Smart Buildings Explained with Pete Swanson

Andrea Ciaffi

Hey, Pete. Welcome to the Digital Construction podcast. It's great to have you here.

Pete Swanson

Likewise, Andrea, Great to be here.

Andrea Ciaffi

Amazing. So today we have Pete Swanson, who is the digital technology lead at most McDonald's. He also has a lot of experience with previously worked at WSP and the Lend Lease. He has been supporting the digital construction industry for a long time. I met him at a conference a few years ago talking about digital construction and I've learned a lot from.

Andrea Ciaffi

The things he has shared because. It's very passionate supporter of the digital construction industry and he's always happy to share his knowledge. So I'm very excited to have you here Pete. But before we start, could you share us could share with us a little bit of your career journey and what led you to work in the digital technology space and the construction industry?

Pete Swanson

Of course, Andre. So I started my career back in the last Millennium, got a while there now, and that was in audio visual, so I always have an interest in technologies actually started in theatre in high school, so lighting and sound and.

Pete Swanson

And that flow come naturally into an interest in audiovisual systems and technologies, and the way that people use them, whether to entertain, to educate as part of their business, and so on. And and I guess, you know, back then the technology was really very basic compared to what we have today.

Pete Swanson

Some might remember that we used to have these. All those projectors and they had three tubes. We called them three gun projectors, 1 red 1. Green 1 blue. Yeah, it was very. Much an analogue wall. Even in the sense of electronics, no networking, etc. But what you could already see was that.

Pete Swanson

People had a. Passion for wanting the tech to work well for them, and unfortunately very often either because of limitations of the tech or the way the systems were designed, or the way that people were trained on them, that wasn't always delivered. And so that really was kind of the the outset for me this this interest.

Pete Swanson

Stay in how do you deliver really great solutions for people? You know where they work, where they learn, where they're being entertained and through the lens of audio visual. And we started to get exposure to that.

Pete Swanson

And I guess then a passion for the extension of that into, you know, not just the audio visual in the room, but you know, the lighting, the blinds, perhaps controlling the air conditioning and so. And that was the journey for me. He threw into what today is the the smart buildings industry.

Pete Swanson

Through that time I started as a contractor. So I'm very much understand the reality of what happens on site. You know, whether that's about the difficulty of, you know, actually installing equipment to the the long hours, whatever else. And the the hard work to make something.

Pete Swanson

Actually come into existences, but I also guess as a a contractor. Could see that there was opportunities to do things better early in the process.

Pete Swanson

So I was very lucky when I was working in the UK to actually work for Goldman Sachs for a year as part of their AV design team, and that gave her my first real view of, I suppose the difference between the client perspective of what they wanted versus maybe the contractors perspective.

Pete Swanson

Moving to here to Australia in 2002 worked initially for again the systems integrator. But again I could see this opportunity just to try and help to scope things better so that the clients expectations were better met and the outcomes were delivered more reliably by the contractor.

Pete Swanson

So I joined a consulting firm in the two. Present for what eventually became WSP here in Australia and set up an audio visual team which then also grew into technology integration and so on. So that was a real passion for me. I was also passionate all the way about really being able to focus on certain techs.

Pete Swanson

So I spent time with a a leading. Audio, visual and integration company, a vendor manufacturer a MX which. Became acquired by Harman. And really have an opportunity there to kind of focus on those systems, but also focus on how to support the value chain.

Pete Swanson

And I guess that started to give me perspectives as well on the realities of deploying tech at scale into the built environment and the fact that not everything works all the time. You know when you're in the business providing the distribution, providing the support.

Pete Swanson

You come to understand that inevitably some things fail and it's not about whether things fail, it's about the ability to. Well then maybe one from there. My sort of next part of the arc was moving into the property construction development space, working for land lease for five years and again for.

Pete Swanson

Me. That's very much. About, I guess the opportunity for that integrated view, you know so often. Depending on what role we play in the industry, you know for the consultant we have a certain perspective with with the contractor. We have certain involvement, the distributor and so on.

Pete Swanson

But when you're in an integrated business like Lend Lease, you can really get a a fuller view of the whole process and the operational side of things. And it also that's always been a passion for me, you know, while it's very important that we build effectively and we use the best tools to actually construct environments, for me what's important is what happens after we hand them over.

Pete Swanson

So that operational phase and really making sure that the tech we deploy is effective is realistic to support both in terms of reliability. Cost and so on and is delivering genuine benefit. So during my time at Lendley, so I was lucky to work in some of the emerging digital areas.

Pete Swanson

We were looking at ways to develop solutions for smart workplace and smart buildings from an analytics perspective in terms of getting data out of the buildings and then providing insights and helping people to optimise the way they were occupying those buildings as tenants.

Pete Swanson

Or, you know, operating them from an owner perspective. One of the things I realized was that the industry is very complex as I already knew, but also very much still emerging. There's a lot of challenges in how we define projects, how we scope them, how we.

Pete Swanson

Deliver that and that's what brought me back to where I am again at the moment, which is consulting. So let's say, you know, I've sat in most of the seats around the table, so I guess I can give a reasonable perspective on what's likely to happen at each stage of the project.

