How CBRE is Using Data and AI to Transform Global Real Estate Operations

For decades, real estate technology lagged behind. AI is now giving leaders the tools to make smarter, faster, and more data-driven decisions.

Jason Godard, a global leader at CBRE responsible for operations across 51 countries, shares his unique perspective on how technology is reshaping the corporate real estate and facilities management industry.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why technology adoption has been slower than expected -  and how AI is finally enabling smarter, data-driven decisions.
• The importance of portfolio planning, data mining, and predictive insights for global real estate operations.
• How companies like CBRE balance off-the-shelf tech solutions with internal innovation to stay competitive.
• Practical insights for leaders on future-proofing property investments and operational strategies in a rapidly changing workforce.
  
  
• Jason’s vision for closing the AI generation gap and empowering professionals to leverage new technologies effectively.
  
  

This conversation provides actionable insights into how AI is not just a buzzword, but is starting to change the way global property decisions are made.

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About the show: 

Digital Wisdom is the podcast for leaders driving complex digital transformations — and determined to get it right. Hosted by Richard White, a trusted advisor to billion-dollar businesses and CEO at 365 Inhouse. Each episode unpacks proven strategies, hard-earned lessons, and real-world insights from the front lines of enterprise technology. If you're navigating chaos, aligning systems, or scaling with purpose, this is your blueprint for clarity, momentum, and results.

• 🟠Apply for a free consult with Richard here 🟠

Transcript

richard 2: 1:02

Welcome to Digital Wisdom. Some of you will know from watching the series so far that some of the people that we like to speak to have been leaders within the tech world, but this time we are flipping that on its head a little bit. Jason Godard is joining us from CBRE. Jason is responsible for a global company, 300 million. Dollar or pound operations across 51 countries. Jason is gonna talk to us today and joining us to talk about how technology is and isn't serving the real estate and facilities management industry, So Jason, welcome to Digital Wisdom.

jason 2: 1:42

Thank you very much, Richard. Good to be here.

richard 2: 1:44

So Jason, let's talk a bit about your career then. So you've obviously got quite a high profile job at the moment, how did that evolve over the years?

jason 2: 1:52

Yeah. Um, not through choice. So always had this conversation, I think, with school leavers and, and how you, you know, create your career or choose your career. I wanted to be a mechanic when I left school. So I went and studied that. Started doing night guarding as a security guard, to have some money in my pocket. And I think at the time I probably ended up being one of the people with the most money in college in my pocket and a nice car, right? Because I was doing nights doing security made a decision of let me give that a go and see if I could turn that into a career. Very long story short, by the age of 21, I was a branch manager for rentokil security services as it was. That's really how I got into the FM industry initially. as a supplier to the company that I then went to work for.

richard 2: 2:33

Okay. So you were supplying into CBRE.

jason 2: 2:36

Yeah. Man guarding services. So security services, electronic guarding, man guarding into facilities management for Johnson Controls. And you know, that facilities management is, has broadened its horizons over the years, so. Very much, you know, the business that we operate these days is corporate real estate. So the leasing element of buildings the building of buildings, so finding the space, the actual physical construction. Sometimes if it's an owned building for our clients. And then the operational delivery, so sort of real estate project management, and then facilities management. But what, back in 2002 when I started. I was very much running a facilities management business. So if you think of the core services of kind of cleaning, security, catering and the maintenance of equipment within buildings, HVAC, low voltage, high voltage, et cetera but that, business has grown over the years. CBRE procured Johnson Controls facilities and real estate business back in 2015. So I've got, you know. 20 something years continuous service, But that's been with two companies through acquisitions. So John's Controls and then CBRE.

richard 2: 3:45

I assume CBRE grows by having many acquisitions as well.

jason 2: 3:50

I think, you know, we acquire companies on a pretty regular basis. Those acquisitions usually are additive to our customers. So they're, you know, business that improves the core business that we have and, and gets into more areas. Yeah. Sustainability companies technology companies that have the ability to manage elements of our business, project management business. we acquired a hundred percent of Turner and Townsend just over a year ago, which is one of the world's largest project management companies. We're in data center management, data center production. So yeah, it's all around that real estate piece. But yes, it is growth through acquisition as well.

richard 2: 4:27

because this is why I thought it would, it would be fascinating as well for for us to have a chat.'cause it when you first started, so back in 2002. Up until, say, for example, when you was acquired. When you was acquired by CBRE. And then on from there, how have you seen the industry change in terms of tech and how it's served the industry.

