AI, Leases and Small Business Power in Commercial Surveying

Speaker: 00:39
Today’s care. It’s not correct. Yeah. Okay, great. And I’m pleased to have Ola on board with us today because Ola is a theatric commercial surveyor who is also, and I’m pleased to say, he won the Theatre Commercial Property Surveyor of the Year Award for the RIC Matrix of 2025, which I think is a fabulous achievement. So well done for that, Ola. And he is also the founder and director of Olawill, which is a business that provides lead advisory services to SMEs. So without further ado, welcome Ola.

Speaker 1: 01:23
Thank you. Thank you, Nina. Thanks for the nice welcome.

Speaker: 01:27
Yeah, it’s always a pleasure, Ola. So, as with everyone we we have on the show, I’d really like to understand a bit more about your background, the things that you’re involved with now, but also kind of a little bit about your journey and sort of what brought you to be now a uh an award winner in commercial surveying.

Speaker 1: 01:49
Yeah, my background, as you would probably be used to now with a lot of surveyors, didn’t start in real estate. So my undergraduate degree was in biomedical science. I wanted to be a doctor quite early on, did the degree and then realized in my third year I dislike the sight of blood and also the experiments with bacterias and things like that. And I was just like, you know what, this is not going to be my profession. So the next best thing was to be, I know it’s random, but uh to be an estate agent. And yeah, so started looking into property, eventually was an estate agent for like two months. I realized I really like it, and then eventually decided I just need some formal education around property because I do want it as a career choice. So I went, I did a master’s degree in real estate development at Westminster University. Once I graduated, I went into the world of property. My first property job was co-star, difficult job, and then went into NHS property services for my graduate training. Definitely learnt a lot. It was it was a massive, it was a massive part of my development as well because that’s when I started growing to love property, uh, loving what I do, surveying, which I would say when I wanted to be an estate agent, I didn’t know anything about surveying. I didn’t even know it existed as a thing. I saw the Sainsbury’s, I saw the the library, I saw all these buildings which growing up, but in my head I kind of always thought the government just put them there. You never think somebody builds it, somebody rents it out, somebody’s occupying it. You don’t really think about the all the bits that make up the property industry. But NHS property services was just like a sandbox where I just like learnt a lot. Eventually, moving on to asset management, uh I did that for quite some time in different companies. Eventually now worked at Arch Company, which is the largest landlord of small businesses. So a lot of their their portfolio is huge. I think like 5,000 arches. Probably I’m probably undercooking it as well. Lots of small businesses, and I’m negotiating directly with people, and I thought this is fantastic, because this side of property is fantastic because it’s I I don’t know, I just enjoyed having conversations with the different characters. It’s not like a corporate real estate thing where there’s a surveying company representing a client and then the client is off in Jersey somewhere. Um this was like I decided to the tenants are typically I decided to leave my job in the city and set up a model airplane shop. And this has always been my passion, and now I have a shop doing it. I loved speaking to the different tenants, but then I left Archco, worked at LCP, which I did get some experience, but I think LCP really crystallized my intention to be on the other side of that argument, be on the side of the businesses, the people that are taking the risk, are taking the gamble to like go off and do their own business and um giving them advice because I think a lot of them did things themselves, which always puts them in a difficult or more tricky situation than they should be in. So yeah, that’s which was sort of uh my career so far. But yeah, now I’m working on a will advising these tenants.

Speaker: 05:45
Yeah. Excellent. No, thank you for that. So can I just pick up on something? Model aeroplanes.

Speaker 1: 05:51
Yeah, I will give you sounds fascinating. The shop is based in Oxbrid close to Oxbridge and West London.

Speaker 2: 05:59
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 05:60
Obviously it was a private conversation, but he said he’s worked in the city for most of his life and just decided that that’s what he wants to do. And Oxbridge is right next to Euthor. So you’d think that that kind of business wouldn’t work because it’s so random, but it was always it always had people in there, and it’s not the walk-in trade where you like you don’t know that you’re going to a model airplane shop. These are people that want to go to their model airplane shop, they spend a long time there talking about the different models to the guy, and you could see the passion that comes out of you know, him because this is what he wants to be doing. And I just get inspired by this kind of stories.

