Ian will be taking a break over the Easter period but will return with lots of exciting new interviews, articles and blogs towards the end of April or the beginning of May. See you soon!

VALUABLE RESOURCES
https://www.ianjrogers.com/

ABOUT THE HOST
Ian Rogers is an entrepreneur running businesses in the Real Estate, Construction and Facilities Management arena. Ian has over 40 years’ industry experience, as he was effectively born into construction with his father having his own building company and Ian spending time working on sites from the age of 11!. As a result Ian has seen the industry from a trades person perspective, as a chartered quantity surveyor working on large commercial projects, as a project manager and then working on structured project finance through PFI/PPP deals. This has given Ian a unique whole life approach to any project by considering the end game at the beginning.

CONTACT METHOD
https://www.ianjrogers.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome Sophie Foote about Health and Safety. With a world of experience as a Scuba Diving Instructor; a degree in Social Anthropology; a Master’s in Southeast Asian Economics, Anthropology and Politics; and Air Traffic Control qualifications under her belt, Sophie has taken the plunge into the HMO (House in Multiple Occupation) markets. Ian and Sophie discuss her experience as a Diving Instructor and building a diving resort, working in an unfamiliar culture, her beginnings in HMO management, her drive to improve standards within the HMO market, good relationships with tenants, staying in control of rising energy costs, and her podcast ‘Girls in Property’. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sophie currently manages a portfolio of 14 HMOs and is starting to work with HMO conversions moving forward. 
• Starting in Scuba Diving, Sophie felt that the way forward was to be an owner and operator of her own diving school which led her to purchase land in Indonesia to set up and build it which gave her initial experience in property development.
• Returning to England for their children’s education, Sophie became an HMO operator as a franchisee of the ROOMS platform, a rent-to-rent model which manages HMOs for owners and pays base rent and collects individual rents from tenants to fulfil the margin. 
• Sophie has systemised the landlord-tenant relationship with quick cleaning and property maintenance turnarounds, an app-based system to allow communication between tenants and to report problems, and regular social meetings to improve rapport. 
• The demand for HMO rentals is increasing due to the cost of living. An ‘all in’ model allows tenants to make one payment that includes all the extraneous energy bills (currently prohibitively expensive) so people are leaving flat rentals and seeking rooms. 
• You can listen to Sophie and her co-hosts Athena and Julia’s podcast ‘Girls in Property’. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘For me, it’s making safe, comfortable, clean homes for our tenants because I view a lot of HMOs and the standard is really, really poor and there seems to be a typical HMO that’s a bit beige and falling apart.’ – Sophie

‘It’s very brave to start a business and develop all in a new country in what is probably a young relationship with your other half at the time. To try and put all that together it must have been very stressful.’ – Ian  

‘We had things like crabs in the walls sometimes. You’d get land crabs going up the bamboo or geckos, and monitor lizards. But bamboo is fairly easy to replace so…it wasn’t too bad.’ – Sophie

‘It’s really not difficult to be of a higher standard than most of the HMOs. It seems that most of them are typically student groups and they just left so anything that breaks is left broken, any mess is left uncleared. So we have a cleaner that goes in, and we maintain things very quickly. We have an app for our tenants so they can report stuff.’ – Sophie  

‘If you differentiate yourself within the market like you are, you’re never going to have an empty room.’ – Ian 

‘We’ve got smart thermostats in every property which we control and we turn the heating on in the morning and the evening for an hour or two and then the tenant can boost it for an hour as well, which means the heating can’t be left on all day.’ – Sophie 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

https://www.ianjrogers.com/

ABOUT THE HOST

Ian Rogers is an entrepreneur running businesses in the Real Estate, Construction and Facilities Management arena. Ian has over 40 years’ industry experience, as he was effectively born into construction with his father having his own building company and Ian spending time working on sites from the age of 11!. As a result Ian has seen the industry from a trades person perspective, as a chartered quantity surveyor working on large commercial projects, as a project manager and then working on structured project finance through PFI/PPP deals. 

CONTACT METHOD
https://www.ianjrogers.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In his final episode detailing the function of Building Information Modelling (BIM), Ian explains the Digital Twins. A Digital Twin is a digital representation of a physical object, process, service or environment that behaves and looks like its counterpart in the real world. In terms of buildings and real estate, the Digital Twin utilises the original 3D model from the BIM process and converts it into a representation of what is actually built.

Ian covers types of Digital Twin, how a Digital Twin functions, challenges they can solve, why and how to design with Digital Twins, data, modelling, internet linking, Artificial Intelligence integration, and benefits of Digital Twins. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The data, as with all aspects of BIM, is the critical part of Digital Twin representation. 
• This method can allow enhancement of strategic technology trends, prevent costly failure in the physical objects and, with advanced analytics, test the products and services. 
• Types of Digital Twins are Component or Part Twins, Asset Twins, System Twins, and Process Twins. 
• Digital Twins can improve procedures such as workflow and staffing, monitoring, and testing of new products and processes. 
• Devices connected to the internet allow real-world data to be instantaneously transferred into the Digital Twin.
• Common benefits include increased reliability, availability through monitoring and simulation to improve performance, reduced risk, reduced mechanical failures, and efficient scheduling and supply chain. 
• With new participants in the supply chain, all must be willing to share all their data from their production processes to ensure the information contained in the Digital Twin is complete. 

BEST MOMENTS

‘It is effectively the transition from the design phase into the real world.’

‘What you are trying to do through the digital twin is actually test what reality is going to be like and therefore avoid all the costly mistakes by doing it wrong in the first place.’

‘The developers who create the Digital twin ensure that the virtual computer model can receive feedback from sensors that gather data from the real world version.’

‘Digital Twin technology uses machine learning algorithms to process large quantities of sensor data to identify data patterns.’

‘However, for all of the benefits, Digital Twins is not suitable for all instances as it can increase complexity.’ 

VALUABLE RESOURCES

https://www.ianjrogers.com/

ABOUT THE HOST

Ian Rogers is an entrepreneur running businesses in the Real Estate, Construction and Facilities Management arena. Ian has over 40 years’ industry experience, as he was effectively born into construction with his father having his own building company and Ian spending time working on sites from the age of 11!. As a result Ian has seen the industry from a trades person perspective, as a chartered quantity surveyor working on large commercial projects, as a project manager and then working on structured project finance through PFI/PPP deals. This has given Ian a unique whole life approach to any project by considering the end game at the beginning.

CONTACT METHOD

https://www.ianjrogers.com/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.