The technological backbone of premises will either make or break a building

COMMENT Offices are back in business, and landlords have a new brief: navigate the complexities of hybrid working, and the technological nuances it will demand. Landlords need to support tenants to bring employees back to work, and make the experience so good that they keep coming back. But what’s the secret to implementing technology that tenants will actually use? WiredScore spoke to tenants and their advisers to identify the four problems that tenants want proptech to solve. 1. Making the most of building management system data Everyone wants occupancy figures. Cleaning regimes, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems… these are all key indicators that say “I am safe here”. Occupiers’ real estate teams want the BMS to go further. Alongside controlling the heating and ventilation, tenants want systems that use algorithms and machine learning to make informed changes to occupancy. Can the system run 25 scenarios and use this to suggest changes for the set-up or show breaking points? These analytics should be accessible not just to real estate teams but also (as read-only) to stakeholders. However, sharing data means also creating an environment of trust. Occupiers’ number-one fear is: are you going to use that space efficiency data to squeeze me? 2. Find my Goldilocks spot Put yourself in the employees’ shoes. From the moment they walk through the door – coffee in one hand, a mask and work pass in the other – how do they unlock the door, go through the security gates, get up to their floor, go through a second security door and find a desk? Where is safe? Where is clean? The employee needs to solve all these questions, usually before 9am – and it’s real estate’s job to make it easier. Ernst & Young went as far as to build a resilient workplace system to make sure that just being at work isn’t a job in and of itself. “The solution was an IT system that allows individuals to choose an appropriate workplace depending on their business requirements,” says Paul Luciani, EY’s Asia-Pacific real estate leader. The system allows individuals to book, register and enquire about spaces and then uses AI to find their “Goldilocks spot”. It looks at who is in the office that day, identifying frequent collaborators and logging work habits such as light and noise preferences. Then it is important to make sure that the office actually works better than home. Freed from corporate security protocols, employees have been able to log in to Zoom, Teams and Webex meetings on a whim. Can they do that in the office with corporate security protocols running in the background? Making life easier for employees could be as simple as enabling touchless entry for staff and pre-qualified visitors. Plus, removing plastic passes is great news for environmental targets, as research by tenant-only agency DeVono shows that 25% of plastic keycards are lost and replaced every year. 3. Internet – getting it right Even in the humblest of operations, the office internet has to be perfect or employees may decide it’s simply not worth coming in. Does your building set-up give tenants plug-and-play internet options? Are there multiple internet service providers (everyone needs a plan B), multiple points of entry, low lag, no black spots and good mobile coverage? This is so important that one large corporate currently has two people who walk around the building with laptops to identify Wi-Fi black spots. Is there guidance on what digital connectivity is available that tenants can take away from a viewing? You would be surprised how many get to negotiation stage before realising the Wi-Fi isn’t part of the package and is going to add months to their move-in date. Finding an internet service provider, way leave (the agreement allowing a telecoms provider access to install services) and signing a contract are some of tenants’ biggest headaches. Tenants describe way leaves as “the bane of my life” and “so painful”. The solution? Take the stress out of the Wi-Fi from day one. Have a variety of internet providers ready on site which provide the plug-and-play experience that many expect. And, at the other end of the spectrum, for those bigger corporates, these provide choice, saving them time and money, and act as a back-up supplier. 4. Accessible energy and sustainability data Two words matter here: trust and authenticity. “We spoke to Amazon, GSK, Barclays, Facebook, and they don’t feel there is enough of a relationship with their landlord to ask for sustainability data,” said one agent.  Tenants and landlords alike need to justify every area of their carbon emissions. For the majority of tenants, the emissions connected to their real estate are not considered part of their core business reporting, and they really just want the stats to pass on to the auditors – and it’s up to real estate to provide said stats. Tenants want uniform, standardised data that allows them to benchmark buildings. Often, much of the data is already available, you just need to package it up so both you and your tenants can make better data-driven decisions. Certifications such as SmartScore can prove the smartness and energy efficiency of a building, which is certainly part of the battle. Moreover, an open dialogue between building owner and tenant is vital – tenants have to know where to get the information they need, and they need to feel able to ask for it without encountering multiple layers of pushback. For most, this is still the start of the journey. Tenants are still in post-pandemic learning mode, and agility, flexibility and future-proofing remain commercial property’s biggest friends. Going forward, the technological backbone of premises will either make or break a building, and having smart systems that talk to each other will be key. Nadia Bainbridge is senior product manager at WiredScore Photo © Gerd Altmann/Pixabay