Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.
This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.
And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.
The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.
We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.
Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.
From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.
Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters
#3.2 - Tyler Smith: Creating Safe and Healthy Buildings - Part 2
Part 2
Tyler Smith is Vice President, of Healthy Buildings at Johnson Controls.
A background in engineering he has spent 18 years with the company in roles focused on leveraging building management systems and HVAC equipment to drive outcomes in energy efficiency and indoor air quality.
From 2018 to 2020 he led the Critical Environments business unit, which designs and manufactures systems for critical spaces such as hospitals and laboratories.
From late 2020, he has led Johnson Controls’ Healthy Buildings portfolio with a focus on helping building owners operate healthier buildings through improved indoor air quality.
He brings a unique perspective on how large organisations are starting to understand healthy buildings. Not just through the lens of there customers but even internally.
Just imagine for a second you take on the role of healthy buildings at the start of a global pandemic, and your organisation has over 100k employees across 2000 buildings in six continents.
Notwithstanding the impact you can have on the perception of air quality and health internally, the impacts organisations like Johnson Controls can have at a broader level even with incremental changes is enormous and fascinating to discuss.
They have been in buildings for over 140 years, they know a thing or two about how this works, and Tyler is at the Vanguard of enterprise-level thinking in this space.
We talked about how the corporate world is starting to see air quality and health in buildings, the impact standards are having in the sector, ESG, Big Data, air quality of course and much more.
Johnson Controls - Healthy Buildings - https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/smart-buildings/healthy-buildings
Tyler Smith - VP Healthy Buildings - linkedin.com/in/tyler-smith-4934835
WELL Building Standards - https://www.wellcertified.com/
ASHRAE 421 - https://www.ashrae.org/technical-resources/bookstore/ashrae-standard-241-control-of-infectious-aerosols
WGBC - Health and productivity in the workplace - https://worldgbc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/compressed_WorldGBC_Health_Wellbeing__Productivity_Full_Report_Dbl_Med_Res_Feb_2015-1.pdf
Check out the Air Quality Matters website for more information, updates and more. And the YouTube Channel
This Podcast is brought to you in partnership with.
21 Degrees
Aereco
Aico
Ultra Protect
InBiot
All great companies that share the podcast's passion for better air quality in the built environment. Supporting them helps support the show.
Welcome back to Air Quality Matters and part two of my conversation with Tyler Smith. I'm conscious, chatting to you, tyler, that often we're talking about these spaces, these well buildings under the well standard, or buildings that are incredibly well controlled with advanced analytics and perhaps even AI. Not many people have had an opportunity to experience those buildings. Can you speak to some of the sense of what it feels like to work and operate those buildings and some of the outcomes that they can generate for people in them?
Speaker 2:I think this is a really important journey to take prospective customers and partners on painting this picture of what's possible today. I'm not talking tomorrow or next year or 10 years from now. I'm talking today as we design and build and operate and maintain an intelligent, a smart building. If I could, I'll try to take you and I on a journey together here, you and me, rather, on a journey together as we interact with the smart building. First and foremost, we've talked a lot during our time together here about the role of sensors and data and really the smarts of any building are rooted in that network of those white boxes, those gray boxes, even some sensors that you can't see, especially sensors that you can't see that are behind the scenes, above the ceiling, in ductwork, somewhere, maybe integrated into a device, and you don't even really realize that that's a sensor and it's gathering data. So we've got this vast network of sensors and then the communication methodology that they're all employing, whether they're wireless, wi-fi, bluetooth, et cetera, or wired, and they're sending all of that data back to somewhere that somewhere historically has been a room in that building that a facilities person sits in all day in front of a computer looking at graphs and charts and data and things like that. But increasingly these days, where is that data going? Is the cloud? And it's going to a sensor manufacturer's cloud. It's maybe going directly to ours. Regardless, there's some interaction, some cloud to cloud interaction that's happening, and then we're consuming and we're aggregating and we're acting upon excuse me and presenting that data and the insights, just like we talked about before.
