In our Podcast series “Sh*t You Wish Your Building Did!”, Memoori explores the intersection between technology and commercial buildings through interesting conversations.

For Episode 31, we were joined by Tomás Mac Eoin from Master Systems Integrator (MSI) Hereworks to Discuss their Swift HR Concept.

The Swift HR concept envisions a cross-functional team, led by Human Resources (HR), with the agility to quickly respond to, and manage smart building insights. So it becomes a guiding force for integrating human feedback into the data layer of smart building systems, thus improving the user experience.

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You Can’t Design a Truly Smart Building Without Human Resources!

James: Tomas thank you so much welcome to the podcast.

Tomas: Thank you very much for having me.

James: Of course thank you tell us a little bit about Hereworks to kick off.

Tomas: Yeah so Hereworks was born in I suppose to 2007 and we were originally a commercial audio visual uh integrator um and my own background I’m a background in telecoms and IP networks so we kind of from the get-go we embraced AV over IP um we’re part of a larger um Construction Group called MacEoin group um and we have within that group we have a Construction Group and we have a mechanical and electrical um services division and as we progressed through the years and grew as a contractor we we started doing a lot of I was automating everything from um from yeah obviously Lighting systems HVAC systems um and we got more and more than into smart building Technologies like space analytics systems Etc Y Before we realized it we uh we had become what everyone now knows or most people know now as a master systems integrator we didn’t realize it at the time that’s what we had become so we were handling a lot of data that comes from uh buildings in general and we collating it and then using it for uh for I suppose generating insights uh on of what’s going on in the building and how to better manage those buildings so now we would describe ourselves as a master systems integrator yeah or smart building integrator.

James: Perfect and I know you have lots of experience working on projects so I bought you one today because I want we’re going to talk about uh this concept that you’ve developed called Swift HR yeah but I thought a good a good starting point or you know was to First sort of frame it right as some of the fundamentals about what you’ve been seeing within your work um and you know when I’ve heard you talk you’ve talked about the responsibility for translating smart building data into actually actionable insights within an organization right super important So currently how does that tend to work within an organization is there one particular you know entity that is responsible for that?

Tomas: Well I suppose first of all i’ say we’re we’re we Hereworks are our our similar companies are are responsible for actually generate generating the insights from the data um the qu the question I suppose is within organizations who can actually action those insights right and usually and I I think this is this is fairly common across the industry we’re commissioned by either the facilities the facility management people or by real estate and they’re the ones who kind of want a smart building and um they hire us and it’s all very exciting at the start and uh we install a lot of Technologies um but time and time again we find that sometimes the insights we generate after go live um are not action um it depends on the organization who who who’s actually responsible um but generally because facilities or real estate of commissions they’re the ones who will kind of look at the insights and a lot of the insights we generate um are around humans and around people and how people interact with the building um and they’re the ones in particular that aren’t action so I suppose if we’re generating insights around energy or we’re generating uh insights around space utilization they generally get fairly well um fairly well actioned by Delux of real estate facilities but some some of the most valuable insights around the humans um and how they interact with the building and it kind of Falls between two stools and nobody’s nobody’s really really responsible um I have lots of examples.

James: yes no I’d love to hear an example that was going to be my next question.

