Technology + Built Environment
Smart Building Magazine Column, The Smart Chronicles
The smart buildings industry did something genuinely impressive over the last decade. Faced with fragmented supply chains, overlapping scopes, and technologies falling between trades, it created a delivery construct that mostly worked. The Master Systems Integrator brought clarity to capital projects. It defined accountability, reduced chaos, and made it possible to deliver increasingly complex smart […]
In January, I usually look to the future. But winter has a way of slowing you down. Fewer distractions. Sharper thinking. On cold mornings, I like to imagine a walk through a small, fictional graveyard. Not of people, but of smart building and smart city technologies that once mattered deeply, worked remarkably well, and are […]
Smart buildings are becoming sophisticated enough that we’re finally allowed to ask awkward questions. Not “can it optimise my HVAC?” or “will the dashboard impress leadership?”, but something slightly more philosophical: what happens when the intelligence we’ve embedded starts smoothing reality in ways we don’t fully see? Not maliciously, not Skynet-in-a-plant-room, just… systemically. Most optimisation […]
The current wave of AI lives in documents, emails, and dashboards. The next wave will live in space. Embodied AI means software plus sensors plus motors operating in the real world: machines that can see a corridor, decide what to do, and act on it without waiting for a human. Once AI can move, buildings […]
There’s a moment in every smart building project when the confetti settles and reality walks in. The app works. The dashboards load. Then, within weeks, the control room drifts back to radio calls and spreadsheets. The gap isn’t technological, it’s operational. That’s why the most valuable deliverable on any PropTech programme isn’t a feature list, […]
You’d be forgiven for thinking PropTech was on a rocket ship. Flashy demos. AI-powered everything. A conference circuit full of optimism and matching lanyards. And yet, behind the scenes, the UK PropTech sector is beginning to show signs of fatigue. Not a dramatic collapse, but a slow, quiet unravelling that’s easy to miss if you’re […]
Have you ever walked into a building and instantly felt relaxed, productive, or inexplicably on edge? That’s not by accident, it’s the “vibe” at play. But now, there’s a new, tech-savvy cousin on the scene: vibe coding. I’m excited about what it could mean for smart buildings. Google defines vibe coding as: “Vibe coding is […]
One of the questions I get asked most, in boardrooms, conferences, or even in the pub, is: “What’s next for smart buildings?” It used to be a fun question. I’d launch into some enthusiasm about self-healing systems, walls that would talk back to you, or what was real about AI in mobile apps. These days, […]
One might be forgiven for believing that the value proposition of smart building technology has already won its case. After all, who doesn’t want a workplace that’s more efficient, sustainable, and responsive? Yet, large corporate occupiers still find themselves staring blankly at dashboards brimming with data, wondering how exactly this aligns with their ESG reporting, […]
In the smart building industry, one of the main hurdles to achieving optimal building performance has historically been the management and interpretation of unstructured data. Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have dramatically reduced this barrier. AI has demonstrated remarkable capabilities in recognising and interpreting relationships between building assets without explicit labels. For example, AI can […]