Speaker 2:But if you're a visitor to that building, or you're a student in a smart school or you're an office worker in a smart office building, what does that feel like to you? What that feels like is a building that anticipates your actions. You walk up to a door and it knows who you are because there's a camera, sensor or both that has detected that. This is Tyler Smith, this is Simon Jones. They have the permissions to be in this space, so I'm going to unlock this door or maybe open it for them. I know that Simon and Tyler are going to conference room three on floor 17. And so I'm going to ensure that that space is unlocked. The lights are on, the HVAC is on as well, the air quality is where it needs to be, so that that conference room that they're conducting their meeting in is as safe and comfortable and productive of an environment as necessary. It is a building that has the human, the occupant, at heart and is doing everything it possibly can to ensure the safety and security of that human.
Speaker 2:The concept of dashboards and kiosks and displays ways for the occupant of the building to interact with the smart building are really fun to explore as well.
Speaker 2:You may just like I have walked into a nice class A office building in the past and you see a big monitor on the wall, or even a screen integrated into the wall, and it's displaying data about that building and the quality of the air and the other events that may be happening.
Speaker 2:That's a really important connection point as we think about the role of a smart building. It's one thing to be operating in a smart, intelligent way. It's another to connect all of that to the occupant and why they should care and why it impacts them and enable them with, maybe, some data and insights such that they can make decisions on what they're going to do as they interact with that smart building. And the last thing I'll say and then we can move forward here is that and it's one that really understands really, really well the energy required to achieve certain operational objectives. That's kind of a mouthful there, but when we operate this ideal smart building, it knows where people are, it knows where assets are, it knows the costs of energy required to operate all of the systems, whether they're HVAC or lighting or otherwise, and it's constantly making decisions on how to, based on where people are and what they're doing, where assets are and what their purpose is, making smart decisions on how they're going to achieve all of those objectives in the most economical and least carbon intensive way possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's interesting. There's a great term being coined over in the UK called buildings as safe havens, and I know certainly there have been some buildings in North America that genuinely have been safe havens, particularly, for example, where we've had really severe outdoor pollution events, that actually those buildings have been one of the few places where a reprieve from that environment is possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so unfortunately, many in North America dealt with the wildfires back in the summer.
Speaker 2:That started in many places, but a lot of them were concentrated in Canada and the smoke generated from those wildfires and all the particulate matter that is a component of that smoke then traveled down into the into the States.
Speaker 2:You know that challenge is here to stay, that pain point for a building operator, for the occupant of a building, whether it's your home or your office or your school that challenge is here to stay and, unfortunately, may only be exacerbated as we move forward due to climate change.
Speaker 2:And whether it's a bushfire in Australia, a wildfire in Canada or any point in between, these extreme climate events are going to impact the quality of our outdoor air and they are going to impact the quality of our indoor air and, to your point, the role that a building plays, the role that a healthy building plays, the role that a smart and healthy building plays as a safe haven for you.
Speaker 2:You know that you can go there and that environment that you're going to be in is the cleanest possible, safest possible environment that you can be in at that moment, probably safer than your house, and that really, I think, thrusts to the forefront this conversation of what truly in society, what is the role that buildings play? It's not just a place that you go and learn. It's not just a place that you go and get your job done or you go have a medical procedure done at. We back to this responsibility word. We have a responsibility to ensure that these buildings that we're asking people to come into are these safe havens and they can trust that they're going to, that their health and wellness and productivity are going to be optimised in those buildings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, indeed, and as an indoor generation with so much of our time indoors, that's more important than it's ever been.
Speaker 1:There are a couple of frontiers though here, and you know, I think both you and I would work in the real world and we appreciate that not all environments we can paint a picture of a glass clad headquarters building in downtown wherever, where everything's automated and lifts nowhere you're going and HVAC systems automatically respond to your preferences on thermal comfort and indoor air quality right. There are a couple of layers to those frontiers. The first one certainly is the non-residential built environment. For the majority of us, and for the majority of us, our workplace built environments are offices above shops in high streets, our offices above warehouses, in enterprise parks and industrial estates. They're offices that were built in the 60s or 70s or 80s and you're smiling because we've all worked in them. We all go and visit them. They're a very, very long way from some of the stuff that we've been talking about and generally the consensus out there is the HVAC systems and the ventilation systems are nowhere near where they need to be.
