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Dr Katherine Gunderson founded Grand Bequest to help coordinate the return of vacant buildings to community use. The company’s developing RegenerationOS platform is intended to help people identify and prioritise buildings, assemble evidence and participants, and move potential projects towards funding and delivery. The idea grew from Gunderson’s experience in Detroit and Scotland—and from her view that vacancy is often not one isolated property problem, but a coordination problem involving condition, ownership, community priorities, investment and delivery.
Why do buildings sit empty when communities need them?
That question is the starting point for Gunderson’s work. In an interview with Material Source, she describes seeing empty or at-risk buildings not simply as neglected structures, but as assets disconnected from the people, capital and decisions that could bring them back into use.
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That diagnosis matters in construction and regeneration because a building’s physical condition is only one part of whether a project can proceed. A site may also need a clear ownership path, a credible account of local needs, planning and design work, funding, and an organisation able to carry delivery forward. Gunderson and Grand Bequest describe these factors as fragmented across separate processes. Their approach is to treat the route from vacancy to reuse as a pipeline rather than assume that identifying an empty building is enough.
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The available evidence does not establish one current, official UK-wide count of vacant buildings. In 2026, Gunderson told Material Source that there were “over a million empty buildings across the UK”; the reviewed sources do not verify the underlying dataset or the definition behind that figure. A separate Crisis announcement from September 2023 reported nearly a quarter of a million properties unoccupied for at least six months in England, up from just over 200,000 in 2016. It also cited more than 100,000 households in temporary accommodation. Those are dated England figures, not 2026 counts or UK-wide statistics.
How did Grand Bequest develop?
Grand Bequest was founded in February 2020. Gunderson says the original idea was to use community events to bring vacant buildings to life. When the pandemic disrupted that plan, the company pivoted towards technology. The founding date is also recorded by The Data Lab, which supported the company in its early development.
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That development arc—from community events, to assembling building information, to a platform intended to coordinate regeneration work—helps explain the company’s focus. A list of empty properties can make a problem countable, but not automatically actionable. The harder task is to decide which buildings warrant attention, establish what is known and unknown, identify potential partners, and create a route towards a viable project.
What does RegenerationOS aim to do?
Grand Bequest describes RegenerationOS as an all-in-one platform for identifying empty buildings, prioritising them, coordinating projects and moving them towards funding and delivery. In the 2026 Material Source interview, Gunderson names residents, community groups, councils, architects and funders as potential participants. These are company descriptions of intended use, rather than an independent assessment of the platform’s results or availability.
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In Gunderson’s account, a resident could contribute a building’s location, name and photograph, helping create an evidence trail. That contribution is one possible starting point, not a substitute for a building survey, title investigation or planning assessment. A photograph can flag a site and help others locate it; it cannot establish structural condition, legal control or whether a proposed use is achievable.
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The larger ambition is to link those early observations to project coordination. If a building is prioritised, the next questions may involve who owns or controls it, what the community needs, what surveys and design work are required, how a proposal might be funded, and who can deliver it. The platform is presented as a way to organise that path. The available sources do not independently verify how fully each stage is currently implemented, or provide current pricing or access terms.
For construction practitioners, the distinction between information management and delivery is important. A digital record or priority score may help teams decide where to investigate and coordinate work. It does not by itself resolve the practical requirements of a project: surveying, design, consents, cost planning, procurement, construction and long-term operation remain separate tasks requiring the relevant professionals and decisions.
How does the Grand Grade prioritise a building?
Grand Bequest says its Grand Grade draws on Gunderson’s doctoral research and considers four dimensions. The company presents them as complementary factors in deciding which buildings may warrant attention:
| Factor | What the company says it considers |
|---|---|
| Cultural significance | A building’s cultural importance and relationship to local history or identity. |
| Social benefit or social return | Potential community benefit, including possibilities such as social housing or mixed use. |
| Adaptability | The building’s potential for extended community use or a different use over time. |
| Financial viability | The financial dimension of whether a potential project could be viable. |
This framework reflects a useful tension in adaptive reuse: significance and social value may argue for retaining a building, while condition, adaptation requirements and project economics affect whether a viable plan can be assembled. The four-factor approach makes those concerns visible together, rather than treating a building’s future as solely a property-value question.
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However, the sources do not disclose the factors’ relative weights, thresholds, underlying data quality rules or independent validation of resulting scores. The Grand Grade should therefore be understood as Grand Bequest’s described prioritisation method, not an independently validated industry standard or a definitive project appraisal. A score can help structure an early discussion; it cannot make the investment, conservation or construction decision on its own.
Gunderson gives an interview example in which adding a postcode, attaching an image, producing a score and sorting a building took about 35 seconds. That is an anecdote from the interview, not a controlled benchmark of platform performance, nor evidence that the subsequent feasibility and delivery work takes a similar amount of time.
What comes after a building is scored?
A priority list only becomes useful when it leads to a decision about what happens next. Gunderson describes a developing process that includes “go/no-go gates” and a proposed kick-off package for assessment. She says drones and advanced scanning could be used to create building files for architects and structural teams. The interview does not identify equipment or suppliers, establish that this workflow is generally available, or independently verify the claimed accuracy. It should be treated as a proposed part of the company’s approach, not a confirmed specification for every project.
