#23 - Mazen Jamal: Navigating the Future of Healthy Buildings and Smart Buildings

A conversation with Mazen Jamal

With two decades of experience in the built environment, Mazen's journey in sales has led him from the Middle East to Sweden, where he started working in early prop-tech companies specializing in space utilization, occupancy detection, Indoor Air Quality monitoring, and smart/healthy building analytics.


Since he has conducted business across North America, and Continental Europe, all the way to India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.

I always think it's interesting talking to people involved in business development, account management and sales it is at the bleeding commercial edge of the sector.

It's close to my heart, but professionals like Mazen are also having conversations daily with the people who count, the customers, in whatever form they take, from C-suite executives to space users.

So it was a real pleasure to talk to Mazen, someone driven to grow the digital smart built environment. And someone who has worked at the coal face in sensor tech, smart buildings and healthy buildings.

Mazen is a straight shooter, and full of insight. Well respected and worth a listen to, in my opinion.

Mazen Jamal - LinkedIn

Transcript

Simon: 0:14

Welcome to Air Quality Matters, and this is a conversation with Mazen Jamal.

Simon: 0:21

With two decades of experience in the built environment, mazan's journey in sales has led him from the Middle East to Sweden, where he started working in early prop tech companies specializing in utilization, occupancy detection, indoor air quality monitoring and the whole smart, healthy building analytics space.

Simon: 0:43

Since then, he has conducted business across North America and continental Europe, all the way to India, singapore, hong Kong and even Japan. I always think it's interesting talking to people involved in business development, account management and sales. They are at the bleeding commercial edge of this sector. It is close to my heart, but they're also having conversations daily with the people that count the customers in whatever form they take, from users of the space all the way to C-suite executives. So it was a real pleasure to talk to Mazen, someone who is driven to grow the digital smart building and environmental monitoring space and someone who has worked at the coalface in sensor tech, smart buildings and healthy buildings. Mazen is a straight shooter and full of insight. He's well-respected and worth a listen to, in my opinion. Thanks for listening to Air Quality Matters, and this is a conversation with Mazen Jamal.

Mazen: 1:54

I've been working so much on a global level so I've had conversation with North American companies, I've had the Middle East and I've had with Asia, pacific and Oceania. So I've seen different adoption reasons. I've seen completely different scopes, people like focusing, for example, nordics or focusing on the UK islands as a market. You just see one part of the story. But when you're working with so much different global markets, you see just different reasons why people and different motivations and different budgets and they're not the same. So if someone wants to go sell North America, asia and this is way overgeneralizing, kind of like Europe, asia and North America it's really hard to imagine breaking it down into sub countries and sub regions in the US. It's just a completely different beast. That's why you hire people specialized in regions, because you need to demystify that particular region to sell into it. So imagine doing this on a global level.

Simon: 2:55

It's got tons of complexity. So it seems to me like, if we let's just call it the healthy building space, it seems like that sector's at a bit of a crossroads at the moment for one reason or another. Can you kind of put your finger on what that is, Mazen?

Mazen: 3:14

It's a way to publicly announce that you have a healthy space. And when COVID hit, a lot of people wanted to get that external recognition or external validation that I have a healthy space. So they just ran towards the healthy building certifications from well fit, well aerated, as well as other reset and so on and so forth. So they just wanted to go to them and say do my job. I don't know how to do my job, I'll send you my information, I'll send you my data, you validate it for me and you give me that badge and then I can claim to everyone.

Mazen: 3:49

That's why I mean when you go to retail restaurants during COVID, mid COVID, there's a lot of that sticker saying clean, that sticker saying healthy. People just wanted anything. They were grasping for straws, they wanted that one thing to say do I pick this donut place or do I pick that coffee shop? And that one sticker made a big difference. It was very popular in hotels. There's not a single hotel that did not have COVID tracing cleaning rounds. So that public awareness kind of catapulted healthy buildings into exponential growth.

Mazen: 4:25

And then when COVID kind of died out, they're like why do I need it? It's not going to affect my bottom line business, especially if you're a building occupier. So let's just say you are a random name like Apple or Google occupying in Paddington one floor of a building. It's like your occupancy is not going to change. It's just nothing is going to change if you pursue or you do not pursue a healthy building certificate, and that's just basically the argument that the air quality industry has been pushing. So you're going back to saying air quality doesn't matter as long as there's no business value, that you can make money or you're afraid of something you don't really care.

Simon: 5:09

That's why healthy building today is at a low versus covid yeah, and I suppose that was always going to be the case. You have a global emergency with a real focus on a particular element, which was indoor environments. It's going to create an artificial uh case for doing something about it, let's say, but the drivers the fundamental drivers of air quality, haven't really changed. It still remains the single biggest environmental risk we face as a human species, and we spend so much of our time indoors. The vast majority of our exposure to outdoor air quality occurs in those indoor spaces. So somehow we're losing this in translation or we need to reset in some way and start building that business case up again, do you? You think? What is it?

Mazen: 6:06

I think that we're also competing with more pressing use cases if you want to call it energy crisis. Specifically here in Europe, when you go to the C-suite and they have a list of things they need to worry about from a building's perspective whether they're asset owners or occupiers it always will be second versus the bottom line, how much they're spending. And today, all of the spotlight, the limelight, is on energy saving. That's why air quality has taken a backseat to it and it always goes with the same question, which is what is the return on investment of indoor air quality? And to me, and quoting a movie I just happened to see yesterday it's like asking what is north of the North Pole. Is there really an answer to what is north of the North Pole? It is the North Pole, so it is the most north you can go.

Mazen: 7:07

And the question what is the return on investment of air quality kind of defeats itself. It's the wrong question. It is important to monitor air quality. There needs not be a dollar sign on the paper. If I'm put a dollar on the table, what is the return on investment of clean and healthy and productive people? That's the wrong question. That's why it should be. If I'm hungry, I need to eat. I don't need to ask what's the return on investment of eating. You just need to eat and you just need to breathe healthy air. It affects our continuity as human beings, it affects our economy, it affects our buildings. It affects so much, much, and we shouldn't be asking that question.

Simon: 7:45

We should just be doing something about it and I suppose there's I don't know if it's three fundamental drivers for decisions in the built environment around this space. You've got the stick, the regulatory and legislative requirements to do something, and we're increasingly seeing many countries mandate monitoring of air quality in public spaces or or standards increasing the whole. So you've got that driver there that that seems to be making incremental progress, depending on which jurisdiction you're in. You've then got the business case, the fundamental business business case, and I think we as much sense as it makes to us that there's value in good air quality in a work environment, that it has an impact on the bottom line.

Simon: 8:32

You know the joseph allen, uh type argument um, that's hard, it's hard to find the person to translate that argument to in business sometimes, um, but as you said at the very, very beginning, here you've also got a consumer element to this, a public element to this, and one of the things that drove, um, this focus during the pandemic, were people making decisions about where they go to work or not, or where they go out to eat or not, or where they stay or not, based on a drive, but something that was important to them. So I think it's worth exploring those three a little bit perhaps, like how do we, how do we get to a place where this is important enough to enough people that we see some forward momentum again? Because it seemed to me like and maybe it's because of the artificial perspective of COVID we seem to have lost that momentum and I sense a nervousness in the industry that they're not sure how this is going to play out.

Mazen: 9:37

There's definitely less momentum, a lot less momentum. And just look at something else about air quality that we take for granted without even thinking twice Carbon monoxide monitoring, right Fire alarms those come by default in a building. You don't think about them, you don't argue whether you want to put them or not. They're by law forced there to protect you. I mean, what is the odds of you getting a fire versus having bad air quality? It's like it's incomparable. You always have bad air quality, specifically in meeting rooms when you have the meeting for longer than 30 minutes, versus you might get a fire or you might go for 50 years without a fire but you still put those carbon monoxide sensors. You put those fire alarm sensors. So it needs to go down more legislative route that there needs to be the minimum of monitoring, basically air quality, at least CO2s and PMs and VOCs. There needs to be that Temperature and humidity. They're being monitored in plethora of ways inside of the built environment and it's very cheap to do so. You're not going to get a lot of pushback to say I'm going to put a temperature sensor. It's not a big deal. It's when you combine all of them together inside of a box like that one. You put all of them inside of a sensor and now suddenly the cost is a lot higher, that you start getting a pushback. So it definitely needs to go down legislative path.

