“I suspect the evolution of technology in our buildings is going to come rather quickly,” said Lachlan MacQuarrie, vice president, real estate management, with Oxford Properties Group, while moderating a seminar at the PM Expo in Toronto last month. “My advice would be: you probably don’t have as much time as you think you have.” The PM Expo is North America’s biggest exposition, networking and educational event. It brings together thousands of visitors and exhibitors around the topics of design and construction innovation in products, technologies, best practices and applications. This year’s event unsurprisingly focused on connected buildings, touching on important issues such as energy and security. One popular seminar discussed ‘energy management vs. building automation,’ which highlighted the energy efficiencies of real-time monitoring and operational responses. The conversation, however, transcended its technical title and instead focused at the real underlying issue. “I think we’re at a point where it is no longer a conversation […]