When Property Week launched the search at Mipim 2017, we had no idea of how time-consuming it would be or how obsessed we would become with it.

The idea was to identify the 100 most powerful people in property from across the worlds of agency, development, investment, finance, proptech and beyond. The emphasis was on the entrepreneurs, disruptors and innovators working within property rather than with it, so no lawyers were included and very few government figures.

My rationale was that the socio-political context is so volatile at the moment that no one external seems to be exerting any lasting influence on the industry and that it is those working within the industry who are the true masters - and mistresses - of their own destinies.

We were also looking primarily for UK protagonists - the people wielding direct influence over the UK property market - although there are inevitably a number of major international players on the list given how active they have been in the market over the past year.

The list has taken us months to painstakingly collate. Initially, we reached out to our audience via social media for nominations - a process that generated more than 200 names, some of which were not on our radar. We then slashed the list down to around 120 with input from our sponsors, Dentons and Malcolm Hollis, and went out to our editorial advisory board for their input.

Exerting influence

This is where the real hard work started and we began to thrash out potential rankings. With the focus very much on people who have made a real impression over the past year and are still exerting influence, we soon realised that we needed to create a ‘Ones to Watch’ list to accommodate those who had recently been promoted or moved and had not yet had time to prove their worth.

So now we were compiling two lists - and the process was about to become more challenging still. We started to assess the top 50 across five metrics: financial clout, deal-making prowess, industry knowledge/insight, disruptiveness/innovation and general influence.

This was to help with the ranking but also to produce our playable Power 100 deck of cards - complete with Trump card (see what we did there) - which were handed out to everyone who attended our power-packed Power 100 event tonight, hosted by Dentons.

We then used the metrics more loosely to rank the rest of the Power 100 and sense-checked the full list with industry experts. We think the resulting list, while inevitably subjective, is as comprehensive and credible as you can get.

Encouragingly, it was more diverse than we expected and hand on heart, that diversity was not manufactured. More encouragingly still, those with the greatest power clearly understand the great responsibility that comes with that power.

Yes, there are people who could and perhaps should be on the list and are not. And yes, you may disagree with the rankings of those who have made the cut. But we hope it provokes more debate than argument and that it is seen as the celebration of the industry it is intended to be.

We would also like to think it is the first of many Power 100s to come. Enjoy!