All bits and pieces were discussed during Bits, Bricks & Behavior 2018

The Bits, Bricks & Behavior conference, organized for the first time simultaneously with Smart Homes & Intelligent Buildings in the Jaarbeurs Utrecht, inspired the visitor with numerous use cases and visions of the future.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Willem van der Ven of Schiphol Real Estate outlined a future in which the national airport and adjacent areas should form a digital hub. Van der Ven described three trends in the world of building automation and beyond. First, organizations want to be able to scale up and down quickly. Secondly, the theme of sustainability: zero waste, low energy consumption and healthy working environments are important. Third: the connect-factor: how do you make a location(more) relevant for a customer?

Schiphol tries to act as a testing ground for companies that want a lot of flexibility. For example, rarely used meeting places can be shared with other companies via the Spacemaker service, while Parkplex does something similar for parking spaces. Schiphol Real Estate is also experimenting with Uhoo to monitor the working environment and an app has been released that should strengthen the sense of community. In the presentation you can read more about the concepts of Schiphol Real Estate.

More creative buildings

A well-attended lecture was the session by Roger Tan from UNSense. His story was about the road to the future of buildings. Tan outlined how complex the work of architects has become with advancing technology and higher demands on a building.

At the same time, he showed possible solutions, such as the Solar Visuals Panels developed together with TNO. This should give solar panels a more aesthetic appearance. UNSense also developed a Pod, a capsule in which someone with a high stress level can relax. You can find the complete presentation read.

Pay per use

The concept of pay per use is receiving increasing attention, partly due to initiatives to make companies more sustainable. Henk Kuipers from Rabobank talked about a project in which the bank is experimenting with blockchain technology together with a number of partners. Moreover, consumers have already become accustomed to pay per use models where they are no longer the owner but, for example, purchase content. Think of the success of Netflix and Spotify.

With the help of a demo, Kuipers explained how a shared car can be used using blockchain technology. So-called smart contracts can also be applied, so that the blockchain also becomes smarter.

More pleasant working environment

Paul van den Berg from Plantronics further discussed the Behavior side of the conference. He showed how important (ambient) noise is for the well-being of employees who work in open-plan offices. For example, the risk of absenteeism due to illness is twice as high in open plan offices than in other working environments.

Plantronics experimented with various concepts in its offices, such as sound absorption or sound masking by playing white noise. None of these solutions were marked as successful. The company ultimately ended up creating a more natural work environment with more plants and a splashing waterfall. The waterfall must be able to be seen by the employees, otherwise it will be a nuisance.

Plantronics claims to have increased productivity by approximately 20 percent with these adjustments, while customer and employee satisfaction also increased. Read more about this initiative in the presentation.

Future of work

In the final lecture, Ricardo van Loenen from B. Building Business indicated how this company can make buildings better connect to people. B. now runs a large start-up ecosystem in Amsterdam. It experiments extensively with new concepts, such as redesigning the working environment.

The shared office model poses some challenges. B. is working with Boon Edam, among other things, to see how an open office space can be properly secured. Facial recognition is one of the options.