ESD has been an internationally recognized leader in the development of Intelligent Buildings for years. To provide better clarity and competitive advantage for our clients, we have created an Intelligent Building Group dedicated to helping them navigate through the maze of Intelligent-Building options and solutions.
The new team brings decades of experience to the task. ESD President Kurt Karnatz leads the IB Group, along with the core team featuring Dave Clute, Rob Knight and Rick Szcodronski.
“Intelligent Buildings are central to any real-estate strategy, and they create outcomes that benefit all stakeholders,” Karnatz said. “Owners, operators, occupants and visitors are all seeing the positive effects of Intelligent Buildings today and will enjoy them even more in the future.”
ESD’s Intelligent Building work has already touched major companies, and as more stakeholders embrace the business case for Intelligent Buildings’ economic, environmental and experiential outcomes, this number will quickly rise. Operating and maintenance costs drop. Energy expenses fall while building sustainability increases. Occupant satisfaction, comfort and control jumps. Overall, these outcomes spur tenant demand, heighten competitive advantage and enhance assets.
Examples of Intelligent Buildings are increasing all around. In the retail space, rentals are becoming dynamic. Thanks to sensor technology, mall owners can now charge tenants based on how many visitors they drive in front of stores rather than by a square-foot contract. In the hospitality industry, customers check in to hotels via their mobile devices, and their “key” resides on their screen – they never need to go to the front desk.
Said Clute, who previously worked at Cisco Systems among other well-known firms, “The idea of Intelligent Buildings has been around since the 1980s, but it’s taken off in the last five years because of the ubiquity of Wi-Fi, the Internet of Things, secure networks and the availability of cost-effective building sensors. We’re literally at the threshold of the long-term potential of Intelligent Buildings.”