A Sustainable Future for Commercial Buildings - Inferrix
We interviewed Raj Paul, CEO of Inferrix, about how technology can positively impact the race to net zero, the barriers to adoption, the importance of including smaller sized buildings in strategies and how we can ensure buildings are future-proofed.
If you'd prefer, you can listen to the interview in full on our podcast.
Raj has worked within the smart building and technology space for a number of years with a strong focus on creating a sustainable future for commercial real estate.
Inferrix was born out of a passion for designing and developing affordable, cutting-edge technologies to lower carbon footprint and make buildings smarter. As a company, they manufacture and develop IoT and edge AI embedded hardware and software solutions. Raj describes it as a full-stack where all the wireless sensors and actuators, gateways, and the platform, are all pre-integrated in one single stack. He goes on to explain that the core idea of what they’re doing is helping commercial real estate operators and facilities management companies to reduce their operations costs, reduce energy wastage, and improve the wellbeing and productivity of the occupants.
There's a great deal being discussed about smart buildings and decarbonising buildings. So, what's your take on this topic? How are Inferrix’s positively contributing towards this?
You're absolutely right; there’s a lot of talk around this space. But also, there is a lot of confusion and clutter. An important thing to understand is that every country is on its own journey when it comes to this. Everybody is at a different stage in terms of maturity, so, often the biggest challenge is understanding where to start. There is an ‘ad-hocism’ around this right now. There is no strategic direction; people are not empowered enough, nor do they have the skills needed. So ultimately, what's happening is people are looking at point solutions and trying to start somewhere.
My view is that it will all fall flat if there is no cohesive strategy. However, slowly knowledge is building up, but it is a journey; it’s going to take a few years before we get anywhere near where we want to be.
It feels a bit like we're currently at a bit of a junction; we’ve still got COVID-19 as a very prominent focus. We've got a mix of people working at home and in the office. The recent cop 26 summit generated more conversation than ever before around environmentally positive buildings, and on top of that, government targets around net-zero carbon that must be achieved. So, the question is, is technology the answer?
If not technology, then what? If you look at the net-zero targets and the overall concept of scope one, scope two, scope three, and embedded carbon, every aspect of it has an element of technology or research and development.
So, let's start with the construction of the building; when it's being built, you have cement, mortar, wood and all kinds of materials that go into it. So, the question really is, what kind of research is going on to try and reduce the carbon footprint of the building blocks, for instance?
But once the building is built and you have all the services in place, then you need some kind of technology to manage it efficiently. So, there is no other option but technology because you can address user behaviour or occupant behaviour and educate them.
At the end of the day, you need a ubiquitous mechanism that is institutionalised; you need technology to do that for you. The critical thing is that the technology has to be affordable, and it needs to make sense for the building owners to invest in.
So yes, technology is definitely the answer.
Is cost seen as the primary barrier because many would argue that technology has been around for a while, but there is still a lack of sustainable buildings? So, in your opinion, why do you think that is?
Well, I think there are many dimensions to this question. Generally speaking, I believe one of the main reasons for the lack of adoption and proper implementation of some of the existing technologies is that they are extremely expensive and cumbersome. The model is very insular because there is limited ability to interact with any third-party system, thereby allowing more value to be added. So, I think the reason these have not had an impact is largely because of the affordability aspect of it.
94% of the buildings around the world are classified as small and medium-sized buildings, which are less than 50,000 sq. ft., and if you look at the adoption of building automation in these buildings, I believe it’s only approx.15% of this segment that have adopted any kind of automation. Again, I think this is because it’s just not affordable for them to adopt these technologies.
In your opinion, what solutions could SMEs utilise to overcome this issue? Where should they begin on their journey?
There is no one size fits all solution for these buildings, which also makes it very difficult for companies like us to find a solution that can be applied to these buildings.
The cost of implementing and acquiring this size of a customer is also very high, which deters vendors in the market from focusing on them and educating them to bring them to speed. But to answer your question, I think, in any building, and this includes the small and medium buildings, the first thing they need to understand is what is their current state is, e.g., in terms of energy use, for instance, which includes water, gas and electricity. So, at least then, at the very least, there is an understanding of what they are using today; they can then go to the next level of understanding where the optimisation process starts.
There are lots of opportunities, but also lots of challenges as well; how do we ensure that our buildings are future-proofed? What we consider to be smart today might not be in five years’ time. The industry is evolving quickly, and there may also be further advances in environmentally friendly solutions. Obviously, there's a level of investment to upgrade buildings now, retrofitting them to meet today's standards, but how do we ensure that this cost is not a regular fee? What can be done to try and mitigate risk and easily allow for further improvements to be made in the future?
I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is siloed solutions. They increase the overall cost of operating and maintaining solutions over the long term.
The second aspect is the shelf life of products/solutions. We need to try to have a strategy where everything blends together instead of having various silos. For example, the air quality should feed into the exhaust systems to ensure that the air quality is brought back in check.
Data gathered for preventative maintenance is a way of smartly and efficiently managing the various solutions in a building. All the relevant data collected should be presented in a format that is correlated to each building service. It should not just be data for data's sake; I think sometimes we have too much data; we only need to see the key insights.
It’s that whole idea of interoperability across the building, isn't it? So, it's unlikely that you're going to have one system from one provider or one type of device throughout the building. I think it's about the industry coming together collectively and understanding that we need to get that base layer correct.
You're absolutely right; interoperability is key. The government should throw in some incentives for people to adopt this technology.
Yeah, definitely; I think there's going to be a lot of change within the next few years. But hopefully, a lot of that is going to be very positive for not only the environment but also for occupants and people within these buildings.
We've seen certain roles starting to emerge within the industry, e.g. Smart Building Consultants, who aim to try and bridge some of these gaps that you've mentioned in terms of skill, knowledge and expertise. But these consultants are often few and far between, and they're not common on every project, but even they face a lot of challenges; for instance, they're often not brought into projects until the later stages of cleaning up the mess that's been created because system smart system delivery is failed. Maybe as we move forward, we'll see those kinds of roles becoming more common at an earlier stage in a project, which will mitigate some of those issues.
Absolutely, this is a journey. In many countries, roles such as Smart Building Consultants wouldn’t be used at all currently, so it will be some time before we achieve unified smart buildings, have a clear strategy to implement them and where it is also cost-effective, but we are on the right track, we will get there eventually.