For a construction team, this stage is where early screening must give way to appropriate professional investigation. A digital record may help define what is known and what needs checking. It is not the same thing as an intrusive survey, structural appraisal, measured survey or other assessment selected for the building and intended works. The source material does not set out a standard survey scope, so project teams would need to establish requirements with qualified professionals rather than infer them from a platform score.
The “go/no-go” idea can be understood as a way to avoid treating every listed building as an automatic redevelopment project. A decision gate could, in principle, prompt a team to gather more evidence, proceed to the next stage, change the proposed use or stop work on an unsuitable opportunity. The interview does not publish the gate criteria or a tested process, so those details should not be assumed.
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Why does Grand Bequest talk about bundles of buildings?
Gunderson argues that projects may be easier to organise when buildings are grouped into programmes at ward, council or regional scale. The proposed logic is that a pipeline of opportunities can give public bodies, communities and investors a more structured view of potential work than a series of unrelated sites. Bundling may also make shared preparation and coordination more feasible, although the sources do not demonstrate a measured cost saving or delivery outcome.
In the interview, Gunderson estimates that a small bundle of around 36–37 buildings could require about £4.5 million for early viability work and de-risking, before redevelopment costs. This is her illustrative estimate, not a published market benchmark or a general cost per building. The interview does not specify the assumptions, scope of work, building mix or location behind the figure. It should not be used as a construction budget or as a direct comparison between sites.
The distinction between early-stage costs and redevelopment costs is material. Surveys, design development, project structuring and other preparation may be needed before a scheme is ready for construction finance, but the amount depends on the buildings and the proposed programme. Gunderson’s example signals the scale of preparation she believes a bundle may demand; it does not provide a cost plan a council, owner or contractor can adopt without project-specific analysis.
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In September 2023, Crisis announced an investment in Grand Bequest through its Venture Studio, alongside a growth programme and network support. The announcement also reported a company target for 2024: analyse 100,000 dormant properties and make 11,000 potential investment opportunities available. That was a target stated in 2023. The reviewed sources do not establish whether it was achieved, so it should not be presented as a completed result.
A separate research partnership offers a different kind of evidence. In April 2026, the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute described work with Grand Bequest on measuring circularity in conservation and adaptive reuse. The partnership concerns how reuse may reduce demolition, construction waste and carbon emissions. The university account does not quantify savings, so it supports the fact and subject of the research collaboration, not a numerical environmental claim about projects delivered by the company.
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Grand Bequest’s current team page describes work spanning assessment, community evidence, investment preparation and delivery coordination. Taken together, the sources indicate a company positioning itself at the connection point between building information, community input and project preparation. They do not amount to an independent evaluation of platform accuracy, the number of buildings brought back into use, or the commercial performance of the model.
What does the story mean for adaptive reuse?
Gunderson’s central proposition is that vacant-building regeneration needs more than a catalogue of properties. It needs a way to connect local knowledge with assessment, prioritisation, investment preparation and the organisations that can deliver work. That is a coordination thesis: the blockage is not necessarily one person or one missing technology, but multiple decisions and responsibilities that do not automatically line up.
For owners, councils, community organisations and construction professionals, the practical implication is to separate the stages. First, identify a building and establish reliable basic information. Then test its significance, potential uses and community relevance; establish control and constraints; commission appropriate condition and design work; build a realistic financial case; and agree who has authority and capacity to deliver. A platform can help keep evidence and participants connected, but each step still requires sound information and accountable decisions.
Adaptive reuse can also make construction’s environmental and social consequences part of the same discussion as project viability. Retaining a building may avoid some demolition and new-material demand, while a changed use may address community needs. But those benefits are project-dependent: they need to be evaluated against the building’s actual condition, the proposed works and the alternatives. The Edinburgh Futures Institute partnership is studying how to measure circularity in this field; it is not evidence that every reuse project will produce a particular carbon or waste reduction.
Grand Bequest’s development from a community-events concept in 2020 towards RegenerationOS reflects an attempt to make that complicated path more legible and coordinated. Its strongest contribution, if the approach works as intended, would not be a score in isolation. It would be helping stakeholders move from “this building is empty” to a defensible decision about whether and how it can serve people again. The sources establish the ambition and the developing framework; they do not yet establish independently verified outcomes at scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Grand Bequest a construction contractor?
The sources describe it as a technology and regeneration coordination company, not as a contractor carrying out building works. Its platform concept is intended to help organise evidence, project participants and routes towards funding and delivery; construction delivery itself still depends on project owners and the professionals they appoint.
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The 100,000-property analysis and 11,000-opportunity figures were targets reported in Crisis’s 2023 announcement. The sources reviewed here do not confirm whether either target was reached.
Does the Edinburgh partnership prove that reuse reduces carbon by a specific amount?
No quantified savings are reported in the University of Edinburgh account. It describes research into measuring circularity and the potential relevance of reduced demolition, construction waste and carbon emissions, rather than publishing a measured result for Grand Bequest projects.
