Kelly: (00:06 )
welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:08 )
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13 )
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:18 )
I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19 )
and I’m Kelly Westby,

Robb: (00:21 )
building owner or manager in New York City? Smart buildings NYC is your Go-to guide to learn how to comply with the new codes mandated on all large buildings in New York City. Find out how the technology discussed on this episode can help your building get ranked higher by visiting www.smartbuildings.NYC.

Kelly: (00:40 )
Well, it is bittersweet to be introducing the final episode of this first season of buildings and beyond. I want to thank you all for going on this journey of podcast development with us, or if this is your first episode, definitely go back and listen to all of the others, because we really had some great conversations this season. Today we are venturing a little into the beyond by having a guest outside of the immediate SWA team. David Unger is the founding CEO of Sentient Buildings, SWA and Sentient have a strategic partnership that I think speaks to the way that we see the term smart buildings and what it really means to us. We don’t think that adding more and more sensors to generate more and more data points in buildings is smart. Smart buildings live at the intersection of behavioral science, building science, and computer science. To put it a little more simply, smart buildings bring together building systems, technology and people, and what better person to bring the technology piece to SWA and to those listening to buildings and beyond other than David Unger.

Kelly: (01:42 )
Dave founded an innovative web services company in the 90s and eventually moved to become chief technology officer of US energy group. This transfer focused his technology expertise on improving the built environment, which he has fully solidified at Sentient buildings. I’ll let Dave introduce you to who’s Sentient is and what they do. So let’s just dive right into the episode. So welcome Dave to the podcast. How’s it going?

Dave: (02:08 )
Good!

Kelly: (02:09 )
good. Thanks for coming out to our Norwalk office. So I sort of introduced the topic a little bit in the intro, but I wanted to get started with your take on what the term smart buildings means to you.

Dave: (02:26 )
So smart building to me means a building that has a sense of awareness of its environment. a building that not only can sense what’s going on but can actually react to the environment in specific ways, whether that’s human controlled, or that’s fully automated at some level. But a smart building is a building that can actually react to its environment and control things and monitor and manage things in a way that aids in energy efficiency, aids in comfort and also monitors and protects against major issues that could cause problems in a building. So, a smart building is really a sense of awareness that the building has of itself It’s not an alive building in a lot of ways, but it’s, it’s, it’s a building that can react to its environment intelligently and do something

Kelly: (03:24 )
great. I mean, we all are loving the plant walls that are cleaning our air. So the idea of a fully live building that’s aware of itself sounds pretty good. SWAs position, I would say in the thought of what a smart building means is that it’s tying together the technology aspect that I think you talked about just now. And then also with the building systems and with the people and tying these three things together, how do you think that technology relates to building systems and people?

Dave: (04:02 )
Yeah, well, I mean technology is really the glue that basically can take a system and integrate that system with a communication network. And then expose that network through some type of interface to a person. Right? So the three pieces of a system in a smart building include those three things. Really you need a system that you’re monitoring, controlling or doing something with that you can imbue at some level of intelligence. An