Mazen: 11:09

A second way I see increased adoption would be if it is part of a bigger thing. Today, when you're selling air quality because we're still in the air quality industry, selling this as an idea to the built environment and to occupiers and asset owners but what if it starts becoming more of not legislative but more like it comes with the package? So when you are building a new building, why not just equip it from the start with all of these monitoring and have all of these measures and have all of these systems that can alert you? So you're not buying into. I'm going to put air quality sensors, but you get it kind of same way you get fireproof doors, same way you get air conditioning. You don't buy into it or not, and it's not mandatory by law, but it's kind of the default, like I need to have decent doors and I need to have decent windows and the building just comes fully equipped with all the bells and whistles to take care of itself and take care of its occupiers.

Mazen: 12:12

So it's just also like another route into and the way that gets into it to me is through the big, the big three, at least they say like JCI, honeywell and Schneider Electric. They can influence this on an industry level because between those three they're almost in every building in the world. So once you kind of buy into that system that they happen to sell into you, when you buy a ventilation system, when you buy a BMS system, it comes by default with all of these and the customer is not ticking, I don't want this. It doesn't opt out. You start seeing some changes and then buildings that do not have these start kind of becoming the outliers and people are like this is horrible, I don't know why. Oh, it doesn't have all these things that come by default in new buildings. All right, now it makes more sense. And then it pushes also the asset owners to doing something about it, because now their buildings are just unattractive.

Simon: 13:13

Yeah, and I suppose that's another leg to the stool. Actually, of those three, that kind of consumer, regulatory and business case-led is the visibility-led, that the more of it it's around, the more you expect to see it in places. Um, I think you're absolutely right and perhaps that speaks a little bit to your global perspective, mazen that you know the the reality is in in much of the middle east and asia, um, that by 2060 we're going to have approximately doubled the square footprint of buildings. So there's an enormous opportunity in those places to put this type of technology and this infrastructure into buildings at the start. It will never be cheaper than when you're building a building to embed this type of technology into those spaces. That's for sure.

Simon: 14:07

But there are places like north america and europe where the vast majority of the buildings we're going to occupy in 2050 2060 already exist. So it's a different puzzle to unpack, depending on which kind of jurisdictions you're looking at. We're much more of a retrofit and renovation challenge in Europe than we are a new build, not that construction isn't ongoing, but as a percentage of the built environment it's significantly less somewhere like Europe than it is in, say, asia, absolutely.

Mazen: 14:43

I was in Saudi for an event last September and I was having this conversation with one guy from Neom, the big mega project company, and he was a bit sarcastic but made a lot of sense what he said, which is and I do know that with recent events that the line has been shrunk. But taking it back to September, he said if we started buying gloss for the line and every factory on earth dedicated production for 24 hours to just the line, that means there's no glasses for your glasses and there's no glass for windows, there's no glass for screens, no glass on earth being manufactured except for the line. It will take 25 years to fulfill all the requirements for the line. So when he's like, when you're telling me I should care about my air quality, I don't have buildings that I need to care about their air quality because everything that I will occupy doesn't exist today. So you can imagine the scope of business versus Europe. You go to Paddington, go to Piccadilly Circus. What's the odds of a new building coming up there?

Mazen: 15:59

It's really, really, really low versus where Asia and China, in specific, and Middle East today is. Just, you see that, hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, there will be a city here that will occupy hundreds of thousands of people there. It doesn't exist today. It's just sad. So it's a completely different conversation versus something like in Europe. Then also, you can go into places such as Tokyo, where it's extremely well occupied. It's the most dense city in the world. It's also similar conversations, but then it's different because the Asians have had that mentality of wearing, for example, face masks.

Simon: 16:38

So if you've been to Japan, or you've been to Korea 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people still wore masks anytime they felt a bit unwell.

Mazen: 16:46

It's part of their culture. Which takes me back to one thing I remember from my childhood. I can't put a day and a date to when, but I remember at school when they told me the best way to throw a piece of paper is to tear it up because it takes less space in the garbage bin. Such an insignificant piece of information. But up till today I still tear every piece of paper before I throw it, and now I happen to put it in the recycling bin.

Mazen: 17:15

But when you start educating the society from when they are young that you should care about air quality such as countries like in Japan and then it will be by default that people should care about their quality such as countries like in Japan and then it will be by default that people care about their quality. By default, people take the right actions when there is an issue that needs to be taken on. You don't need to train them. You don't need to suddenly hit them with that just kind of push that shocks everyone into oh, now we need to completely change our lifestyle because we're sick and we have to wear masks and everyone just complains about it.

Simon: 17:47

It's so different is almost exclusively in the impact that changes in habit and culture can have, and awareness and understanding. You know, there's so much low-hanging fruit in certain sectors or in certain parts of the world where you could throw all your resources at that and have a far bigger impact than you could perhaps at a small regulation change somewhere, but that takes time, and I think the concern of the industry at the moment is what does the next five or 10 years look like? And I think that's where regulations and standards are on a slow creep. In the background, not always very visible, we see things in Europe like the EU taxonomy having more of an impact about how we classify a building as sustainable and healthy and providing something positive to society. Those kind of things are very hard to see tangibly on the ground, but without question having an impact, and increasingly we see in workplaces you know legislation and regulations around healthy workplaces and those standards constantly being improved, so it is happening.

Simon: 19:14

I think where the market needs to look to, though, is the business case case. It's the in the with where we are at the moment, with regulation as it stands on a slow creep, with awareness being a long-term thing. What happens in the next five to ten years where we can convince people to take this seriously enough, to have this high enough up on the agenda to be buying into the idea of healthy buildings and I think the joseph allen coma approach is a good start starts to frame the irr of the or the roi of of air quality. But we need to get better at demonstrating that. That's my sense of it. We're not. It's very difficult for you to go into a boardroom of a c-suite and put evidence in front of them that there's an roi to this investment.

Mazen: 20:12

It's all quite intangible at the minute for a lot of people it's um, I I use the term pancake effect um, if someone, if you went to a restaurant and they gave you one slice the pancake, it will be definitely very unfulfilling. You'd probably storm out saying I've been robbed of my money. But once you have multiple layers, it starts becoming more attractive and that's the way you sell air quality. It needs to be a multi-layered return on investment. If you go with one thing, which is health and productivity, people can pick it apart very easily. But if you combine it with energy saving, with regulation, with thermal comfort, with a lot of different ROIs, suddenly becomes thick enough and juicy enough for people to say now it makes sense. That's one part. This was just one strategy to build things up. But there's another strategy, when it comes to return and to cost, which is to do the exact opposite. We need to pick it apart.

Mazen: 21:20

I remember I had a conversation with a big real estate company in the UK so not to name names and I was discussing 19 buildings, rollout of sensors, around 1,800 sensors, and he came back to me said that's still a lot of money. It's thousands of sensors in 19,. But we want to do it, but you're hitting me with a big bill, so I'm like all right, let's break it down. Let's break it down into how much it costs you per employee, not per lump sum. So I broke down the number by 19 buildings. I broke it down by floors. I broke it down by square footage and then I broke it down by floors. I broke it down by square footage and then I broke it down by employee and I said it costs you to monitor air quality per employee a fraction that it costs you to give them unlimited coffee in your office. So when he saw that comparison, he said it is not expensive and I got the purchase order 48 hours later.

Mazen: 22:24

So there's different strategies about building up and deconstruction, depending on what you're trying to sell. You need to use these strategies because a lot of people are just kind of like it makes sense, I'm going to go try to sell it to C-suite and then you're hit with a barrage of questions. You're unprepared and they shoot you down. So it really needs a lot more prepping. I mean, if you can sell invisible air, you can sell anything.

Simon: 22:49

That's just the way I see it. It's the hardest thing to sell in the world today. Yeah, that's for sure. And how do you see that interlacing with the, the whole smart buildings movement as well? Because you know, air quality and environmental monitoring is not in a vacuum, you know it's. It's competing for air time with a whole range of other technologies that are trying to get into spaces. Um, yeah, and I think they're probably struggling in a very similar way to air quality at the moment, in that they've also been faced with a tidal wave of change in the sector, particularly with this hybrid workplace, redefining what work is or what assets are. It's a very unsettled space in general, isn't it?

Mazen: 23:38

Absolutely. I've been selling space utilization, occupancy sensors, smart washroom solutions as well, and indoor air quality pre-COVID. So I've seen the smart building world where if you look at the building and depends on what you look at you'd see it as 90%. If you look at health and well-being, then air quality would be 90% of the use case. Other stuff would be more like cleaning grounds and garbage disposal and all of these things. But when you look about it from a functionality perspective, from a smart building perspective, suddenly air quality is not 90% of the use case. It is one of the plethora of use cases Today. What dominates the smart building sphere are quoting many friends in the industry that have used that is the holy trinity, which are space utilization and occupancy, indoor air quality and energy management. Those are the three kings that dominate the building and how we operate it more efficiently. There are a lot of subcategories, there's a lot of combination of different ones, but kind of if you want to take it like in pre-COVID, it was more like we don't know, it's just the spinning wheel, Like people are trying to understand which one they want to tackle. I've had tons of conversation where the conversation were not on return on investment. It's more like what is this that you're talking about? What is these technologies that I can put in my buildings? It was more education. It was more discussions on what kind of radio signals are you using, what is the security protocols, how do we install these sensors. So it was more like really early stages of prop tech or property technology.

