Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Good afternoon or good morning, depending where you are. This is Jackie Deberka of constructive voices. And we have today another fascinating guess, because it's a subject that's particularly close to our hearts here. You'll have heard the phrase bng if you're in the UK, and if you're not, it stands for biodiversity net gain. We ourselves have created a very interesting expert led online course for this topic. Big news in England in particular, and a lot of talk around it, particularly on LinkedIn. So I'm not going to say very much more, except for I'm delighted to be with Shash and Mishra, and I'm going to let you take over and introduce yourself just a little bit about you, both personally and professionally.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Thanks, Jackie. I'm Shashin. I'm the VP of Emea for AI dash.
AI Dash is a technology company. We started in 2019, and we're building products towards improving the planet, part of which is biodiversity net gain. Personally, I'm an engineer and I love to solve problems. Tougher the problem, better it is. I'm also an author. I wrote a book called responsible AI, which was published by Springer. And in this book I covered how business and technology teams can make sure that their machine learning and AI products are free of human biases. And in this current role, as I said, I'm leading the EMEA business and I'm also responsible for biodiversity native gains solution and which is called Bngai.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: Fantastic. Now, I, as another author also, I will latch onto the fact that you've written a book, and I love obviously, what you've described about that book that's very important in this day and age, with so much debate about AI and its place in our society, isn't it?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: It absolutely is. While we're building these products, there's always what we mostly hear about AI is how it's going to take over the jobs. But I think that's not the real reason to be worried about it. The real reason to be worried about it is that this is incredibly powerful set of tools, so we have to be able to use them in a positive way and not let them utilize as their learning from our own behavior, our biases, and create tools for good. Really?
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Definitely. I would agree with that 100%, Shatin. I mean, as a media person, I just find it very time saving for those tedious tasks, and I certainly wouldn't let it take over what I do. But it's very, very useful and has so much potential going back to AI dash. What is it exactly, and how was it founded.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Well, the company was founded in 2019.
As the story is, our CEO, he was running his previous company at the time, and he had recently moved to California from India, and he experienced power cuts, which he was not expecting in California. It is not unheard of in India, it's becoming rarer. But he was certainly not expecting that in California when he found out why it happened because it came in the news. He found out it happened because of a vegetation incident, and that's where the idea behind the company was formed. How can AI come in? How can we use technology to reduce such incidents? And that's where we first came in. We built. Since then, we built something which we call as a vegetation aihdenhe, a set of technologies built mostly around AI to be able to look at land and tell what's on land, generate the insights that businesses can use towards improving their operations. And on top of those insights, products help their operations team deliver the outcomes on the ground. Because it's never about just the insights, but it's actually about getting the outcomes, driving the outcomes, and solving the real problem on the ground. So that's how AI dash was founded. As a company, our core competency still remains using satellite imaging, combining it with other data sets as and when required, and finding out what's happening on the ground.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Excellent. So we're going to dig deeper into all of that as we chat away today, Shatin. But let's go into what is BNG biodiversity net gain? Very well known currently in England and the UK, but not so much elsewhere, unless you happen to be an ecologist or a landscape artist, perhaps?
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Yes. And perhaps let's start from where the requirements for biodiversity net gain and what is biodiversity comes around. So biodiversity itself is, as the name suggests, the diversity of life, which includes plants and animals.
It is also now recognized quite widely that biodiversity restoration or preserving the biodiversity is really what's important towards fighting the climate change.
As a result, in addition to the net zero cops that UN runs, there is a biodiversity cop. That happens. And in the Montreal cop, they signed up to a biodiversity global biodiversity framework. And that was signed by more than 90 countries. England is one of them, most of the european, all european nations, European Union signed it as well all the member nations and many other countries throughout the world.
The first big target coming out of global biodiversity framework is called 30 by 30, which is the promise to be able to bring 30% of nature depleted areas within the country, which signs up to the target by 2030.
And as part of the signing, all 95 countries signed up to 30 by 30. England has since then taken a lead and defined requirements on how would that happen. So the english approach right now is to require all new developments to measure biodiversity on the land before they break ground, and then propose how they are going to improve the biodiversity on the area that remains around the development, post development, to the 110% of the original baseline, which is 10% more than the baseline, and there is a 30 year period in which they have to deliver those gains.