Speaker: 06:46
Yes, I can see, I can see that. And I can understand that too. That that passion where people do something that’s especially really niche.

Speaker 1: 06:54
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker: 06:56
Yeah, no, that’s great. I think what the the next thing I’d like to talk about, which is of we’ve obviously discussed, is you’ve got a lot of awareness around and experienced with AI. And it’s something that w we’ve discussed. And I’d like to get your thoughts on AI sort of both in your world and surveying and and kind of, I don’t know, your opinions, what you see, what you think, how you use it.

Speaker 1: 07:22
So I’m not going to talk about the specific companies that I have worked in that are relating to the things that I’m saying. But of course. Starting in the prof profession and working in multiple companies, we were just getting around to uh scanning leases in. So a lot of companies I worked for have like massive drawers of leases, emails printed off, all sorts of things. And a lot of those companies, uh and this is in 2018, 2019, 2020, are still just going about the process of digitalizing their records. And then now, uh bear in mind, digital records have been like with us for like I don’t know, since the six eighties, I I don’t know how long. And now AI is coming in. And it’s like we when I don’t even think a lot of property companies are even past the initial step of, oh, let us have records that we can access from any place. We don’t have to come into the office and search the s the store for like a specific deed or a specific agreement. And it’s it’s quite interesting to see the property industry evolve. I think a lot of people there’s a lot being said, and it is inspiring on one hand, and then on another hand, as I just said, I think how is it even gonna happen? Like a lot of people say a lot of things like AI is gonna change everything, change the way we work, change everything. But it’s like I say this thing, we had DocuSign become acceptable, I think it’s 2018 or 2019, that that’s acceptable as a property transaction. So you instead of a wet signature, you can use DocuSign, and that can go to land registry and be accepted. How many people have even implemented DocuSign? And DocuSign is such a basic bit of technology. DocuSign is uh there’s alternatives as well, there’s Adobe signatures, so that’s just digital signatures, and that’s not been widely adopted. And then we want to skip a few steps and go into completely automizing a bunch of work. And I do know a lot of people, uh not a lot of people, s a few admins from some companies have lost their job because companies were preparing for that AI way. So it’s like I don’t know if we are overcooking what impact it’s going to have on one angle, and then the other angle is I run a small business and AI is is just freed up a lot of time in terms of just the detail things that are required. For example, I was speaking to somebody and he uses um dictates, so you just do a voice note, a transcription voice note, upload it into Word, and it can just type up a report for you. So not a report, what you said, is write it into a Word document. Yeah, exactly. Those kind of things, I mean in the past, I would have a surveying company and I’d have to get an assistant and or a typist or somebody that’s gonna just sit there while I speak to them and they type it up. That’s cost, that’s time, that’s a lot of effort as well. I think it’s cutting down those bits of work, but then if I’m in two minds, I would say, because I’ve just given you the reason why I don’t th I think it’s overblown, then there’s another part where it’s really benefiting me as a small business in terms of even sense checking my reports. I know some people are against it. For example, I’ve written up a whole report, and then I just say to AI, is that act as you are the client, XYZ.

Speaker 2: 11:22
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:22
Your interest is to just understand the report and be able to make a decision from it. What would you add or what would you suggest on this report? So the report is already done. Obviously, I’m done the parts that I’m supposed to do from my own ingenuity and my own knowledge, my training. But it’s just getting a second opinion without having to call somebody, which obviously I’m sure in the past you just pick up the phone too.

