Articles

“Imagine this… There is an explosion in your building, and everyone is trying to get out, including Fred, your facility manager. Jim at the front office shouts across the hall “Hey, Fred! Emergency Services are here. They need to know where the shut-off valves are! Fred pauses and turns to his desktop only to find […]

For much of the world, one of the first brands that come to mind when discussing home improvement is IKEA. The Swedish company now maintains an incredible 422 of its one-stop-shop home and furniture stores across 50 countries. The 957 million store visits and 2.5 billion web site visits in 2018 have generated an impressive […]

Phones ring, elevators ding, light switches click, access control systems beep, and alarms blare out. Sound is a very present but little considered form of human-machine interface within our evolving smart buildings. However, recent technological innovations and creative new approaches take us beyond dings and beeps, potentially making “sound” a fresh interface market for smart […]

“The future of work — it’s an exciting frontier where, more than ever, innovation and collaboration will be keys to success. And it’s coming to an enterprise near you at breakneck speed. Not to mention a café, home office, or shared workspace,” begins a recent report by tech-giant Cisco on the “borderless, lightning-fast, and highly […]

What’s a smart city without smart buildings, and where is the city with only smart buildings? Municipal and national governments talk confidently about their smart cities, but until they can drive the conversion of old building stock into smart-connected elements of the urban landscape, they are just creating smart infrastructure. To truly see the potential […]

Real estate developers buy land and create facilities to match the needs of their prospective clients. Once construction is completed, the property is sold, leased, or rented, and the developer’s focus moves to the next project. This is the real estate development business and it has made many people very rich. “Ninety percent of all […]

“Successful digital transformation is like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. It’s still the same organism, but it now has superpowers,” says George Westerman, a research scientist at the MIT Center for Digital Business. When digital transformation is done wrong, however, “all you have is a really fast caterpillar,” he points out, “and it’s hard […]

“A great workplace experience is more than just having a desk by the window or free lunch. It’s about being able to find a conference room for a last-minute meeting or having a mix of space to help you do your best work, like a table for collaboration and a quiet area for creative thinking,” […]