CRE Generative Design Software Uses AI To Help Streamline The Build Process

With high interest rates and supply chain challenges continuing to delay construction projects, it remains a struggle to get commercial real estate deals over the finish line.

Margins are tighter than ever, and project stakeholders need to be sure they are making a smart CRE deal that will pencil out. One step they should take is to conduct a feasibility study to get an in-depth analysis of a project's viability, potential risks and other factors to determine if they should proceed with development. 

Tools like TestFit can show the potential of a project site and the feasibility of a design, so stakeholders can feel assured that they are making the right decision with their investment. This real estate feasibility platform uses generative design to get real-time insights into the design, cost and constructability of a project. TestFit CEO Clifton Harness said this not only offers peace of mind, but saves time and resources that would be spent completing mundane tasks in the build process. 

“Before TestFit, I worked at a development company and got tired of counting parking stalls and endlessly drawing apartment units, which was such a painstaking process,” Harness said. “We initially built the company to solve apartment unit mixes and have now grown to automate other time-consuming tasks, such as design options, calculating the yield on cost and other items to optimize the feasibility process to help our clients build faster.”

While the focus was initially on multifamily, Harness noticed there was a need for these tools in other sectors of real estate, such as industrial. This inspired TestFit to create 15 sub-algorithms to address both the housing and warehousing markets. 

“Instead of a deal going awry because the traditional construction process takes so long, we can use our optimization tool to expedite the process and help get more deals penciled,” Harness said.

Harness and TestFit co-founder and chief technology officer Ryan Griege, who is also the main programmer of the platform, were able to automate tedious and error-prone tasks in site planning, like counting stalls. Additionally, they expanded TestFit’s capabilities to consider different building constraints, such as whether a site would be better optimized for 200 apartment units instead of 400. 

Harness said the generative design tool incorporates a pro forma valuation to help evaluate deals in hours rather than weeks. TestFit inputs the data securely and doesn't re-aggregate it like other companies, which is a concern for people using many artificial intelligence tools, he said.

“Clients can download the app and begin entering different parameters, such as zoning, building codes and units, and then we compile multiple test results to generate risk-adjusted information,” Harness said. “We wanted a frictionless approach where users without any technical knowledge can feel comfortable using an AI-driven cloud system with encrypted data.”

Real estate logistics firm Prologis saw the potential of TestFit and invested in the company in 2022 as part of a $20M Series A round. The company is also a client and uses the platform's real-time AI component to get a better analysis of the feasibility of new warehouse sites.

Instead of going back and forth on revisions with architects, Prologis Vice President of Development Luke Peters said the firm can get multiple site iterations in real-time by using this software, which allows the team to collaborate and make decisions much faster than before.  

“TestFit is transformational,” Peters said. “We've shaved days off of our analysis by using the AI capabilities of this software, which allows us to make smarter decisions faster.”

Harness said that currently 50% of the top 10 multifamily developers and nine of the top 25 architects use TestFit. He considers the platform a game-changer because it allows big capital expenditure projects to be quickly risk-adjusted by AI before an investment team gets involved to fund it. As inflation is high and supply chain delays are prevalent, it's becoming more important to plan a course of action to allocate resources more efficiently, he said.

Harness encouraged architects to adopt AI tools for mundane tasks to free them to focus more on the vision-creation process, where their expertise is more suited. Not only is TestFit helping optimize more building space, but Harness found that the site planning process is four times faster. 

“When we look at the cost of a building, it's much more expensive today than it was three or four years ago,” Harness said. “Using our optimization tool can help counterbalance this inflated market. As a result, we can create better buildings with better metrics.”

This article was produced in collaboration between TestFit and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.