Mazen: 25:22

And then, when COVID hit, suddenly just the wheels started spinning and it started bouncing between space utilization because people needed to know how many people are in my building because of COVID and then air quality. It's just kind of bounced between those two. And energy was like well, who cares? Now we just need to burn as much energy as possible just to live through the storm. And then, when kind of COVID died off and space utilization became king again, it's like now the buildings are empty and we need to understand how to right-size our portfolio. I worked with a big financial institute that had 250 buildings and they said we're going to go down to 150. We need sensors because we need to know where our people are and we need to know what to do with those assets. So it's a massive return on investment, Like getting rid of one building pays off all 250 building worth of data, so numbers don't really matter there. And then Putin decided to do something stupid, right? And then energy crisis went through the roof. Suddenly, we know Like people started going back to assumptions I have good air quality.

Mazen: 26:30

There's no COVID, right? It's an assumption. Like I know my building is empty, why do I need to put sensors? I know it's empty. It's an assumption. It's probably around 30%. And now energy I need to save energy.

Mazen: 26:44

Like I'm not saying don't save energy, but I'm saying don't drop the ball on others, because they're interrelated. They do affect each other. It's like if you're into physics, it's like quantum entanglement. They're going to affect each other regardless. It depends on how many people you're going to consume energy, and you consume energy based on how many people, because you're going to need to ventilate and most energies consumed through ventilation, heating and cooling. So they're all going to affect each other.

Mazen: 27:09

So you need to look at things in one lens to be able to know and this is again goes back to the air quality industry doesn't understand the smart building industry and the smart building industry doesn't understand air quality. It understands data. All it wants is a device that can give them data because they combine it with other data sources to make the building smarter. So there's just completely different people speaking completely different languages and I'm like yo, why are you guys don't work together? It's like I don't understand the gibberish. This other person is speaking, right, and this is just so weird that both have a salesperson holding one of those sensors and completely different pitches. Completely, there's probably this person from smart buildings doesn't even know what VOC is. It's like oh, it has VOC, right, who knows what's a VOC? And someone from the air quality industry. Just completely. It sends data through wireless. You know wireless technologies like no clue on the tech stack.

Simon: 28:20

Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. And you're right, I mean it's building performance and I don't think it doesn't matter where. You're right, I mean it's building performance and I I don't think it. It doesn't matter where you're coming from.

Simon: 28:28

At the end of the day, right now, what we objectively need to understand well is building utilization, energy performance and air quality, and not necessarily in that order. It would depend on what the context is. The broad and macro environmental context is at the time that will drive which one is sitting at the top of those three. But undoubtedly the challenge over the next five to 10 years, particularly if we want to move towards a more sustainable built environment, is we've got to understand how we utilize, manage and energy performance and air quality in those spaces. But you're right, you don't get a sense that they're talking to each other very much, and it does make complete sense, particularly in that new build sector.

Simon: 29:18

But my fear is that when we talk about the built environment and we talk about the Schneiders and the Johnson controls of this world is we instinctively think of that Deloitte headquarters building in London or that LinkedIn headquarters building in Dublin, and that's just not the built environment. It's the pinnacle, it's the shiny glass tower. It's the shiny glass tower, it's the thing that shows the way and the potential. But 95%, 98% of the built environment is not those kind of spaces. It's your office above a warehouse in an industrial estate. It's your solicitor's office on the high street above a retail outlet. It's cafes and hairdressers and schools. You know public buildings. You know that's the built environment and it couldn't be further from that kind of ideal of a integrated, bms, smart, intelligent building.

Simon: 30:26

You know the vast majority of our built environment is run to failure, um, and some of it failed a very, very long time ago you know, and that, for me, is the real because, ironically, that's where the low-hanging fruit is, that's where the most potential is locked down, like, realistically, most headquarters buildings in london will get 95 of it right. You know, really what we're doing is tinkering around the edges and optimizing, but the real potential is locked into that bank in the town in North America or that school in Norway or wherever. It's where they're getting fundamental things wrong and systems have just been let go and there's underinvestment. The information data can provide and the direction of travel that it can indicate, the impacts are enormous in that sector. But again, that's not where the sales focus is either at the moment and that's not where the commercial focus is, because they don't necessarily have the money.

Simon: 31:42

It's a harder road to travel. It's a gnarlier fight to fight to get business in that sector. You know you land a you you land a deloitte headquarters building somewhere in new york and that's your sales bonus. Got for the year probably right, um. Whereas if you've got a you've got to do the hard miles around middle america. You know, convincing school boards to invest in clean air technology and sensors, you know that's, that's tough businessman.

Mazen: 32:20

You know I couldn't even sell my my own daughter's school. I just felt it's a conflict of interest, right? And when I was speaking to the principal and he's like you're trying to sell me something, I'm like, no, I'm trying to sell you something, but I have to take myself out of this equation. I still care about my daughter's air quality and, again, I couldn't sell it to him. It is definitely a very hard sell and this is just like I said happened to me yesterday.

Mazen: 32:50

I was at my daughter's school and they moved into a new building two years ago. So when I had that conversation with them it was pre-COVID. I saw that they have the built-in screen module, bms sensors in the wall. They were showing CO2 levels. So I'm like great, you know. So I was standing there and my daughter said five more minutes, right, five more minutes. So it just felt stuffy in that classroom. And then I kind of looked at that sensor and it was like 1090 ppm of CO2.

Mazen: 33:24

And without you know, without even saying anything, just a couple of minutes later the teacher just kind of opened the window. She's like I can feel her just kind of suffocating. She opened the window and I kept on looking at the screen and it kept on dropping till it went down to 880. And then I just called her. I'm like do you know what this is? She's like no, do you have any understanding? Do you know what this is? She's like no, do you have any understanding? Do you know what the number is? She's like no. I'm like. So you have that thing in your class and you have no clue what to do about it. She said no, I'm like you just open the window and five minutes later it dropped from a thousand to sub 800, sub 900 and made a big difference. Just small minute changes in behavior. So, the small minute changes in behavior. So today, if you were to go to a school and say I don't want you to put smart, complex, automation, bms solutions, just take a small action based on data, like a small alarm or a small SMS or a light flash. You see that light flash. You just open a window. Right, this very small, simple stuff that can make a massive, massive impact.

Mazen: 34:27

What is the biggest inhibitor today? Who's paying for this? Right? Am I paying for this? Who's paying for this? So one of the biggest inhibitors today is cost. Not because there's no return on investment, just because there's little money with those little money with those. So to me, the way I see this changing is just like when certain technologies were like when laptops first came out right, it was elite of the elite that can afford them. Everyone went to PC and suddenly now just available for everyone. And IoT sensors need to get to the point where the cost of the hardware is insignificant. It's like $2, right, it's full packed of all of that sensor. And you're going to ask me so how do these companies make money? Well, they make money out of selling analytics and data not through selling hardware.

Mazen: 35:20

That's when they can have an OPEX model and distribute it by kids and then it starts becoming more digestible. So one of the biggest inhibitors today. So, going back to one of potential questions you might ask me, which is what is the future going to look like and what are we doing wrong today? And the big thing that I see us doing wrong today is we're giving data, we're not giving insights. Yeah, there you go, millions of data points and the client is like what does it mean? What do I do? It's, it's a it's, it's a massive pain point and it's.

Simon: 36:05

There's a chasm in a lot of sectors between what's considered an insight and actually creating an outcome. Um, because we have to remember what we. We build buildings for people and this isn't about just doing something for the sake of it. It's got to create value, genuine value for people. It was interesting.

Simon: 36:31

I interviewed Tom Robbins last week from Switchy and I think the social housing sector is a really interesting sector in that regard, because it's probably one of the industries that's most advanced in its thinking of getting actionable insights out of data from its sector and translating that into something that's tangible and demonstrating a real business case for it. And switch has been doing that now for nearly a decade, where that data is giving them insights into things like fuel poverty and void risk and condensation risk in properties, and that's fine. That's a data insight. But an actionable insight is turning that insight into something that integrates with a system or a business process or a workflow in that organization that prevents fuel poverty, that limits damp and mold, that alerts and avoids the building sitting there empty and falling into disrepair or enables people to focus resources on the stock that needs retrofitting first. So it's, it's gone, that next step forward. And I think if you look at something like, I think the schools is a really classic example of that. Many schools throughout certainly throughout europe had co2 sensors deployed into classrooms. Most of them now have been turned around face the other way because teachers are fed up with kids pointing at them or they're in a drawer somewhere collecting dust.

