Episode 10, Game Changers and Transition Makers: How A.I is shaping the future of sustainable buildings

Elena Lambros:

Hello and welcome to ESG Matters @ Ashurst. I'm Elena Lambros, the Ashurst risk advisory climate change and sustainability partner. Welcome to the latest episode of Game Changers and Transition Makers. In this episode, I'm joined by Robert de Burgh-Day, the founder and CEO of Brightspace, a tech firm that offers an AI-driven HVAC efficiency ecosystem, reducing costs, and enhancing air quality.

Well, welcome to the podcast, Rob. We're really happy to have you here today.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Elena Lambros:

Rob, I thought it'd be really great if you could just make a start by telling us a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your business.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah. I guess I come from a trade background. I was an electrician until 2012. And since then I've been in a number of different businesses from hospitality to marketing and all sorts of things. And then, about eight years ago, I started an IT consultancy with a friend of mine and we were doing complex communication infrastructure and just building out what we call bespoke systems.

And we did that for a number of years. And during COVID we found ourselves locked down like everyone else. And that's when we thought, let's have a crack at building our own sort of product. And we're out about four years later now. And yeah, it's progressed and evolved. We originally were really heavily focused in the air quality space, especially coming out of COVID.

And during the product development journey, we realised that what we were doing had broader applications into the ESG space. And especially around how buildings are utilised and how we can more efficiently operate, especially in this post-pandemic, sporadically occupied offices environment that we see these days with people. In two to three days a week, but the buildings that are designed to be fully occupied nine to five.

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, absolutely. I think there is that real shift in terms of behaviour and people's work patterns or life patterns. And then additionally you've got all those energy efficiency considerations. And I know from focusing on net zero and the energy transition, addressing the energy efficiency side is actually one of the harder things to change because changing people's behaviours is typically quite difficult.
How did you think about developing the idea of Brightspace further and what sort of need were you trying to address?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah. Well, I think we were looking at what it takes for an asset owner to make a change. And we've learned pretty quickly that people don't really want to spend more money than they currently are. The first step was to say, "Okay. How can we provide a solution that's going to be at worst, cost neutral and at best, provide ROI from day one from the energy that they're saving?"

And that's really how we dove into this journey. And coming from a background of installing this sort of tech, I guess you'd say, we understood that the thing that holds a lot of this stuff up is the cost of labour, the cost of installation, and difficulty of integration. We really just approached it from the start with what's going to be the smoothest, slipperiest way I guess, to get tech into a space and have it work without having a major amount of downtime, without having to vacate tenants, for example, or do any major, major works in the building?

That's where we landed when we started. And now we're really building out, I suppose a two-speed approach, really talking to new builds, but with an initial focus on existing assets. And especially ones that are struggling from an occupancy's perspective and struggling from a value perspective because they're falling behind some of the greener assets.

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, no, great. And then do you want to just maybe take everyone through exactly how it works and all the automation? I've actually seen your product and it looks really great. Maybe if you can try and describe that to everyone listening, that would be really helpful.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, sure. We've got a number of different wireless edge IoT products. And we place sensors all throughout a building and these sensors track all the occupants in the space, so we know where everyone is in the building in real time. And that's with a real focus on privacy.

The way we monitor everyone, everything's processed on our Edge devices. And then all we send off the device is just, it's basically a floor plan with everyone on it so we know where they are, but we can't identify anyone. That was really critical because we wanted to be able to install these everywhere so we'd be able to fully utilise the building rather than just in areas that were maybe less sensitive, for example.

And then we augment that with monitoring the air quality very accurately in all the spaces. And then providing fresh air on the Edge through filtration and other means. And that allows us to more accurately deliver the services to where they're needed and also lower wasted and rejected energy that you would see from having to take a guess as to what's happening in the space.

Elena Lambros:

Rob, you talked about a lot of the climate tech companies. And I know there is this whole climate tech ecosystem underway. How have you managed to work within that to help drive your business?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, I think there's some people doing exceptional work out there. I mean, Nick Williams I suppose has really provided a platform for companies like ours to meet their peers, which is super important because you can get an idea of what everyone else is doing and there's a big support structure there. But generally the exposure and the encouragement that we get from people like him is instrumental to keeping us motivated. It's very selfless, some of the people in the ecosystem and it helps us immensely.

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, that's great. I love seeing people who are passionate about what they do in helping others and supporting them. I think that's really important. And then if I think about the next question I wanted to ask you is what does success look like for this to you? Are there key goals that you have or key ambitions you have to grow the business? Thinking you've mentioned it's only been around for four years, so come pretty far already.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, look, we've done okay. We're just coming onto the market at the moment with a few key pilots completed or just getting underway. I think success for us looks like having a broad amount of deployment across major cities in Australia. And then I suppose through Asia and into the MENA region. Our long-term goal is to have a high quantity of deployment in these areas because we see applications for the data we're collecting around how these buildings are being utilised. Which with enough scale to that data, we can provide some really impactful insight into how to better manage these buildings and how better to run the cities in the future.

