AI in Site Selection Is Coming to LocationOne, LOIS, and Lasso

Here is what is changing, who it will help, and what we are building next. 

AI is part of nearly every technology conversation and when we talk about AI with our user community, the conversation remains focused on the practical workflows.

• Can AI help me find economic development properties for my projects?
• Can AI reduce the time it takes to create and distribute a Site Selection Request for Information (RFI) to economic developers?
• Can AI reduce the time for economic developers to respond to a Site Selection RFI?
• Can AI help me find data that we already collected during earlier site selection projects?

Those are the questions shaping how we are introducing AI in site selection across Strata Platforms.

Conversational AI search will start rolling out as a standard feature within LocationOne, LOIS, and Lasso. It will be available to all users and included within the existing platforms. The capability will give a new way to search by asking questions in everyday language. Here is what that means depending on where you sit in the location decision-making process.

For Corporate Site Selection Leaders

When a new project begins, the pressure to identify viable location options can build quickly. You may know the general requirements, but turning those requirements into a productive property search can still take time.

With conversational search on LocationOne, a free website for all to see where properties from dozens of economic development organizations are listed, you will be able to reduce search and scrolling time by describing the location a project needs.

You might ask:

• “Show me rail-served industrial sites larger than 100 acres.”
• “Find buildings over 200,000 square feet near a port.”
• “Which properties meet the acreage and transportation requirements for this project?”

At launch, the AI will focus on helping you search and find matching information. Future phases will help our user community summarize and compare results.

The immediate value is simple. You start with project requirements in your own words and move more quickly toward properties that deserve to be moved to the next stages of a site selection process.

For Professional Site Selectors

Professional site selectors have access to a tidal wave of information, must find accurate data quickly, and they receive hundreds of responses from economic development organizations when they request using the formal Site Selection RFI process. When consider the portfolio of active projects a site selection professional manages each year, data quality becomes a high priority.

Conversational AI is intended to make that process more direct.

Within Lasso, our property database and project management software, our user community will be able to search the confidential site selection project information stored within their own account.

You might ask:

• “Which properties have been submitted for food processing projects?”
• “Show me rail-served sites we have evaluated before.”
• “Which properties are larger than 100 acres?”

The AI will search the information and surface relevant records. This creates a faster path to the information you want to review and apply to the project.

We are also developing another capability specifically around the Site Selection RFI process flow.

Site selectors send RFIs in many formats, most commonly as Excel workbooks or Word documents. The next phase of AI development in Lasso will help import RFI formats from a broad number of source documents, interpret the questions, and organize the questions into the standardized data collection methodology inside of Lasso, to prepare the RFI for efficient distribution across a State or Region.

Once the economic development participants have provided their project responses to the project, Lasso will then convert the information back into the specific format the corporate real estate leader or site selector has requested.

We have not announced a launch date yet, but the AI capability will be included for all Lasso users when it becomes available.

For Utility and Railroad Economic Developers

Utilities and railroads manage large service territories, extensive property portfolios, and relationships with economic development partners across many communities, regions, and States. For these utility and rail economic developers, finding the exact combination of property, infrastructure, transportation, and location characteristics can still take time to search and obtain for every new business inquiry received.

Conversational AI search will make it easier to ask direct questions of the data in your LOIS map viewer or Lasso property data account.

A utility economic developer might ask: “Show me industrial sites within our service territory that have due diligence documents completed and attached to the property record.”

A railroad economic developer might ask: “Which properties in our service territory have the natural gas capacity to serve this project?”

A team could search its own Lasso project history to find properties that have already been evaluated or submitted for similar opportunities. This is especially valuable for organizations working across broad geographies. Instead of relying on someone to remember where a property record is stored or how a specific field was entered, users can begin with the question they are trying to answer.

The first phase is about surfacing the data. Future phases will build toward summarizing and comparing the information that is found.

For Economic Developers

For economic developers, property and project information accumulates over time. There are active property listings being marketed on a website, older RFI submissions from previous projects, numerous spreadsheets managed by different people, property due diligence documents, community data, and information gathered by current and former team members. That history is valuable, but it is not assembled in one place and it is not easy to search.

Conversational AI will give economic development teams a more natural way to work with their historical information.

Inside LOIS, users and website visitors will be able to search the properties and location information available through the map viewer on the website.

Inside Lasso, users will be able to search their own account data, including property information and prior project activity.

A user might ask:

• “Which available buildings have loading docks?”
• “Show me sites that qualify for New Markets Tax Credits.”
• “Which properties have been submitted for automotive projects?”

The value from AI comes from assembling years of past property and project history that your organization has already collected. When teams are small, when responsibilities shift, when teammates are stressed, then assembling years of project history in one place with the help of Lasso with AI, will result in a calmer and more productive organization.

What Comes After Conversational Search

The Conversational AI rollout is the beginning. This first capability is intentionally focused on search and discovery. Users will be able to ask questions and find relevant property or project information within LocationOne, LOIS, and Lasso.

The next major capability in development is designed to improve how RFIs move between corporate real estate leaders, site selectors, and economic development organizations. Lasso will be able to ingest an RFI in the original format provided by a corporate real estate leader or site selector, interpret the questions, and organize the information into a structured project. Once responses are complete, Lasso will convert the response data back into the specific format requested by the person leading the project.

This means site selectors can continue working in the formats that fit their process, while economic development organizations can manage the response through Lasso.

Later phases are expected to add summarization and comparison capabilities.

We are also planning for AI to help draft RFI responses using information from a user’s uploaded documents and account data.

For example, an economic development team may already have an answer stored in a previous project file, spreadsheet, property document, or internal record. A future AI capability would help find that information and suggest a draft response for the user to review. The user would remain responsible for reviewing and approving the answer. The opportunity is to help teams begin with the information they already have rather than starting from a blank page.

To achieve the data quality that our site selection and corporate end-users demand, the AI Assist within RFI responses is planned to data mine each user’s own documents and account data. It will not search web sources. We would like to hear from our user community about whether they would like to add a set of trusted web sources to their RFI response toolset. Those are the conversations that help us decide what to build next.

Moving From Search to Selection

The most valuable ideas behind our software begin in conversations with the people using it. Someone shows us where a process slows down, where valuable information becomes difficult to reach, or where a better process could help a team.

Those conversations are shaping the next generation of LocationOne, LOIS, and Lasso. Conversational AI search is the first step. Then, AI Assist in both the RFI creation and RFI response drafting will continue delivering time back to our user community.

These capabilities support our larger vision: to radically accelerate the search-to-selection process.

That vision guides our mission to transform location decision-making by connecting people, properties, and community information more effectively. As AI in site selection continues to evolve, we look forward to building with it, alongside the corporate leaders, site selectors, utilities, railroads, and economic developers in our user community who move investment decisions forward every day.