Episode 30 – Part 1 – What is a Smart Building or a digital twin? with Dan Drogman, Smart Spaces

The following transcript is autogenerated so may contain errors.

Matt Nally  

On this week’s episode, we’ve got Dan Drogman on from Smart Spaces. So thank you very much for coming on.

Dan Drogman

Thank you. Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

Matt Nally 

That’s great to have you on. It was interesting, chatting briefly before this, to learn some more. But do you want to gently give everyone an overview as to who you are? And what you do?

Dan Drogman

Yeah, certainly. So I’m Dan Drogman. I’m the CEO and co founder of Smart Spaces, smart building operating system running across 75 million square feet. And our purpose at Smart spaces is to optimise environments for people on the planet. And what that translates to is optimising how people use the workplace. So that’s desk booking, meeting, room booking, food ordering, but then connecting that to the building system. So we only power spaces on when they use and don’t waste energy when they’re empty.

Matt Nally

And I imagine this can be very interesting episode as we go through everything. I suppose a bit of background, how did you get into it? Yes,

Dan Drogman 

it’s interesting question. So I started in the industry in 2004. I graduated from ual. So I went to University of Arts and I was studying web design and development. So that time is the.com. Boom, so I joined ual in 1998. And it’s the.com. Boom, so web designers are getting paid some seriously high salaries that attracted me plus, I had a big passion for design and programming. I’ve always excelled at it because my dad got me my first PC when I was about five years old. And that was in their stuff space. So if it was command line, so I sort of had that natural ability, but really what I like to spend my days doing was in paint, or Photoshop designing. So web design was the perfect sort of merger of technology, and design. And yeah, went to study web design and interactive media. And we’ve done some really advanced websites using a technology called Flash and flash died a few years back. Some of my developers here, when we go to conferences, they introduced me as a Flash developer, because they know it’s a dead technology, and they’re basically gonna dig it. But But obviously, the real sad thing was.com crash. So then I joined the industry, nowhere near the salary that I expected. But what we found was, I actually had a passion for the more technical side, certainly design and user experience is paramount. But so we started developing some quite advanced software for the time 2000 For like data rooms to sell assets, intranet for big business parks. And that’s when we first got the idea. And we didn’t obviously know this smartphone would arrive later. But we’ve got the idea of wrapping up the services available to Office tenants on a single platform and recording what they use and giving them access to it and allowing for payments and so on. Back then we built these intranets. But very embarrassingly, when we attract them out of people that logged into the intranet, yeah, no one used it. And we were very, very upset, you know, we poured our hearts and soul into it. So when we got the second time round, when the smartphone got mass adoption, and the App Store come around, we actually revisited it. And first of all, this was doing more work for hotels, actually, that offered conferencing and meeting room facilities and, and they had a lot of aspirations for smart. So they invited us into me apple, and we met up or looked at the iBeacon programme which detects where you are which buildings you have located to, and allows us to create prompts and apps and so on. And, and that’s when sort of the genesis of the idea come around. And then fast forward to about 2014. So 10 years later into my career, we had a fantastic opportunity to revisit the intranet projects, but utilising an app and knowing that no one would use the platform in its previous fall, we needed to bring those transactional elements in and those elements resulted in access. So mobile access, ANPR, access for the car park, booking the gym, booking a meeting room, paying for your lunch, these are all transactional pieces. And if you can make a killer user experience, it makes it easier through the app than the alternative. You’ve got a user base, you’ve got product market fit. And that’s yet that was the genesis of smart spaces

Matt Nally

as fascinating. So what was the main driver then between usage from the internet version to the app version? Is it because it’s in your pocket? It’s easier to get hold off? Or is it because you’re more forced to use it just because everything interconnects now or is it a mixture of both or

Dan Drogman 

a mixture of both? Yes, the intranet fell down that actually most people found it easier to email reception. So I want this room for this time. And so and then you’re guilty of those processes where You allowed that to happen, you’d rather than push people back to internet and say no, but you can book it yourself. It’s self service. They were like no farmer bucket for you. But I think over time as like those operating costs have been squeezed, and you no longer have the luxury of like someone running your park for you, you know, there’s less stuff running these assets than ever. Yeah, you have to be stronger. And you have to say, No, you know, a book itself, plus, I think is an education piece, I think back then, you know, it hadn’t reached maturity, like a lot of people hadn’t moved to Internet Banking. So they weren’t comfortable booking things online, they were still very scared of it. And I had to do it. Whereas what we see even throughout the theory of the smartphone, and it was early adopters to start with, but the moment our grantees got smartphones, we knew Wow, we’ve got access to a much wider audience, and they’re willing to use and embrace it. And so yeah, I think it’s convenience. It’s actually people understanding how to use it. And then the transactional element is just what makes life easy for them.