Pete Swanson

What may or may not be realistic, and also how we can get the best out of each part of the project team. By helping them to be able to do what they do really well and not putting them in a situation where you know they're they're trying to deliver something that you know wasn't really very natural or wasn't very achievable.

Pete Swanson

So yeah, that's that's me in a nutshell.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah. Thank you for the introduction. I'm, I'm I always enjoy to listen to how different people end up working in the digital space for the construction industry and to and really appreciate how we all came here in different ways from different angles and that also proves the skills that are required to be part of this transformation.

Andrea Ciaffi

Like, it's not just one thing that you need to know. There is so much. But yeah, thank you for the introduction today. We are talking about smart buildings and smart cities. And as you can see, Pete is the right person to to get to talk about that.

Andrea Ciaffi

But before we start, we understand that there are so many bad words in this industry. Smart buildings may feel like one of those. It can you tell us what makes a building?

Pete Swanson

Smart, but I can tell you that for a number of years it caused me to physically cringe when people said smart building. Because you're right, you know that we have so many buzzwords we contend with the. Hype cycle all.

Pete Swanson

The time you know a lot of the technologies that we use are somewhere up towards the peak of the hype cycle or they've they've gone into the through and heading towards the. Better productivity, but smart buildings I guess. He's actually for me, kind of settling into the market.

Pete Swanson

You know, the term has been around for quite a while, but I think now we're starting to understand collectively for the smart building is actually really a concept. It's not one thing, you know, you can't just go out and buy a smart building as it were, but.

Pete Swanson

What you can do? Is recognise that when we're talking about a smart building. We're talking about aspiration to deliver really great experiences and performance and sustainable outcomes by using technology in a building. So you know in a nutshell for me, that's what a smart building is.

Pete Swanson

But of course, depending on what kind of environment we're talking about, you know be at a hospital, be in a stadium, university, government institution, corporate environment, you know, transport hub, whatever it might be, there's gonna be variance on that definition of what smart means.

Pete Swanson

So in one sense, it's simple because we're aspiring to deliver a great outcome. Using technology. On the other hand, it's highly complex because really what we do is unpicking the purpose of the building and then understanding where and why we could deploy any given technology and then think about how we bring them all together as an integrated whole.

Pete Swanson

So yeah, I think you know it's it's a complex space, but I think as an industry, we're starting to understand that. Yet the banner smart buildings does does have something that we can all start to to sort of create a line together with.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, I can't understand why he makes you cringe, but we we also need to start somewhere, right? We need a name. We need to name things. And sometimes there are new things and we people come up with all, like, creative names. But whatever from.

Andrea Ciaffi

Your point of view, the main technologies that enable a building to become smart and what what's the difference between a smart building and traditional?

Pete Swanson

Yeah. Look, I think so if there's any traditional building has a number of systems in it, but they're deployed separately, then the difference with the small building is thinking about how we can bring those systems together. So the very. First component of that is actually understanding how we.

Pete Swanson

Want to communicate what sort of? Network to we want to. Deliver in order to enable them to communicate with each other, and also to communicate with other systems or solutions that we might bring in under the banner smart pot on the heels of that connectivity is, of course, security.

Pete Swanson

You know, once we start to bring all the systems together on, you know typically today what we call an ICN and integrated communications network then yes, we have the convenience and the reliability of a more robust network. But we've also we've got to make sure that's well secured.

Pete Swanson

So the connectivity followed by security is the starting point. Then we have to look at the question. Of what are? We doing now that we've enabled these systems to communicate, you know, in some cases what we're doing is we're actually enabling individual systems to just communicate directly with each other, particularly where we need the extremely real time, extremely low latency.

Pete Swanson

Interaction. It's typically going to be best to do that direct between systems, but what we're also looking at, of course from the smart perspective is the data from the systems. So the information that can allow one system to better understand conditions and respond to them and look a classic example here is you know we have occupancy sensors.

Pete Swanson

They have building. System by enabling the occupancy sensor data to be shared with the building management system that can then better understand why this meeting room has got. Hot if we. Overlay say we're booking information. With that we can see that yes, there are 20 people in the.

Pete Swanson

Room designed for. 16 people, but we can also see the booking only goes for another 20 minutes. And after that the room was empty for the day. So that's kind of the that principle of making data available and enabling it to be. Dead.

Pete Swanson

However, it's really easy. To say making data available and they want it. To be shared. But that's the next part of the architecture is actually saying what technique, what method, what system, what systems will I use to get the data out of the individual systems and bring that data to a common environment where I can share it?

Pete Swanson

And also make sure that data is structured in a manner that it is relevant and accessible and usable by those different systems, and that even comes back, you know, really simple stuff or basic stuff like the expectation for consistent data naming. But you know, coming back to my point, before it's not very helpful if I. As for VMS referring to.

Pete Swanson

Room 1 dot O1. The occupancy sensor referring to room A dot O1 and maybe the room booking system referring to Bennelong or whatever it might be. So that's one of the key elements in terms of actually enabling that smart you know first we've got that connectivity and that security but then.

Pete Swanson

Secondly, it's bringing the data get together and not just bring it together. So it's in a common place, but in a common and structured way. And of course this is where I see it. They're being nice parallel actually with the the journey that we've been going on with the digital construction side of things.