jason 2: 4:47

I think technology in the way that we apply it to facilities management, real estate hasn't moved a tremendous amount during that period of time, if I'm honest. You know, if you think of the way that, technology is applied to our business. It's generally through kind of data mining and making sure that you know, abstractions and that we understand what's in a lease and making sure that the legal requirements are covered. So I think as AI has, become a driver that's creating a lot of that first fix for want of a better term. You know, project management is very much around our things, on time, on cost, et cetera. So I think, you know, the technology has grown around, around that space. And then in the facilities management, it's all around sort of the, if you think of it from an uptime perspective and making sure that, you know, critical spaces are managed, maintained, and operated within the requirements. But also understanding where our, challenges are across the portfolio. I but I think, you know, technology generally hasn't moved on. Tremendously. But I think we are seeing AI application now to, that technology is having a huge improvement in the way that we spend our days less focused in having to, to to do the mundane things. And it's starting to get to the stage now where it's given us the outputs, which I think give us more time to be much more strategic and focused on. What our end users and our clients are looking from and ultimately, you know, the technology is there, the data is there to be able to make decisions that are data driven. so if you think of you know, a, a large corporate looking for a new head office in a, in a city, Why does somebody choose that building? Why does somebody choose that city? Why do they choose that part of the city? It's based on data, right? It's based on where are the staff pool coming from?

richard 2: 6:40

Yeah.

jason 2: 6:41

where is the is the caliber of people coming from? Who is it they're trying to temp them from?'cause they're probably working from somebody else. Currently, and therefore where do they need their building to be, to be able to answer all of that criteria. that's a big piece of data that we're able to churn through technology to be able to give a heat map of we think it should be this postcode, or we think it should be that postcode and we think it should be this level of building and these are the amenities that you need in that building to entice people for want of a better term, or keep them, in the business once they're in the business.

richard 2: 7:11

and do you feel like that is an area that has been developed over the course of the years that is starting to help you?

jason 2: 7:16

I think it's developed. I think what we've ended up as an industry is lots of data and not necessarily the use of that data to be able to give outputs. And I think as we, going through the AI age now, it's becoming much easier to take that data and mine it from the point of view of what is helping us make a, a decision that has got thought and process behind it rather than what I think we've done for a number of years is we've had the technology, we've had the data collation, we haven't necessarily had the outputs in the right way that give us that decision making criteria.

richard 2: 7:55

Is it, has it surprised you that there hasn't been huge advancements in technology?

jason 2: 7:59

Yeah, I guess so. And, and I think, you know, if you, you talk to anybody in the industry, I think, you know, we'd all say that there have been improvements and things have moved forward. But I think if you look at the way that we consume data in our everyday lives, very different from the way that we consume data in an industrial sense. You know, in a, business sense. I've not seen the leaps and bounds that I think. You know, if I, if I think of how I consumed TV not that far ago, did I really understand that YouTube was probably the way I was going to get my media? No, that's happened very quickly. I think you can think about it for lots of technology, right? There's been advancements every year, but has it really been a huge game changer until you've had something like Amazon? Which changed the way we all shop, right?'cause we shop instantly and we get things delivered the next day. And it wasn't that long ago in the UK that Amazon didn't work that way. Right. So I think that advancement is starting to be applied to corporate real estate now, and I think is that speed is starting to catch up, but to answer your question, I don't think it's moved as quickly as we'd like it to. And therefore I don't think there's been the mass advancements in all of that data coming together that there can be now with ai.

richard 2: 9:18

what do you think that looks like? What sort of things would it be doing to make your life just so much easier?

