Exploring the Smart Building Revolution - A Season of Insightful Conversations

For season 12 of The Propcast, Louisa was joined by some of the leading Smart Building companies in the space, where they dove in to all things ‘smart’.

As the demand for secure, energy-efficient developments continues to soar, the number of smart buildings worldwide is projected to climb from 45 million to 115 million by 2026.

Episode 1: Ken Dooley, Chief Product Officer at Haltian & Dan Drogman, CEO of Smart Spaces | The Future of Work: Smart Buildings and Designing for Diversity

Did you know that office temperatures can affect cognitive performance? This episode of the Propcast explores the concept of creating smart and empathetic buildings, addressing crucial topics like gender bias, neurodiversity, and office space design. Find out more.

Episode 2: Edi Demaj, Co-Founder of KODE Labs & Ilene Goldfine, SVP and Chief Digital Strategy Officer of Hines | How to Future Proof your Portfolio & your Culture

This episode discusses how to future proof your portfolio and nurture a robust company culture. The guests explore how a change in people and culture can help address the pace of innovation and, ultimately, impact profitability, efficiency and sustainability. Find out more.

Episode 3: Mike Winn, CEO and Co-Founder of DroneDeploy & David Thirlwell, Director of Operational Excellence at Stiles Construction | Exploring the Value of Drones: Eyes in the Sky

In this episode of the Propcast, Louisa, Mike and David explore how drones have become widely accessible in recent years, providing a bird’s eye view of job sites and delivering structured, detailed data to enhance safety and efficiency. Find out more.

Episode 4: Anas Bataw & Prakash Senghani, Co-Founder and CEO at Navatech Group | How ConTech & PropTech are Revolutionising MENA Real Estate and Allowing Economic Diversification

A recent Deloitte report cited the Middle East real estate market is projected to expand by up to 111% in the next five years. This episode discusses the vast opportunities for innovation and growth through technology in the Middle East, the geographical advantage that has put the MENA region at the forefront of smart technology adoption and urban development, and the huge appetite for digitalisation that the guests have seen in the last few years. Find out more.

Episode 5: Julieta Moradei, Managing Partner and Founder at Overlay Capital | Special Edition: Blueprint 2023 – Building a Digital Future in Construction

In this bonus episode of the Propcast, Tabitha is at Blueprint in Las Vegas, where she is joined by Julieta Moradei, Managing Partner and Founder at Overlay Capital, where they explore why the construction space has been slow to adopt technology, the startups that are leading the way in digitalisation, and Julieta dives into the Women in Construction Tech community.  Find out more.

Episode 6: Arie Barendrecht, Founder and CEO at WiredScore, Bayron Lopez Pineda, Director of Operational Technology at Kilroy Realty Corporation and Richard Paine, Head of Development in Singapore at Lendlease | Navigating the PropTech Landscape: Successes, Challenges, and Global Trends

The guests help unravel the macro and micro trends, as well as the challenges that the industry is seeing in selecting and implementing technology. This episode provides a global view of PropTech from various perspectives, providing valuable insight into the opportunities as well as challenges that the industry currently faces. Find out more.

Episode 7: Emanuel Heisenberg, CEO and Founder of EcoWorks & Mauricio Weiss, GP and Founding Partner of Zacua Ventures | Renovation to Regulation: Charting a Course for Sustainable Innovation

With 40% of emissions being used on buildings and 20% on materials, the guests delve into the short- and long-term costs of going carbon neutral and whether it is a realistic goal with today’s current economic climate. The guests discuss how an increase in sustainability pressure, paired with geopolitical instability and labour scarcity are a handful of the challenges that accompany reaching net zero targets. Find out more.

Episode 8: John Rogers, Chief Innovation Officer for CoreLogic & Kirby Brendsel, Flagstar Bank’s VP, ESG and Sustainability Director | Climate Solutions in Real Estate: Tackling Risk, Affordability, and Insurance

In this episode, the guests discuss all things climate and housing affordability, and the solutions that are out there to help solve the issues! John and Kirby explained the importance of providing data and analytics around climate risk to allow companies to measure the financial impact of climate change up to the year 2050, thus helping companies, cities, and governments to put in place mitigation plans. Find out more.

Episode 9: Jeffrey Berman, General Partner at Camber Creek | Navigating Venture Success: Insights on Returns and Strategic Funds

In the final episode of the season, Louisa and Jeffrey discuss how to set yourself on a path for the potential to create venture return, Camber Creek’s investment thesis, portfolio, their approach to investment and JB’s predictions for 2024. Jeffrey dives into the importance of a ‘less is more approach’ when it comes to investment, and how Camber Creek’s investment strategy is based around a ‘need to have’, rather than a ‘nice to have’ method, providing examples like Flex and Built whose products provide solutions to the challenges that tenants and landlords are facing in the US. Find out more.