Speaker 2:Well, you rightly categorized it as the bulk of the building stock out there is as you described. It's pre-existing, it's older, it is of questionable maintenance and upgrade history. It is the vast majority of the opportunity out there, and I think it's, as we think about how to deliver the benefits of a healthier building, regardless of the building type. I think it's really important for us to rally around this fact that that ideal building that I described a few minutes ago so exciting to talk about, that it's so exciting to work alongside partners that are in a position to realize that. But the reality is that the rest aren't. But that doesn't mean that the benefits of operating a healthier building are out of reach for them. We need to be mindful of the fact that no two buildings are the same and we need to create these easy, cost-effective on-ramps onto this journey, and that's why it's so critical to, as we interact with our customers and we understand the outcomes that are important to them, that we then step back and craft a journey and an on-ramp onto that journey that is achievable, that's affordable, that their decision makers and constituents can rally around and we help them make that a reality. So, for instance, we know for a fact that not every building in that building stock that we're describing even has a modern HVAC system, even has all of the we call them levers. But the levers that you can pull to impact the environmental quality, the air quality inside of a building, may not even exist. So we've got to start by baselining the operation of a building, understanding what those levers are that are available to us and working within the realities of what's possible and what the customer's budget and timeline and et cetera are. And by doing so we're gonna uncover opportunity. We're gonna uncover ways that we can help them on that journey. We can help them start that journey, and one of the more simple ways is just awareness, and awareness comes through, can come through just putting a several hundred dollar sensor on the wall that's got a display on it, start measuring some stuff, start measuring the quality of the air and the relative humidity and the CO2 levels and the PM, et cetera, et cetera. And let's just, let's start driving some awareness inside of that building, whatever the application of the building is, of just what does the quality of this indoor environment look like. And then maybe we take the next step and we connect that air quality sensor into something, whether it's a preexisting building management system, if we have one, whether it's to a cloud, and we expose that data to some other people if that's possible, heck, maybe we even connect that back to a piece of HVAC equipment, if we've got it, and then we take that next step on the journey. We then begin leveraging that data to make some decisions, and then we start monitoring the impact of those decisions that we're making.
Speaker 2:We measured this, we opened that damper a little bit more manually, we collected a couple of weeks more of data and, oh my gosh, we saw that the CO2 level was going down in this building. And so, man, that actually really, really works. And then so on and so forth. And then, as you get deeper in that journey, you're able to justify investments more easily, you're able to free up some CAPEX maybe more easily, you get more people on board, you get your constituents asking for it and expecting it, and so on and so forth. And then, maybe a couple of decades down the road, you find yourself in that glass office building on, you know, in downtown, new York City. And but you know, I think that that realizing that ideal building starts with a step. We've got to create that step. We've got to create that on-ramp around the realities of their current operations and help them find a cost of effective way to make that step.
Speaker 1:And there can be some real low-hanging fruit right In those particular buildings.
Speaker 1:You know we, you know heating systems, air conditioning systems, ventilation systems have typically been turned to come on when people arrive and go off when people leave and never much thought has been paid to it.
Speaker 1:And you realize the building is still at its design temperature six hours after everybody left and is an up to temperature two hours after people arrive.
Speaker 1:And you know, without that data you never see that.
Speaker 1:You know and all of a sudden you can start creating business cases for improving but, like you say, also present information in a way that starts to provide tools for people, even at a administrative controls level, to manage their spaces more effectively and get good outcomes. Which leads me on, interestingly, to the second front here, and that is we all now work in this hybrid world and it's an interesting philosophical argument, I think, for a lot of organizations and institutions on how to manage this new frontier. Because whatever we understand about the lack of performance in, let's say, the rest of the non-residential built environment, certainly we know our residential environment doesn't perform very well often and it's where we spend the vast majority of our time. So again, we can have huge impacts on that area? Do you have any thoughts on this new hybrid working model and how healthy buildings whether it's interacting directly with those buildings or those people working from home, or it's just the lessons that we might learn and bring from our workplace? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Such an important conversation and debate that's ongoing and probably will be for some time. I believe, and Johnson Controls believes, that being physically present next to teammates maximizes productivity, insures high performing teams, and that's a necessary environment to create as we move forward. We talked earlier about the role that healthy buildings play in attracting and retaining talent. Given the option of being asked to come into an office to do work or stay home and I know that I need to be next to my team and that we've got this big deadline and we're going to work best if we're next to each other, then I'm going to be more willing to do that, if I know that that environment is safe, if I know that the air quality is going to be clean, if I know that I'm going to be my best self there. We explored that concept earlier. I think a really interesting one for us to explore, in addition, is I mentioned the levers a few minutes ago and really understanding what levers are available for us to pull.