Pete Swanson

Because they're for large projects, we talk about the common data environment and so on. And yeah, the structure of that information in the design phase, really we need that same discipline, albeit with different focus in the operational phase. So that the connectivity, the security of that, the data acquisition, the management and then we get to the point as well as saying.

Pete Swanson

Without just enabling those systems to communicate together, we also want to be able to introduce new applications, and I use that as a broad term. But I guess the the reason they use that broad term applications is to differentiate from a failure abuse term market.

Pete Swanson

The platform you know we've seen a lot of cases where people talk about. One smart platform, but the challenge if you build that as one big structure where all your smartphone tonality lives, is that you sort of you, you wouldn't die, but the quality of that.

Pete Swanson

Platform whereas if I have a Docker environment and I can then introduce different applications to it, I can start to pick what suits me both in terms of budget but also in terms of the evolving market.

Pete Swanson

And that's a key point I'd emphasize as we go through this is we're not in a place where you can just say, OK, smart buildings have matured, there's nothing left to, you know, nothing left to resolve. You can just pick from every.

Pete Swanson

We're in a place where, even as the life cycle of the project, you may start out with an aspiration for, you know, particularly sophisticated occupancy analytics function that maybe doesn't exist today, but perhaps in the three years through to your bill that comes into existence.

Pete Swanson

So that's why I really advocate for that idea of applications that might be about security. Occupancy, fire safety, energy optimization, building systems, analytics. Yeah, that allows you to. Really think about the functionality you need in each case. Buy only what you can afford or you can justify and remain adaptable.

Pete Swanson

So if you want to swap one of those applications out in the future time you've actually contemplated how to do that, you know, rather than having one monolithic platform where effectively I have to sort of piece meal, upgrade that if I actually want to.

Pete Swanson

To enhance it.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, I love this approach of splitting the the data scheme and the the the the database and the different applications. It makes a lot of sense. It's a lot more scalable and future proof I'll say. We know the. Smart buildings creates a lot of opportunity from the for example, energy efficiency point of view, the sustainability.

Andrea Ciaffi

Side but again, from your point of view, how can we use smaller buildings to minimize energy consumptions while at the same time we maintain the comfort of the. Occupants in a.

Pete Swanson

Sydney. And look, I think that this is one of the the parts of the market that I point to is really an example for other less mature parts. So we're seeing now that you can buy for relative solutions depending on what your particular focus is.

Pete Swanson

If you just want to optimize your central plant, there are solutions for that. If you want to go out and look at your broader. Yeah. You know, building mechanical system and the way in which it's performing, the conditions to which it's responding and you want to optimise that both in.

Pete Swanson

Sort of response controls perspectives, but also possible faults that are affecting the system and making it less efficient. You can do. Those things as well and. The people who have developed those various solutions. In conjunction with the. The clients they've worked with the.

Pete Swanson

Recognised just like you say. That it is no good. To try and just sort. Of run the system hard as possible. While not achieving those thermal comfort outcomes, you know, so it's really we're seeing that mix of both and this is the thing we'll come back to probably again and again through.

Pete Swanson

Chat. But even in that space, it's really worth just understanding what is the value you're pursuing. You know, there are already capabilities with, you know, what you want to call it, AI machine learning similar, but the automated solutions that are just gonna work the closed loop of the plant function as efficiently as possible within the parameters you give them.

Pete Swanson

But that solution might not have any context for the fact that there's a fault out in the field, which is resulting in much higher demand. Which is then. Affecting the overall performance. So that's where we might look more in a FTD and you know maintenance optimization type of solution.

Pete Swanson

But even then we've got choices as well as to to have a facilities management team who are going well at that management layer rather that engineer layer and what they want is you know to identify work orders that should be issued. Make sure the work is completed, etcetera.

Pete Swanson

So then we'll kind of that more structured solution providing recommendations. Things, or perhaps I. Have you know? Really strong engineering team on site and what they need is just better tools to help them to diagnose and plan.

Pete Swanson

So even in that context, you know we're talking about that idea of, you know, efficiency and optimization, thermal comforts on there are various solutions in this space, which means you know it's good because you can choose what suits you. But it also means you have to understand what suits you.

Pete Swanson

So I think that that's a really important thing there because we do see still unfortunately people sort of saying I want to buy something that's building analytics and energy optimization.

Pete Swanson

And we haven't really gone further than that in terms of how they think it will fit into their workflow, how they think that their existing organization, their FM team, their engineers, their BMS provider and so on are actually gonna interact with that solution to make it effective.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, makes a lot of. Sense and we. Know that over the last few years, the different organization and companies have been in engineering, firms have been talking about sustainability goals has been really front of mind for the industry. Do you see the role for smart buildings to help organization with this footprint?

Andrea Ciaffi

And sustainability goals.

Pete Swanson

Absolutely. Yeah. Look, I think you know one of the great things about and energy optimization solution is that obviously you're reducing your consumption and you're reducing your power bills, which everybody likes. From a financial point of view, that's great. But you're also getting this flow on to reducing your potential carbon impact, so.

Pete Swanson

I think that for me. That's a great example of getting the best from a sustainable approach. You know, we still. Have this case where people like ohh sustainable as you are it's cost and so on. But here we're actually really bringing the merit of both together.