Simon: 38:09

Because we didn't figure out when we deployed that hardware what next? What was the workflow that that data needed to create to get a better outcome for that space? And it was a huge missed opportunity. Really. Most of them weren't connected. Like you say, teachers have got numbers that are available to them in a classroom and there was never really a process created within that organization to get a better outcome. And that's the challenge, I think, in the air quality sector is, if you can't automate it, which is the the case in the vast majority of cases in the built environment what does a workflow or an actionable insight actually do? And I'm afraid a dashboard with a ziggy zaggy line and a heat map isn't going to cut it If you want, in two or three years' time, people to be turning around and saying that genuinely brought value to us as an organization. That hardware deployment and that software deployment. It's part of our DNA. Now this is how we act as a result of it. That's where we need to get to.

Mazen: 39:25

Yeah, I've spoken with multiple sensor companies. I've worked with multiple sensor companies and they've always opted to take that backseat approach to we worry about so much, like we worry about designing good hardware battery management, data management, encryption, data storage, visualization. You know, like we carried the customer across a lot of the race, that someone else can carry them across the finish line. It's always that solution providers and system integrators can wrap up that puzzle Like they can put the last piece. We're not going to worry about it. But that is the whole race. Like if you run all of the marathon and you stop the last meter, is it really worth running the whole marathon? You just didn't finish it right. It doesn't matter, and that's the problem. A lot of them are putting a lot of information, a lot of work, and they're not telling the customer what to do, or maybe not what to do, but what is the thing that will make a difference? After investing all of that time and money and hardware and education, there's just so little left. It is complex, don't get me wrong, but it's just so little left versus what has been done and no one's just doing that. It's again. To me it feels like.

Mazen: 40:56

Let me give you this thought experiment when you go buy a car, do you say that you bought a car seat and a car steering wheel and a car radio? You don't. You don't think about the car as a sum of its parts. You say this is a car by default, it has seats and a steering wheel and a radio and an engine. So the air quality industry today is selling parts. It's like the ventilation system, the filtration system, the BMS system, the air quality monitors, the data piece.

Mazen: 41:31

Everyone is selling a piece of the car and the customer is like I really don't care about all of this. Why doesn't anyone understand? Give me a car that just takes me to where I want to go. Like, where I want to go is good air quality. It's going to affect me. Give me a return on investment or give me something in return, like we talked about. Return on investment is a wrong discussion, but something like I'm paying money, what am I paying for? And you giving me a whole bunch of data is not solving my problem. So stop selling this as pieces and start selling this as a complete end-to-end solution.

Simon: 42:08

Yeah, I suppose it I it. It depends on where you are in the supply chain. Look, if you're a sensor manufacturer, like Sensor or Sensorian or Bosch, you're a very long way from the end customer. You're selling a component that goes into a part that delivers part of a service. You're realistically not going to have those conversations. Where I think it gets muddy is where you're talking about those kind of multi-sensors that you had in your hand, where as part of that product, you're also selling an interface, a ux ui experience that's supposed to drive an outcome. And now you're straddling the gap between selling a piece of hardware to schneider to put into their ecosystem of products they put into a building, to actually providing something that has an end game, that provides a solution, shall we say. And that's where it gets difficult, because you have to define what you mean by a solution. Is it a? Is it a mission-driven business like switchy, where your, your mission as an organization is to improve the lives of people living in rented homes and therefore everything that you sell is wrapped around that, and that comes with a customer success team, an installation team that does a third of the installations, because some customers don't want to do that. Is it the full package. Is that what you're selling? Or, if not, how do you segment that effectively so that you can scale?

Simon: 43:45

Because, like my fear is, is the moment you're involved in any form of electronics, it tends to be a bit of a scaling race to the bottom type market.

Simon: 43:55

And you, you, you tell that the instinct is to move further and further away from the customer because that just slows you down.

Simon: 44:05

You know, if your margins are embedded into the manufacturing of hardware, electronic hardware it only goes in one direction generally, unless unless you've got a premium product and that is down and faster and bigger. You know, and that's the risk, because it makes it very difficult to have a deep and meaningful relationship with a customer. But on the flip side of that is a sector that increasingly is looking for, as a service, type O, opex type business models. You know, buying into clean air as a service and indoor environmental quality as a service. And I think the built environment is maturing in some sectors in that way that increasingly people are going look, I'm not interested in what you tell me this does. I want to pay for comfort and air quality and healthy buildings. You take care of the rest. I want an operating model that provides that, and I think that may be a key to unlock some of these challenges, because then you can invest in the ROIs that this stuff brings, because you embed that within your own business model, you know.

Mazen: 45:18

You'd think more companies would do that, but you know they're not.

Mazen: 45:23

I recently came across an Italian company called U-Earth and they're doing clean air as a service and I'm like why didn't anyone do this before? But again, when you are able to sell hardware like in COVID, why wouldn't anyone do this before? But again, when you are able to sell hardware like in COVID, why wouldn't you Like? Now, people are evolving into better, more resilient business models, because they have to, so those thought leaders and those innovators are coming into light, so it is just a matter of time.

Mazen: 45:58

I still think, like you said, the race when it comes to electronics is to the bottom, and this is why I go back to my argument that JCIs and Schneiders are the ones that can take the beating right, because they can take a beating on this, but they can make money somewhere else. They can give you a full holistic solution. So the way forward is through. No one knows the way forward right, it's where we can only assume. But I definitely think the biggest companies that can make an impact are JCIs and Schneiders and potentially, the emergent of new independent consultants that can say I can take your data, I can analyze it for you and I can give you the best actions required. You are free to go choose which filter, which ventilation, which installer to use. But now you know what is your problem and what you should do about it. So today there's not a lot of those that can just kind of stand out and say I'm an independent data consultant. What we probably need are independent data consultants.

Simon: 47:05

Yeah and I think Joseph Allen kind of hinted at that a little bit in his book and I've been speaking about it quite a bit recently is that there are layers of insights into the built environment and there's the the general uh heartbeat of a building type, data and insights that low-cost sensors provide.

Simon: 47:31

But equally, you will at some point need a specialist to come in and advise you on what good actually looks like. And you know I keep joking, it's like health wearables. You know sensor technology in buildings is like health wearables. It gives you an indication of your general health and your fitness and your sleep patterns and all of that good stuff. But you probably want to go and get a blood test at the doctors every now and then and you probably want to get a consultant to have a look at your knee if it's causing your problems, like at some point you need to involve specialists in your care. Your garmin isn't going to cut it, I'm afraid you know, for you know at the moment. So that that's kind of where we're at with this building technology is that we're learning its boundary conditions of what it's capable of telling us and how that fits in with the the broader trajectory of the built environment, about what a healthy building actually is but it also I've seen.

Mazen: 48:33

I've seen a lot of times where the biggest impact adoption of these technologies would be personal champions. So what I mean is, out of 99 people wearing an Aura smart ring or a Fitbit, there's one person that actually digs down into the data right, that actually digs down into the data right. You're always going to get that champion that's enthusiastic, that says wow, look, there's something. You would go consult a specialist or ask a manufacturer and then dig down into it. I know a good friend here in Sweden. Her name is Linda, and I lent her my sensor and she's like look, every time I lit a candle which is a very Swedish thing in the winter to light candles, my PMs was through the roof and she's like I just took them away and threw them away. Like completely changed her lifestyle. From sensor reading, she now monitors her sleep and she takes action zone to improve her sleep quality based on her aura ring.

Mazen: 49:36

But not everyone is like that and today a lot of what we're and I've seen it first hand a lot of my sales success cases were around a person on the other side being enthusiastic about this technology. But the reality is 99% don't. So, yes, you're going to get lucky and you're going to get one champion that will analyze the data and do something about it, but then the rest would want a seamless experience. Like you said, automation we don't want to worry about it, we don't want to look at the data, we just want to know that I'm going to buy this and things are going to get better. I don't care what happens in between those millions of steps, I don't care about them. I want, that's it, you know, and it's it's it. The world is extremely nuanced, so we cannot make one solution to fit all. We need to always need to be tailoring a lot of what we do and a lot of what we say.

Simon: 50:35

Yeah, and Tom was saying this last week. One of the lessons that Switchy had to go through was that understanding the difference in the adoption curves and the impact those early champions and adopters can have in just strong arming these ideas through a business. But the risk with those types of individuals is that they can leave and then you're left in the wind. Um, and I don't get the sense that air quality should be at the early adoption stage. We need to be moving into the more mass market adoption stage at this stage and there are no champions in that world. It's hard business cases, seamless integration, clearly defined goals and proving ROIs. It's a hard world to operate in because we're in that general building management system, built environment, hvac, fm type environment. You don't get to be an innovator too much in that space. If you've got something like this, it needs to make sense at a fundamental level for people. You've really got to be able to stand over that and there's not enough of that yet in the sector?