Elena Lambros:

Which is obviously something that is absolutely needed. Given that, and that's probably quite a tough ambition, a great ambition, but obviously a lot of focus to get there, what do you think is really the key for you to reimagine the current systems and change the game in this way?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

I think the key for us is to build enough understanding and trust in the people that are on the coal base. There's so many great climate tech solutions out there that are really impressive, but without having something that the installer or the person on the ground that's directly interacting with the spaces that we're going into understand and have confidence and trust in technology working, I think that the adoption rate is going to be pretty slow. Our focus is squarely on the end users of our products and how we can educate and empower them to be able to deploy technology like ours and others to make change.

Elena Lambros:

And what has been a piece of feedback or outcome that you've had from one of your clients that was possibly unexpected when you started out?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Oh, that's a tough one. Well, I think the best bit of feedback we got was probably our first major pilot turning around towards the end of the pilot and saying, "Hey, let's do the whole building. We love this." That was a good piece of feedback.

I think there's two levels of feedback. You get feedback from a client, which might be an asset owner or something, where they like seeing the results. But maybe the best feedback we've had is from some of the engineers and the people that have been sent into I suppose sense check and validate our technology, really embracing it and pushing the cords for us.

At the end of the day, products like ours really live and die by the engineers and the ESG consultants. Once you start getting those sort of people on site, it gives you a lot of confidence. But that doesn't take away from the fact that you still need to get the end user, the installer, the person who's working with your product in the hands on the goal post on site.

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, absolutely. You've got everyone working together, making sure it's getting the outcome that you need. And from what I've seen, it's actually really visually pleasing. It looks really good. It's a pretty easy addition to a building.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, I think when you're putting things into buildings, you really want to blend in. You don't want to be too out there. And I suppose that's part of getting things past the status quo as well, because you've got everyone in the line from the architect to the consultants. And everyone else has got to be like, "Okay, I can see that hitting inside the lane that I'm usually swimming in."

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, no, it looks great. Given you're making all of your component parts in Melbourne at the moment, and with the recent announcement by the Australian federal government about the Future Made In Australia Act, what do you think the impact might be for you?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, I think the government's really making the right noises. And they're doing their best effort to help support Australia manufacturing and bring the focus back to onshore capability. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out over the next 12-18 months, whether all the legislation actually gets to a point where it's efficiently delivered.

But so far, I think that they're definitely putting the right foot forwards and they're giving us a lot of confidence to focus on a future made in Australia. We often get people saying, "Why aren't you just making this offshore?" And really, yeah, it might make a bit more sense in some cases to do that, but we'd much prefer to keep the capability here.

And from what we can tell at the moment, we'd probably only save 30% going offshore at this point. For the sake of that, I think it's worth trying to service this market and first world markets which supports and pays a little bit more for the quality and for something that's made in Australia.

Elena Lambros:

For the quality and then also the ESG credentials of having something made in Australia, you don't have any concerns about modern slavery, human rights?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely. And look, I think if you're building hardware and it's complicated, you do want to be close to your manufacturing base so you can get in there and solve problems quickly rather than having to fly halfway around the world.

Elena Lambros:

And one thing I always ask everybody on this podcast is, what is your own personal commitment to meeting net zero or climate goals in the next 12 months?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

My personal commitment is I guess to focus on our product and the impact we can make through Brightspace with everything I've got. And so far, it's even with the IT consultancy, I've actually recently exited that so I can focus 100% on this business. Even though I was probably one foot in the door at that point because we've been so focused on this. It was we got to a point where we were like, "If we're going to make this work and we're going to have as much impact as we can, the whole team needs to be 100% on this journey."

For me, it's really, it's about removing any other distractions and just having a laser focused on getting as broad a deployment as possible. Which is somewhat a selfish outcome because it's going to help us from a business perspective, but it's also going to have, it's going to how we can maximise our impact.

Elena Lambros:

Yeah, I mean, I think if you are focusing on it completely and you're giving it your undivided attention, you do maximise your impact. And that's what you want ultimately, right? With a product that's really helping people think about energy efficiency and driving towards the energy transition. It's great. It looks amazing. And finally, if you could provide listeners with one action to take away, what would it be?

Robert de Burgh-Day:

If you've got something that you think can make a difference, just have a go, just to start. I see a lot of people that are, I suppose, walking around the edge of taking the leap and trying to do something big. And it's not going to be easy, but you've got to just dive in and just be resilient, just keep going no matter what.

Elena Lambros:

That is great advice and obviously really working for you given where you're at with Brightspace. That's the end. Thanks for joining us today, Rob. I really enjoyed the conversation and really love hearing about Brightspace and all the things that you're doing in there.

Robert de Burgh-Day:

No. Thanks, guys. No, I really appreciate having me on. And yeah, it's been great.

Elena Lambros:

Thank you for listening. I hope you found this episode both worthwhile and insightful. To learn more about our podcasts, visit ashurst.com/podcasts. This Game Changers and Transition Makers mini-series follows on from our 30 For Net Zero 30 series, and I would encourage you to click on the link in the show notes to find out more. To ensure you don't miss any future episodes subscribe now via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And while you're there, please feel free to leave a rating or a review. In the meantime, thanks again for listening, and goodbye for now.