Speaker 2:We've got a lot of levers in the average office building.
Speaker 2:We don't have a ton of levers in the average residential building.
Speaker 2:If the hypothesis is that if my air quality is good, my lighting quality is good, my acoustical quality is good, then I'm going to be my most productive, healthy self.
Speaker 2:How, then, can we ensure that at someone's residence, where we A don't have the data like we do at an office, and B don't have the levers available to us to pull like we do at an office, and C we're not in control of pulling those levers? So it's so critical that we invest in education. It's so critical that we support office workers by providing them with cost-effective access to things like enhanced purification or maybe a sensor for the residence, so that at least some of the data, at least some of the awareness that's possible in the average office environment could also be possible at someone's home. Hybrid work is here to stay, and so when we shift our focus away from what are we going to do to force everyone back in five days a week towards how do we work within this reality to then ensure that our teams are as productive and high-performing as possible, Then we're on to something there and we're focused on the right thing and we're solving for the right problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very true. There's a couple of statements that stood out to me on this subject matter over the last few months, and one of them was from Ireland, from the Health and Safety Authority here, who just released a new code of practice for indoor air quality in the workplace, and I don't think they've fully meant this when they said it in reference to the home working environment, but they meant in the varied work environment that people are exposed to now, I guess. But they said an employer has the responsibility for the working environment of an employee, no matter where their place of work is.
Speaker 1:Whether they're working for two weeks out of a sub-office down south, or whether they're doing a few days from their holiday home in wherever. As an employer, you have a responsibility for the health and wellbeing of your employee at work, no matter where that place of work is. The ramifications for that are deep and profound for employers. The other part of this is that we don't have the right to control someone's home.
Speaker 1:You know, someone's home is their castle and they have the perfect right to accept the risks that they're prepared to tolerate. But that doesn't necessarily sit with performance and good environments that are conducive for work. I mean, there are people today who worked in the room that they went to bed in the night before. There are whole parts of the workforce working for large periods of time at home in rented or private rented accommodation with very small footprints, that have been stuck there because they can't afford to move, maybe sharing bedrooms with kids and animals. It's the wild west, for sure, and it's a really interesting one to unpack, and I think the reality is. The only way we'll unpack it is with data, because we're not going to see it in any other way. It's too complex to see other than with big data.
Speaker 2:I would add to that that, absolutely, the role of data is critical and of these early adopter, forward thinking governments Like to be honest, like with Ireland, as you just mentioned. We need powerful groups out there testing the forefront of what's possible here, forcing conversations, forcing research to be done, forcing calculations to be done and tradeoffs to be considered and then there's going to be others that follow behind. But I'm so thankful in my role when I hear things like what Ireland has done and another example is what's being considered in the EPPD and what the democratic government here in the US under President Biden have done. All of that stuff is so important because it pushes us along, it challenges us to think about how we're going to make this stuff happen, and then all the data come in to prove that it was worth it. So it takes forward thinking organizations and government bodies like that to test the boundaries so that we all benefit downstream.
Speaker 1:Have you guys been involved in the development of 241 in any way, or are you keeping up to speed with what's happening with that standard from ASHRAE? The reason I ask is because one of us talking to Max Sherman, who was the co-chair of this, just last week, and one of the interesting things for me that came out of that standard is this mixed mode of operation that you see out of 241. And it struck me when I knew I was going to be talking to you to talk to you about that, because I imagine that's right up this intelligent building data arena of Johnson Controls is trying to manage these spaces, not only for sustainability and energy and health, but also perhaps for the reduction of transmission of infectious diseases, having mixed modes of operation that could be switched on. Is that something you've paid close attention to as it's been developed?
Speaker 2:It is, and we were fortunate to have one of our teammates, john Douglas, as a part of the work, alongside Max and many, many others that put a lot of time and work and hours into what was created with ASHRAE standard 241, and we're obviously incredibly optimistic about the future of the adoption of that standard and what it will mean for the control of buildings in future potential pandemics, and it's going to take standards like that and other actions to ensure that we don't find ourselves where we did back in 2020. So really commend ASHRAE and the work that they've done with 241. We've also got guideline 44 coming out of ASHRAE. That is, 241 is to the transmission of infectious diseases, 44 is to wildfire smoke.
