I think there is a direct relationship between digital innovation and sustainability. We firmly believe that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. In order to be able to measure the sustainability impact of your building, of your project you need to have implement some sophisticated digital technologies. Some examples I can give you, in the UK, we have invested a start-up. They help real estate owners to measure the environmental impact of energy usage of their buildings by plugging into to building management systems, by plugging into the IoT sensors and the various other systems in their building. They are also using AI to be able to bring the light insights as to how your building being managed and how efficient is.
Those insights lead into actionable recommendations that the building owner can make to reduce their carbon impact and reduce their energy usage. We hope that companies like this can scale up and grow beyond and just a couple of real estate portfolios and I think that’s going to be one of the interesting challenges to watch. Because the clock is ticking. With every day that goes by we need accelerate the action that we are taking. You can’t do that without deploying these types of technologies at scale.
We have also invested in another start-up which is called Qflow. They are specifically measuring the materials that come on to development and construction site and the waste that goes off to construction site. Through AI and data collection at all the different points of materials are going in and waste going out they are able to help construction projects reduce their environmental risks.
Faisal BUTT
Founder & CEO, PI LABS