Pete Swanson

We're saving energy and cost and reducing carbon impact. And so yeah, I think and and obviously besides anything else, you know, we are waking up as a culture. You know, as as a civilization globally. You know, we've realised that we've got problems in climate change and so on.

Pete Swanson

And so increasingly regardless of where you stand on the starts of true belief in sustained. Outcomes. It's actually just becoming good. Business sense already has become, I would argue, good business sense. So I think that imperative is there and that makes it much more attractive then to go look, we can get wins in a couple of categories here.

Pete Swanson

And if you think about that point, we're saying to optimize the performance, again, let's just talk about the the thermal environment, the condition of the air and so on. I can get a. Cost wheel. I can get an experience when and. I can get a. Sustainability win and that's a great thing because.

Pete Swanson

But do think to compare and contrast. Unfortunately, there is quite a lot of tech out there searching for a value, searching for a proposition, searching for use cases like this, and just get these IG sensors that do blah blah. Then something good will happen, you know and and and that unfortunately is tainted the industry.

Pete Swanson

To an extent, because people are a bit sick of the. You know, blind optimism or their undirected enthusiasm. So I think like sustainability absolutely being the other things that I really like from a sustainability perspective or in conjunction with the broader principles of sustainability is the health and well-being aspect.

Pete Swanson

So remember again and yeah, you won't hear me talk about data centers. You won't hear me talk about, you know. Logistics, warehouses, etcetera. Because what I'm really passionate about is places with lots of people. You know, I love that experiential side of things.

Pete Swanson

I love the idea that helping people to have a better day at work or you know better learning experience or faster recovery in hospital, whatever it might be. In that context, we then have the experiential well-being tech things like ambient audio, so you know we've gone through this generational piece where we made mechanical systems quieter.

Pete Swanson

Then we discovered that their noise was quite handy for, you know, acoustic privacy. So then we went through a phase of injecting noise back into buildings, which I always thought was. Little bit crazy. But now we come to a point where we say, well, actually, yeah, OK, we do need that baseline background sound level at around that sort of 45 DB.

Pete Swanson

In order to. Have sort of acoustic comfort, but we can do that with more natural sounds which help to reduce stress, help to make us feel better because you know, for millennia we've been outside. For a lot of our lives, and now we spend a lot of our lives inside.

Pete Swanson

So that's a real passion for me as well and. Terms of not just that pure sort of, but always called the hard sustainability of things like energy reduction, carbon and so on. But that consideration of the indoor environment, things like the ambient audio, also things like circadian lighting.

Pete Swanson

And I think one of the things I love about the smart buildings process is that when we're talking about that aspiration. We're really giving ourselves license as a project team to explore all the different areas where we could have.

Pete Swanson

Impact, whereas if we started from with a writing specialist or an audio official specialist or you know an ICT specialist or security or mechanical or whatever and kind of who is driving towards that solution you know but hammer looking for a nail whereas we try and flip that around and say well what is the genuine value we could deliver.

Pete Swanson

And then how? To achieve that with those different systems.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, this is great. And and yes, you. I I like how you. Are thinking about the occupant as well of the building when. Think about how they can personalize the experience of himself and how the building are actually adjust itself to the people that live in it.

Andrea Ciaffi

I think we can also think about smart buildings. As a way to improve productivity as well, because if I experience if my experience is better and I mean the best environment possible, what do you think about that? Do you think that smart? Building can also help improve productivity of.

Pete Swanson

I can definitely think it can. I think it's quite a challenged area to prove. So it's, you know, you you have the ROI category of solutions like I can save cost. I can therefore save carbon. I can buy less offsets et cetera. But there are some things and productivity as an example where it can be difficult to prove that metric.

Pete Swanson

You know that that's. So it's almost like. I think we have to be quite clear when we're going through that process to say here are our ROI based solutions because I can point to the fact that you have to implement this or reduce that much cost or you know make my building more profitable in some other way.

Pete Swanson

And then we've got this other category which in some cases are hygiene things like for for example, although it said that connectivity is really important. It's hard in isolation to point to an ROI for a network you know, because the network itself is actually enabling other functionality.

Pete Swanson

So I think that's where the important parts of this process, the smart building process as well. Saying are you getting after an hour away with this solution or are you going after something else in terms of that you know, experience improvement and so on?

Pete Swanson

And do you have a way to measure the enhancement of that come back to your point of productivity. I mean, I think one of the very simple metrics that I perceive is occupancy. People go to places they value, you know, as long as we have a choice, you can tell what we value because that's where we go.

Pete Swanson

If we're told, we just have to go to the office or, you know, work, for example. You know, in in a specific function like in a hospital or similar where it has to be physically there. Then there's not so much indicative choice that today, particularly when we think about workplaces.

Pete Swanson

You can actually. Tell by the amount of time that people are electing to spend in that space, and that comes down to not just did I go to the office today, but you know, was it meeting rooms? Was it desk space? Was it other collaborative areas that we're really seeing that demand?