Speaker 2:We talked about wildfire smoke earlier and our understanding of how buildings operate should be operated in a response to those extreme environmental conditions is what this is all about, and it really takes us back to the D word data that we've used so much throughout our conversation, simon, and the role that data plays in helping us make those decisions on what is going to be operated, when and for how long, and you mentioned mixed modes and us being able to, on the fly, make a decision on what is the most effective means of accomplishing whatever this objective is that we need to accomplish, whether it's ensuring that people are safe in a wildfire, smoke event or it's the next pandemic and, yeah, we're incredibly thankful for ASHRAE's leadership position there. We're now looking to standards, code bodies excuse me globally and the adoption of 241 to enshrine it in building codes. We're looking at other similar groups to ASHRAE to be fast followers there and to follow the lead of ASHRAE and really look forward to what the future holds as 241 becomes a reality in how we build and operate buildings going forward.
Speaker 1:So, on that future tense question, where do you see things principally heading for your customers over the next five to 10 years? What does the trajectory look like for the majority of your customer base? What do you think when it comes to healthy buildings?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that the concepts that we've been exploring of codes and standards and return on investment and business cases and new personas and influencing, creating these connections, golden circles, all of that that is relatively fresh for us. Now, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, it's just gonna be how we operate going forward and you can kind of compare that to the green revolution of two or three decades ago and we're gonna be in a position towards the end of this decade when all of that stuff is just table stakes. It's just how we build and operate buildings going forward and the challenges that we've gotta overcome of what's this air quality thing and why should I care about particulate matter level and what's dashed right to. It's just gonna be the reality and we're excited and hopeful for that future here in the near term.
Speaker 2:Other things that we expect our customers to be making decisions on and grappling with are emerging technologies.
Speaker 2:We have the pandemic to thank for really accelerating not only the understanding of the role of air quality in health, wellness and productivity, but also just the investment in finding new technologies to make that a reality, and so I expect that we're gonna see the rise of some neat new technologies to help our customers to deliver on those commitments.
Speaker 2:And the biggest one that we mentioned a bit ago but we've got to acknowledge again is the role of AI and the role of large language models and the possibilities of what those models and chatbots and things can mean for our customers and their operations. We're just gonna see the pace at which those evolve, the pace at which what's possible with AI evolves, impacting the built environment just like it's impacting any other industry. So I imagine, of really of all of the opportunities that lay in front of our customers, that AI is gonna be at the top of that list and really trying to get a handle around what it means for them, how they can leverage it as a competitive advantage, how they can leverage it to cost effectively achieve outcomes that they value, such as decarbonization, and just kind of a merging of all of those trends over the next five to 10 years is gonna be really fun to be a part of.
Speaker 1:But do you think that means for your customers? Ai integrated with healthy buildings and building management?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the short answer is don't know, and it's gonna be a really fun ride.
Speaker 2:But what I can say, though, is we fortunately we have a glimpse of that today with what's possible in OpenBlue, our digital platform, and that we've been leveraging AI since before.
Speaker 2:It was cool, I like to say, in helping, in real time, make decisions on how to, from an energy consumption standpoint, operate a building most effectively, and our ability to balance energy against things like infection risk and find and recommend optimal operating points for buildings, and we've been implementing that capability for some time now, and so, if you take that kind of as a jumping off point, the world is our oyster.
Speaker 2:I mean, there's just so many exciting applications of that capability that we've got today, with those trade-offs, with chat bots, as you rightly said, and what we can do to leverage those large language models to help us make sense of data, and take these data sets, shove it all in a tool and application like that and make better sense of it and therefore maybe arrive at those insights more effectively and more quickly. There's just so many neat ways that this could head, and I mean it when I say it that we're all in a very privileged position to be a part of this and to be able to witness this and to be able to guide where all this heads, with our customers best interests in mind. And that goes back to that responsibility word that we've used throughout this discussion. We truly have a responsibility to help them understand and help them leverage it for good, and I think when we keep that in mind, we let that guide our decisions, then this is truly gonna be a really fun next five to 10 years in this industry.
Speaker 1:That's great and, tyler, thanks very much for your time this evening. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. We'll speak again soon.
