Are property developers and technology providers focusing on what occupiers need from smart buildings?
That was one of the key questions asked during a panel session during the Smart Buildings Show this week. And the answer was a clear ‘no’. There is a trend for buildings to be overspecified with poor onboarding of occupiers to technology, leading to technology graveyards as sensors go unused and their information not monitored.
Chaired by Chris Bunn, managing director of The Intelligent Building, the panel comprised:
- Diego Henriques, global director of workplace facilities and real estate at Reckitt Benckiser;
- Laura Woolcock, associate and workplace strategist at Savills;
- Elizabeth Nelson, co-founder at the Smart Building Collective; and
- Bex Moorhouse, a consultant on secondment to WPP as global FM program director at WPP.
Those familiar with the early days of BIM may recognise some of the panellists’ experiences.
Where’s the useful data?
Bex Moorhouse One of my roles at WPP is managing the global occupancy data that comes in. The challenge is getting accurate data and also telling the right story. Just because I can see a certain number of people coming in at a certain time doesn’t actually tell me that they’re performing at their best or that the workplace is facilitating that.
As a consultant going into businesses, I want to drive positive change. And currently, the off-the-shelf systems don’t really deliver that. I’m looking for systems that are user-friendly, remove friction, and pre-empt a lot of the things that I need to do.
For example, if I’m sat in a meeting room and the air quality is getting bad, I want the system to tell me the air quality is bad, so I can move somewhere else. Right now, there are some suppliers that are doing that, but I don’t necessarily think that we’re listening to the needs of the occupier as much as maybe we could. Just seeing where people are in a building is not telling me how their performance is positively impacted.
Overspecifying smart technology
Laura Woolcock I’m seeing occupiers wanting to fit more stuff into less space. If you’ve got a building that’s state of the art and it’s got [the right] credentials, how does that impact how much is being charged? Can your average mid-sized organisation afford that?
Is the market just overproviding overspec’d office space that the average occupier doesn’t need, but it’s offered at a premium rate? There are plenty of organisations that will pay for that, but there’s an entire market of mid-sized organisations that don’t have the budget to occupy state-of-the-art buildings (like Bishopsgate or 40 Leadenhall).
Tech says ‘no’
Laura Woolcock offered the following example of technology being developed and deployed with the best intentions but creating unintended consequences.
“One of my friends has just moved into a state-of-the-art smart building on New Oxford Street. This is an example of where the technology is just not quite cutting it. They have fresh air sensors to monitor the carbon dioxide levels in all the meeting rooms, which is brilliant from a well building standard.
“However, if the carbon dioxide levels get too high in a meeting room, it cancels the room bookings in that room until the levels of oxygen return to an appropriate level. So from one perspective the technology is working, but where is the user experience?
“Everybody knows what it’s like when you’re rushing around the office trying to find the meeting room in the first place. And then you think you’ve got it booked, but the system kicks you out because the carbon dioxide levels are too high. It just beggars belief. The recommendation is to have all of your meetings with the door open!”
Maybe it’s about paring some things back and looking at what is the best value-add to the people that are actually going to be occupying that space.
Technology graveyards
Elizabeth Nelson One of the biggest things we’re seeing is amazing, smart buildings that require a huge knowledge transfer to the occupier. The functionality of these buildings certainly isn’t being utilised to their full extent.
There are some buildings in Europe I’m aware of that have a wall of shame. Each time new tenants come in, it’s like starting over – they ask ‘why’ and ‘what do the sensors do’? The sensors stay on the wall and it becomes a bit of a graveyard of technology, some of which is probably still functioning and nothing is being done with it.
Let’s get very specific about what we want to do and when we want to do it, and get involved with the data and get it done.
Diego Henriques [Six months into this new role] I’m a little technology-fatigued already. I prefer to start small with something that is scalable, something that is usable. And what I hate is people who think that because we are a FTSE 12 organisation, a very large business, that we have deep pockets to spend on all this technology on a footprint of five and a half million square feet. It’s just not feasible to rent all those sensors to implement a solution that is just not financially attractive.
So, baby steps: we don’t want to have graveyards of technology or to try a technology and then no one jumps on it, or the data is not used, or the technology is very soon left behind.
Help now, not tomorrow
Bex Moorhouse Technology suppliers need to meet occupiers where they are today. There’s nothing worse than being shown this golden version, which your real estate portfolio is nowhere near. The discovery phase is important, but so is the roll-out of technology.
What I’ve seen in practice is a beautiful dashboard is created, but the engineer on the floor doesn’t know how to use it. You need every person that might interface with that technology to be brought on the journey to avoid the technology graveyard.
Laura Woolcock We’ve got buildings with ceilings full of incredible sensors, technology and cabling, but then a tenant might come in and rip it all out because it doesn’t correspond with the things that they want to be measuring or the systems that they want to use as part of their global portfolio. It’s incredibly wasteful. The tenant is paying for something that they’re not using. There needs to be flexibility: get the basics right and evolve as technology advances.
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