Pete Swanson

And of course you can then start to look at tying that back to perhaps the productivity of individual team. And so on. But I guess that's where we have to be mindful as well. If the complexity of data, you know as as we start to say, OK, well, we see what's this team is turning up and we can also see that maybe profits up or whatever else.

Pete Swanson

Perhaps retention metrics have improved and so on. It's not always easy to prove the correlation or the causation. Between those things. And I think that's a big challenge for smart buildings generally as you get into the data space, you have to be diligent.

Pete Swanson

You have to recognise that just because two things happened at the same time doesn't mean that one of them calls the other and doesn't even necessarily mean they're related. So that for me, you know, productivity is a great example of that. Yes, there are ways.

Pete Swanson

You can potentially demonstrate that, but particularly in the knowledge economy, it can be hard to draw that direct correlation between what I did with the building and and the. Definite business outcome.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, makes sense. And there is also another aspect that is interesting for smart building, which is the hospital safety and security and now the data that we collect also could create some privacy concerns as well, right? Because we all want to make sure that our buildings are safe and and we are monitoring with accessing we potentially.

Andrea Ciaffi

Scan the faces and do face detection. We could use biometric access control, lots of different things that we can use. So from your point of view, how can on one side improve the buildings, the security of the buildings at the same time, make sure that we address all of the privacy concerns that people may have.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah.

Pete Swanson

Look, absolutely, I think, I mean there's there's a few different facets there, obviously, yeah, part of the smart buildings kick bag is access control is CCTV is video analytics. You know there there are various elements there that absolutely are being used to manage and improve the safety.

Pete Swanson

Of the building. Again, you could be doing that just with those systems, not in the smart buildings context, but in the smart building in an integrated connected building. Obviously have opportunity to create more connections between those systems, whether it's their, you know badging through speed styles and some other function happening.

Pete Swanson

As a result you know could be left or. Similar, whether it's about video recognition, whether it's also that about things like the ability to detect abandoned baggage and and so on, or to detect rubbish. You know there. There's various different functions that we can unpack there, but as you said, privacy is a key element.

Pete Swanson

And I think again, this comes back to. Understanding that we're in a different world when we contemplate all of this data, we can read together. You know you have a a category of data which is very much sort of, I'll call it building centric.

Pete Swanson

You know it's it's about what's happening with the energy consumption, with the air conditioning, with water consumption, we have lighting conditions, whatever else. But there is a category that's very much occupant centric, which is. About how people are using. Those systems, the individual identities.

Pete Swanson

So and like you said, you do have to be quite careful in thinking through how you will manage that data. And that comes back to this point about you bringing all the data together in a common environment. We need to be really clear about where that data potentially does have privacy implications or security implications.

Pete Swanson

And I think one of the things we're seeing there is the opening. Up of new areas. New opportunity for services in the industry you know, because typically somebody who is not familiar with data as they start to engage with it will find this is you know this quite bewildering.

Pete Swanson

This is possibly Even so confusing that I don't know what to do with it. On the other hand, if you bring somebody from a a data perspective. To building data, they may have very clearly understand how. To work with. The data, but they may not have any context on what it means from a building perspective.

Pete Swanson

So. That there's a real challenge there around actually understanding how you will use data, not just from a systems perspective, but also from an organizational perspective, from a governance perspective. And I think again the answer there is if you go in with your eyes open to that, then you can make plans, you can identify gaps in your organization.

Pete Swanson

Either in the project phase or in the operations phase and. You can resolve those gaps. You know, whether it's hiring people. In whether it's outsourcing certain functions. You know all of these? Things can be. Addressed, but it's really having. That awareness from upfront to understand the implications.

Pete Swanson

Of what you're doing.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, makes sense. Another aspect, another interesting aspects of smart building could be how they can help from the maintenance point of view. We know that we are familiar with this way of maintaining building that could be very reactive. So building managers, identifies and issues and now we react to the problem.

Andrea Ciaffi

So do you think that we can use more buildings? To prevent maintenance issues before they actually even occur, and that could probably lead to cost saving as well.

Pete Swanson

Yeah, absolutely. Look, I think you know, predictive maintenance is another good example of something that everybody wants to see. We can't necessarily do it in every aspect yet, but certainly there are cases where we can say, OK, look, I can be pretty sure of an activity that's gonna need to happen.

Pete Swanson

And if I give you a specific case, let's think about. There are various things under the banner of maintenance and cleaning is a maintenance activity. If I know the occupancy and the use of things like desks or meeting rooms or any other kind.

Pete Swanson

Kind of area then. I could better understand the likelihood of. Needing to actually. Clean that area.

Pete Swanson

If I've got sensors on my bins, I could better understand the full rate of bins and so on, and I can respond to that equally, even as an example, if I just know that there is actually a thermal issue in an area, I may not be able to predict what the activity is that I need to do.

Pete Swanson

To solve that issue, but I'm at least aware of it before I get a tenant complaint, you know? So. So there's a few different categories there of being able to say, I definitely know that there's an activity that needs to be done. You know it's cleaning, it's been emptying.

Pete Swanson

It's addressing a thermal issue or. Similar, but I can also start to see patterns and again coming back to building analytics. I can see scenarios where perhaps equipment is degrading that may predict that there's a failure or just again may not be an absolute failure.

