Buildings must be smart to be sustainable

 

Dan Drogman, CEO & Founder, Smart Spaces; Phillip Shalless - Senior Asset Manager, AXA IM Alts; Simon Robinson, Head of UK & ROW Services, Beazley

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The move towards corporate sustainability is gaining exponential momentum. We’ve seen companies move their targets, drop their targets, flounder and struggle to grapple with sustainability.

 

And as the climate crisis continues, the need to get it right is imperative. Companies are under pressure both from legislators and the wider public to boost their climate credentials. Failing to make concrete progress in sustainability could be costly. It could also drain the talent pool: young people in particular want the companies they work for, as well as buy from, to reflect their values, and sustainability is one of them.

 

So what’s the solution? One step businesses can take is reducing the energy they use in their offices. Lifts, escalators, fridges, lights, air conditioning units, heating, hot water, computers – they all require energy. But they don’t have to require more energy than they need. And this is the case in many offices, from Belfast to Beirut, from London to Luxembourg City. Lights stay on when there’s no one in the room. Rooms are made too hot or too cold. Lifts come too early or too late and have to be called again. It’s a massive waste of energy (and a massive waste of money).

 

Trying to deal with all these different functions in a building is a daunting task. In fact, it’s an impossible one. The first problem is gathering all the relevant information, so you know what’s going on and where, and how much energy is being used (or wasted). The second problem is acting on that information: making sure the lights go off when there’s no one there, that the room is the right temperature, that the water is hot or cold when it needs to be, and not when it doesn’t. In a big building, this amounts to a massive undertaking.

 

A human being might not be able to do this. But technology can. The twin innovations of the Internet of Things (IoT) – physical devices connected to the internet – and artificial intelligence can take care, respectively, of both the collection of information and the response. And they can do it in real time. Pressure sensors can detect footfall: where people are in a building, and how many people there are. AI can act on that information, turning off the lights or heating in parts of the building that are currently unoccupied. Lifts can arrive on time. Air can be heated or cooled to the optimal temperature.

 

All these changes add up to an enormous amount of energy and money saved. By doing no more than integrating the Smart Spaces app with IoT in the building, businesses and building owners can do their bit to protect the planet, strengthen their brand, move closer to Net Zero, appeal to a reservoir of climate-conscious talent – and save a small fortune in costs as well.

 

Smart Spaces is a global smart building platform that powers 85 million square feet of commercial real estate across 26 countries. Smart Spaces optimises environments for people and the planet by bringing efficiency to enterprise companies, knowledge to commercial real estate owners and convenience to employees. Having worked with some of the UK’s most iconic buildings, including 22 Bishopsgate in the City of London, Smart Spaces has become the go-to building management platform for companies looking to make buildings leaner, greener, cheaper to run and more comfortable.

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Discover more about Smart Spaces here.