That is the BNG, as everybody in the construction market in UK understands it, this is how England has done it. The rest of the world is also evaluating what their approach is going to be. But that said, the UK's approach, or England's approach, is being looked at very closely by most of the countries because it creates that shared responsibility between the government and the enterprise, because they're both responsible for bringing the development, as well as utilizing the land towards the development, to then not just do the development activities, but then also contribute back to the nature, because that helps all of us, and not limit that area of improving nature to some corner of the country, but rather make it happen everywhere.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: It's a great explanation, and I think it's just so important around the world that this topic is addressed. At the moment, however, various countries choose to do it. And yes, they've definitely got their. Their eyes on England, and it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out. We haven't got a lot of time, obviously, 2030 is really just around the corner. We've got a four and a half years down the road from now. So in your opinion, Shashin, how important is it that we address bng in the UK?
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Well, UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world. And to somebody who may just look outside in the countryside, it may seem counterintuitive, but because it's a pretty, very pretty countryside that we have, but at the same time, most of that is either grazing land or agricultural land, neither of which offers any biodiversity. So in overall terms, we've lost a very high amount of biodiversity in the last 60 to 70 years. And if we don't do take any action now, it is going to become more and more difficult the more we delay it. So it is really important that we address bng.
And we've tried with carbon.
Industry has been pushing direction towards capturing more carbon, but with more science coming up and more research coming out, it is becoming apparent that restoring biodiversity, loss of life that has happened, is going to be the key. Because as we limit the biodiversity on the land, the ability to regenerate, the ability to fight back, the climate change goes down drastically.
UK really needs to do it, because it is, as I said, one of the most depleted countries from that regard around the world.
[00:08:59] Speaker A: It is. So we're mostly looking at, obviously, the impact of such a nature depleted country. But we're also unavoidably going to have the subject of economics coming into this. But then there's also many documents and programs about how, in fact, biodiversity is so important to our health, isn't it?
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yes, it definitely is. There is a huge impact towards food production, our own well being. If people living in.
We've had in London, we are lucky to have lots of parks, but then, at the same time, it should not just be limited to those areas.
Being able to have that diversity around us definitely helps.
Being able to bring that also means that we will be able to generate more food. We can not just improve the quality of land, but we can also improve the quality of food we produce. So it definitely has an impact on quality of life that we have.
[00:10:02] Speaker A: It does. It does now. So, going back to what AI dash has created, what exactly is Bng AI?
[00:10:11] Speaker B: So Bng AI came out from identifying the need that as the new requirements would come into force, we will, as a country, not be able to meet the requirements, purely because there is a huge shortage of ecologists. To be able to measure biodiversity, to create those plans, to be able to achieve the net gain over a 30 year period, and then to make it happen, we need experts, and those experts here are ecologists.
We did some estimation and we realized that there's at least a shortage, about 40% ecologists, as compared to what are needed in the country to be able to make it happen. That's not a number that we can fulfill by just training few more grads over the next few years.
And we don't even have those few years, because the requirement is now.
So the key purpose and the realization was that if we truly want to be able to fight climate change by improving biodiversity at a national level, and not just at a national level, but beyond UK, then take beyond England, then take it to the rest of the UK and to the rest of the world, we have to use technology to make it happen, because that shortage is not just here. The scale of challenge and the scale of biodiversity improvement that is needed to meet those global biodiversity framework targets and beyond are far more than what the current ways of working can support. So bng AI is an answer to that? Is our answer to that. Where we are trying to build technology that can create those tools. Process improvement, really enabling the ecologists and the experts to be able to deliver much more than they otherwise can by themselves. So it's a. Bngi is a collaborative tool. I like to think of it as an ecologist's best friend, which is going to help them deliver much more value than they can deliver by themselves.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Quick question for you. Is it a tool that a non ecologist could use? So let's say somebody who's, you know, they have some background, perhaps in architecture or, you know, fairly good few years experience in construction. Is it accessible to other people or does it require oncologist to use it?