Pete Swanson

It may be that there's a. Filter that needs changing. Or perhaps there's a valve that's stuck open, things like that, so I can go, I can look, and I can dress those kind of issues. So yes, definitely that, that kind of capability is starting to come to the fore.

Pete Swanson

But the really important thing to remember is in the first majority of cases, these solutions don't fix the problem themselves. You have to integrate it to your workflow.

Pete Swanson

You have to integrate it to the whatever contracts you have in place, be that cleaning, be that your BMS maintenance cycle be that you know whatever other aspect because if you have alerts but you have no person to respond to them or no mechanism for that work to be instructed, you're not much better off than when you didn't know about them.

Andrea Ciaffi

That's true. We talked about, we talked about smart buildings, but let's try to think about how we can scale up this concept of smart building and to the to the broader vision of the smart cities. How can we integrate small buildings into a larger smart city infrastructure and how can different building?

Andrea Ciaffi

Share data with with each other and. With, with with the CD systems.

Pete Swanson

Yeah. Yeah, look, I think. That's been a perspective of mine for a while now, and particularly, I mean, I've always been a buildings person. You know, that's probably come through in the kind of examples I've given and so on, but I've mostly been about buildings or maybe.

Pete Swanson

Precincts. And so, well, I've spent time looking at and, you know, working in some of the the smart city areas. All the things that. Struck me is that they are assemblages of buildings. So yes, there's some smart city smart community elements you can use which are separate to the building components, but it's really important.

Pete Swanson

If I'm building a smart building, I don't want it to be a smart island. I want to think about how it can communicate with other buildings. No, I think we we still kind of heading towards that future.

Pete Swanson

I don't think we're quite there yet in, in many cases, but definitely there's the opportunity there for us to be able to say I can not only leverage the benefit inside the building, but I can look at how I can beneficially share information between buildings that could be about.

Pete Swanson

Power consumption power generation for example, so it. Might be about. In local exportation, as it were, of energy between buildings, and again you see this with micro grids within, you know, large precincts like health and universities and so on, but extending that sinking to city centre areas and again communities and so on.

Pete Swanson

Yeah, it's definitely opportunities there to connect what you've done with your smart building. To what you're doing, your smart broader environment. I think though the one thing. Says that amplifies this challenge of getting things like data naming and data structure and communications protocols, right?

Pete Swanson

Because if that's hard to get right for one individual building, you know, you make your choices about what combination of your back net, modbus, OPC and MQTT and whatever else you're going to use and then your database preferences and so.

Pete Swanson

But you then also have to think about, well, how do I line that to the building next door, the building down the street may well be owned by somebody else who's going through a different design process and a different time as well. You know, that's the other point.

Pete Swanson

It's not often that we just build an entire, you know, neighborhood or district or whatever at the same time. So we really have to have that awareness of. What those interactions might be and and also the requirements say you must do this, because let's also not forget for any given project at any given time, you know the program's under pressure.

Pete Swanson

The budgets under pressure, more aspirations than fit either of the former 2. So if we don't log in something helpful like Angie. That has to be available for the broader smart city. It's not gonna get very far if that's not structured, you know, if it's not mandated in some way or if it's not attractive in some way.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, we are close to the end, but before we go, I would really like to touch about an important topic which is user experience, because at the end of the day it it's all about the people, the people actually use the buildings, but people there that there are many complaints about user experience that people have with actually using smart technologies so.

Andrea Ciaffi

What do you? Think we are. We get so many complaints about this technology at the moment. What's going on?

Pete Swanson

Yeah, look at this. This one goes right at the way back to the beginning of my journey. As I mentioned in AV, all of the things that stood out to me early on was that we didn't really seem to understand our users and you'd hear a lot of complaints about ohh, this touch panel doesn't work.

Pete Swanson

This video conference system is too complicated. It's unreliable. Etc etc etc. And all of that came back to the fact that very broad assumptions were being made by project teams, and they're saying we know best. We're the experts, we know how to. Design this and very rarely did they interact at all with the users.

Pete Swanson

And in fact. You know even. We saw circumstances as I was starting to sort. Of push through. This space in the mid 2000s, even circumstances where you were technically engaging with the client, but not necessarily the people actually with the users in the room and they're client representative to say I know what's needed.

Pete Swanson

I know what's required here, but one particular example where basically we were told that all 52 functions need to be presented in equal size buttons on the main touch panel page. Reverse that because I know where they are and I can use. Easily.

Pete Swanson

The problem with this though is they were. Not the sole. Operator. So when other people came in and they wanted to operate the system they presented with you 50 odd buttons. It's a bit like when you look at the remote control here like now where where's that menu function again or?

Pete Swanson

How do I? Get to the guide, you know, and so. We have this situation where if you don't engage with the actual. Users you will never find out only what's really important to them, being what makes sense to them and see kind of the level of sophistication that they want, because almost always the level of sophistication the actual user wants.

Pete Swanson

Is a lot. Less than the specialist engineer or designer who has been creating the thing. And that includes what I'm talking about. There's a consultant whether I'm talking about the contractor, the programmer who's actually doing the work, you know, all of these people bring so much expertise in the area and often overthink stuff.

