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The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published comprehensive new regulations for its members’ use of AI, a step the standard’s authors say will have the benefit of helping to usher in a new phase of innovation for the sector.

Co-author Darius Pullinger said publication of the standard will discourage complacency among some members as use of AI accelerates, strengthen public trust and confidence – and importantly, he said, ensure the human element remains a focus.

The technology is there “to achieve better outcomes for the profession, for clients and ultimately for the public as well,” Pullinger said in a recent interview. “That’s achieved by proper engagement by members, removing complacency, keeping humans and keeping the surveyor in the loop.”

The standard was published this fall and takes effect on March 9, 2026. It sets out mandatory requirements and best-practice expectations for RICS members and regulated firms worldwide.

Key requirements include:

• Governance and risk management. Firms must implement clear policies around data use, AI system governance and risk documentation.
• Professional judgment and oversight. Surveyors must assess the reliability of AI outputs and remain accountable for all work, applying “professional skepticism and expertise throughout.”
• Ethical development of AI. For firms developing their own AI systems, the standard mandates assessments of data quality, stakeholder involvement, sustainability impact and legal compliance.

RICS acting president elect Maureen Ehrenberg said in a statement, “This standard ensures surveyors remain at the forefront of innovation while protecting clients, data and public trust. It supports the profession’s adaptation to rapidly advancing technologies while reinforcing the core role of the surveyor – to provide trusted, independent and ethical advice.”

In Canada, the Canadian Institute of Quantity Surveyors and RICS maintain a reciprocal recognition agreement for qualified members.

Standards co-author Carys Rowlands explained the RICS Standards and Regulation Board first proposed the development of a professional standard in recognition of the extent to which AI was becoming a regularly employed tool across valuation, construction, infrastructure and land services.

“Our members are beginning to use AI day to day, and they’re using it sometimes in fairly significant ways in the delivery of services to their clients,” said Rowlands.

Alerting members to risks

Publishing the standard and spreading the word among RICS members globally will alert members to the risks of using AI and boost knowledge, said Rowlands.

“We did a survey of our members to understand who was using AI already, who wasn’t, who felt comfortable with it, who felt a little bit nervous. It revealed quite a big spread of comfort and competence in terms of using AI,” she said. “The standard is aimed at upskilling our members as well as to make them feel more comfortable in using essentially a technology that we know they’re all going to have to grapple with if we want the profession to remain relevant.”

RICS is the first professional body to have issued a standard that sets mandatory requirements rather than merely guidance or information, the authors say.

Among RICS members, AI has frequently been used to take meeting notes and write minutes, similar to other industries, Rowlands said, but now more often specific AI tools are being developed within the sector for report writing, data analysis, project management and project planning.

“Obviously the risk in actually the AI producing erroneous output or introducing bias into the system and so on carries a much more serious risk if our members aren’t alert to it,” she said.

Even more cutting edge are cost-prediction models for very large projects or significant retrofits, Rowlands said.

“Those cost-prediction models are something that AI is capable of producing, but you’ve got to look really, really carefully at the data inputs to understand how that AI model has been trained,” she said.

Pullinger said technology companies are getting more bold in their promises and ambitions for what these systems can do.

“There is a real fallibility to this technology and so not used properly it could lead to a real corrosion of the profession,” he said.