Simon: 51:51

I don't think we're not. We're not able to walk into a place and clearly demonstrate why they should be doing this and what that will look like to them in a year's time and two years' time, and certainly not in the vast majority of the built environment. Perhaps more so in the fully automated headquartered city buildings, yes, but for the rest of the built environment, very difficult for somebody to walk into a series of high street banks and clearly outline what environmental monitoring is going to mean to their business day to day and why they should do that and what that return on investment is going to be. That's the challenge. It's not a walkover, and I think waiting for regulations to kick in is going to take too long. So there's a lot of work to be done on that area, I think.

Mazen: 52:47

It's not going to be an easy journey. It feels like the tech investment world. You know, pre-covid, as long as you said, I'm thinking you'd get investors throwing money at you. That's just kind of like we never had that glory days in air quality until COVID. It's always been a hard sell. Then we got COVID and there's tons of money and we let our guard down. We just felt like this momentum is going to just going to carry on after COVID. But it didn't. And then, when COVID was gone, we went back to due diligence. Right, what is the return on investment? What is the bottom line? Where's the profitability from a VC investing in a startup? So it is going to be hard. It needs to be hard, and there's no way of shortcutting into an easy sell for a while until we really hit unfortunate disasters, and we don't want that. We don't want unfortunate people to get seriously hurt or die. You know we don't want to get a mass pandemic and we don't want wildfires and just and but today the biggest impact are these. These are what's pushing business forward, and we shouldn't pray for disasters, but it just feels like that's what the air quality industry wants. It just needs more disasters for it to push, to push forward's pretty ironic.

Mazen: 54:16

I think we're going to see changes because, let's put it this way, the generations our generation is different than the newer generation. I don't have TikTok and I'll never have TikTok, and I can never accept TikTok. And the same thing can be told about my dad accepting certain things that I do and you just keep on going back. Today, the newer generation cares about these things, like for me, maybe for my dad or my grandfather air quality. You're like you know they really don't care about it. They didn't understand it. So I think one change that is inevitable is that the newer generation, my kids and your kids, when they're going to grow up, these things matter to them and when there's enough young generation that care about this, they can influence Because, in the end, products and services are tailored for consumers and if the consumers want this, then the industry will change.

Mazen: 55:16

So it really starts with education and it feels like why don't we talk about air quality like we talk about recycling? There's not a single kid that doesn't get some kind of lesson on Recycling is important, it saves the earth. It puts them in some small bins. Why don't we start with something extremely cheap cheap like a bunch of scientists and a bunch of air quality expert going to the government and saying, look, we can just write you some stories. Material curriculum will cost nothing. Just just make it mandatory that you're going to talk about air quality early days in school. And two generations ahead, the whole world is different. Right, it's small impacts. Small things can make a massive impact. And we're still kind of like do we want to sell? Do I want to sell? Who do I speak to? What's my ICPs? I just go back to the start. If we did this years ago, we'd be here by now, and it's the long road, but it's the right one.

Simon: 56:19

We need to start by educating from scratch yeah, and I don't know if you have that in sweden, but you know, very popular in the uk and ireland are these kind of green flag schools. You know it's part of the curriculum schools and badges and merits for recycling and awareness and creating bee hotels and biodiversity on site. And you know, because not only is it a good thing to do, but it it also wraps in citizen science and early education around science. Um, I was only talking to somebody about this the other day. Like air quality is an amazing thing to be teaching kids about. You know it. It has everything from chemistry to physics to engineering to social science. It's great and the the organizations that are like sammy in the uk that are doing kind of citizen science in schools, can see that kids come alive. When you get a bunch of kids running around the classroom increasing the co2 in the classroom to see the impact that breathing has on a space, you know like really practical stuff, it's brilliant.

Simon: 57:27

Yeah, so I think two tracks for sure that you, we need to both raise awareness. And the other thing that when you were talking there made me think was public health is such a critical part of this as well. You know things can be driven by consumers, but also things can be fought against by consumers and one of the things we learned with the smoking campaigns is that you know legislation and regulations can have an enormous impact on society and raising the importance of something that's harmful to health, and this is a public health issue. You know air quality, without question, is a public health problem.

Mazen: 58:06

Definitely there's much more discussion. So COVID, like you said, it's controversial whether it did good or wrong. But awareness I think everyone can agree that awareness has been increased and due to that awareness, we have something to build upon and from there kind of keep on pushing because it will. Today, one single legislation change can make a massive impact. I remember when I was working selling air quality sensors, one of the things that we did was a tracker that can keep track if any country put legislation to monitor CO2. Just made the difference, like if a state or a country came with legislation, suddenly all our focus and resources are dedicated to that country, because that's where we can solve right. So it's a massive thing because, again, sure you might see it's forced, but it becomes a habit. Like I said, like CO2, see carbon monoxide sensors it will become natural. People wouldn't think about it forced when it's been used for a long time. It will just become a natural thing.

Simon: 59:31

So how did you find yourself in this space, Mazen? What was kind of your trajectory into air quality and smart buildings? You've been doing this for a while now, haven't you?

Mazen: 59:46

Yeah, I wouldn't say I chose to be in it Probably a long personal story on how I got into it, but it was more like a challenge. I applied to a job that I really thought I was good for and did seven rounds of interviews and the CEO and the, the CCO, approved of me and I got the contract but was not countersigned and I'm like, all right, it's been two weeks, it's been three weeks, it's been a month. What was going on? They said, well, the chairman of the board doesn't think you're a right fit. So so I'm like, okay.

Mazen: 1:00:26

So I went to meet the chairman and he was, he was hard, he was, he was tough. He's just like first 10 seconds, hello, want to work for me. And I was like what is this? It just feels like Trump vibes. He's like here's a whiteboard, here's a whiteboard marker, sell me. And I was like, well, I blundered it big, big time. I was so bad that he said just sit down. So I sat down and we talked a bit for about different things, about my experience, and then he said listen, it's pretty obvious that you don't belong here, shouldn't be sitting in front of me, shouldn't be in the same room with me today. So I kind of like I did not apply to your job actually the job you know your headhunter thought I was a good fit, did seven rounds of interviews and then I was accepted by your CCO and your CEO. So if you're going to judge me based on my first five minutes pitching a product in an industry I haven't worked for, I wouldn't hire myself for you. But what I can do is I can sell, so you let me start in this company and learn more about your products and then I can sell for you. He started laughing and I got the job and it just became like a personal challenge. I wanted to prove myself to this chairman that I could sell it, you know. And now it's been almost eight years, nine years, and I'm still here and still doing it. I'm hopefully doing a good job at it, but I've decided to prove this to more than just him. That's why I, same as you, I feel that the way forward is just to keep on educating, writing posts, writing material, writing articles.

Mazen: 1:02:15

But I like to do things differently. I like to mix up the story. I think there's a lot of boring things in our industry. There's a lot of people writing about the importance of air quality in very boring terminology. I'm like why don't we speak the language of the newer generation? Why don't we make it fun? Why don't we mix it with more modern aspects? Why don't we mix it with facts? Why don't we mix it with storytelling? And it just feels like it's a missed opportunity. A lot of people are doing it and that's what I've decided to do.

Mazen: 1:02:47

I'm going to write a post about the Concorde plane. I'm going to suddenly shift the story into air quality. I'm going to write a post about smoking and bicycles and, voila, I'm going to show you the return on investment of monitoring data inside of a building. So I'm going to speak about the built environment, smart buildings and healthy buildings and prop tech, which I grew to be passionate about. Plus, I'm, you know, jonah's ticket to that guy. I thought I don't fit in this industry and I want to make a difference. Yeah, you know, I'm not just going to sell products, I'm going to. My goal is to affect the whole industry.

Simon: 1:03:22

Yeah, I think you and I are a little bit past doing a TikTok dance Mazen. I think we can rule that one out quite firmly here and now. But one thing you're absolutely right is that the storytelling element of air quality and healthy buildings we haven't cracked that nut at all how to frame this subject matter. It's been as much of a fan as and everybody will know from my podcast anyway, as much as I love academics, they can be a dry old bunch sometimes when it comes to explaining the complexities of air quality. Um, because it's a, it's a hard. It's a hard subject matter.