Pete Swanson

You know, it's the very best intentions in the in the world. You're putting too much stuff in. I think Steve Jobs had a a great quote, which I won't shut out exactly right, but basically it was that, you know, simplicity is actually really hard to get to, you know, completely.

Pete Swanson

It's easy. You can deliver a complex solution fairly easily because you don't have to refine it much. You just give people all the functions, give them their 52 buttons. Let them work it out, whereas simplicity, you actually have to be really clear on what the core functions.

Pete Swanson

Are what the right works. Know is what the user journey is, so I'm gonna drop a few terms here because I think they're they're often missed, so you get the user interface, which technologists are pretty familiar with. You know, we design the the touch panel, the button panel, the web UI, the dashboard, whatever it might be.

Pete Swanson

That's the UI. Now that by. Itself doesn't tell us anything about how it works. We need two key components to help us have that reference. The 1st is the user experience, so that is how I navigate through my interaction with those.

Pete Swanson

License and the second is the user journey, which is really important and that's the question of why did I come to the panel or the web page. Or the you know. Whatever it was in the 1st place, what brought me here today? What is my role?

Pete Swanson

Am I, you know, lecturer? Am I a corporate chief in a boardroom? Am I the executive assistant to the corporate chief is gonna get the video conference? From running and my visual maintenance and my, you know managing the DNS, whatever it might be.

Pete Swanson

Why am I? Here what is my role? What have I gonna do next? So you really gives you that context user experience then says, OK, I've come to the panel. What functions do I need to complete? Do I, for example, get nervous if I press the button and it doesn't seem to do anything, you know?

Pete Swanson

Do I need some feedback to tell me? Because actually the function is going to take 10 seconds to respond, but I need to know that it's doing it rather than you know. It didn't work. And then five, the user experience which actually manifests those functions.

Pete Swanson

This is applicable to basically every technology you know at the end of the day. In some way, we interact with tech, and again the whole like. BMS, you know we've been doing. A fair bit of work over the last. Few years in. That space around the context of smart building systems and so on, just from the UX perspective, just say, OK, well, who in a minute.

Pete Swanson

What do we actually want the PMS graphics to present for? Who are my categories of users? What are we going to do as a result? And again very similar to the audio visual world where people have had a lot. Of hate for. AV interfaces over the years BS we've seen very similar things and again I think part of the issue there is.

Pete Swanson

There are several cohorts of users, but we don't necessarily think about all. Of them, you. Know we've got the engineered technician which is very well covered by the fact that we've got this technical cohort of design. That's we've also got the facilities management cohort who really are sort of in the the red green category.

Pete Swanson

You know they've got KPIs they need to keep the building running. They need to know how many things are green, how many things are red and then be able to take some steps as a result, including calling our technician cohort to help them solve the problem and then support to that, we've got our executive cohort or analyst.

Pete Swanson

Short, who aren't doing these of those things, they're looking at, you know, analytics trends. They're looking at forecasting, they're looking at general performance, you know, possible strategic scenario modeling. So and you can pretty easily imagine if I give one interface to those 3 cohorts, nobody's going to be happy.

Pete Swanson

And yet in too many cases, that's kind of what we've seen is so there's. The one interface. To satisfy everyone, so user experience is absolutely key from my point of view. The good news is it's reasonably straightforward to actually. Staff delivering better user experiences, so the the very first step is find.

Pete Swanson

Users you know actually asked that question. Where are my users? Do we know if these users exist? If you can't actually find the specific users because they haven't been hired yet? This is common in some new facilities. You know the the whole OPS team doesn't exist yet because the building's three years away.

Pete Swanson

But you can just find representative. So you can go and interview people who do similar roles and so on depending on the organization, you might have some of those people available. They might not be moving into that building, but they don't have equivalent function.

Pete Swanson

So find. Users and then user experience, design, design, thinking processes, and ideation to iteratively engage with them to really get clear and say, OK, we now understand what's desired. People get a little bit scared about this. So how it's oh. Gosh, what if the users asked for like something like language that?

Pete Swanson

They can't afford. But that's actually part of the management process. You know, as as you go through that journey, it's not saying like, imagine you could have anything you want and somebody decides, you know, you want a theme park or something. It's more setting the context.

Pete Swanson

Hey. This is going to be a lecture theatre. This is the broad functionality you're expecting to deliver. How would you work with this? Or this is going to be an operating theatre system or this is going to be a courtroom system. How does that align to the way the court works here?

Pete Swanson

I can't tell you how many times I've had experiences in those kind of contexts where somebody says, but it does these things, but that's just not. How we work, and I'll refer to that as technically correct, but functionally rejected. You know, technically it does a thing, but it's not the thing the user wants so.

Pete Swanson

Yeah, for me, particularly with the complexity across smart buildings generally you know with dashboards, with analytics platforms, even with like the question of exporting data somewhere else, what is that user journey? How do I make sure that the user interface that enables that is effective or if I've got more automated method, again the little lines to that overall user journey.

Pete Swanson

So, you know, I think for me, if I could bring no other improvement to the industry, I'd have that focus on user experience because it actually drives through a lot of the other things. That we need to improve.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, I totally agree with you, Pete. I think the problem comes from the fact that the engineering industry is familiar with having a problem. So if you're an engineer, somebody throws a problem at you and you find the best way to solve it.

