technologies — from cybersecurity tools to energy-efficient lighting — to help give it a leg up on its competitors.
“Every company today is also a technology company and you cannot hide from it. You have to incorporate and integrate technology into your business,” said Zachar. “I want to disrupt myself. I don't want to be disrupted because if somebody disrupts me, that means that I didn't anticipate them.”