Speaker: 11:51
I think that’s one of the most powerful things of it that a lot of people don’t realise is that it being like that critical partner, it being that sort of second pair of eyes to sort of critique what it is you’re doing. And I think that it is with AI tools very much so a case of you asking, not asking it to produce everything for you because it won’t be very good. I mean, they’re getting better in many ways, but at the end of the day, the best thing they’re good at is when you’ve got something and you go, right, now pull this apart and tell me how you have this to be improved. And it’s interesting with the the small business in your thoughts because what I’m hearing and seeing like on a national level and very much globally, like especially in the state, is the biggest benefit in adopt to other small businesses because they’re saying it can it has such an amazing impact on how many things you can do. Especially with a small business data, you have your time, all these tools that can just save you an ad experience that I mean, people say, I need to know how to do everything you do, but we have using AI as my like an like an assistant to get my thinking and things like this. But I I agree about the data and the fact that there is this whole it’s gonna change everything and blah, blah, blah. But it’s happening at different stages everywhere. And you’re right, if the data isn’t there in the first place, then AI adoption is gonna be very, very slow. Because you’ve got to the the data is king, isn’t it? That is that is the food for AI. And if you don’t have data and have it correctly and clean and usable data, you’re not gonna be, it’s not gonna be able to look in the cupboard and bring out a lease.

Speaker 1: 13:30
Exactly. And yeah, the other side of it is, for example, I try sometimes to see what the limit of AI is. For example, I’ll take a floor plan and I’ll say, zone this. It is completely wrong. It doesn’t know what it’s doing. Or, for example, you say there is a lease that’s already digital, read the lease and summarize the points. It is 90% wrong and it makes stuff up, which is so dangerous if you think about what our job is as surveyors. We are supposed to be well, we’re not supposed to be missing important things. So it would just say it would just make up, like, for example, you just the commencement date, you’d say something like 2026, and obviously you will spot it because if you’re doing the right things, you’re you’re reading the lease and you’re making sure you’re you’re prepared. But if somebody was to say, okay, I’ve heard in the news that AI is this revolutionary technology and it’s going to do everything, and they just put their leases into there and say, summarize it or give advice to a client and send it, send it straight to the client, you will see more negligence negligence claims. And it’s not going to be a pretty site because AI is also quite limited in terms of I feel when it’s it’s good at reviewing what’s there, uh like you said, it dealing with the information that it already has, but if it doesn’t have the information, it just makes it up or it just misdirects you.

Speaker: 15:09
Yeah, I think all the standard off-the-shelf tools do. I’ve seen other software that doesn’t do that, but that’s because it’s been custom built in a closed system so that it doesn’t hallucinate. Hallucinations have dropped, but they still exist. I still see them. I pay for more sort of enterprise grade tools, but it does happen, you’re right. And there is this concern I have across with negligence and the risk of with it being overrelied upon. And human nature, no matter who you are, there’s a lot of people that will choose a shotcut every time. But it always it’s with your name at the end of the day on that report. Yeah. And you have to make sure it’s it’s right. So the other thing that just moving on to something else was around, we talked about just before the call, we talked about challenges that you’ve had with, I think, was it recruitment and retention?

Speaker 1: 16:10
I’m not at the stage yet where I’m recruiting. Actually, I’m thinking about whether to get an intern or apprentice to just kind of support the workload or maybe be training somebody or someone that’s interested to just give them work experience. I’ve done work experience meetings or days before where I just show people how surveying is done. But in terms of when I was in full-time work, I realize it it’s not very clear how you get started in surveying. It’s not very I know I know it’s the universities are there. The RICS does a lot of outreach. Um, I used to work with them as a RICS ambassador where sometimes you’d go into like for example, I there was a stall, RICS stall at Skills London, where they were showing out saying you can be a surveyor. But number one, just coming from the word surveyor already confuses people. Because I remember me starting and I Googled what is a surveyor. I got more confused by reading that than I was before I searched what a surveyor is. That’s why I mean I I’ve probably overdone it a little bit. I have done like multiple articles on my LinkedIn about what is a surveyor because I knew I was feeling like that when I started, because I was like, what the hell? But and I’m still learning what different surveyors there are. There there are so many different types of surveyors. So it’s like, how do you even and some I get these questions as well. Some people message me on LinkedIn saying, I’m trying to start off and I don’t know where to start. It’s very difficult because you could do anything. Like you could be a quantity surveyor, you could be a building surveyor, you could be any anything. Like, so it’s like you just have to start with what what are your interests and yeah, what do you yeah, what do you really what do you like doing? And I think a lot of people from that I speak to from my generation, they just fall into it and they fall into what they’re doing, and they eventually grow to love it, or they don’t grow to love it, and they just leave uh get another profession. Um so I think it’s a very big ask, if maybe to Dara, ICS, if to people like you, how do you explain what surveyors are to the world? And obviously it’s bit by bit with these, yeah, with these um vodka. Exactly. And the key word is what.

