Buildings Can Talk Now. Are You Listening?

The amount of technology installed in buildings has increased dramatically in the last two decades. The stack now includes building management systems to control heating, electricity, ventilation, solar and lighting, not to mention security, user management and room booking.

The challenge of a facilities manager today is to oversee all these different technologies and datasets, all from different vendors. It’s becoming more and more overwhelming to cope while operating buildings.

But what if they could actually talk to their building? Ask it which areas aren’t performing efficiently, for example, or how usage differs across offices? Or, have a conversation about how to improve the visitor experience?

Technology today — specifically artificial intelligence — makes this conversation possible, said Ferdinand Grapperhaus, CEO and co-founder of Next Sense, which provides an AI-driven building performance platform. 

“We’ve created a problem for ourselves,” he said. “Buildings have become too complex for humans to make sense of it all. We need to solve this technology problem with new technologies that give us control again, so we can make better, high-quality decisions about real estate in less time.”

Addressing building performance from all aspects of environmental, social and governance using technology isn’t new, Grapperhaus said. Many engineering firms and real estate consultancies give in-depth advice about how to improve the performance of a building. 

However, implementing technologies to provide the necessary data has until now been costly. To deep-dive into a building, a property manager needs data from sensors, energy meters and building management systems. 

“This is hard to scale across multiple buildings, which has been a key challenge of the last decade,” Grapperhaus said. “When proptech arrived, it brought dashboards and solutions to make data visible, but it never really escaped the 'nice-to-have' vibe.”

Regulation will soon force the issue of better building performance. The UK government has announced that all commercial real estate has until 2028 to achieve an energy performance certificate of C and until 2031 to achieve a B. 

For portfolio owners, this means that sustainability is no longer an aspiration but a leasing and financial condition. 

The good news is that with technology now available, Grapperhaus said AI has the potential to make buildings simpler, more user-friendly and human-centred again. 

Software can be used to create loops of improvement, establish targets and deliver simultaneous tracks of analysis of not just buildings but portfolios.

“Then, you have the best of both worlds: knowledge from building advisers built into machine learning algorithms and access to all the datasets you need to understand performance,” he said. “AI is the driver that turns proptech from a nice-to-have into a must-have and will give experts control and even the opportunity to be one step ahead again.”

Next Sense’s solution combines the most rapidly growing form of AI that allows users to talk to buildings with large datasets and machine learning models built by the business' own engineers over the course of years improving building performance.

When a building manager accesses the Next Sense Building Intelligence Center, on the left side they will view all the data feeds and analysis they need to create reports. 

On the right side of the screen, users can prompt their building in an AI chat-style communication, built on Next Sense architecture, powered by selected LLMs and run on European servers.

They could ask a question as broad as “what is going wrong with energy use on our floors?” or as detailed as “what could we do to improve tenant satisfaction?”

“Under the hood, we’ve got all the information about the building, from floor plans to sensor data, as well as data on weather and how people use the building,” Grapperhaus said. “We make the dataset as rich as possible and the interface as simple as possible.”

Next Sense works directly with occupiers, operators and landlords, of which many are Fortune 500 companies, including some in the top 10. These global companies expect an office that makes their lives easier, Grapperhaus said. 

“The climate should be comfortable, the energy consumption low, and it should be a place where you want to stay and have a meeting,” he said. “The user experience in a well-connected building is considerably higher.”

Amsterdam-based investment firm Timeless Investments used Next Sense to reduce total energy consumption by 17% by optimising heating and cooling. This included reducing use of air-handling units by 51% and adjusting use in under-used areas.

Measured over an initial two-week period, these verified savings are expected to increase further on an annual basis due to seasonal variation.

Just Eat Takeaway used Next Sense across its 13 office locations in Europe. Using one business intelligence center, the business’ ESG teams can view the performance of the whole portfolio or drill down to asset level to provide local managers with information about how to improve a specific building.

“The winners in property management are those who can use technology to leverage their people,” Grapperhaus said. “Their staff can focus on what they do best, while management is done by AI and analysis.”

On the landlord side, Grapperhaus has conversations about how a better understanding of data can reduce building vacancy and retain occupiers. It also simplifies conversations about service charge because it gives information on exact energy and building use, he said.

Looking ahead, AI will accelerate flexibility, allowing people to develop more effective ways to use the same square foot of space, Grapperhaus said. 

“Imagine knowing your office is used in the evenings by a sports club or music centre to practice — this is a solution to create more resilient cities that are not too polluting or densely populated,” he said. “The better control we have of our assets, the better chance we have of creating multi-uses for them. It can be the solution our cities need.”

This article was produced in collaboration between Next Sense and Studio B. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.

Studio B is Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. To learn more about how Studio B can help your team, reach out to studio@bisnow.com.