Matt Nally 

Awesome. Okay. So I suppose that brings us up to the point now where we’ve got smart building, so I suppose that’s part one, then we’ll probably discuss what certain things are. And then we’ll come on to benefits in part two, but I suppose it’s very cool than what what is a smart building? What does that mean? I know we’ve got smart TVs and you know, lectures and stuff in the house. But what’s what’s a smart building? At its core?

Dan Drogman

Yes, certainly. So from a commercial aspect, it is a building that has the ultimate user experience. So it’s very easy to access the amenities and understand what the amenities are. It offers a fantastic set of amenities, but it optimises those communities. And so what that could mean that it will enable you to get from street to seat very fast using your mobile app and using Apple Wallet. So you can access that with your smartwatch you can access with your phone, your phone battery goes flat, you still can access the building for up to four hours. Now, before you get to the building, you can book your desk, you can book your meeting rooms, you can book your locker. And you also can use the apple one access to access those facilities as well. Now, all of this records data into the cloud, which then can be analysed to optimise that. So you can look at your peak times you can look at your quiet times you can manage your roster, you can manage neighbourhoods, so then when a team member books, you can suggest that they book in the same zone. So they’re productive when they’re there. They’re not just going in and working on their own, and not making the most of being in the office, your time all these things together on a common user experience. But then tracking it, and more importantly, linking it back to what spaces are online. Where are you providing fresh air? Where are you providing cooling or heating. And when someone leaves, disabling those, and but not doing it too early, that you get a complaint that someone’s cold at five o’clock and not doing it too late in the morning, that they’re cold when their arrival too hot when they arrive. And also understanding what people like their preferences. So running one space at 20 Celsius, one space at 21 Celsius, showing that on the desk booking plan, showing how noisy the two environments are maybe having some warmer lighting in the warmer area, cooler lighting in the cooler area. And then give people the ability to choose where they go, and then track what they like and then make more of what they like and take away their space they don’t like. So it’s tying all these things together onto a common platform. And then optimising and a good case study would be one of our clients started with us in about 2018. That 500 staff, they were predicting expansion, which is really nice. So they actually leased an office for several 150 people, they’ve now managed to scale to 1500 with the same amount of space, and they use our software to facilitate access to that space. And then they use sensors connected to our platform to make sure that they’re using it as efficiently as possible. Which means that they haven’t had to lease more space. They foresee they won’t need to lease more space for another two years, which based on their headcount is a saving of about 1.2 million a year in rent. And that doesn’t even account for the energy. That’s the true thing. It’s all about productivity and optimising things.

Matt Nally

That’s, yeah, fascinating. James, because I suppose traditionally people would would have just gone right, we’re gonna have to move into bigger premises earlier. And of course, people will be familiar with new spaces and decorating and moving. Yeah. Yeah, big benefits. Is it’s something that is also used in resi. in similar ways it is it is the key benefits for smart buildings in sort of larger scale commercial hotels, that type of thing. Yeah,

Dan Drogman

so we are focusing on commercial but yeah, it definitely has the same application within hotels. I think, you know, people sometimes get it going to their room and the lights don’t come on. So you put the card in. And so what I do is I put a business card in or they put a nother card in, keep the lights and H back on where They’re out, obviously, with the smartphone, we know they’re not there, we can disable that space. But we can give them rewards for that. So they don’t feel like they’re getting trapped unnecessarily that we are, you know, doing the ethical thing and not preventing waste. We can give them a reward and say, well, actually, yeah, you’ve saved this much energy. So you’ve got the percentage of for coffee in reception, so you’re getting a payback. And as soon as people get a payback, they’re way more open to sharing that data. So yeah, I think it applies to hotels is that same for Bill to rent BTR? Because, yeah, you know, again, where you’re not paying the energy, it doesn’t affect you financially, whether you have the heating on and the windows open, in deep winter. And so you know, people abuse it. And but I think if you can incentivize them, and that would be providing a fantastic return on investment for saving energy, they will do it. And I think that’s where the same technology falls into resi. And hotels.

