Challenges
With so many and the sheer variety of the pressures across the Built Environment we talked to other professionals and chose a few that could headline. Every organisation is different and sharing of ideas is useful, if you can get it into one main place (one of the additional poll feedbacks is about centralised information hubs). After Covid-19 and the back to work (or not) demands it made on us, employee engagement and labour continue to be impacted. In-house coffee shops, or more hybrid working arrangements dominate the column inches about what employees want, but often it is far simpler, and more work focused tools are what is required. It feels like compliance and the management of it was already tricky (especially in large or multi-site organisations) and as we now rightly tackle climate change, net zero and ESG, the added complexity lends itself to a more digitalised approach. Costs of course remain the obvious one, from labour and materials to energy, businesses are experiencing painful rises across the board. Technology such as solar panels can help to reduce costs over time whilst requiring significant investment, but elimination of wasted energy can be significant though and the measures could be considerably less cost! You voted, we compiled…………..
Smart is overused.
We hear so much about smart this and smart that. It has become the norm for anything ‘connected’ and it is now bordering on misleading. A connected device is only ‘smart’ if it is used in a way that brings benefits, insights or results, and often they are delinquent in this task. Setting up a series of siloed devices or solutions in a building that then end up working against each other for instance, is a long way from smart. Technology in 2024 can be a fine line of both brilliant and (often) useless because whilst it has so much potential it also has borders. Organisations tend to tackle smart technology as a single solution (such as those we have chosen for our Poll), but ideally, they should still be within a wider strategy and built to sit within a unified platform that can really deliver results. When we add connected lighting or emergency lighting, as an example, it should be with a holistic approach that it can be used alongside other smart solutions. If we added people counting or occupancy devices, we want to understand if the results can be used to save energy in lighting or heating, so it is key they are unified? A clear long-term strategy will pay huge dividends in the short- and long term value, performance and cost of your technology investment.
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Smart Emergency Lighting is a great way to be safer, compliant and more cost effective.
Or consider Indoor Air Quality to give performance and staff wellbeing a boost?
