Real Futures: Standards, Governance and Trust: Building Products That Real Estate Stakeholders Can Actually Use
A product may be technically strong, but if stakeholders cannot trust the data, understand how it is governed, or integrate it into existing processes, adoption will remain difficult.
For real estate and built environment startups, standards and governance are not simply compliance requirements. They shape whether a product can be relied on, shared across organisations, connected to existing systems, and used confidently in operational or investment decisions.
This clinic focuses on the practical role of standards, governance, and trust in product design. It is designed to help founders understand what institutional customers, asset owners, operators, and industry partners need in order to adopt and rely on new technology.
Rather than treating governance as something to address later, the session explores how founders can build credibility, transparency, and interoperability into their products from the start, without creating unnecessary complexity.
We will explore how to:
Identify the standards and governance expectations relevant to your product and customers
Build trust through clear data ownership, quality, provenance, and accountability
Design products that can work with existing real estate and built environment systems
Understand where interoperability matters and how it affects adoption
Avoid governance gaps that create commercial, operational, or reputational risk
Communicate clearly how data is collected, processed, shared, and used
Balance strong governance with the speed and flexibility required by a growing startup
Strengthen product credibility with institutional and enterprise stakeholders
Participants leave with:
A clearer understanding of how standards and governance influence product adoption
Practical approaches to building trust and accountability into product design
Stronger awareness of the data and governance questions customers are likely to ask
Better visibility on interoperability, ownership, quality, and compliance risks
Increased confidence in positioning their product for real estate, infrastructure, and built environment stakeholders
A clearer view of the steps needed to make their product credible, usable, and ready for wider adoption
Session Lead: Chris Lees
Chris Lees brings 30 years of experience in technology and 25 years in real estate, combining mathematics, data strategy, and workplace analytics to help organisations achieve more with less through information-enabled decision making.
His work focuses on using data to unlock performance, improve efficiency, and support smarter decisions across real estate portfolios and operations.
Real Futures: Catalyst Converge Accelerator
Real Futures: Catalyst Converge is CSRI’s accelerator for ventures building sustainable real estate and built‑environment solutions. The programme accelerates bold, scalable innovation by connecting founders with researchers, industry partners, and real‑world pilot opportunities.
Ventures receive guided diagnostics, expert mentorship, access to PGIM and UCL resources, and a collaborative ecosystem focused on real‑asset transformation.
What the accelerator offers:
Tailored workshops and matched mentorship
Access to researchers, industry leaders, and investors
Pilot opportunities with PGIM
Support for innovation grant applications
Real‑world validation and market‑readiness
The accelerator integrates with the wider CSRI ecosystem - from Bartlett Invents to executive education, hackathons, and thought leadership - creating a clear path from idea to pilot to scale.
👉 Register your interest in Real Futures: Catalyst Converge Accelerator