Andrea Ciaffi

Yeah, it's more like product management, product design skills where you, you don't even know what the problem is. Yet so you need to figure out what the problem is. You need to speak with the people or the users. The people are going to use the think you are about to design and.

Pete Swanson

Yes.

Andrea Ciaffi

Build and only then you solve the problem, but you still keep on touching, busy with them to make sure that you are actually solving the problems that they have. Otherwise you end up building a solution looking for a problem. Please.

Pete Swanson

100% Super quick example about how you can do this without kind of introducing just sort of. Infinite project risk. Let's take say, an operation center environment. We know when we're going to build that building that we're building it to be an operation centre or in a significant part of it is that it could be an airport, it could.

Pete Swanson

Be for emergency. Service could be for telco provider, could be for transport. You know any of those categories. We know that there's a really important asset or situation that we have to manage. So that's our first iteration, yeah. That's all we're building the building.

Pete Swanson

There is no question. We're not gonna, you know, do it in the tent or out in the open air or whatever else it's gonna be in. So our first iteration is then just asking so how? How will the people work in that building?

Pete Swanson

Yeah. And some of this is very much, as you said, it's more like architect supposed to engineer territory. But as I then go through it, OK, I understand the number of people. I understand the kind of functions I can now start to understand the kind of specific space that this comes to, you know.

Pete Swanson

Things like these very large video wall systems, and potentially a lot of data coming into them, you know, in many ways those OPS centers you see are like an enormous smart building platform. You know, they're a smart system. They're bringing data from all sorts of places, from cameras, from.

Pete Swanson

Else and consolidating them. So maybe we can get to the point. I understand how many people need to be in the space that can define the, you know, the extent of the displays. I can understand where the data is coming from, you know, so I'm really building that up.

Pete Swanson

I haven't changed the fact that it's gonna be building a consolidation. How many people? I've got an idea of how they're gonna work and so whether they need one big screen. Smaller screens, bigger screens. Whatever. And then I can go down to the.

Pete Swanson

Then how do the people interact with that system? So just just the sort of tighten the loop so that I'm dealing with smaller problems as I go. I'm no longer asking is it an OPS center? I'm no longer asking over. 50 or five.

Pete Swanson

100 people here. I'm no longer asking. What's the power that we need for the working environment? Now I'm just asking within that context, what is the best way? To configure it for how people will work do I want, you know, an app on the desktop for everybody.

Pete Swanson

Do I want an app on the desktop for team readers? Do I just want a? Touch panel that enables. Me to interact with those solution. And that kind of process is what allows us to constrain that iteration. I think people get scared about the idea of iteration because, like you said, in software product development, you couldn't just keep going.

Pete Swanson

You know, you keep iterating and lawful leases and so on. Whereas in construction, at some point you gotta finish, you know, and you've gotta finish designing so that we can't can contract. And then be at some point we gotta. Finish building so that.

Pete Swanson

We can hand over and I think it's it's. Actually, yeah, the. Tension between those things that we have to resolve, but like I say, it is resolvable. And if we approach? That environment, be it that kind of complex sort of OPS center example I gave you, be it just more broadly thinking about smart building functionality, then we can work through that process.

Pete Swanson

And the one thing that's including with that some people say, gosh, that sounds like hard work etcetera. Well it kind of is, but it's less hard work to leave it till later. You. Know we've all heard. The the point before about like if you have a discussion and you realize you've got something wrong with the discussion, it effectively costs you no dollars, could you?

Pete Swanson

Oops, sorry you. Know let's fix that. If you realise when you've written a report. And it's being checked at this issue where maybe that's like a $10 issue. If you realize when you've produced the document set and it gets recalled, then that might be, you know, 100 or $1000 issue.

Pete Swanson

If you realize when you hit site that there's a problem, then it's potentially A10. 1000 or 100. $1000 a million dollar problem and what we're. Talking about here is similar. If you do that work up front, you can solve when it's cheap to fix the issue.

Pete Swanson

If you wait for it to manifest as a problem or an answer to your site, all you're doing is allow it to cost more and take longer.

Andrea Ciaffi

Probably totally the importance of embedding all this process during all this exercises during the design process. But we are at the end of our episode today, Pete. This was a great episode. Thank you very much for making the time for meeting me and have a chat about about smart buildings.

Andrea Ciaffi

If people want to reach out to you, where can they find you know? You are on LinkedIn. I know you are. You, you, you are speaker, you are in so many different places. But what? What's the best way to reach out to you?

Pete Swanson

Yep, look absolutely on LinkedIn and you'll find my details there. I would also advocate if you're interested in smart buildings and you're not yet a member, you should really have a look at Nexus Labs. That's a great community. Also work with Para currently on their big data special technical groups, so finally there.

Pete Swanson

If you're in that sort of space. But yeah, that's the Linkedin's a really easy one. And as I say, Nexus Labs. Is a great. Community if you want to know more about smart buildings, you want to immerse yourself in that world, then do go and find Nexus Labs dot online.

Andrea Ciaffi

Thank you very much, Pete. This is guy. Thank you.

Pete Swanson

Pleasure. Thanks Andrea. Yeah.