Simon: 1:04:06

You know, air chemistry and building physics and fluid dynamics is a hard one to tell a story about. And it's about plain english and framing and and finding what resonates. And often, yeah, often it is the people at the front end of businesses like air quality sensors and and air quality certificates and things like that, that are having those conversations and understand how to translate this complex world into something that people understand. So that I mean that was a question I was going to ask you. I mean, you know you've now worked with global leading air quality sensor companies and um air quality rating type organizations. You're involved in the well um air group as well in the development of those types of standards. Yeah, what? What lessons can those industries learn from sales, you know, from business development and trying to convince real people in real businesses why this stuff matters? What can those learned, do you think, from that?

Mazen: 1:05:18

Everyone uses the same strategy, which is air quality is important, so by default people should care about it. So they kind of start with this. It's intuitive, it's natural, it's as old as time itself. Air quality is important. So they start with that wrong step into the pitch and they're easily shot down by C-suites and executive firms and asset owners on why they should buy into air quality and it's the wrong approach 's. That's what I think. So, in my opinion, having people experience today in two different things one in industries parallel to air quality in the built environment and prop tech and bms and doesn't need to come from that particular it shows, it helps give them a different perspective about what works and what doesn't work in a building, not just kind of like tunnel vision on air quality. The second thing is having experience on a global level, because today we're no more single country selling single countries or parallel economies like the UK islands. We're now literally purely global economies like the UK islands. We're now literally purely global. Anything that you produce and you sell most probably is going to be consumed in every single country potentially on earth. So once you see things from one perspective the UK market, the American market or the Southwest. It limits you. The world is so big, it's so diverse, it's so different. You people that have seen different markets to understand. I've worked once with a company that they just couldn't understand the Asian market, like no, no, no, we'll use our same European strategy there. I'm like it wouldn't work and it didn't work. You cannot make it work, you cannot take. And I've seen tons of property companies go from Europe to the US, the land of opportunities, and fail. And American companies say we can conquer the whole world. They come to Europe and they fail. It's just, it doesn't work. You need to tailor different strategies for different markets. So you need global experience, you need global perspective and you have a need to perspective from different aspects of the built environment, not purely air quality. And then suddenly you get more tools, more experience into selling, into this.

Simon: 1:07:48

Yeah, that kind of global experience, local knowledge element, you know yes.

Mazen: 1:07:56

Put fun into it. I can't emphasize how much a bit of light-heartedness goes a long way. It just feels like. You know I'm not saying go through a joke to a ceo of ey, I'm not saying that, but just let's just relax a bit. Everyone is so serious in this air quality industry.

Simon: 1:08:18

Take a chill pill yeah, and you know I keep referring to my conversation with tom robbins last week, mainly because it was the most recent one, but one of the bits of gold that he he said was that the, the housing industry is just littered with the graves of people that were right. And you know, if you're, if you're, and the prop tech sector, I'm sure is exactly the same that going in with a holier-than-thou attitude, that I'm right, you're wrong, like air quality is important. If you don't get it, you're an idiot type mentality.

Simon: 1:08:52

Um isn't going to get you very far. You've got to find a way of um. You may be right, it may be important, but unless it can work for that organization or that individual, it's not going to resonate. It doesn't matter how hard you try and how many scientific journal papers you point to, it's just not going to resonate. You've got to find the language that that works for that type of organization and that's a challenge and understand that it might not be about the thing you think it is. You've got to find the key to unlock why that might be deployed for that particular sector.

Mazen: 1:09:32

I think we've matured enough when it comes to the science of air quality. We're not going to have a lot of breakthroughs when it comes to indoor air quality science anymore, right, what we have is more than enough. Let's put it this way Even if we discover some unrelated scientific chemical discoveries, we have enough to work with. So it's all about the business pitch and the business angle to it today. Also about cooperation between the different silos in the air quality industry and the business angle to it today. Also about cooperation between the different silos in the air quality industry, in the ventilation industry, um, and all of us just kind of working together to make a massive use case for the government to push more legislations. It's it's going to start and it's going to end into legislations yeah, my apologies for my academic listeners there.

Simon: 1:10:20

Mazen doesn't mean that at all. There's always room for further, further research is always required, um, and there's lots to learn, particularly about ozone and volatile organic compounds and all sorts of things. Don't worry, you're safe, um. But you are absolutely right and and pavel Wajrocki says this, wachowski says this that we know a lot and we know enough to get going. It's not like there are big unknown unknowns out there. What we need to do is further. You know the research. A lot of this is about further evidencing why this is important, and the other thing is is the multidisciplinary nature.

Simon: 1:11:08

We don't do that very well. We need to work much more closely with health scientists and public health and occupational hygienists, and we're missing out a lot because of a lack of interdisciplinary approach to the sector, and I think probably the same could be leveled at the business side of this, within sales and organizational structures. We're missing out on a huge opportunity to work more closely with health and safety organizations, with people that are working in occupational hygiene, people that are working in managing financial risk in the sector, gene people that are working in managing financial risk in the sector, people working in hr always seems like a massively untapped resource to me. You know I'm hugely conflicted about hr. Um, I think everybody always is.

Simon: 1:11:54

There's probably a joke in there somewhere about HR. But that aside, I just get the sense that the sector that should care for and is responsible for employees in the workplace should have a much bigger part to play in the decision-making and the strategies around outcomes of the workforce. Yet somehow we haven't seemed to have unlocked that potential with HR. I don't know if you've found that. It seems to be a sector of an organization that doesn't seem to hold the purse strings or be able to make the decisions that it should in organizations.

Mazen: 1:12:38

We've had similar thoughts in a company. We've approached HRs, we've targeted campaigns for HRs and they don't have budgets. They don't hold budgets. They can make a big case for as long as they want, but they don't hold a budget for them to get this approved. So, yes, I mean HR is basically taking care of the people's health and well-being Makes total sense, right? Companies have been.

Mazen: 1:13:08

One argument that I used is they get two similar companies, right? Remember when Google was oh my God, Google has play areas, right? You don't say that anymore. Like, a lot of companies have a PlayStation and a fat boy chair that you can lounge out. The playing field has been leveled when it comes to work perks. So now we're started grasping towards intangible things Like why should I work in this company versus another? And health and well-being will probably emerge as one distinctive feature and HR will play a role. Today, still hazy, but I think it will play a role in the future when you're saying we can give you an equal package to these companies. We both have play stations, we have excellent perks, we have parental leaves and good coffee, but we also care about your health and well-being and we care about the air quality and we care about your productivity and it will resonate with the newer generation. It will make a difference.

Mazen: 1:14:12

Yeah, not yet, just because hr does not involve enough.

Simon: 1:14:17

But eventually it will yeah, and if that 330 300 rule stands true, which I think logically it does, whatever the numbers actually end up being in the balance, yeah, undoubtedly you know the potential to have an impact on your bottom line as a business by dealing seriously with the health and well-being of your staff. Just on absenteeism and presenteeism and performance, that alone should be a business case enough to work with. I think the other area that's interesting is the, the hybrid model, and we actually just saw, again from that same organization in harvard, a recent report on the impact of homeworking, you know, on thermal comfort and I think it was CO2 levels. They were monitoring and productivity, like that's a.

Simon: 1:15:08

That's a huge area of unknowns now in this new world. I mean, there are people like you and I that are potentially working today in the same room that somebody was sleeping in last night or or was having dinner in last night. Um, it's, it's the wild west from a workplace perspective that this hybrid model, work, working remotely model, and if you genuinely interested in the performance and well-being of your, your staff, um, unlocking that somehow is going to be really, really important. Um, if you want to be a successful business and just thinking, you, you've just got to provide somebody with a chair and a decent desk. I'm afraid isn't going to get anywhere near where you need to be thinking now?

Mazen: 1:15:58

uh, also had tons of these arguments Today. It's a very polarizing discussion working from home versus working from the office. There's big advocates for either or Not. A lot of people sit in the middle. There are some, but the people that are against working from the office. They make such a massive battle They'd rather bite the head off of the other person versus the other saying you don't work from the office, we're going to fire you all. There's no right for both. That's the thing is, there's no either, or there is and there's both.

Mazen: 1:16:36

I personally worked from the office pre-COVID. In COVID I worked hybrid. Post-covid, I worked completely from home. I personally don't like it. I have a one-year-old, I have a small apartment, I have tons of things to worry about. Another single person in their 20s wouldn't and they would say look, I love to work from home. Great for you, not good for me. If you have a dog, if you have a pet, there's construction site outside of your building for the next three years. There's a lot of elements that you don't control. I'm not against either. I'm saying it should be a hybrid model and I think the hybrid model will come victorious. And I think the hybrid model will come victorious.

Mazen: 1:17:20

Some people will lean to either or. But, like you said, what about home? And I've had tons of conversations with companies how do we bring the elements of monitoring air quality into our home employees? Biggest problem was the cost. Cost of a 300-pound sensor is just through the roof to give away to all of the sensors. That's why I go back to my argument. Technology needs to go down to such a cheap level that it's very easy to give away those sensors to employees and say monetary air quality, here's an air 101.