Speaker: 18:47
I think it’s so broad, it’s it’s almost like the there’s so many different different ways I’ve looked at it. It’s that like it’s like the capturing of the data, the insights, the interpretation, assessing risk and reporting. But there are so many different nuances to it in different types of surveying to get one answer. And I think that is half the challenge. I think half the challenge is the is the the word surveyor.

Speaker 2: 19:13
Yeah.

Speaker: 19:13
Because you hear it all the time. Like people are um, I don’t know, they could be a car surveyor. Yeah, job titles can mean so many things. And that exactly that is a challenge. But I think it comes back to more what they actually do. So, like you say, which is a really important point, what do you really enjoy doing? Like, for example, do you want to be somewhere where you are out and about travelling, going to different states of or do you prefer to be more death-based? And then because some roles are far more death-based. And I guess if you want to be with buildings or uh you’re more interested in the financial aspects, and I think you’re right. I think that’s what is difficult because it’s quite huge and so much variety. But then I think that’s a shame that we’ve got this challenge because there are so many amazing, exciting, you know, and I speak to like marine surveyors in mineral surveys, yeah. It’s fascinating. It’s fascinating. And I think it’s an amazing profession. And I think it’s interesting how your journey and how you’re still seeing that. And yes, we do need more and more younger people to come in. And I think there are talks about my understanding, the RISC is involved with potentially a like I think it’s a built environment, GCSE, maybe.

Speaker 1: 20:33
Be amazing. For someone like me, if I had seen that, I’d been like, I wouldn’t have wasted my time trying to be a doctor where I kind of did it because of my mother, but uh she wanted me to be a doctor.

Speaker: 20:48
Um that’s not I didn’t know.

Speaker 1: 20:50
Literally, it’s just uh it’s very yeah, she it’s it wasn’t the right fit. But if I had seen something like that, I think it would have given me some pause because I did enjoy looking at cool buildings. I remember going to uh because uh going to f like Central London for the first time and I was just like looking up. Even after working there for multiple years, it’s just looking around, looking at the details. It is fascinating properties fascinating to me. It is fascinating as a young uh as a young boy in like my GCSEs, I’d be like built environment, and there’s buildings. Even if I don’t understand what a surveyor is, I’d be like, okay, it’s about buildings. I’d be a bit more interested to take that rather than something like I I don’t know why. I took a bunch of random yeah, I took geography actually, which is yeah, which is interesting.

Speaker: 21:53
Something like that would be amazing to sort of spread the awareness of of surveying early on in a career rather than later.

Speaker 1: 22:00
Very true.

Speaker: 22:01
Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:02
Yeah. I think there’s some benefit of like having a lot of people that just fell into the profession because you kind of yeah, I speak to people and I just it’s so fascinating what they did before. You know, like, oh yeah, what were you doing before? And uh some people were like I did history in uni and here I am measuring building, you know.

Speaker: 22:24
Yeah, there’s a lot of people have people from all sorts of backgrounds. I was a baker.

Speaker 1: 22:29
Yeah.

Speaker: 22:30
Very bizarre diverse kind of backgrounds and stuff.