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Oh, no, absolutely. I mean, there are different parts of the application. So the BNG requirements in the, in England, they required developers, architects to do their bit to it. So it has areas which talk to each user separately. It supports developers, architects can bring in their development plans, see how their development plan interacts with the site, how much biodiversity it takes away, allows them to make changes to that. And then finally ecologists job is around going to the site, completing the site assessment, using the technology, and then together, all of them have to work as a team, using this tool as the core technology to decide how they're going to deliver the 10% net gain. So they all come together and they use the tool they have. It speaks to all of them. There are functionalities around supporting each of the users. So it's by no means restricted to just one kind of user. And it is not just an ecology tool. It is a solution that has been built for users to be able to deliver 10% net gain. And for all the user Personas that need to interact with the biodiversity net gain requirements, they can work on the system and deliver their goals.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Okay, sounds very interesting. Now, what role does the construction industry and developers have to play in successfully improving Bng?
[00:14:07] Speaker B: They have the key role in the process. All developments need to be able to meet 10% net gain target over 30 year period since the beginning of the plan. So the developers need to be able to make measurements. They need to be able to have a very clear data based approach on how they are going to measure what's on the land and how they're going to deliver it. One key challenge that is easy to overlook right now because it is day zero of the entire process. It has literally the requirements came into force few months ago, is the fact that there is a 30 year timeline to deliver it. And that's where I think the developers need to keep a sight of that since there's a 30 year period to deliver it, they need to take an approach that can allow them to keep track of everything they're doing as they're delivering it.
They are the ones who has to take ownership of the land by law and making the gain happen. So theirs is the central role in the process, from measuring, planning and then executing and finally demonstrating that the execution is successful. It all depends on how they are presenting it back, what they are showing back. So they need to be ready for a 30 year plan on every single project they're creating?
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Yes, it is. It's a very exciting time, isn't it? At the same time, kind of looking at this completely unknown as it is right now, except for, of course, the rules are there and the hopes are there, but it is a challenging time. I guess the adoption of new technology is critical to success. Shashin, what do you think?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: I think the adoption of technology is going to be absolutely key, because without tech, the current ways of working may not scale up. Being able to get all the site data back in emails, getting them back as documents that are being created is going to create a logistical challenge as projects get tracked over 30 years and every new project every year for the next 30 years becomes part of the scope. So if a developer does just ten different applications projects a year, they're really looking at 300 projects being tracked over 30 years. Now, that's a big challenge. So unless they are using some technology to bring all of that data together, to be able to track each project over its timeline, they're going to find it very difficult to scale it and it can have real impact on their growth as a business. So adoption of new technology is absolutely central to how they deliver this.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: One question. It's a terminology that I've seen around conservation covenants. What are they and do they relate to your, to your PNG AI?
[00:17:07] Speaker B: Jahi, can we cover conservation covenants a little later, please?
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Can I say again, can we cover.
[00:17:15] Speaker B: Them a little later, please?
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Yes, no problem at all.
[00:17:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Okay, so let's just move on then. That's no problem.
Shashin, how can satellite and AI technology help? Specifically.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: Satellite and AI technology can be useful because it can.
Starting 2018, we now have very high resolution data available, or images available through satellite and through aerial mapping, which allows us to be able to look very closely at the land and identify habitats on scale. What this means is that this technology can be used to create very detailed habitat maps, which is the key to how the requirements have been set out by DeFra on how the BNG mapping must be done to users. It directly translates to being able to create, to meet the requirements of Defra in terms of creating those detailed habitat assessments without spending a ton of money on it. So it scales, it makes it faster and it makes it cheaper. So it's a big, it can be a big use case for. It is a big use case. And it should be something that all businesses should really consider, all construction businesses should be considering when they're deciding how they're going to do their BNG journey.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Okay, so let's dig a little bit deeper then. Like how does AI, the BNG AI, assist developers, planners, local authorities in navigating this new landscape?
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so that's a great question we've got. When we started looking at the system, we realized that different users, there are different sides to it. So there's obviously developer and there's planning authorities and local authorities which have different set of requirements. So for developers, they can use the technology to be able to very quickly assess what's on the land, support their ecologists by providing them the technology to go on the site and complete the site assessments really quickly.