Tomas: Yeah so um in one and again this is a kind of a recurring theme we had uh we had a building here in Dublin um and we found that a particular room type was being over um occupied um and the problem that was causing was very very high levels of CO2 um up into kind of 2 and a half thousand approaching 3,000 parts per million which is it’s beyond the stage where you’d be feeling tired it could actually make you sick and these were this was going on for 3 4 hours and when we investigated more um and we looked at the booking data we found out that it was it was a training session it was happening in consecutive days repeatedly across the building and when we looked into it we found out that actually there was 27 people in that room and the room had only ever been designed for 15 people so we also knew um that there was plenty of bigger rooms available in the building so the simple fix was to book a different room yeah now we had been commissioned by facilities in in in that case and they didn’t have a direct link with with uh workplace managers or with Human Resources hr to kind of change those habits um and that seems really really simple but that problem went on for months in fact it may still be still be going on um and you know what a required was was Zero cost bit of training of you know actually if you if you’re booking this size of a booking this size of an event please use this type of room so that’s a very blunt blunt example um of of kind of what goes on so what we found is that no matter what project we get involved in we rarely rarely see human resources or anyone from Human Resources at the Smart building table let’s call it and that’s seem that to me is a is a I suppose a glaring Omission I’m sure James you’re more than familiar with the with JLL 3 30 300 rule so for every $3 you spend on energy you spend 30 on rent and 300 on people y so you know you know that’s where the value is in the people yet a lot of our time in the smart building world is spent on the first two on on the energy and the um and the real estate which you know energy obviously you know we obviously have a lot of targets to to meet for 2030 and Beyond um and it’s a very Noble Pursuit but my argument would be that actually if we focus on the human we’ll actually get everything else right because we’ll we’ll improve um we’ll improve well-being obviously so now now we have a more productive Workforce um we’re only designing spaces for how people use it so we’re reducing the real estate costs and we’re only you know uh uh setting up these facilities for when there’s people there and how they use it so we’re going to save on energy we’re going to save on waste and how we how we clean and how we maintain the facilities as well so I suppose that’s our mantr here work is really focus on the human I we get everything else right now Human Resources are all about the human facilities yes they do see themselves as being responsible for well-being but they’re quite disconnected really from now I’m talking in office environments by the way and I should I should I should have said that from the start I’m really talking about Office Buildings here rather than industrial or buildings but it is Human Resources that are most connected they understand the sentiment of people what people want and they’re generally fairly senior in an organization so they can actually Implement change.

James: Okay so that’s a perfect segue then into what you have called the Swift HR approach right so this concept could you describe um yeah what so obviously we’ve described the problem and how Human Resources is disconnected so is this concept is bringing that bringing them into the conversation about smart.

Tomas: yeah and and I suppose it’s probably word mentioning first who who is at the Smart building table will we’ve already said we’ll have facilities we’ll have um real estate we sometimes have uh workplace safety teams um we’ll have IT there and we’ll have obviously have the technology um as well um as part as part of the the smart smart building um so the idea of Swift HR by the way it’s an acronym um so s is safety W is workplace I is it f is facilities uh T is technology H then is human resources and R is real estate so Swift HR the idea is that we create we that we reimagine how we actually manage uh modern Office Buildings because at the moment we rely on kind of traditional facility management contracts where there’s really no room for proactivity around the insights that are coming from from our smart building Technologies because you know it’s all about efficiencies it’s all about reducing costs and everyone is rewarded on reducing costs so we’ve written these contracts we’ve kind of tied the hands of the fac the facility managers and putting these bus because there just is no room for productivity so Swift HR is it’s it’s not just a new team it’s it’s rethinking how we actually manage these buildings and how we how we write these facility management contracts going forward but the idea is that it’s a cross functional team it includes all of those um different disciplines but my argument is that actually the people who should lead that team are the Human Resources team MH because as I men they’re the ones that are really connected to the bu to the people and therefore uh the highest return on investment from any of these Technologies you know you know yeah everything about it is positive because we’re improving well-being um but you know with my shareholders hat on I’m also improving uh productivity because all the research like this countless research shows that actually if you focus on well-being you’ll increase productivity if you do the opposite if you focus on productivity you actually reduce well well-being so you know it’s a it’s a win-win for any organization.

James: Very interesting and in the current sort of state of play as you said like a lot of this other gets managed by some workplace well it’s generally within facilities right but do you think that is responsible perhaps for like not great outcomes as well because they’re just not really uh they don’t have the same incentive structure to you know promote these ideas or really push forward this agenda they’re they’re too focused on cost and too focused on like managing resources.

Tomas: Yeah I mean and that is it that that’s the way we’ve written and I’ve been at the other side of this table as well where I’ve actually been you know biding for facility management contracts and like it’s all about C like it’s it is such a low margin um industry it’s all about just getting the most you know sweating that asset I ha manager to do the most and then try um trying to year on year make efficiencies by um you know maybe it’s by energy saving um but like we could have a very efficient building if we nobly in it!

James: Absolutely the the most efficient building is the one that’s never built.

Tomas: Yeah so I think it’s really down to how we’ve written those contracts and it really like I mean it’s a it’s a Cutthroat industry um and it’s all about low cost yeah and you know at what expense and there’s always this big excitement you know with a capital budget when a building’s being built and there’s Millions involved and you know everyone wants to be at that table and then the building’s built and suddenly it’s handed over and now all that excitement and all the hard work and expense that went into put in these systems and were’re not leveraging not leveraging it uh to to to its maximum.

