L&Q, one of the UK’s largest housing associations with a portfolio of over 105,000 homes, has signed a three-year agreement to deploy OpenSpace’s Visual Intelligence Platform across its active development portfolio. The partnership addresses L&Q’s need for a reliable, continuous visual record of construction across multiple sites and contractors, covering quality assurance, dispute resolution and compliance with the Building Safety Act 2022. For a developer and long-term owner of residential buildings, the evidence of how a building was constructed matters for decades after practical completion.
The Building Safety Act 2022 changed the compliance calculus for residential developers. For higher-risk buildings, it is no longer enough to complete construction to a good standard: developers must be able to demonstrate it, with a documented record of what was built and how, maintained throughout the building’s operational life. OpenSpace addresses this directly. A 360° walkthrough of a site at every stage of construction creates the kind of time-stamped, searchable visual record that satisfies both internal governance requirements and the statutory information obligations that come with building and owning residential properties at scale. L&Q’s decision to deploy OpenSpace across active developments including Greenwich, Plumstead, Barking Riverside and multiple schemes in Merton reflects how seriously leading UK housing providers are taking this shift: the record of construction is not a back-office concern but a core operational asset.
Beyond compliance, the practical benefits L&Q describes are consistent with what OpenSpace customers see across the residential development sector. Speed of capture matters because documentation only gets done consistently when it fits naturally into a site manager’s day. Image quality and upload reliability matter because a record that cannot be trusted is not a record at all. And portfolio-wide visibility matters because the teams that need to understand what is happening on site are rarely on site themselves: commercial teams, management and quality inspectors all need access to an accurate, shared picture of progress without depending on constant travel or manual reporting. OpenSpace brings this together in a single platform, giving residential developers the visibility and evidence they need to deliver better outcomes, resolve issues faster and meet their regulatory obligations.
By: Rebecca Miles
