London – 20th January 2026: Zutec, a leading provider of ConTech and PropTech SaaS solutions in the UK and Ireland, today provided its predictions for 2026.
As operational burdens for managing buildings increase and regulatory requirements continue to tighten for asset owners, the property sector is under growing pressure to manage critical safety, compliance, quality and operational performance with greater accuracy and transparency.
Zutec predicts that during 2026 Artificial Intelligence (AI) will hit a turning point in PropTech, shifting from an emerging technology to a core capability for asset owners. AI will not only help organisations better navigate complex, data-heavy property portfolios more effectively, but also support compliance across regulations such as the Building Safety Act 2022. By surfacing information faster and enabling more informed, evidence-based decisions across the building lifecycle, AI for building asset management will help reduce manual effort and improve day-to-day operational efficiencies.
“AI will no longer be experimental. It will be a practical, scalable solution helping building asset owners make maintenance decisions, meet safety obligations, reduce risk, and protect people and asset value, particularly across higher-risk residential buildings (HRBs). The organisations that succeed will be those using AI not just to collect data, but to turn it into trusted, real-time insight that supports safer buildings and stronger outcomes,” commented Emily Hopson-Hill Managing Director at Zutec.
Zutec highlights three priority areas where it predicts AI will deliver the greatest impact for asset owners as 2026 progresses:
“AI will no longer be experimental. It will be a practical, scalable solution helping building asset owners make maintenance decisions, meet safety obligations, reduce risk, and protect people and asset value, particularly across higher-risk residential buildings (HRBs). The organisations that succeed will be those using AI not just to collect data, but to turn it into trusted, real-time insight that supports safer buildings and stronger outcomes.”
Zutec highlights three priority areas where it predicts AI will deliver the greatest impact for asset owners as 2026 progresses:
1. AI for Making Building Data Accessible and Actionable
During 2026, AI will fundamentally change how building asset owners access and use information locked within Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and Building Manuals today.
Instead of searching through thousands of static PDFs and legacy documents, AI-powered systems built to understand building information, will enable instant, natural-language queries that surface the right information at the point of need. Whether that’s maintenance procedures, safety instructions, asset specifications, or compliance evidence. By intelligently indexing, validating, and cross-referencing O&M data against buildings, AI will reduce time spent searching for critical documents and information, improve decision-making, and ensure teams are working more effectively and efficiently.
This shift will be especially valuable for demonstrating ongoing compliance, supporting safe maintenance activities, and preserving institutional knowledge throughout the building lifecycle. It will also enable safety-critical information to be highly accessible and searchable, supporting the "golden thread" of information required for all higher-risk buildings (HRBs) as part of the BSA.
2. AI for Risk and Safety Management
The Building Safety Act turns safety from a one-off activity for each building to a continuous obligation, with clear accountability placed on Accountable Persons. AI enables asset owners to move beyond manual, reactive processes by continuously monitoring and updating building data through smart ingest, which helps them identify emerging risks, and maintain auditable, up-to-date safety information and evidence at scale. Additionally, AI will be able to support the collation and summation of Safety Cases reports or Gateway 3 completion certificate applications, as an example, helping asset owners meet BSA obligations, as an example.
When Safety Case Reports must be actively maintained and updated for HRBs, AI can also support predictive risk management through advanced modelling, trend analysis, and automated alerts, helping asset owners anticipate fire and structural risks before they escalate.
3. AI for Governance and Building Lifecycle Integrity
The Building Safety Act mandates a “Golden Thread” of accurate, digital, and accessible information throughout a building’s lifecycle. AI will transform this from a static document store into a live system—automatically ingesting data from inspections, sensors, and maintenance records, while flagging inconsistencies, outdated information, and unverified changes.
Now asset owners’ trusted source of truth won’t just be a data repository, but an intelligent system where data can be quickly surfaced from designs, construction, and occupation.
The Building Safety Regulator expects clear accountability, traceable decisions, and timely updates. AI will help accelerate improve response times to regulator queries, and demonstrate that safety risks are actively managed—reducing enforcement risk, personal liability exposure, and reputational damage.
The asset owners who embrace AI for building asset management operations and as part of solutions such as Zutec’s award-winning Building Document Management solution, will not only benefit from better managed building maintenance, but lower compliance costs per building, reduced risk exposure, and improved long-term asset performance and safety.
Those who fail to modernise face growing pressure to meet regulatory requirements, fragmented data, and portfolio-wide scalability challenges.