jason 2: 9:24

And it's pulling that data to give you a direction. So, portfolio planning is a big part of what we do for our clients, right? So You know, a Microsoft or a. Bank of America, or you know, some of these big names. What we're finding I think now is that a lot of these industries are crossing over from a talent pool perspective because the talent now tends to sit in a technology base, you know, in it, right? You've still gotta have specialists, you've gotta have, you know, chemists and, you know, people are qualified in life sciences. You gotta have bankers who understand what they're doing in, in finance. You gotta have you know, code writers in it, et cetera. But a lot of what's going on in between that, the talent in between is, I want to go my work for Microsoft today because their restaurant is better or their location is better, or the building's better or, or whatever. So I think. Being able to forecast a little bit more what the competition is doing. And I don't mean the competition from A-C-B-R-E perspective, I just mean general business competition. I think that is something that would be hugely helpful from a vision perspective and when trends are starting to change. And, you know, if you think of the the microeconomic sort of climate we've seen. Eastern European countries in Europe that have been the, the back office for many companies. We've now seen that moving to India and now it's moving to different parts of India. It's cost based, right? But if you'd set your stall out 10 years ago on a five to 10 year plan, you'd have got it wrong part the way through that, because all your costs would've gone through the roof and you, you, so you've gotta be a lot quicker. To change and I think being able to have some of that vision, I think would be really good through data and technology.

richard 2: 11:09

Would it look like someone actually. Developing a product that enables you to be able to mine that data and be able to, you know, produce what you do a, a, and make the most out of of ai or I yourself, or CBRE investing into that in order to bring that and make the most of it, the technology more in your company these days.

jason 2: 11:30

Yeah, I mean we're, we're certainly investing in it and I think, you know, there's, there's a balance right between what do you invest in and what do you buy off the shelf. Because why create Microsoft when Microsoft's already created it? Right. I think that's, that's also part of it. But it's how all those elements come together. But I mean, we are investing it in it as a company. I think a lot of our competitors are investing in it as organizations as well. And I think we have done for a number of years. Right? And what we're finding is the, the world's changing so quickly that that data is different data in two to three years time. So I do think, I think there's two sides to this coin, right? I think there's investment in companies like ourselves that, or ourselves investing that technology. But I think there's also the keeping up with what the industry as a whole is using as the technology and the barometer for, for these sort of yeah, these visions in the future.

richard 2: 12:24

As you acquire new, businesses and obviously every new business comes with the technology, do you have any challenges in how you integrate the technologies and as well as, you know, I guess challenges in terms of how to best utilize that technology, the data that, comes along with it? how has that played out for you?

jason 2: 12:43

Yeah, I think there's two different ways to look at this, right? I think as a business, we're a global business operating a hundred plus countries across the globe. Some of that would've been through acquisition as we spoke about. They may have a different finance system. In that country, they may have a different finance system in that country because of regulations in that country. You know, China and parts of Asia are a great example of that. So yeah, we may have lots of platform technology, which is different in different countries because of the way that we either operate and have to operate in a country or the way that we have acquired business. And that's been set up on a different system.

richard 2: 13:21

Yeah.

jason 2: 13:22

But, but I also think, you know, in our business. We also have to be quite vanilla in lots of ways because a client may already have a client set of data and tools that they want us to use and they don't want to use our data set and tools. So I think we are used to being able to operate lots of different technologies and lots of different data sets and, and, and try and bring that together. And, and this is why I was kind of saying I, I think the future of technology in. Maybe not just our industry, but in many industries is, is kind of being a little bit vanilla, right? It's what you do with the data that comes out of it and the ability to, use that data rather than, I've got the newest, best technology because you and I both know that next year somebody else has. The newest and best technology. Right. It kind of just keeps evolving constantly.

richard 2: 14:16

right. So a, are you, are you excited then about, about the future? Like do you feel like the technology that the trajectory of the, the tech industry can align well with, with your industry? And are you excited about the opportunities to come or do you still see some challenges?

jason 2: 14:34

No, I, I am excited and I think you know, if I think of what we've gone through in the last, I was gonna say five years, but it's probably the last six or seven years. I'm not sure I understood Bitcoin when Bitcoin came along. I'm not sure I particularly understood AI up until very recently. You know, I think if you look at the capabilities within a number of, of the advances we've had in, in technology in the last couple of years, it's become something that. Is in our every day, and, and I can see, I can see the vision, right? I can see where it's going. You had this conversation with me two, three years ago. Mm-hmm. We are all talking ai. I haven't got, I didn't have a clue what we were talking about. Right. I mean, and, and that's where I think now that we're starting to use it every day and it's starting to become part of making life easier for people. you know, something that I didn't understand a couple of years ago, I think is now something that we all understand, those of us that are using it probably through having to use it. I think the application of that changes everything. It's now about writing the programs, making sure people have the understanding of what they're trying to pull together, but the capability is definitely there now.

