Purpose Built Student Accommodation Portfolio Technology Audit

Building Size: Whole Portfolio
Location: Across the UK

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Overview

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Following the acquisition of 11 Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA) sites across the UK, Trustek were appointed by Hudson Advisors to attend every site and assess the technical capabilities within the existing assets, with the objective of identifying the most appropriate energy optimisation solution for the portfolio.

Whilst the traditional due diligence process typically focuses on building services and mechanical and electrical infrastructure, the property technology elements within this process are frequently overlooked. This may be due to the breadth of PropTech, which covers a wide array of solutions — from connectivity and smart metering through to access control. These specific elements can, however, have a significant impact on the student experience and occupier retention, as well as supporting the marketing efforts required to attract and retain customers going forward.

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With a dynamic asset management team at Hudson Advisors, there was a clear requirement to act quickly in order to satisfy their business plan objectives for the repositioning of these assets. Following Trustek's appointment, the team was required to complete technology audits across all 11 sites — ranging from Aberdeen to Nottingham — within a short timeframe.

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The Audit

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Trustek was able to collate each building's technology stack, identify anomalies and inconsistencies across the portfolio, and produce a bespoke RFP brief — incorporating detail from in-room technology through to communal systems — to support the procurement process for identifying and deploying the right energy optimisation solution across the whole portfolio.

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A challenge with any building portfolio is that every asset carries a unique technology stack. Inheriting this creates a standardisation problem, making it difficult to centralise reporting and data collection for Hudson Advisors on an ongoing basis. This required Trustek to identify any building or location where additional or unique technologies had been deployed, assess their relevance and effectiveness — whether in energy optimisation, communal Wi-Fi, or otherwise — and evaluate whether those solutions should be scaled across the portfolio or removed from the technology stack entirely.

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Following completion of the audits, Trustek was able to report back to Hudson Advisors on the specific sites where legacy copper cabling was supporting the communal connectivity infrastructure — an important finding given that copper-based networks are due to be decommissioned in 2027.

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Trustek also identified the limitations of existing smart metering deployments in terms of energy management and internal reporting, and developed a clear strategy to upgrade or gap-fill this data to enable accurate reporting to institutional funds — which have specific requirements for access to this data — while moving away from manual meter reads.

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A core objective throughout this process was to understand any existing energy optimisation within in-room systems, and to identify the existing heating control infrastructure — whether electric or gas and wet heating solutions — to ensure that when the procurement process was conducted, Trustek could identify a technology and hardware partner capable of supporting both electric and gas heating solutions across the full portfolio.

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Looking Ahead

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With the increasing adoption of AI software platforms to support optimisation and asset management, Trustek believes that technical due diligence of the property technology stack will become an increasingly critical step for active development and asset managers. Understanding and qualifying the risks associated with inheriting a portfolio of assets — whether those risks stem from a disparate set of technology systems, legacy on-premises infrastructure, or analogue and paper-based data reporting — will be essential in a world where AI-driven requirements and data collection standards mean that outdated systems will no longer be sufficient to protect and enhance the value and performance of the portfolio.

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Image source: Leeds Trinity University