Season 2, Episode 4: Rust Belts & Blue Collars (w/ Cormac Crossan)

We have a new website: https://www.schneider-electric.us/en/work/campaign/nam/next-story-up/ In Act 1, Tyler discusses the transition – both psychological and actual – between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, and what that means for how we see ourselves and how we see our buildings. He remarks that society places a high importance on what are traditionally manufacturing or blue-collar jobs, but that due to the fact we are now in an information/digital age, those jobs and the value they bring are highly digital as well. We should consider these “blue-collar IT”, and as opposed to these blue-collar jobs being finished once a building is completed, they now play an active role in the continued life of a smart building and feed directly into the productivity of a knowledge and services economy. In commercial real estate, where facilities are often used as the offices for “white-collar labor”, this dynamic is most apparent because these developments are now facing greater demands to be “smart” and “well” and leaning on the tech in a building to make that happen. In Act 2, we discuss the commercial real estate sector with Paris-based Cormac Crossan, Business Development Director of Commercial Real Estate for Schneider Electric. Cormac delivers the goods with quotes, facts, statistics and wide-ranging observations about the state of smart buildings in the commercial real estate industry. He remarks that while it’s still largely less tech-adopted than other less obvious industries such as commercial fishing, the investments in “prop tech” technologies across all aspects of a building’s services points to a promising future. He discusses the benefits of seamless engagement between building systems, and how this remains a holy grail of sorts, while describing how simple data points are becoming more and more valuable by helping to make the life of a building occupant simpler (and not just saving on electricity consumption). He speaks of the 3-30-300 principle, benefits of biophilic design, and other simply cool facets of CRE in today’s economy. Outro: “It’s All Okay” by Julia Stone