In A Post-Pandemic World, Safer and Healthier Retail Stores and Offices Prepare for the Future

As mask mandates and other regulations are slowly lifting, retailers are investing in making in-person shopping experiences better than before, as consumers rediscover the joy of shopping offline.

Companies whose employees have been forced to work from home are, likewise, making preparations for the return of in-person collaboration, knowing that concerns about the COVID-19 virus will linger, with a heightened sense of the importance of safe spaces.

Retailers and businesses are not sure when customers and employees will come back in full force, but they need to be ready when they do.

Buildings IOT this week announced that the company secured a $10 million growth investment with Keyframe Capital to advance innovation in building systems management. Buildings IOT streamlines building data and makes it easier and more cost-effective for owners and operators to maintain assets throughout their lifespan, according to the company, headquartered in California's Bay Area with offices in New York City, Canada, and a distributed North American workforce.

"As vaccinations increase and employees return to out of home workspaces, building owners and managers are accelerating efforts to make their spaces safe, secure, and compliant," explained Brian Turner, CEO of Buildings IOT. "This investment enables us to more quickly scale our data management platforms and our full suite of building services, ultimately allowing us to reach more customers and have a greater positive impact on the built environment."

Managing 220 million square feet of building space in the data center, utilities, government, pharmaceutical, retail, commercial real estate, and higher education industries, the company delivers software and services in master systems integration, building systems contracting, building systems service, and annual subscriptions.

As a Master Systems Integrator, Buildings IOT installs and configures building control systems for operational areas as diverse as HVAC, access control, and IT infrastructure then brings the data from each of those systems together within a single management interface command-and-control system.

"Building stakeholders are scrambling to adjust to a post-pandemic world, and Buildings IOT is well-positioned to assist them in this period of critical transition," explained Ben Birnbaum, partner at Keyframe Capital. "Based on the company's maturity and deeply unique technology, we believe that the Buildings IOT team is poised to deliver outstanding value to the commercial real estate market that is seeking more efficient, secure, and healthy environments."

The company captures the opportunities inherent in collecting, securing, modeling, transforming, and visualizing building data. In addition to helping clients sift through information, the company also offers services that enable smart buildings to become highly functional, healthy, and attractive for occupants. 

The company said that, while improving the value of their building assets, Buildings IOT clients help reduce the country's commercial building energy usage and emissions, which utilize a reported 71 percent of the nation's electricity, 54 percent of the natural gas, and emit 40 percent of the greenhouse gases.

"The high energy needs of commercial buildings often place a great strain on the nation's grids during peak periods and are responsible for a staggering amount of emissions," Turner said. "At the same time, it is critical that energy efficiency not come at the expense of indoor air quality, especially as healthy air is top-of-mind for everyone returning to indoor office spaces. Buildings IOT provides real solutions for greater energy efficiency and carbon reduction while also making it possible to monitor indoor air quality levels and change ventilation strategies immediately if necessary. As a result, building owners see an improvement in their operating costs, while tenants report feeling more comfortable and productive at work."

"Buildings are extremely complex ecosystems with dozens of systems running at all times," Birnbaum said. "They have been starved of operational efficiency by equipment and controls manufacturers for decades, which has led to massive energy and cost inefficiency in buildings that the world is finally beginning to wake up to. While many building owners have ambitious, publicly-stated sustainability goals, and others will follow as they face regulatory pressure to do so, they often struggle to execute on action plans to achieve them. Buildings IOT provides the technology and services to enable them to achieve these goals."

The funding will support scaling up sales and marketing, product and technology development, and the creation of new business models that will help their clients monetize their data streams as tenants begin to inhabit buildings once again.