Mipim, the world’s leading real estate fair and for the first time, “proptech” will be present in large numbers, rather than being relegated to another show on another date, as in the past. This is a sign of growing interest in “smart buildings”, equipped with data-gathering sensors and connected to the Internet.
“Nicolas Kozubek, director of Mipim Proptech, assures us: “What we wanted to do was to enable all technological initiatives linked to real estate to get closer to the heart of the market. “We know that traditional real estate players are talking more and more about technology and innovation, and need it more and more,” he adds.
Technology companies are exhibiting and highlighting the dashboards they offer their customers. On a tablet, you can see in real-time the parameters of an office building. Not the social climate, but temperature, humidity, energy consumption… and the owner can refine the parameters to see the details of a floor or even a room.
One of the leaders in the real estate sector, Gecina, which owns offices in the most sought-after districts of Paris, some buildings have their “digital twin”, a digital mock-up that centralizes all the building’s data in real-time for better exploitation.
“This will have an impact in several ways, on the user experience and on optimizing the management of our buildings, as well as on environmental impact,” explains Sabine Goueta Desnault, Gecina’s Director of Innovation. Other systems, designed for employees, let them know in real-time which rooms, parking spaces or even open-space areas are free or occupied. And reserve them if necessary.
One of the leaders in this field, Thing-it is a company specializing in “smart buildings” and founded in 2016, boasts a threefold increase in sales last year. It equips five groups on the Dax, Germany’s main stock market index. “There are two major trends: the mutation of work and ESG (environmental, social and governance criteria, editor’s note), and we think we’re at the crossroads of these two trends, and that’s why we have this rapid growth,” explains company founder Klaus Berberich. A success story with the pandemic and the spread of telecommuting.
“Post-COVID is still a glaring example because we had problems with people returning to the office; we need to attract people back to work. And to do that, we need to be able to create new spaces,” explains Jacques Guigui, Director of Technology and Innovation at commercial real estate giant CBRE.
“Probably, when the COVID page is turned, the question of what a building brings to its users, what people come to look for in that space, will be questions that will prevail”, asserts Jérôme Spanek, French representative of the Dutch company Spaceti, also specialized in “smart buildings”.
Clearly, for building owners, it’s a way of making their buildings more attractive and reducing their environmental impact. “When it’s on the tenant side, often the reason they approach us is either because they have internal social pressure that means they need data, or they have a project to redevelop their premises or move,” he explains. Counting the maximum number of people in the office at any one time can help save space… either to create new spaces or to save money.
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