Speaker 1: 22:34
It’s not like it’s not like um banking or like investment banking. A lot of people just go, yeah, I want to be an investment banker, and they started in school trying to get the internships and all of that. It’s like they have a track, but with surveying, it’s just like I just ended up here. Good luck.

Speaker 2: 22:53
I love you.

Speaker 1: 22:54
Yeah.

Speaker: 22:55
So what I’d like to do, Ola, is is move on to your business. Oh, I will tell tell us about that.

Speaker 1: 23:02
So, like I said earlier, the business was started um because I would like to give advice to smaller businesses who are often unrepresented, often doing deals that are not good for their business long term. And that’s because there’s just I mean, by default, I don’t think the surveyors are doing this on purpose. By just default, there is an imbalance in knowledge of the market. So when they get into negotiations, they’re often not properly informed if they’re representing themselves. They and because I don’t know if I I know you come from the resie side of things, so it’s not as I don’t think it’s as adversarial. Maybe you can tell me when when you’re doing right reviews and least and yours, there’s two people that have different opinions about the market, about this, and we have to it’s a conflict, but it’s also we have to get to the position where we agree for it to be documented. So in those kind of situations, it’s very, very difficult if you don’t have the information to well convince the other person, number one, but then also you just get the best deal. So and I realized a lot of the the smaller businesses, I’ve sp speak to them a lot. A lot of the reasons they don’t get advice is they don’t think they need it, number one. They feel they already have a solicitor, so they don’t need the surveyor. One thing I say is the solicitors act on your instructions basically. Um they don’t really they’re not that connected to the market. You might get some solicitors that are very commercially savvy and they might be able to give you advice, but usually they’re on the top range of you have to pay for it kind of thing. So having a surveyor there just gives you the additional look at the deal, be able to negotiate it for you, but gives you an an additional tool to get the best deal, and then the solicitor will do the the drafting and troubleshooting of the actual documentation. So that’s what I do, and that’s why I enjoy doing because I I really enjoy seeing entrepreneurs and people that invest uh you see a lot of people they invest all of their money into their shop, and it’s not that they have twenty shops, it’s not like their girls or any large companies, they invested their life savings into that shop. So that shop succeeding is their children’s pensions, or this is what they have to leave behind, that kind of thing. So I do enjoy saving their money and allowing them to take more of a profit and give it to their families. Exactly, exactly, exactly. I’m not saying that it wasn’t fun landlord rep, but I just feel like landlords have okay, the landlords I used to work for, they had enough help. They had enough surveyors, they have enough solicitors, they have the best solicitors, best surveyors, but it’s just giving the tenants a fighting chance in that as well. Um and also making it affordable because uh that’s another thing. Yeah.

Speaker: 26:17
What area do you cover?

Speaker 1: 26:18
Um I at the moment, uh because I’m a small business, I cover everywhere in the country. But um, I’m trying to I remember having a conversation with somebody should I have a patch or should I just take whatever work ASA is at this stage? Um that’s my mentor, you say is at this stage, just take whatever whatever work you can get. Um in the future I start thinking about a patch once you maybe have like employees and like you you’re pretty well established. So right now I cover a huge patch, but I wouldn’t say I you would travel to the north to do a rent review or lease renewal, but typically like London area. I I think the furthest I’ve done was a lease renewal in Gloucester. So there you go.

Speaker: 27:05
Well what we’ll do is what I’ll do is I’ll include the in the show notes, I’ll include uh a link to Allah Will and and you you okay for me to include to your LinkedIn if anyone’s gonna do it.

Speaker 1: 27:16
Oh yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. Yes, I do post weekly, almost weekly, on my LinkedIn. Just different things and like it doesn’t necessarily have to be property related, it’s just just different things, things about surveying, things about how to get started in the industry, things that I would have liked to know when I was starting off. Um have a lot of conversations about that.

