Construction Industry
Net Zero Buildings Explored: Cambridge University’s Civil Engineering Building
February 23rd, 2024#Podcast 26: Commercial Buildings Silent Majority!
December 18th, 2023A Blueprint for the Future of Retrofitting in Smart Buildings
Progressive regulators around the world are finally beginning to address the problem of inefficient existing building stock that makes up the vast majority of global real estate and consequently, the majority of buildings’ impact on the environment. However, solving the problem of existing inefficient buildings is not as simple as just applying new regulations, significant […]
Net Zero Buildings Explored: Elithis Tower, Dijon
The Elithis Tower in Dijon, France, is the headquarters of the Elithis Group, a building engineering consultant firm. Completed in March 2009, the facility was one of France’s first net zero buildings and is considered the world’s first positive energy office tower developed at a standard cost of construction. At just over 50,000 square feet […]
Defining a Zero Emissions Building from the Top Down
A zero emissions building is not as easy to define as you may think. Should it include embodied carbon, for example, should efficiency and clean energy generation be specific parts of the definition or should it simply refer to the level of emissions, whatever the approach? These are the kinds of questions being discussed in […]
Funding Takes Off for AI Drone Building Inspection!
Of the one million or so buildings in New York City, 314 have over 40 stories and are considered skyscrapers but more than 14,500 are over the six-story threshold to require a physical inspection of their facade every five years. With the growth of tall buildings around the world, especially in Asian and Middle Eastern […]
A New Venture Capital Fund to Bridge the Construction-Operation Divide?
In this Research Note, we take a look at Suffolk Technologies, the corporate venture capital arm of Suffolk Construction, which recently closed a $110 million inaugural venture capital fund for “Built World Technology Innovations.” The fund will invest in early-to-growth stage companies across construction technology (ConTech) and property technology (PropTech) spaces, with a focus on […]
Breaking the Shackles: Overcoming Resistance to Change in Smart Buildings
The commercial building industry has been notoriously slow in its adoption of new smart buildings technologies, struggling with a deep-seated inertia that has seen innovation lag other market verticals. Bound by the shackles of long-established practices and the burden of decades-old infrastructure and systems, it remains highly resistant to disruption. Complex supply chains, entrenched ecosystems, […]
How Improved Stakeholder Collaboration Leads to More Effective Smart Buildings
A huge range of different parties have both a stake in and a role to play in the delivery of, successful smart building solutions across the life cycle of a building. Each of these stakeholders comes with its own unique set of priorities, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs). Achieving successful outcomes as part of […]
Discovering Where BIM Ends & Digital Twins Begin
Building Information Modelling (BIM) and digital twins are two important technological concepts that can, at times, be considered quite separate or be used interchangeably in the buildings sector. Both concepts could be defined as “a digital representation of assets, processes and systems in a physical space,” yet they tend to be used by very different […]