What Federated Data Means for the Future of Surveying with James Garner FRICS and Ashley Stewart-Noble #242

The RICS Podcast

The RICS Podcast
What Federated Data Means for the Future of Surveying with James Garner FRICS and Ashley Stewart-Noble #242
May 31, 2026 Episode 242
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

Across the built environment, traditional centralised approaches to data management are being challenged by increasingly complex project teams, diverse data sources, and rising regulatory expectations around governance, transparency and accountability.

In this episode of the RICS Podcast, Ashley Stewart‑Noble is joined by James Garner FRICS, Head of AI and Data at Gleeds, to demystify federated data and explore what it means for surveyors accessing and interrogating information across multiple systems, teams and organisations, without the need to copy or move a single file.

This episode of The RICS Podcast covers:

  • What federated data is, and what its use really means for surveyors 
  • Why rapidly growing project data and tighter governance is moving federated data up the agenda at this point in time
  • The difference between federated analytics and federated learning
  • What surveying can learn from other sectors’ use of data
  • Why professional judgement, AI literacy and audit trails are essential to trustworthy use of federated data

James Garner FRICS: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesgarner1976/

Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors:

https://www.rics.org/uk/

RICS Podcast Page

https://www.rics.org/podcast/

Kieran Halliwell

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kdhalliwell/

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