You were not trained for this

I have been watching. Not just the technology. The people.

Over the past few years I have had hundreds of conversations with surveyors about AI. In community threads. On calls. In workshops. In podcast recordings. In LinkedIn and WhatsApp messages at ten o’clock at night from people who cannot quite articulate what is unsettling them but know something is.

And the range is extraordinary.

Some surveyors are already deep in. They are using AI daily, testing tools, building prompts, rethinking how they write reports and manage data. Others have not opened an AI tool once. Some are angry about it. Some are dismissive. Many are frightened but will not say so publicly. Some have decided it is a fad or hype. Some have decided it will destroy the profession. Some are looking forward to retirement. Some are pretending it does not exist with their head in the sand. Some are fearful of younger generations. And it goes on.

All of that is quite normal and understandable.

When the internet arrived, we saw exactly the same spectrum. The sceptics. The early adopters. The ones who said it would never replace the high street, the phone call, the face to face meeting. And they were right, for a while. Until they were not.

But this is different.

The internet gave us a new way to access information. AI is not doing that. AI is generating intelligence. It is reasoning. It is producing work that, until very recently, required years of training, professional qualifications, and ongoing CPD to deliver.

That is an identity shift.

Think about what it means to be a professional. You studied. You trained. You sat exams. You committed to ongoing learning. You earned the right to charge a premium for what you know. Your knowledge, your judgement, your professional expertise. That is your value proposition. That is what clients pay for.

And it is a HUGE part of your own identity.

And I do feel for people who are struggling with this. Nobody asked for it. Nobody got a vote. The most transformative technology most of us will experience in our working lives arrived without permission and it is not slowing down for anyone.Now, for the first time, much of that knowledge is accessible through a free tool. Or a tool that costs less than a monthly phone contract.

I have had my moments too. Through most of 2022 I was searching for answers, trying to make sense of what I could see coming. I shared my thinking with friends and family and got blank looks. Most people thought I was exaggerating. It was a lonely few months, sitting with a sense of foreboding about something I could not yet fully explain. After reading Scary Smart by Mo Gawdat, it clicked. Everything was going to change. And that conviction has not left me since.

The replacement of professional judgement
I am not saying AI replaces professional judgement. It does not. Not yet, and possibly not ever in the way some fear. But the knowledge layer, the thing that made you the expert in the room, is no longer exclusively yours.

Many do not want to admit or talk about this next bit

Many of the people already using AI are doing so “quietly”. It saves them time. It makes them faster. But they are not passing that on. They are not lowering their fees. Many are just doing more and they are not telling clients. Because the moment you admit AI helped you produce that report in two hours instead of six, the client asks why they are still paying for six. That contradiction will not hold long term.

I believe the professional model itself will change. Charging by the hour only works when your time is scarce and your knowledge is hard to access. When neither of those things is true, the value shifts to the outcome you deliver, not the hours you spend delivering it. Law and accountancy will feel this first. Surveying will not be far behind. And pricing will change.

What will be value be in an AI dominated world?

We do not have the full data yet. We do not know how many homeowners are asking ChatGPT what a Party Wall Award should include instead of calling a surveyor. We do not know how many property investors are using Claude to draft due diligence checklists they would previously have commissioned. We do not know how many are taking photos or videos and asking AI what the defect could be and how it could be fixed.

But we know website traffic across almost every professional services sector is falling as more and more turn to the AI tools rather than Google. We know AI search is answering questions that used to drive phone calls and emails. This is happening now and I have seen it and heard numeorus times.

For surveyors, there is some protection. Much of what you do is physical. You attend site. You inspect. You measure. You observe things a language model cannot see from behind a screen. Those roles are not disappearing any time soon.

But the advisory layer. The report writing. The interpretation. The recommendation. That is where the ground is shifting.

And this is where the fear lives, even when people will not name it. I have had surveyors tell me

“its scary Nina, I don’t even know where to begin”, “I’m glad i’m retiring soon”, “will I have a business in 5 years”

Because the fear is not really about technology. It is about relevance. It is about spending decades building expertise and watching something replicate the output in seconds. It is about wondering whether the next generation of clients will still see the value in your qualifications when they can get a plausible answer for free.

I do not think the answer is to panic. I do not think the answer is to ignore it.

“And I certainly do not think the answer is to pretend you are above it. Some will. And in five years, they will wonder why the phone stopped ringing.”
The answer is to get honest and work on conveying what makes you valuable beyond knowledge alone.

Your professional judgement. Your ability to stand in a building and read what the walls are telling you. Your experience of what goes wrong when corners are cut. Your accountability. Your insurance. Your willingness to put your name and your reputation behind a professional opinion.

You cannot outsource professional responsibility to AI

Those things matter. They matter enormously. But they only matter if you can articulate them. And they only hold value if clients understand why they should still come to you instead of asking a AI chatbot.

That is the work now. Not learning every AI tool. Not ignoring the whole thing. Not raging against it. The work is understanding what AI changes about your profession and being clear, to yourself and to your clients, about what it does not.

The profession is in transition. That is not comfortable. And I understand why some surveyors want nothing to do with AI. They built their careers on a model that worked. It is not easy to watch that model get questioned
But the surveyors who will thrive through this are not necessarily the most tech-savvy. They are the ones who are willing to sit with the discomfort, be honest about what is changing, and do the thinking that matters.

Start by looking at your firm/company as a whole. Not just the tools you use but the strategy underneath. How are you talking about AI to your clients? Are you being open about it or hoping nobody asks? What is your position and could you write it down if someone asked you today? Most firms cannot. And beyond your own use, think about your people. Your policies. How you hire. How you train. How you handle the risks. AI is not a bolt-on. It touches everything. And the firms that treat it as a side project will be the ones still scrambling when their clients and their insurers start asking harder questions.

I know some of you reading this will think I am overstating it. That is fine. I would rather say it now and be proven wrong in two years than say nothing and watch people get caught out. And some of you will not have seen any of this in your day to day work yet. AI has not knocked on your door. Your clients have not mentioned it. Your workflow has not changed. That does not mean it is not happening. It means it has not reached you yet.

And finally

I am working on something that brings senior practitioners from across the profession into the room. Not to set direction. To provide an honest sense check of where AI in surveying really is. The risks. The threats. The opportunities. And the insights that only come from people doing this work every day. It helps answer the question

Where is the profession heading and what can we do about it