Matt Nally

Awesome. Okay. And there’s a couple of other things I saw on your website, LinkedIn, with smart buildings, which were, obviously AI, which I think you kind of touched on in terms of data analysis, and we’ll come on to in a second, but also digital twins. So I suppose firstly, what’s a digital twin? And why is it useful within the smart building? Space? Yeah,

Dan Drogman 

certainly. So the digital twin is a representation of the builder building in a digital environment. And so if we have all the sensors that make up a building, and all the data around a building, we can have a digital repertory of that building. And that means that we can simulate things in that environment. So if you want to understand that, if you brought the house back on 30 minutes later, every morning, what would the temperature be when the first person arrives, based on our dataset we have in our cloud, you can simulate that in the digital twin. And then that’s typically linked to representation visually. So that could be a 3d model. So you can actually see the fabric of the building, you can see all the components that give you a better understanding of how things work together. But yeah, it’s a simulated environment, which is a twin of the building, and it will either run real time, so whatever you’re seeing in the 3d twin in your browser, you could be on a beach in Barbados, with your iPad out, loads the building up, you can see exactly what’s happening in that building on that model at that time. Or you can walk back and see what it was like, you know, three months ago, you can compare three months to now or you can look forward and look at the predictive analytics and say, What was the building look like in three months time? So yeah, it gives you a virtual environment to test strategies to save energy, and improve your building.

Matt Nally

That’s really interesting. Because it’s, it’s, it’s very easy to anecdotally think one thing is happening, and try and make decisions based on what you believe is going on versus being able to actually they cross check and go, actually, now I’m completely wrong. Yeah, years ago, but it’s in supermarkets. And remember, in the bakery section, you’d often get one thing completely over bacon. But people love blueberry muffins. Well, the data doesn’t say they do. But that’s all gonna go in the bin. So next time, follow the stats.

Dan Drogman

That data is used to older folks, you know, they were based on our occupancy data and our predictions for occupancy, we will all default. And we could go back and look at like, say, half term this week, for instance, last year, and see what the occupancy levels were and say, Okay, we’re going to reduce the amount of food we ordered by 30%, to cater for half term. So yeah, it’s certainly really powerful for that. And that’s what it comes back to this purpose of optimising environment, people on the planet. You know, it’s all around making the savings, but you know, also making life great. You don’t want to come back next week. And then there’s no blueberry muffins if you’re lucky, blueberry muffin, so we can see those patterns and respond to them. Yeah,

Matt Nally

awesome. Okay. And then AI Artificial Intelligence side, obviously, it’s a term that we hear a lot in terms of, you know, the common ones, obviously, chat GBT and blog writing and that type of stuff. But it’s got super powerful uses, I understand in data analysis. So is that what you’re using it for then? Within the smart spaces, side of things, because you mentioned early, got a lot of data collection. And imagine otherwise, that just sits there. So part of the benefit, obviously, with smart buildings is you’ve got the app and the engagement and ease of using the building itself. But I imagine you drive a lot more benefit from the data sciences. That way you’re using AI and

Dan Drogman  

Certainly, yeah, and that’s what provides the insight and it comes down to a few things. It’s like one, the data set now is so large that you can’t really interrogate it as a human efficiently. And then too, we create these fantastic dashboards, but obviously, that requires time and sometimes when you look at the dashboard, it’s almost too late. You’ve missed the opportunity. So yeah, we use em. l machine learning to provide the predictions on our platform. And we made quite a significant hire. Last year I head of AI, Alex Michaels, he’s responsible for delivering version two of that, which is going great guns. We’ve also got, obviously, the Gerrity of AI, which you mentioned, chat GPT, which we use a lot of these tools internally to increase the productivity of our team. So our team will use chat GPT, plus a whole host of other services, some connected to Slack, some connected to our Git repository, some connected to the testing in our software. And they will provide code examples or snippets that they we can use. So you know, typical thing would be a formula to understand screen sizes across all the different Samsung devices. That would be a formula that we can get chapter up to right, move that into our code, we have another tool that will analyse whether that’s got any security risks, or it brings any libraries in that we don’t know, or open source, which could cause a risk. And yeah, and increase our productivity. And so we’re seeing, you know, we can get up to like 30%, more productivity out of our developers. So we’re not looking to replace them with AI, we’re supplementing them with AI is your assistant that this is the best way to think of it in the generative side. On the obviously, the generative stuff will come into our crank posts on our platform as well. Because obviously, you know, that could be time consuming. So we’ve got that piece. But yeah, the other side of that is the ML machine learning, which is the insights engine.