COMMENT: The future of the built environment is smart. But this doesn’t mean implementing technology for technology’s sake. Rather, smart must be the result of a conversation among tenants, owners and technologists focused on the outcomes that the users of buildings actually want.
Although the phrase has been around for several years, the focus on smart buildings is accelerating, driven by three trends: the increasing use of technology in our personal lives, the changing nature of our professional lives, including the recent experience of working from home, and the global imperative of our time – the climate crisis.
The market for smart buildings is rocketing and is forecast to be worth $180bn (£130bn) by 2025. But we’re just at the start of that journey, and it’s imperative that real estate gets smart now, and gets smart right.
While many buildings now involve a few aspects of smart technology, there is no consensus on what makes a building smart. Everyone understands technology will continue to be both a significant driver of change and a fundamental part of the solution. But the changes we make as an industry need to start not from the technology but from the people.
Smart must put the user first – beginning with the outcomes the user wants and needs from a building and only then deploying the relevant technologies to deliver those outcomes. An outcomes-focused smart building uses the necessary – and best – technology to provide outstanding experiences for its tenants, operators, owners and wider society.
Straightforward approach
To ensure this investment is well made, the industry needs a global approach that is straightforward. We need a usable blueprint to describe, create and measure the smart buildings of today and tomorrow.
Over the past year, we have created the WiredScore Smart Council, leading tenants, landlords and other property professionals from across the world coming together to establish an authoritative perspective from within the industry. From thousands of hours of conversation, we have heard that a smart building needs to deliver against the four outcomes that are most valuable to building users:
- An inspirational experience, a workplace that attracts and delights, with flexible and personalised services;
- A sustainable building through a reduced whole-life carbon footprint by using technology to operate the building more efficiently;
- Cost efficiencies created by optimising the building’s performance;
- Future-proof by design and able to adapt to new demands.
Actually creating that smart building requires two different lenses. Firstly, the view of the user: does the building provide functionality to delight and attract people, and resolve the challenges that users typically face? These functionalities include individual and collaborative productivity, health and wellbeing, sustainability, community and services, maintenance and optimisation, and security.
Secondly, the technological view: are the foundations to deliver those functionalities in place, including digital connectivity, building systems, landlord integration networks, governance, cybersecurity and data sharing?
Introducing SmartScore
At this critical time for the market, when building owners and tenants need to work together to attract employees back into the office, smart buildings will play a key role in creating more attractive, efficient and sustainable workplaces that allow individual productivity to flourish, and where people are excited to meet and collaborate.
That’s why we’ve launched SmartScore, a new certification for smart buildings aimed at providing clarity, definition and measurement for the growing smart building industry. Developed in conjunction with the WiredScore Smart Council, the certification will help establish a common standard for smart buildings that defines a smart building in relation to the outcomes it delivers.
Not only will SmartScore enable the most advanced landlords in the world to better understand and communicate the user functionality and technological foundations of their buildings, but by setting a common framework for measuring and defining the elements of a smart building, it will also give landlords and developers confidence to innovate and improve their buildings in a way that improves the experience of their tenants and delivers a measurable ROI for themselves.
William Newton is president and managing director of WiredScore
