Collecdev Accelerates Their Development Process with Ratio.City
Managing the real estate development process is no small task. From acquisition to construction, builders rely on data-driven decisions to help them uncover opportunities and maximize their projects. Collecdev shares how they have used Ratio.City’s tools over the past two years to streamline the due diligence process and build better communities faster.
Meet Collecdev
Collecdev is a Toronto-based visionary development company dedicated to building better communities. The firm champions an integrated approach throughout the development process and is committed to being at the forefront of sustainable building practices while maintaining uncompromising standards of quality. Collaborating with industry leaders in all disciplines, the company takes pride in advancing innovative ideas, resulting in a collective vision. Collecdev communities are designed to create balanced and complete communities that reflect the way people truly want to live.
The Problem
Collecdev is constantly seeking out the latest technologies to keep their communities engaging, sustainable, and future-proofed. They make it their business to stay informed, do extensive research, and then incorporate the systems that help them respond to shifting market demands – a strategy that recently led Colledev to pursue an innovative new approach to development.
“It was tremendously difficult to search and find relevant information through the municipal and third-party websites—especially if you are new to the role,” says Guidzag Kassabian, Planning Coordinator at Collecdev. “Putting together a single planning analysis would take me almost a full day to comb the sites and compile the information into a single document. From there, I’d have to manually extract the relevant insights and try to put together something presentable to show to potential partners and people who were invested in the project. We needed a way to get the job done faster.”
As an innovation-led company, Collecdev was keen to explore potential solutions for urban data analysis, planning, and scenario modelling. So when we showed them the Ratio.City platform, everything fell into place.
The Results
Ratio.City offers powerful tools to help builders research the development potential of a site and translate data into actionable insights. Our platform allowed Collecdev to quickly find relevant policies about parcels, generate sun shadow studies, and create preliminary massings that they could share across their organization.
“Ratio.City took a complex problem and made it a lot easier, but what really separated Ratio.City from the competition was its ability to layer data and mass developments. That was the big feature that got the rest of the team involved and convinced,” says Guidzag. “It not only sped up my planning proposals and analysis, but it also allowed our development team to put together preliminary pro formas or feasibility analyses. Getting those inputs early in the development process changed the way we communicated with our internal teams, partners, and investors. We were able to turn around a holistic proposal in a fraction of the time it used to take us.”
Over the past two years, Ratio.City has continued to work with Collecdev to better understand challenges in their process and evolve our platform to meet those needs. From custom reports to new data layers, we keep adding features to make the due diligence process easier.
“They’ve been so receptive to our feedback and have introduced several new features that have directly benefited our business,” says Fernando Valenzuela, Director of Development. “I would without hesitation recommend it to any of my colleagues who are looking for a singular tool to help them analyze sites. Time is so critical in our industry and using Ratio.City allows us to be much more efficient in our roles.”