Mazen: 1:17:55

If you get this open a window, if you get that switch off your you know, just kind of like basic rules, and it will make a big difference. Yes, a lot of people don't even give it Like it's easy, if you work in the office to blame it to someone. Like you know, if you're cold or hot, you just go to HR, go to FM, Look, it's freezing here, fix my problem. It's easy just to kind of throw it on someone else. But when you're home alone, it's your responsibility. There's no someone to call and say come fix it for me. So if you don't have basic understanding of what impacts, what is happening to you, what you should do about it, then you can also have a lousy experience and unproductive work environment at home yeah, and the compound impact on a business of that is absolutely enormous and a silent creep, you know.

Simon: 1:18:45

If 20 of your workforce is regularly being impacted, um, by poor environmental conditions, thermal air quality or otherwise, that's a very difficult thing to countenance. One thing I was going to say when you were talking just then was isn't it a motive? Though, and perhaps that's what you need? We find it very hard to get people animated about air quality, about air quality. Yet this home, working, office, working, hybrid discussion is one of the most contentious, animated. Everybody's got an opinion and if you, if you like working from home, like you say, you chop a right arm off before letting that go if it suits your lifestyle, if it doesn't, you're viscerally an opponent of it, because you, if you've got a good place to go to work, you know how good an impact that is.

Simon: 1:19:46

I remember when my kids are young. I'm lucky enough to have a bit of land around my house. I moved into a garden shed for four years down the bottom of the garden and put up with that through the winter rather than be in the home around young kids. You know you probably get it. Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, dad, what, what? Can I have a biscuit? Yes, you know, is it.

Simon: 1:20:07

You know, when they get older you get notes passed to you. You know lilies won't give me the x, you know. And you know blah, blah, blah, can you tell her please? You know sorting out arguments remotely, um, so, like it's, it's a very emotive area. Perhaps that's an opportunity in some ways, because we in I've had conversations with organizations, both companies and kind of semi-government type organizations, where the the approaches don't bring up air quality at home because it's just too hard to deal with. But maybe that is a key, that because it's so emotive, it creates a discussion, it creates some awareness. Every time this is looked at across the Europeanan union without fail, every time the level of compliance with even minimum standards in the residential sector is woeful, and I mean somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of residential buildings don't comply with minimum standards for ventilation so it's an absolute, given that the majority of your workforce that's working from home is likely to be working in conditions that you wouldn't stand in the workplace.

Simon: 1:21:34

But perhaps it's a key to unlock some of these discussions.

Mazen: 1:21:37

Definitely the thing about air quality is that periodical testing doesn't work. There's a lot of those discussions, specifically in COVID, that I've had where companies are like what if we send the sensor for a week, do we gather enough data? But that week is completely different than another week and there's 52 weeks and those 52 weeks have seven days and 24 hours times seven. It makes no sense. It needs to get to a point and, like you said, today, a lot of companies just kind of ignore it. It's just too hard of a puzzle to solve. It's beyond.

Mazen: 1:22:19

There's so many variables to the equation that they'd rather not try to solve. It's it's, it's beyond there. There's so many variables to the equation that they'd rather not try to solve it and overcompensate and look 300 pounds on a new chair and a new height adjusting desk and we'll throw in a monitor, like things they can afford. But when it comes to air quality, just even if we put them, if we give them away sensors and we found out they have bad air quality, we can't do anything. That's the big and it was like we can't do anything. Even though you can recommend opening a window and you know all of these, there's a lot of variables that you don't control, so it's a problem. I don't know how to fix.

Simon: 1:23:00

I don't know how to fix it, but personally I think it's analogous to the general built environment question that we were talking about earlier is that we tend to view through the lens of an EY headquarters building in London. I keep saying it, but we're going to have just as much trouble dealing with people's homeworking environments as we are most workplace environments. Most workplace environments are controlled by opening windows. We don't control the building. It's leased from a split incentive model. It's just complex out there. So we have to find ways of empowering people to make decisions, um, in better ways, framing things in better ways.

Simon: 1:23:45

One of the things I was making a note when you were talking on there was that this kind of the difficulty of spending 300 quid on a sensor per employee um, increasingly this hardware and tech is actually embedded in some of the hardware that you have in the office that you're spending money on anyway. You know it's not ideal to have a co2 sensor on your monitor because you're going to be breathing at it, right and you're not going to get a very good reading, but there's all sorts of tech in the home that will in time. You know how much does it cost to have a temperature and humidity sensor in a thermostat or in something fractions of a cent if you're already producing something. Tvoc metal oxide sensors, for all of their failings, are incredibly cheap to manufacture, you know, and put and take up very little energy and space on a piece of hardware. You know I was working with a one of the major conference video conferencing companies, um globally there a year or so ago and it turned out you know you kind of your webex type companies. It turned out they had temperature and humidity and VOC sensors in some of their smart camera speaker systems and they'd never turned them on because they didn't know what to do with it. But it was cheap enough at the time to chuck that sensor hardware in, because the camera's worth a couple of grand for your boardroom.

Simon: 1:25:17

If you're putting in 20 cents worth of sensors in there, why not? And I think that's what we're also going to increasingly find over time is that it would be out, it's unlocking the potential of where that data comes from. Because that data may become that. It may be in your air conditioning system, in your home smart thermostat, in your one of your pcs or your monitors. It's a it's. It's getting that data onto one source that you can do something intelligently with it. It doesn't necessarily have to be embedded in a kind of a white box like the one behind me there that's measuring everything in one place.

Mazen: 1:25:53

You could be picking it up from multiple sources absolutely no, I I I know who you're talking about I worked in a project that's related to that. So, yeah, I also had my doubts having a sensor on a camera in a meeting. I'm like, is it really the right place? Um, no, that 100 like in the end it's. If it's useful data, it's data. I don't care where it's coming from, as long as it's good data. So if we can do something about it, we should do something about it.

Mazen: 1:26:29

And yeah, I mean again, a lot of times I swing between optimism and pessimism because it just feels like it's there but yet I can't reach it. It just feels like a lot of what we do in air quality. It's just like I can, I can feel it sometimes, and sometimes it slips through my. It's like smoke. So sometimes you're feeling today, you're feeling the energy and you're like I can grab it with my hands, and another day just slips through. So, yeah, no, absolutely there's a lot that can be done with as, like, very simple, co2 too high. Get an sms, open your window now that's it, right. It's like small, small, small, small stuff, right.

Mazen: 1:27:16

Once we go to the big buildings, then we need more complex system, more automation, but a lot of the built environment, a lot of residential, a lot of the old school, nationally ventilated. It just needs small, small changes Like what if do this? That's it right, it's not ideal, it's not perfect, but it is something it's better than not doing anything. Like if you don't do anything, that the chances of something happening is zero percent. If you do something in it, there's always that one percent chance. It's better than zero. That's it.

Simon: 1:27:54

That's the way I see it yeah, no, that's that's really interesting, ma Mazard. So looking at the playbook now over the next few years, kind of three to five years where would you be focusing your attention on to get traction? Now you think I'm not going to say the next big opportunity, because I think that's that's a a wasteful question, but I I think, like, where's the potential locked in at the moment for for teams of people that are tasked with getting out there and selling this idea of better, healthier environments? Where? Where's that? Where is that now over the next few years? Where do people go? What's the theme of those conversations? Who should they be talking to?

Mazen: 1:28:51

The way I see it is the reason I go back to the big system integrators, because I'm close to all of them and I see what they're doing so.

Mazen: 1:29:04

Taking a random one, like whether you take JCI or Schneider or Bosch, Honeywell regardless, historically they've been famous for specific hardware manufacturing. They've been evolving and for the last eight years I've been seeing them acquire and get close to a lot of software companies and then eventually becoming software company divisions in some sort. And then I saw them get close to manufacturers of IoT sensors and then eventually acquire or manufacture their own. They are kind of like going and testing what works, because they understand that the future is software, because the data comes from software, but they don't know how to do it. So they're either getting close to them or they're acquiring them or they're learning from them to make their own. So I've been seeing more and more trends in the big system integrators going more software and manufacturing their own sensors or outsourcing them or white labeling other good sensors. So they're kind of funneling down and saying come to me and I'll take care of everything for you. That's why I think the future relies with them. Now, that being said, they don't know what they're doing in a lot of these aspects. I've seen some of them buy software companies and then completely just sort of bin them and trash them. They don't know it. They think that they can operate a software company like they've been running a ventilation system, and no, it doesn't work like that. So there's going to be more collaboration in the market. There needs to be more collaboration between the ventilation, the hardware manufacturers, the IoT sensors and the certification bodies and kind of like.

