Why Brookfield Residential put data governance ahead of AI

Editor’s note: This installment of Built for This is part of HousingWire’s ongoing examination of homebuilding leaders and companies improving their businesses in a housing market that offers little outside help. Brookfield Residential CIO Brandon Sharp will take the stage at the HousingWire Homebuilder Summit, Oct. 19–21 in Dallas.When Brandon Sharp applied for a job to join the ranks of homebuilders in 2003, he had no homebuilding experience.Sharp, now Chief Information Officer at Brookfield Residential, was interviewing for a controller job with Standard Pacific in Austin. The division president wanted somebody who knew the business. Sharp flexed into explaining why he should hire somebody who didn’t. He answered without missing a beat.“Because I am going to own the data more than anyone has ever owned the data,” Sharp recalls telling him.He got the job, and 23 years later, Sharp describes what followed as a rigorous education in how difficult keeping that promise actually is.“This stuff is hard,” he says. “It is genuinely, notoriously hard.”Despite enormous investments in enterprise software, reporting systems, and business intelligence, Sharp, now an advanced student in the fi...