The rest of the technology then allows them to interactively build the plan, generate the outputs, test different scenarios, bring development plans, essentially complete the whole cycle of, and compress the timelines from the start to the time when they're ready to submit their application quite a bit, while reducing the costs as well, quite significantly. The total amount of times and cost savings can be as high as 30% to 40%.
But at the same time, because they're using technology, there is a consistency in the output and there is a much higher degree of certainty in what they're submitting and assurance of success.
The local authorities, on the other hand, they know that now they get, when they get the data, they can get very high quality data. They know that they can investigate that data further and go deeper in it, understand how it meets the requirements. So we're not just providing them with images of the sites, but we're providing full, detailed shape files, for example, that they can then bring onto their systems and see what habitats have been found. Where have they been found?
For a developer, if it goes into, if their application gets rejected, the application can go into an appeal and another peace of mind that they have using technology.
The way AI dash provides it is that we have very high confidence in what output, the output that we are producing. And as a result, we are then very happy to then support our customers and defend the output that we produce as well. So if it goes into an appeal or beyond, we stand with them and we prove why what we believe is right and why do we think that is the case? And that's what we bring in for the developers. But at the same time for planners, that confidence then transfers on in the findings and we are continuously working on providing more and more evidence to planners as well around the accuracy of the system. So that when they know that the developer is using a system, there's a minimum expect standard that is that they know that they're getting every single time.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Very interesting. So I'm going to compare it in all of my innocence to something that is like used for advertising agencies and you might share it with your clients and it's on the cloud, obviously. Is that possible? If we say we want to do a development, we'll say around Bournemouth, is it possible that the, you know, that the local authorities, obviously they're having access to it and the developers and the planners, they can all access this particular area and, you know, collaborate in a better way?
[00:22:05] Speaker B: Yes, it's definitely possible. If our users want to give access to the local authorities on the data, they can choose to do that and the local authorities can get access to that data and then look at it at the same level of detail that the developer is able to.
The data belongs to our users. So if the developer is using the system, the data belongs to them. But at the same time, if a local authority is looking at the.
Receives an application and it wants to validate whether a baseline submitted is accurate or not, they can also use the technology to do the validation on that.
So we're finding that there is a large number of developers using our solution today to be able to create biodiversity assessments sent to the local authorities.
Some local authorities are using it for validating the baselines that are coming in. And there are other local authorities that are using the system as a developer themselves. For the developers that they have to do so, it. It is coming useful to them in different ways.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: That's clever. They're one step ahead there, aren't they?
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yes. So they are using it as a developer and then their planning site can access the data and evaluate it.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Very clever. Very good. Now, what are the common challenges that developers are coming across when looking to meet the 10% PNG requirements?
[00:23:32] Speaker B: It's not easy to be able to create 10% on many sites, especially on these smaller sites.
We're finding that as we take our customers through the journey, we're finding that, and this is not a surprise, a lot of work that is being done to make BNG happen, to get to the submission stage and to get the approval is being done for the first time, and it is challenging the existing processes and ways of working.
And I think there's going to be some time before the dust finally settles on it, and we have a whole new set of ways of working. But that evolution of processes is imminent now. It's quite clear that current processes in many areas are going to get challenged.
That's the big challenge that I think developers face. But at the same time, I think it is also a business opportunity for most of them. Whoever evolves the best is going to be successful in the end. And some of the examples I can see already coming up where they have to think how they do work is around determining whether to. And it starts from very beginning whether to purchase a certain site or not. So not going to name any customers, but we saw an example where a user purchased a site and then they started the biodiversity assessment on it. They had only got a very rough assessment done on the habitats, but it was not as detailed as what is needed for biodiversity calculations. Eventually, when they created all the plans, the biodiversity net gain of 10% was not possible on the remaining area.