James: No absolutely and there’s lots of examples aren’t there where that Handover phase is really uh you know almost very much a Line in the Sand where those that have worked on the building walk away and go on to the next project and someone is left to operate the building who’s probably has had nothing to do with the actual design and um construction of it um and a lot of all that knowledge that went into building it just goes somewhere else.

Tomas: Yeah and and that’s true I mean if you look as well at even commissioning and we still and I think this is a problem worldwide as much you know in in Ireland and the UK as it is in in in the states and Beyond you know this final commissioning of a building always takes much longer than expected and often is never is never finished and and then exactly that happens as well you you you pass over then to a different team and suddenly you know the final commissioning is never finished and actually again that’s where smart building Technologies you know like fault detection Diagnostic and that kind of thing can really help to you know you know make that transition um a bit more seamless and even when commissioning is done right it can be right for one year and then a year later it’s never it’s never looked at again and things were overridden and whatever so again a huge place where smart building Technologies to you know spot these insights spot the anomalies um and and the trend changes that happen when Things fall out of commission.

James: 100% one of the key elements you described to me as well about Swift HR is integrating human feedback as well into the data layer of smart Building Systems so again like being interesting to hear your thoughts on how would that be achieved.

Tomas: Yeah and again putting putting the old here works man on about focusing on the human so we’re handling all this data from from the building you know whether it be internal you know sensor data and temperatures CO2 levels we also bring in things like uh the weather external weather outside we bring in people counting and bring all this data around the building but again what if we brought brought in the human data as well so when I talk about human data what I mean is sentiment analysis again something that HR you know the real that HR are in so you know are people satisfied with their building are they satisfied with their comfort with their workplace when we do those surveys you know whether they’re a p survey maybe they’re done once every two weeks and we ask a question there you know their comfort levels why not bring or or we ask it randomly at random times why not bring that data in into the data Lake as well and now we can compare it to what the building data is saying and now we start to see actual Trends um and there’s a couple of things we can we can do with that obviously we can use it to generate insights but we can also use it to train um to train the building as to what is optimal um we’re actually working on a project at the moment um with one University D City University in um in Dublin at the moment where we’re looking at we we have this concept of a happy score uh in in in Hereworks and our happy so we generate any any buildings that we on board onto our heroes happy platform um we generate a happy score for it and the idea is that it’s the simple score that represents how well the building is meeting the needs of its occupants zero is bad 100’s good and you know why we may never achieve a 100 we’re looking we’re looking at we’re looking at Trends here the idea is that it it it you’ve got all this big data all the data that I mentioned there a minute ago but it’s very hard for human to understand it so we simplify it into one score and but now by bringing in the human data into that data lake we can start to train a piece of AI to to generate the happy score based on you know what the people are telling us what the build building is is telling us and then we can use that data to um to configure our BMS systems you know to actually set our BMS systems to what is comfortable or to encourage our HR people um to provide more desks over there or to bring more staff into into the canteen the other type of human data we we bring in is um ticketing so um within again heror happy we have something called heror solve which is a smart smart ticking system we put these these kind of um smart Asset tags yeah and they’re basically location location aware we put them on anything from coffee CH to desks and allows people to report a problem with those assets within 5 Seconds the idea being that you get more problems reported the things that are really really bugging people around the building and that never really get reported or if they do not through an official Channel and again by bringing that in to the data Lake in the normalized way now we know actually okay what’s happening in that office right now what deaths are working what deaths aren’t working what problems are people having and you just making this much richer human focused uh uh data L um which can generate insights to help those people who manage the building to improve to improve that experience um a lot of people ask well you know we’re going to get so many problems reported that’s the idea and and the idea like where where we’ve where we’ve rolled this out you get an influx of problems in the first few weeks but then you start to see the trends you get to the root cause the problem and then those tickets fall off and then you move on to the next thing and the last more important thing you see all these TRS all the time but you’re all the time making iterative improvements to The Human Experience and been able to see that in the same realm as the as the building data is hugely powerful.

James: Yeah I can see that and I suppose you quite quickly work out what’s important to people right what’s uh when something when there is a problem or when problems repeat as well right with a specific bit of equipment okay so we need to focus.

