British IoT proptech startup delivering a ‘single-pane view’ for intelligent buildings

An award-win­ning UK start­up Gooee is a tech spin-off from the glob­al light­ing organ­i­sa­tion Auro­ra, whose ser­i­al entre­pre­neur chief exec­u­tive and founder Andrew John­son found­ed Gooee in 2014 with Neil Salt and Simon Coombes. Gooee has invest­ed five years in devel­op­ing an inter­net of things (IoT) Build­ing Intel­li­gence Plat­form uni­fy­ing build­ing con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, sens­ing and data ana­lyt­ics.

Dri­ven by entre­pre­neur­ial inno­va­tion and val­ue cre­ation, their focus is on build­ing per­for­mance solu­tions for ten­ants, facil­i­ties man­agers and own­ers. Gooee pro­vides the nec­es­sary hard­ware and soft­ware that dri­ves sig­nif­i­cant cost opti­mi­sa­tion, oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and enhanced occu­pant expe­ri­ences.

To date, the term proptech has been broad­ly used to describe a vari­ety of solu­tions that focus on real estate finance. Gooee has devel­oped a unique way to con­verge IoT, the built envi­ron­ment and the peo­ple with­in it to cre­ate a tru­ly smart real estate propo­si­tion.

The incum­bent dom­i­nance of lega­cy com­pa­nies with­in the build­ing man­age­ment sec­tor has caused stag­na­tion, where own­ers, man­agers and occu­piers strug­gle to effec­tive­ly get a grip on the build­ings they inhab­it. The lack of access to data is the issue and the vast major­i­ty of facil­i­ty man­agers claim this is their num­ber-one prob­lem in address­ing these tra­di­tion­al chal­lenges.

As one of the largest British star­tups in IoT proptech, Gooee is dis­rupt­ing this space with both inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy and sub­scrip­tion-as-a-ser­vice busi­ness mod­els to achieve sig­nif­i­cant cost-sav­ings and high­er rentable val­ue, while enhanc­ing the employ­ee expe­ri­ence for the occu­piers, mak­ing busi­ness­es more pro­duc­tive.

It’s about peel­ing back the lay­ers of a build­ing, its sys­tems and data, and bring­ing it all togeth­er, pre­sent­ing the infra­struc­ture and data in one place, and enabling cus­tomers to build val­ue around it – Gooee’s “sin­gle-pane view”.

But, first, it’s nec­es­sary to under­stand why this march to intel­li­gence is impor­tant.

Function vs efficiency

Tra­di­tion­al build­ings face three cen­tral chal­lenges: ener­gy, space and peo­ple.

Glob­al­ly, build­ings con­tribute to a mas­sive amount of ener­gy con­sump­tion and this has led to leg­is­la­tion that demands build­ings achieve ener­gy quo­tas. Fail­ure to com­ply will mean that poten­tial and cur­rent devel­op­ments will become unrentable.

In a com­mer­cial envi­ron­ment, when look­ing at space at any giv­en time, 50 per cent is under­utilised. At best this iden­ti­fies a need to repur­pose rent­ed space, at worst this is expen­sive and unnec­es­sary cost.

Final­ly, peo­ple rep­re­sent 90 per cent of busi­ness costs, but a dis­en­gaged employ­ee envi­ron­ment can cause busi­ness­es to lose bil­lions a year in lost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Intelligent IoT backbone

Gooee helps solve these issues by con­verg­ing infra­struc­ture and uni­fy­ing data sets. Their  “android-style” plat­form com­bines tech­nolo­gies to ensure a more open, acces­si­ble and eas­i­ly cus­tomis­able solu­tion.

Gooee’s enter­prise-scale, Blue­tooth net­work plays a sig­nif­i­cant part in this solu­tion. Lighting’s view into spaces and dense build­ing cov­er­age makes it an ide­al host for sens­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and bea­con tech­nol­o­gy. Con­sol­i­dat­ing mul­ti­ple sys­tems into one MIoT (mesh inter­net of things) net­work back­bone saves sig­nif­i­cant costs and future-proofs a build­ing infra­struc­ture.

The aim is to help busi­ness­es gain con­trol, save mon­ey and engage employ­ees or retail cus­tomers, using cloud tech­nol­o­gy and IoT to do this at scale, across mul­ti­ple sites.

Value as a service

The con­ver­gence of phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy will help busi­ness­es dri­ve new ser­vices and rev­enue oppor­tu­ni­ties, while build­ing own­ers can com­mand a high­er rentable rate because the build­ing is smarter.

Busi­ness­es need to focus on peo­ple going for­ward and that should dri­ve this intel­li­gent rev­o­lu­tion. Build­ings are now about the con­nect­ed com­mu­ni­ty, and about how I can make my busi­ness more sus­tain­able, stream­lined, engag­ing and, ulti­mate­ly, suc­cess­ful.

Pio­neer­ing the “British inter­net of things”, Gooee is rapid­ly expand­ing oper­a­tions across Europe with sig­nif­i­cant design, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and research and devel­op­ment tak­ing place in the UK.

For more infor­ma­tion on cre­at­ing intel­li­gent build­ings and con­nect­ed com­mu­ni­ties please vis­it gooee.com