‘Smart buildings’ bring many benefits At one time, if you met a senior executive Avison Young, Ivanhoe Cambridge, JLL, in the real estate industry who was in Manulife, Morguard, among others) to charge of digital buildings and innovation, create a program that will define what you might have responded with a blank “smart building” means to the industry and stare of incomprehension. to customers. But now that “smart buildings” A “smart building” is about are all the rage and most people being connected. Through the understand their appeal, installation and use of advanced Thano Lambrinos doesn’t and integrated building have much explaining technology systems, it to do when it comes to joins up all activities and his role as senior viceoperations — from lighting to president at QuadReal air conditioning to security Property Group. He leads to safety operations. It leads a team that’s focused to greater efficiency on redefining the way and comfort while also THANO LAMBRINOS, buildings are designed, reducing carbon emissions SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT, built and managed, and and lowering the cost of QUADREAL PROPERTY GROUP how occupants experience operating the building. their environments. “There are many The Toronto-based executive is also ‘smart’ certification programs popping up, chair of the stakeholder committee for yet none to date has provided a robust the BOMA BEST Smart Building group, enough framework to articulate what’s working with industry peers (GWLRA, required to be ‘smart’ and what benefits 20 BOMA Ottawa Commercial Space Directory 2021-22
‘smart’ actually brings to building owners, operators, and our customers,” said Lambrinos. “A number of these certifications are from for-profit organizations, which makes me wonder if they’re truly dedicated to bettering the industry and our environments. “With BOMA’s globally respected position as a leading not-for-profit real estate association, the group has built a fantastic framework powered by industryleading CRE firms, bringing real value at a cost that simply covers the requirements to administer the program — but no TV spots featuring celebrities, unfortunately,” he quipped. “Our goal is to identify the use of technology within the built-environment and measure the levels at which owners are using it to affect six key areas: sustainability, health and wellbeing, security, connectivity, data management and analytics. With this program, we’ll be able to measure and benchmark within our own portfolio, and against industry peers across the globe.” ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance), which has drastically increased in importance to organizations and to the public in the last several years, refers to a combination of business standards that many investors use to screen upcoming investments. It’s now frequently the focus of policy, legislation and regulation. “ESG is absolutely here to stay, and rightfully so,” said Lambrinos. “It’s critical for all organizations to embrace each letter of the acronym to ensure their businesses remain relevant in the global landscape. From a perspective of environmental sustainability, we have an obligation to the planet and to the communities we serve to aggressively pursue NetZero to support current and future generations. “At QuadReal, we have an extremely robust ESG team that the technology team I lead is tightly aligned with to allow us to realize these goals.” The impact that technology has on ESG in the real estate industry is “critical”, said Lambrinos. “Whether we’re using automation to better optimize building systems, integrating various IoT sensors to provide on-demand services, or correlating typically disparate data sets to better inform decision-making – data and technology are a key element in sustainability and the pursuit of NetZero.