Tomas: We’re not just going to fix the problem we’re going to find the root cause of the problem okay um like one of the most common problems you probably know this your own work in life is I’m too hot and too cold you know that’s the most common problem that any facility manager receives um but by actually able to see exactly where that person was when they were reporting that uh and compare it to the nearest sensor to them um you can start to well actually maybe maybe something wrong with that sensor or maybe they are just pred on as that perfectly comfortable you know you can’t you can’t please everyone or you could possibly send them to a part of the building where they’ll be comfortable because we’re all a bit different you know and that’s that’s exactly.

James: Good point and you mentioned that just that um this kind of stuff you’re doing this already right you implementing this technology um and are you introducing uh Swift HR into your conversation you’re having with clients.

Tomas: we talk about it a lot we talk about it a lot um we I suppose we’ve only really given us kind of that name there maybe six months ago um but we have talked a lot about having HR at the table I’m not saying we’ve great success in it um and you know there’s a reluctance in some in some organizations like some organizations real estate actually uh report to finance and some organizations real estate actually do report in the hure okay they’re the most Progressive companies without a doubt um in terms of kind of moving to I suppose what we call Swift HR and are more willing to bring in workplace managers right to the to the smart building table.

James: Because they already kind of understand there’s a link there between the workplace and human resources.

Tomas: And you know companies are very very different you know even in the tech world like a lot of our companies are kind of the big Tech world F world and within those sectors each company has a slightly different different view on what’s important um and we lead with different Technologies depending on what some people are just really really focused on on you know sweating the plant making it the most efficient as possible and then some are really focused on the human and we’ve we a different tool chest depending on what um on what the customer is really focused on themselves and but um I definitely think you know you hear you hear a lot of people particularly we do bit bit of work with the public sector and there’s a fear of what AI might bring and you know what machine learning might bring you know is this going to you know you hear this you know is this going to replace my job um yeah there’s no fear of that until we we actually change how we how you know towards something like Swift HR and that’s what we have to do we have to let the technology do its job guing the insights and then we need the humans to make the change and to change you know to become you know more concierge type facility uh manager than being you know focused on the plant because the technology will look after the plant so let’s you know Embrace this change um to to to supposed to really leverage Ai and all and all all the benefits that can bring to a to a modern building.

James: yeah it also just occurred to me of course that human resources have all of that information not just about individuals but for example their um how often people are sick how often uh you know they’re in the office or work from home or whatever and I mean that would be really interesting wouldn’t it to be able to correlate um sick leave against uh building performance and see if like you can you can bring that number down the number of sick days by improving the environment.

Tomas: Yeah and staff retention exactly you know is a huge which is a Hu huge thing um nowadays.

James: Yes good point so what are your plans and with obviously you’re you’re taking this to clients now within your business I mean is is is Swift HR something you want to also develop as a concept within the industry that other people can can use?

Tomas: I think it’s a bit yeah absolutely yeah I mean it’s not we’re not we’re we’re we’re not CLA claiming it or or um or trademarking it and we’re encouraging it I suppose um so the more I’m funny I seen I can’t remember who who was this morning um post on LinkedIn anyway I I replied but more and more there is a shift in the industry to talk about wellness and looking after humans in in the smart building industry so there is a bit of a shift I think happening albe it slowly um but yeah I it’s really to get you know we often wonder we we speak a lot of smart building events met you at the Smart building conference in earlier this year but we wonder should we really be speaking at workplace conferences should we because we’re kind of speaking to the converted some sometimes in the in the smart building world so it’s really to get this message through to, is it the building owners is it the asset owners is it is it the owner occupiers is the occupiers of of these building because that’s where the change has to come from that that’s they’re the people who hire you know the real estate companies so companies and I suppose we need to I suppose it’s been education here is it we need to bring them them along the journey but absolutely would encourage anyone you know I I have a couple of slides here as well I can I can send on to you if you want to share yes on on on the on the on the concept but we’ll include those in the show notes for sure yeah.

James: thank you very much it was really interesting to chat through that with you I think it’s uh as a concept I think it makes so much sense I mean is the last question to you is if there’s one thing that you uh want people to take away from uh from this conversation today what would it be.

Tomas: It has to be our own Mantra you focus on the human and we’ll get everything else right and that’s we really believe that and um you know focusing just on the on the narrow uh of you know energy I just think it’s too it’s too low level nowadays for what the um for what the technology is capable of yeah certainly in in in an office environment so focus on the human and get everything else right perfect.

James: Thanks again appreciate your time.

Tomas: Thank you James. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

James: Bye everyone thanks.