richard 2: 15:48

yeah, that's right. It is. He is incredibly excited. I, I remember being back in, in university. God wouldn't we tour over over 20 years ago? and, and I was learning. I mean, AI was my favorite. It was my favorite subject, but you could just see it wasn't there yet. And I remember I went to a Microsoft conference, must have been about six, seven years ago. And they presented ai, actually, I don't even think it was that long ago. It was probably about four or five years ago. And they presented ai and I just thought, no, not there yet. And then all of a sudden it just changed. And I still think to certain degrees, it, it is just not there. It needs a lot of. Handholding. But the basis of it is just, it is phenomenal. And like you said, when you couple it with the amount of data that's available to you even as it stands right now, the opportunities are incredible but are only gonna advance. It, I think it is an, an exciting, exciting time.

jason 2: 16:42

Yeah, I, I mean, I, I, I see this now as, I mean chat, GBT is a great example, right? You can ask a question that gives you an answer. What it's not able to give you an answer to is something that you're not able to find the data to put into it, to give it that. So I, you know, I think what we have as tools now is a long way forward. But if, you know, companies now create, this is all the data I need that can then have AI applied and that's, you know, I guess where we play in this space, right? Is what do we need? What is the data we have? What is the expected vision and outcome of that? Then, then it's very exciting, right? Hugely exciting because we can make much more informed decisions. And if you think of, you know, some of the property decisions that are made, you know, I I, you know, a property decision is probably made four years out, four years prior to to going into the property. You then gotta spend x amount of hundreds of millions of fit out, and you gotta be future proof and all the rest of it. That's a huge investment, right? It's like a 10 year investment. How, how do you make those decisions right today that are gonna be right for 10 years time with a changing workforce? You know, with, you know, I'm, I, I turn 50 this year. I'm, I'm now a dinosaur. So, you know, there's a, a whole generation that's coming up through, right. So,

richard 2: 18:08

Yeah.

jason 2: 18:08

How, how do you become, how do you stay relevant?

richard 2: 18:12

Yeah.

jason 2: 18:12

I think that's where technology has, has a huge part to play.

richard 2: 18:16

Yeah, that's right.

jason 2: 18:17

It really does.

richard 2: 18:20

And so I don't wanna put you on the spot with this question, but I ask you of all of all the guests just to

jason 2: 18:24

you,

richard 2: 18:24

something, something. But so so we have this, Of 5% of every invoice we generate, we, we, we put towards a digital wisdom initiative fund, which is just there to help. Either it's spreading the word about digital wisdom or, you know, doing anything to help industries be able to, to make the most of technology or to, to, to embed, you know, the, the principles that, that we advocate for. Or even just to help, you know, people. Planet, anything in that kind of world. So I, I often ask my guests, you know, is there any kind of projects that you feel you know, we could either jointly invest in work on to give, or any ideas that you think we could use that Digital Wisdom Initiative fund on?

jason 2: 19:12

you know, I think that getting people to understand the capabilities of AI and what it can actually do outside of chat, GBT and all the fun stuff that we can create pictures of ourselves and, you know, all of this sort of stuff. I, I think that the education.

richard 2: 19:30

Hmm.

jason 2: 19:30

Of how of the application is something, I think as a 50-year-old male who's worked pretty much around the globe now, that to me is, is something that I think could then start to kind of create momentum. I think the generation gap's closing,'cause I think we're all kind of learning this together, right? As you get older, you, maybe you're not as quick to learn, but I think we're all on that journey together because we're having to use it.

richard 2: 19:58

absolutely. No, I love that. And it's been absolutely fa fascinating talking with you today. Jason. I really appreciate you joining. like I said at the start, it's up until now, we've spoken to other people within the tech industry about. Their views of the tech industry. But it's been amazing to have, you know, a global leader such as yourself. Come on here and give the perspective of leading, being a leader in the industry and how technology has evolved for you over the time. But it equally where you would like to see it go. it'll be interesting to see how the, how the tech does evolve within your industry and does start to help you more.

jason 2: 20:33

Yeah, agreed and, and I've thoroughly enjoyed it as well. So thank you for the opportunity.

richard 2: 20:38

Great. Thank you Jason.

20:39

If your last tech project run late, missed the mark, or left you cleaning up the mess, let's change that. Apply for a free consultation where we'll lift the weight, strip out the guesswork, and show you how to lead with confidence. Again, head over to 3 6 5 in-house dot com slash unlock digital wisdom to apply many Get it done. Few get it right. This is digital wisdom.