And when they calculated how much credits they need, they found the cost of it. The cost of those credits was. It was a small site, not many houses being built proposed on it, and the cost of the credits was in the range of half a million pounds. And they had to shell the project, of course.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah, of course.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: The ways of working in and this is not how everybody does there is. There are different flavors to how industry operates, but a large number of developers have always been used to getting some assessment done. A quick desktop study, a rough desktop study of sorts, to see whether there's anything of concern on the site, whether they should build or not, and then they proceed. But now they need to go much deeper in that. They need to be able to determine can I make 10% gain on it if I have to build something on it. So the current ways of working gets challenged there. And what they find as they do a detailed habitat assessment and a biodiversity measure baselining on the site can change the decision altogether. They may decide that I should not have purchased the site, or if they do it early on, they can be much more clever and avoid purchasing the sites where they have good to have much more challenge of achieving 10% net gain. The another example I find where there is ways of working challenge coming up and industry is going to evolve, is the cycles that happen between the landscape architects, the landscape and the site architects, ecologists, in terms of bringing the development plans and overlaying it on the site, depending on what they find, they may want to keep certain areas intact, and that may mean that they cannot build on top of it, because if they do, then they will have to get a bespoke agreement, especially if it is a very high distinctiveness habitat or an irreplaceable habitat. And they may, depending on the project, they may or may not want to be able to, to do that. And in that case, bringing those development plans early on, having a view of what are the areas on the site that they should not be touching is really important. And not doing that would mean that they will have to go through design process more than once. They will have to think, they may have to completely rethink the structure of the site, how they're going to develop it, how many houses can they actually make on it? Which goes back again to, can I purchase the site or not? Should I purchase the site or not? So we're finding that this is evolving. We are making sure that through our processes, we support users in all the use cases as the processes evolve. But I think in the next year or so, we will see a lot of those processes getting streamlined on developer side, and a lot of early at the site evaluation stage, a lot of detailed assessment of biodiversity, net gain being done, along with some other assessments to make sure that this is the right site to purchase.
Those who don't do that, those who continue to purchase sites without doing a detailed biodiversity assessment are very likely to have more challenges than the other users.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: It's really fascinating. I mean, I remember when we were recording for the training series, Claire Wansbury said at the very beginning, you know, when is the time to start doing assessment? It was exactly around know, around this whole point.
You don't even consider when you just do it straight away, as soon as you're starting to have considerations before buying a site, you know?
So yes, it's interesting to hear that that's the experience that your team and yourselves are having with your clients. And it isn't a surprise. And it's not just the buying of the site. It's also, you know, the other, all the other people that you're very well aware of, Shashan, who are involved in the whole process. You're paying, you know, consultancy fees or wages or whatever to all sorts of people. And then at the end, it just can't be done because you have to get off site credits that are prohibitive as you talked about.
[00:29:14] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. The credits can be prohibitive, and it can be a make or break for most of the projects. So we are also realizing and helping our users achieve that. When it comes to planning net gain, it's not just the sites that they're going to do developments on. Most of the developers have access to have land that they're probably not going to build on. So we are encouraging our users, we are explaining to them why they should be looking at land that they may not even be building on as possible. Land internal land bank. Because it is always going to be cheaper to create additional credits and use them as an offset or offsite for their own developments than purchasing those credits from elsewhere. Because if they already have land that is in their control, that they're not going to build on, and they're not going to make any changes to any biodiversity net gain they can achieve on it is going to be done much more economically than buying credits from the market.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: And then that needs to be very strategic because you're looking at the local area recoveries and all that type of stuff.
There's a fair bit of planning. Obviously, if you want to buy land, you need to be buying it in the right area.
[00:30:33] Speaker B: You have to prepare for that in advance. You can't do that as an afterthought. You can't have the application process started on a site and then say, okay, can I find a site then? Because that's just going to derail your planning for the site.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: It's very interesting. We're in the early days, as we all know. So how is it a collaborative approach between technology and ecologists?
[00:31:01] Speaker B: Yes, great question. So the law requires.
Law defines somebody who needs to go on the site as a competent person.
