What I am seeing across firms – and why I am running a free briefing on 20 May

The RICS Professional Standard on Responsible Use of AI in Surveying Practice came into effect on 9 March 2026. Seven weeks in, I have been watching the profession respond.

Some firms are getting on with it. Most are not. Not because they do not care – because they are stuck. And the longer I watch, the more the same five issues keep surfacing.

This edition is what I am seeing. At the end of it I want to tell you about a free briefing on Wednesday 20 May to help firm owners get unstuck.

Register for the briefing here

Some firms still do not realise the standard applies to them

A firm owner tells me they are not really using AI. No ChatGPT, no Gemini or Claude. Then I ask if anyone uses Grammarly. Or whether their report writing software has had updates this year. Or if anyone is using the AI features in Microsoft 365 that were rolled out automatically.

The answer is almost always yes to at least one.

The standard applies to any RICS-regulated firm where AI is being used to deliver surveying services. The OECD definition is broad. Most of the tools your firm already uses fall inside it.

If anyone in your firm is using AI in any part of their work – including embedded features in software they did not actively choose to install – the standard applies to you.

Nobody has defined what surveying services actually means

The standard tells you what to do when AI is used in the delivery of surveying services. It does not tell you what surveying services

Until a firm has clearly defined what its surveying services actually the standard cannot be applied with any precision. You cannot identify which AI tools touch which services. You cannot risk-assess what you have not defined.

Shadow AI is happening in your firm and you cannot see it

Shadow AI is the term for AI tools being used inside firms that the firm does not know about, has not approved, and cannot govern.

It is the surveyor pasting client data into ChatGPT. The trainee using a free image-recognition tool to identify defects. The administrator running schedules of dilapidations through a tool a colleague recommended. None of these have been risk-assessed. The data going in and out of them has not been considered.

The standard requires a written register of AI systems in use. You cannot register what you do not know about. The first job for most firms is finding out what is actually happening.

Materiality is open to interpretation

The standard distinguishes between AI use that is material to the delivery of surveying services and use that is not. The mandatory requirements escalate sharply for material use.

If Grammarly (which includes AI) softens a word in a report and the client reads a softer version, was that material?

These are not edge cases. They are everyday decisions. Without a clear framework for how the firm makes these calls, every individual decision is its own potential exposure.

Clients are already using AI to challenge your work

Clients are uploading reports into ChatGPT, Claude etc and asking for follow-up questions. Asking for inconsistencies. Drafting complaint letters in 30 seconds based on what the AI flagged.

I am hearing about this from surveyors directly. The asymmetry is uncomfortable – your firm spent two days producing the report, your client spent 30 seconds challenging it. The AI has no professional indemnity to worry about. You do.

Clients are getting smarter fast. The firms that prepare for AI-assisted client scrutiny will be in a different position commercially in twelve months than the firms that do not.

Why am I running this session?

Almost every firm I speak to experiencing these issues and more. The standard is mandatory, the timeline is now, and most firm owners are running a fee-earning practice without a governance team to hand any of this to.

The word that comes up in conversation after conversation is overwhelmed.

That is why I am running this briefing. I want as many surveyors to get ahead of this before it bites and I strongly believe it will

It is a free 60-minute session on Wednesday 20 May, 1-2, for firms, but all surveyors welcome. It counts as informal CPD. The recording is available to all registrants for 14 days afterwards.

By the end of it you will have a clear answer to whether the standard applies to your firm and where you currently sit against it, and you will know which three or four specific gaps to address first.

Register for the briefing today

If you want to go further than the briefing, the GUARD Framework workshop is available as a live session for individuals on Wednesday 27 May, with a self-paced recording launching in May, and a private firm-wide option for practices ready to roll structured AI governance out across the business. More about GUARD here.

See you on the 20th May.

Nina