Mazen: 1:30:55

It feels like software is what combines all of them, Because from software you can translate this into an actionable insight, into a recommendation of an action, into automation. But it's that layer that kind of unifies everything. And the companies that have the muscle and the purchasing power and the money to do all of this are the big system integrators. System integrators. So I wouldn't be surprised if one day you see oh look, X sensor has been bought by Schneider or Y facilities, IFM or CAFM system or IWMS system has been acquired by Honeywell, and suddenly it starts becoming more like a Facebook, Google monopoly where if you want a good product, you go to the big boys, not the small ones anymore. Small ones are more innovation, disruptions, but on a on a global scale, on a global impact, it's going to be the big players yeah, and we're already starting to see that happen.

Simon: 1:31:49

we're seeing those acquisitions and mergers and buyouts. That that's for sure, um, but it's it's anything but a smooth transition. We're also seeing those same large organizations coming up against some problems. What they thought this space was going to look like isn't, and there's a lot of internal rejigging and rethinking about what that offering looks like, and you and I have had many conversations over the last few weeks, even with people that have worked for some of those major organizations don't have a job anymore or entire parts of those organizations are being let go, because I don't think they're in any different position to the conversation that we've been having today, mazen, and that is like you say. It's a bit like smoke and mirrors. At the moment, nobody's been able to figure out quite what this is yet.

Mazen: 1:32:48

And that's.

Simon: 1:32:49

I mean, in that lies a lot of opportunity, don't get me wrong, but there's quite a few dead ends in there as well, and I think that's what the industry is going through more broadly at the moment. Is that trying to navigate what direction, what this, what flavor? This is ultimately that you can, that big enterprise level organizations can get behind it is.

Mazen: 1:33:15

prop tech is still in its infancy. Yeah, versus other industries iot, property technology, smart sensors, smart buildings it's still very, very, very young and it still haven't found its groove. It's still discovering. It's still kind of scratching left, right and center, trying to understand where it fits in the market. It has not found its place. That's why it's changing. That's why we don't have any single PropTech unicorn, a company that exceeded the billion valuation.

Mazen: 1:33:43

Look at WeWork. I wouldn't call WeWork a PropTech company and I wouldn't call it a unicorn from the kind of curve that it went through. Interesting enough, yardie is now bidding to buy them. So the market is not there yet. It's going to take a bit more time. It's going to take a bit more education and it's going to take more younger generation being injected into old corp JLLs and CBREs and the big banks. They still have very old school, classical thinking people running the workplace and the management and the FM. So it needs to be more injection of new blood that they understand the value of software, understand the value of data, they understand the value of health and well-being and analytics and merging both worlds together, because today it's kind of like mixing water and oil.

Simon: 1:34:38

For sure, actually I must get somebody on from fm actually made me take a note there, because it is the the time immemorial question that innovators and startups and young businesses seem to be having, is they get stuck in the porridge. That is fm business, this low margin, conservative, service delivery orientated business that talks a very good game when it comes to innovation. But in practicality terms, if you're an innovator in that space trying to break in because it seems like a natural course of action, why wouldn't you go to fm companies? They manage all the buildings like it's the perfect marriage in some ways. If you're a prop tech business but but I've, and maybe that's why there has been no unicorn here, because it's the.

Simon: 1:35:33

The built environment is so conservative and so slow moving by its nature and often very low margin that it's very difficult to create a unicorn in that, a global unicorn in that space, because it it just. You just get stuck in the porridge. You know somebody said to me about fm companies a few years ago you know an fm company will be trying to innovate with a customer and the customer will turn around to them saying why would I trust you on tech innovation when you can't fix the toilets? And that's the argument that fm companies get stuck in is the. That's great, but actually we need the bins clearing and the the toilets clearing first, mate, please, and then we'll think about investing millions in a in your new fancy robotic whatever it is that you're flogging I've, I've seen, I've seen pre-covid a lot of fm interest, a lot.

Mazen: 1:36:33

They just thought that this is it, this is what's gonna give us that extra lick. Yeah, like we don't have that lick. And Proptic is the way. And I've done tons of very interesting projects in the world using FM companies Really marvelous use cases. But eventually the momentum was like we're competing with so much budgets and you know it just also went down that the company, the customer, is not willing to pay that extra to the FM.

Mazen: 1:37:02

There's not a lot of trust that FM understand tech and it just didn't fly off a hundred percent. And I know also like a very an up and rising star in prop tech put all their money into the fm carrying them. They said just like this is it like we got the big boys, they're backing me up, like I got jl, ls and cbre is on my shoulder, they're gonna carry me and we're gonna go to to the stars. And they didn't. And the company just kind of fumbled and everyone was like really we thought these are the next, this is the next Taylor Swift of PropTech. And where did they go? They put all their faith into JLLs and CBREs. I'm not saying it's JLL or CBREs fault, but I'm saying it's water and oil. They just didn't mix together. You kind of needed different ingredients to make this work and it's going to take a lot of education. But yeah, I mean an interesting use case, like going back to your classical model for FM.

Mazen: 1:38:14

I did a project with a bank using an FM in 2019, it was bonkers. The use case was put space utilization sensors in toilet stalls on the trading floor. So if the trader wanted to go to the bathroom and get to the bathroom and see it's occupied, they would waste seven minutes or five minutes, depending on how far their desk is of not trading. So they want to open up just the screen on one of their multiple screens and see that the toilet is empty and make their way. And I'm like this is a bonkers use case. What are you just trying to make the people for a few minutes extra? That was the fm's use case. You know, because that's what? Are you just trying to milk the people for a few minutes extra? That was the fm's use case. You know, because that's what they understood just saving toilet time and all of these. And I'm like, all right, yeah, we'll do it. We did it right. Uh, but it's crazy. It's like you should think about innovation, not squeezing people for an extra minute of trading.

Simon: 1:39:19

Yeah, but I suppose at scale, if you've got 500 traders on a floor and you can eke out another 5% or 6% or something that really goes back to that kind of 330-300 rule, that it only takes marginal gains in performance on your workforce to have such big impacts on your bottom line and the money and investment that goes into optimizations of systems and work practices and what have you on the workforce. Yet if you can improve the air quality, all you've got to get those people do is to breathe the air in the space to realize often similar impacts. That's the irony that's lost on me sometimes with people is that there's so much gains here to be had with people at scale, you know, through a workforce you know why I love the 333 use case?

Mazen: 1:40:14

because, um, like you said, it's incremental change. So when, when Dr Joseph Allen said the return on investment of improving productivity per employees was $15,000 a year, something like that, and I said, and someone says, like what if I have a thousand employees or 1,500 employees in my building? You're talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars. That can't be right. I'm like, okay, so let's just take the numbers. Let's just say the return on investment is, according to the formula, a million dollars. Like, you buy from me a few sensors, you get insights, improving air quality and you get a million dollars of return on investment.

Mazen: 1:40:58

What would you say? They'd say, I think that's a whole lot of crap. I'm like, great. So let's just say the number is wrong by 90%. So the number is wrong by 90%. What's the return on investment? It's $100,000.

Mazen: 1:41:15

What would you say? Would you be willing to buy this if you get $100,000 return on investment? They're like, I still think the number is too high. I'm like, awesome, great, let's just say the number is wrong by another 90%. So that's $10,000. So I'm telling you, by investing in this technology, and the data is wrong by 99%, not off by 50%, by 20%, by 10% off, by 99%, your guaranteed return on investment is $10,000 for investing, let's just say $5,000 with me, you're doubling your return on investment.

Mazen: 1:41:54

Would you still think it's expensive and it's a whole lot of bull, and it's just kind of like you put them in a corner, like you're not even willing to accept a margin of error of 99%. It's just like well, yeah, I think you may have a point right. So you need to speak that language of people, like give them the benefit of the doubt and walk them through the alleyway of their concerns and help them see the light at the end of the tunnel. Just don't force yourself into. Air quality is important. Do you want to smoke for an exhaust pipe of a car? Of course he's gonna say no, but this is just a wrong way of dealing with it.

Simon: 1:42:32

Yeah, yeah, and again, it all comes back to that understanding how to frame it for the audience or the stakeholders. That's in front of you. Um, as and I think we'll have to wind up there, mate, that's nearly two hours and we haven't even blinked, uh, so I knew that was going to happen when we started chatting. Um, look, I really appreciate you coming on and having a conversation with me. Um, be really interested to see what you're up to over the next year or two. I think people should keep an eye on your activity because you're one of the thought leaders in the space, particularly at the front end of this business. So, um, look, thanks a million for coming on. It's been brilliant talking to you, thank you.