The true definition of that, and we try to figure it out because the law is not very clear on it, is that it should really be an ecologist. So it's an ecologist's responsibility to create a biodiversity baseline, to do the condition assessment, to do, really the heavy lifting of determining what's on the site, and then completing the biodiversity net gain planning, the 10% planning. So this is a collaborative AI, which takes away the grunt work of walking the site, creating that detailed boundaries of habitats at the resolution required, giving all of that out of the box very, very quickly to the ecologist, and then depending on their expertise, to take this technology to their land, to the site, and answer the questions.
Natural England's guidance says that you should really bring higher an ecologist who is well versed with the requirements of biodiversity net gain. But that further limits users to the number of ecologists they can use. But that's important because they need to know the questions that need to be answered for condition assessing different kind of habitats.
Our answer, in collaborative approach, is to be able to build technology so that technology understands all the questions that need to be asked. Make it easy for ecologists to identify the habitats, and then make it easy for them to just answer the questions that the technology shows. So what this means is that when the ecologist, before the ecologist, goes on the site to complete the condition assessment, our technology has already done the habitat classification, and it's made that available to them on the system so they can review it, they can download it on the app. When they go on, the app places them on the exact habitat that they are literally standing on. And they can see. They can see, okay, I'm standing on a grassland, and it's marked as a modified grassland. And being an ecologist, they can see, and they can decide whether they agree or disagree with it. And should they agree, they can say, start condition assessment. And they don't need to know the questions that need to be answered for condition assessing a modified grassland, because the app gives them that question one by one. It gives them the choices to choose from, as well as exactly as listed in the requirements. But because they're an ecologist, they know how to answer those questions. They just don't need to remember those questions anymore. They don't need to take those notes in the notepad, because they can answer the questions on the app. They can capture their notes on the app, and then they can take photographs, which then get all get linked to their notes and to their answers. So they're creating a very interactive and a deep evidence of what they're finding on the site, improving the determination, creating that evidence to support that determination later on, and as well as being able to work faster, because they don't need to then calculate anything. App does all of it. When they come back to this office, it connects to Wi Fi, and it uploads all the data back into the system, and they can instantly see a draft report getting created, which the review make changes sign, and the baseline is complete. So what would have taken days can be done in 30% to 40% of the time.
It's a collaborative. That's how it's collaborative because it makes them work really faster, takes away the grunt work for them, and it enables them to do work faster.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Yep, that's what I love about AI. When you use it correctly. Absolutely. And it must be seen as a collaboration, as you say. Now, moving on to nitty gritty questions, what are the cost implications, Shashin, of adopting this new technology?
[00:34:57] Speaker B: It reduces the costs, in short, and that's how I would describe it, it reduces the overall amount of spending that users would have to do, and that's effectively all technology is supposed to be doing. Right. So if you're using technology to make things simpler, to make things faster, the costs should come down. The most expensive part of the process is when you're having, when you're using your experts to do work on the sites or in the reporting, and as, because that effort goes down, that human effort goes down, the overall costs reduce for the end users as well. Now, I would like to answer this question a little bit more detail from point of view of two different users. So if for developers, it means that they can get better work done, but they can get it done faster and cheaper, but for an ecologist, and it's important for us because they are one of our key users as well, in addition to developers. So for ecologists, it means that if they are an ecologist that is providing this as a service to developers, they are able to complete more projects in the same amount of time. So sure, they're going to spend some money on the technology, but their net income increases. And we're finding that there's a lot of individual ecologists that are getting onboarded on our system as a partner ecologist because they can bring in their projects and they can get a very detailed assessment of the site done before they even go on the site, and they can deliver a really high quality output, which is otherwise only possible if the user is hiring a very large team of ecologists. They can deliver that, but they can deliver it really fast and in budget, so they get more business as a result. So I think this is through this technology. It's a win win situation where the service providers make more money while the business actually is saving money per project.
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Okay. So it's, I mean, to me, to me, it seems like really, it is a win win situation. And I guess, you know, it would be really interesting to hear, I know you were telling a story earlier that was, wasn't a good news story. It was a bad news story about the credits costing around half a million. But are you at a stage where, you know, you can talk a little bit about some of the positives, about some of the customers that you're working with, how the impact of the technology, you know, is having a positive effect for them?
