Thomas Collins

Thomas is leveraging his property sector vantage point, AI insights and McKinsey strategy experience to bring much-needed innovation to the sector.

He runs operations for L1 Property’s UK residential platform: c.3,000 homes across major UK cities outside London, over £300m of gross assets, managed in-house through their own managing agent, QED Property Management.

L1 operates in-house because they see that returns are made or lost in operations. Service quality, compliance and cost all come down to execution, building by building. Maintenance drives resident satisfaction, safety and repair obligations, and a large share of operating cost, yet across the sector it still runs on phone calls, email chains and spreadsheets.

So Tom built QED Labs to automate maintenance management and drive performance across their own portfolio first. QED Labs takes a repair report from a resident over WhatsApp, works out the problem, raises the job, instructs the contractor and chases it to completion. It reviews every open job every ten minutes and escalates anything safety-critical or uncertain to a property manager. Every message and decision is logged, so every repair on the portfolio has a complete, auditable record. New homes can be added without adding admin in proportion, resolving repairs faster for residents, and using real repair data to plan capex and assess acquisitions.

QED Labs has run across their portfolio since October 2025, integrates with property management systems, and is now used by letting agents and block managers across the UK.