What AECOM and Rightmove are telling us about the future of surveying

The big picture, step back before you speed up

Most people start with AI at task level.

Can it write this email. Can it summarise this report. Can it shave ten minutes off something I already do. It is useful, but it is not where the real value sits.

The better questions are:

– If we can do this ten times faster, what does that actually change – How should our service, our pricing, our roles and our business model evolve in light of this

If you only use AI to speed up what you have always done, you risk baking in old assumptions. You make the same processes quicker, instead of asking whether they are still the right processes. AI is powerful enough to sit much higher than that. It can act as a critical friend across your whole ecosystem.

Tell it how your business works. Tell it your role, your aspirations, your career plans. Share your objectives, your constraints, your risks, your numbers.

Then ask:

What am I not seeing – Where are the gaps or contradictions – What would this look like if we redesigned it from scratch?

I use AI every day to critique my thinking. To challenge my plans for Surveyors UK. To spot blind spots. To stress test ideas before I take them to anyone else. That is the level I want surveyors to experience, not just “tidy up this paragraph”.

We also need to be honest about why AI feels uncomfortable. For the first time, we have systems that can outperform humans in some cognitive tasks at a scale and speed we have never seen before. That can feel threatening. It pokes at professional identity and confidence. The answer is not to hide from it or to treat it as a gimmick. The answer is to bring it into the room with you as a thought partner, while you are still the one making the calls.

Case study 1, AECOM and decisions being fixed earlier

AECOM is one of the biggest infrastructure consultancies in the world, with a major UK presence. They are often involved right at the start of a project, shaping what gets built, how it is delivered and how it is priced.

They have invested heavily in AI and are using it to fix key decisions on design, cost, programme and carbon much earlier than before.

That is already changing how surveyors around them work.

– Quantity surveyors are facing tighter pricing and less room for late commercial “tweaks”. – Surveyors involved in data and delivery are being pulled in earlier, as drone data, scans and models become the default starting point.

– Project surveyors and employer’s agents are seeing more locked in up front, with less scope to reshape risk or procurement later.

Even when other firms are invited in early, it is often to validate AI led plans, not rewrite them. Clients are starting to expect accurate tenders and clear delivery plans from day one. Competing on price alone is not enough. Digital delivery, carbon tracking and reliability are becoming part of the offer.

This is not about one clever tool. It shifts where decisions are made and who gets to influence them. Big firms adopting AI at scale are setting the pace. Even if you never license their software, the way they work will still shape what clients expect from you.

Case study 2, portals, agentic AI and a more powerful public

The second example sits further from your day to day work, but it still lands on your desk.

In the chart below, you can see how some of the big property portals have seen their share prices fall sharply in 2025. A Scandinavian portal down over 40 percent. Rightmove down around 30 percent. An Australian portal down about 20 percent in just six months. That is not just the housing market. It is confidence in the traditional portal model starting to crack.

For years, portals like Rightmove have controlled attention.

– If you wanted to see “everything”, you went to the portal.

– If agents wanted to be seen, they paid the portal.

AI is now chipping away at both sides.

Agentic AI is where you give AI a goal and it goes off to act for you. Tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini can already browse, use plugins and pull in data from across the web.

– If a property is on an agent’s own website, an AI agent can find it directly.

– Consumers can ask for homes in plain language, not tick boxes. “A quiet three bed near good schools with morning light in the kitchen and a coffee shop nearby”, and the AI can search widely, not just inside one portal.

Portals built their power on “we control the listings and the eyeballs”. AI shifts discovery towards relevance rather than who paid for a featured slot. Over time, that weakens the old gatekeeper position.

For surveyors, this has a few important knock on effects.

The route from homeowner to agent to surveyor may start to change as stock and attention spread out again. But the bigger shift is in power and confidence on the public side.

People will:

– feel more certain about what their home is “worth”

– use AI to compare portals, historic sales, AVMs and commentary

– arrive with printouts and screenshots they believe are proof

That extra power is not neutral. It means:

– more clients challenging your valuations and recommendations

– more people trying to “do it themselves” and only calling you when something does not add up

– more potential for complaints if what you say does not match what Rightmove, an AI tool or a graph on the internet told them

Put bluntly, what AECOM are doing at project level and what is happening to portals like Rightmove both point to the same future. Decisions fixed earlier, and a more informed, more demanding public and clients.

You are not building these systems, but they are rewriting the backdrop to your work. The more AI empowers the individual, the more your explanations, reasoning and professional boundaries matter.

What this means for surveyors

Both examples point in the same direction and AI is changing:

– when decisions get made

– who has influence at each stage

– what clients and the public expect before you are even involved

The shift I see is from surveyors mainly collecting and presenting data, to surveyors questioning, interpreting and standing behind it. AI will either change the shape of your job, your business and your profession, or change your clients and the public around you. Probably both.

When global shifts like this happen, you do not get to opt out. You only get to choose how you respond.

This is Surveying podcast

On This Is Surveying, there is already an episode on AI in residential surveying, and I will be doing more AI focused episodes with guests and solo sessions in 2025, so subscribe if you want that in your feed.

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Bye for now and thanks for reading 🙂