[00:37:25] Speaker B: Oh, yes, of course. So I'll give you a couple of examples. One is it's a project that we're just starting. It's a very large site where the assessment had to be done and one of the wildlife trusts was asked to do the assessment. And this project is funded by Duffra.
And in this project, they are going to require to fund the project, therefore required the assessments to be done as per the statutory metric. So we partnered in this project. We are partnering with one of the engineering and environmental consulting companies and we propose an approach on how technology can be used to complete to meet the requirements of assessing what's on the site while being in the budget. So even for projects like those, it is already proving useful. Where we can bring the tech, we can provide the technology. And for large sites where wildlife trusts are providing their expertise, the assessments can be done within the budgets and in time. On developer side, we're finding that there was. I can give you a couple examples. There was one small project where a user thought they would not have to do BNG, and they submitted the application, but they cited.
[00:38:41] Speaker A: I missed that.
[00:38:42] Speaker B: Shashin, the user, the developer, the developer thought that they do not have to achieve BNG or do or deliver biodiversity net gain because their site was really small and the. And the grassland area was less than 25 meters square, which is the minimum requirement. But the site was left derelict or unused for many years and as a result, there was some undeveloped area, which was barren land, which was no habitat, but it had grown into something else in that time. So when the final assessment was done, when the authority looked at the land, they said, your effective area where you have habitats growing is now more than 25 meters square.
So they. They had to now achieve biodiversity net gain. And so we were able to assess, create the habitat plan. And this was after the application had been submitted, they were asked to do biodiversity element of it, bng element of it. So we were able to quickly assess, plan and show how 10%, give them a 10% net gain plan, which they then submitted to their authority. In terms of larger users, we're finding that some of the large developers, and again, can't name the customers, but large customers are starting to use us from the site identification time. So as we are now not just working with their projects teams, but we are now starting to work with their land acquisition teams where as they are looking at land, they use it to do a very detailed assessment of the site and have a very early view of how much total units can be created on it.
They're changing their ways of working in terms of when the site plans would, development plans would come in. So we're trying to bring in development plans as early as in some cases where the site evaluation is being done, and these are not final plans, but representation, but gives a very good sense of whether 10% is possible or not. And that gives them a very early view of what can I do on it? And that becomes part of the business intelligence on getting that competitive edge over making the right decisions or purchasing the site. And that could be a make or break for a success within a certain region. So that we're finding that some people are trying to smartly use it from that point of view.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: Excellent. So, I mean, I feel like, you know, we've covered an awful lot of ground. Are there any points that you would like to mention and leave our audience with?
[00:41:22] Speaker B: I think in the end, I would just like to say that this is very new and we completely understand that this domain is evolving and everybody's trying to figure out the right way to get it done.
In terms of users priorities, we understand that the immediate priority is to be able to get the planning applications out of the door and approved. But sooner or later, users do need to start thinking about how they are going to monitor and deliver the gain over 30 years, how they are going to keep track of the work that they have done year on year and evidence it back to the authorities. Because I know that the first projects that we started, they will deliver their gains in 30 years. And when those projects are delivering their gains in 30 years and proving to local authorities, I would most likely be retired with them. So I assume most of my users would be as well. So how are you planning to keep track of that data? How do you support, how do you, how will you show year on year the work that you've done?
They need to think about that, get ready for it, and then, I mean, use some sort of technology. It could be what we are providing it. They can find a solution themselves, but they really need to think long term and get ready for creating track of everything that they're doing over the next 30 years to deliver the projects.
[00:42:48] Speaker A: So I guess your hope I'm going to throw out one of those kind of random thoughts that comes into my mind that, you know, perhaps AI, bng AI will be sort of like the sales force of the BNG world.
[00:43:04] Speaker B: Well, I think you're reading our business strategy document, but, yeah.
[00:43:08] Speaker A: Brilliant.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's, that's the goal. And that's the goal yes, it would be like. It would be like Salesforce of fantastic.
[00:43:16] Speaker A: Well, I'm wishing you the very, very best. It sounds like an excellent tool, and it's been really a pleasure speaking to Shashin.
[00:43:23] Speaker B: Likewise, Jackie.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: Thank you so much.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Thank you.