Speaker: 27:43
That might be quite good as well. We’ve got filling games today, not that everyone’s gonna know listening to this, but with recording and sound and video, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:53
It’s been it’s been uh it’s been an interesting one, definitely. I did want to say something about because we talked about retention as well. So retention to me, what it looks like, and I’ll speak from a perspective I’m African uh heritage uh individual. I started in property and kind of looked around and was like, it’s nobody that’s very senior that’s of my background. And then you see a lot of like much older people, they’re just like maybe two levels above where I am.

Speaker 2: 28:30
Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:30
And I’m just like, I feel like there is going to be bar. So that’s where there’s no not a ceiling, but like there’s a hurdle to overcome where I don’t see that. And I think that gave me a bit of thought of like, you know what, to progress, it’s either you go go on your own, but then also you see a lot of people changing industry because they spend many years being a senior surveyor and it’s not going anywhere. They decide, let me try my hand at something else. Let me go set up my own company, let me go into investment banking, let me go somewhere else. So that’s the bit around retention that I coming from, the the background behind that.

Speaker: 29:18
Okay. No, I think that’s helpful to people listening as well. And one last thing, um, am I right thinking you’re an APC counsellor?

Speaker 1: 29:24
Is that oh yes, yes. Counselor, assessor, and chair. Yeah. So fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. I I did it because I just thought what your chair of? No, the chair so APC um interviews, a chair and two assessors. So in the meeting, I’m I’m just kind of making the person comfortable, moving, keeping time, writing the referral report if required. But I thought the reason I decided to do it very quickly after I qualified was I’ve just heard the horror stories, to be honest. So a lot of people have come back from so uh let me not say a lot of people because I don’t want to make it sound like it’s a horrible process, but people come back from that process and they say, Here is my here’s why I went through, and I’m just like, this is crazy. Like you do need it’s a already stressful situation, it’s already a difficult thing to sit your APC to prepare for anything. You’re preparing for any question under the sun, and then go into it, and then you find people that are trying to trip you up or trying to go to you or like that kind of thing. So I just thought, you know what, I know that I can be nice to people. Not that I would make it easy for them, uh there’s still people that fail, but at least be a smiling face on the panel.

Speaker: 30:50
Uh at least makes them feel more possible, exactly more relaxed.

Speaker 1: 30:54
Exactly. And the more I’ve done it, the more I realize most people are that smiling face, but you do get the odd person. And as a chair, it’s easy for you to damp that down a little bit. For example, if questions are going into like I’ll give you an example. It is not to uh you wouldn’t know who who it was. They were asking, Are you married? Like the question was going to the set to like, are you married? kind of line. And I was just like, This is can can we please yeah, I was just like, let’s stare away from that. It’s not necessary. Yeah, no, because he was trying to build his question, so and then he just said that, and I was just like, Okay, let’s move on to the next question, please. So those kind of things do happen, but it’s a very small minority, and but the thing is it’s best that we need more people that are open to give people a fair chance and uh happy to make people comfortable and um relaxed in their ABC.

Speaker: 31:51
Well, I’ve I think we’re coming towards the end of our recording.

Speaker 1: 31:55
Yeah.

Speaker: 31:56
I just want to say thank you. Thank you very much. I think I’ve really enjoyed our conversation and I’m especially around the fact that with Ola Will that you’re doing the fact that you’ve taken all your experience becoming charted in the commercial world and then you found this area and needs to enjoy the work. But you also enjoy helping. It’s very difficult to get the access to managing and making state complex areas. And I I like the fact that you’ve decided to do itself. And I do wish you all the best. I think I have that you’re gonna do very well for that stuff. Thank you very much, Nina. And also congratulations on your your award again. Which is no it’s no easy thing to do with all the fixed awards. But those are all the things that you’ve been doing to be supporting people. So I will definitely share follow in the link to your LinkedIn. And if there’s anything else you want to go to, just let me know. So thank you very much to really enjoy talking to you.

Speaker 1: 33:17
Thank you very much, you know.