EDGE founder and chief executive Coen van Oostrom has taken his smart buildings tech global with the launch of EDGE Next, predicting that smart buildings are “going to take over the whole of the industry” post-Covid.
Van Oostrom has launched EDGE Next to provide technology to tenants and landlords so they can monitor the performance of the property, and in doing so, create smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings.
The platform can monitor air quality, the number of people in a room, and make offices safer for work during “Covid and beyond”, Van Oostrom said.
Talking to EG about the launch, he added that as working from home becomes even more prevalent post-Covid, EDGE Next can help show and organise which desks and meeting rooms are free to use, and when these rooms and workstations need to be cleaned after use.
It can also guide tenants and landlords into a post-Covid, working-from-home future. “No one really knows how much we are going to work from home and how to organise that, so we will need data to support this – and the system we have supports this in the right way,” he said.
Van Oostrom added that the rise in demand for smart buildings technology from tenants and landlords has been like “a big bang”.
He said: “If you look at the market as a whole, we have no doubt, zero doubt, that smart buildings are going to take over the whole of the industry.”
Coronavirus has played a big role in boosting this demand, van Oostrom said. “Covid will accelerate everything that was already happening. We knew smart buildings were coming because of sustainability and a focus on health, but we didn’t expect it to go as fast as it did.”
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