May’s Expo Highlights and the Excitement Ahead: Navigating the Future in June’s Expos

It's been a busy time at the conferences this spring.

Innovation Zero

This was buzzing with activity (44% more attendees this year) and packed with engaging presentations with plenty of debate not only around the latest technologies and materials but also around the challenges of delivering to new legislative targets. Requirements such as those for Biodiversity Net Gain and energy performance were discussed looking at the requirements, the need to engage investors, how performance might be best gauged and also the complexity of these challenges when scaling up for organisations with significant volumes of assets such as Housing Associations who need to plan improvements and investment over many years with the significant potential of legislation change within that time.

Recorded sessions are available here so you needn't miss out, watch them here!

ESRI

Esri delivered it's acclaimed annual conference with the usual passion and enthusiasm that always provides a great reminder of the value location and spatial data can empower. Now no longer just the domain of GIS users or siloed departments, spatial data can deliver benefits across businesses and communities through the broad range of ways it can be embedded through APIs or accessed in browser interfaces whether from ESRI or beyond.

You can watch the presentations here! 

UKREiiF (The UK's Real Estate Investment & Infrastructure Forum)

Held in Leeds, the event was a first for Centremaps this year and we're already looking forward to making the full three days in 2025. The announcement mid event of the forthcoming election did lead to a few speakers having to withdraw but also lead to plenty of discussion about the hopes for manifesto commitments from all parties. Planning challenges were, as always, a topic of discussion with plenty of variety in opinion about how the planning system might change to remove barriers but also the need for immediately impactful change and not just long multi-year re-assessments. Some of the challenges were seen to be around ensuring that if policies such as Local Plans are thoroughly worked through and approved at all levels that they can be used to more readily progress applications that satisfy the constraints set. Social value and the ESG (environmental, social and governance) agenda formed the background to one round table with a generally positive feeling that these elements weren't the first to become constricted in project budgets and some interesting conversation on the challenges of how to deliver social value and also how to measure the impacts and benefits to the development and the community it sits within.

CIRIA

Centremaps is delighted to have become a member of the Construction Industry Research and Information Association. We've been following the work on Sustainable Drainage Systems amongst other topics for a number of years. The Geospatial Community of Practice has it's launch event on the 12th June with a webinar "Mapping in construction: How mature are we?" which is also open to non-members and you can sign up here. Centremaps has committed to contributing to the Geospatial CoP moving forward and hope to bring insight on the topic and it's relevance for the full breadth of our users from individuals to corporate users.

We encourage you to mark your calendars and join us at the next expo!