Transforming Spaces, Enhancing Lives: The Power of Digital Buildings

In this special episode of the Climate Confident podcast, generously sponsored by Siemens, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Rahul Chillar, the head of Building X at Siemens Smart Infrastructure. Rahul, with his impressive track record of 55 patents and over two decades in the building industry, shared invaluable insights into how buildings can be the linchpin in our quest for a more sustainable future.

We delved into the findings of Siemens' Infrastructure Transition Monitor Report, which underscores the crucial role buildings play in global energy consumption and sustainability efforts. With buildings accounting for a staggering 40% of the world's energy use, Rahul's discussion on the transformative power of digitalisation in making buildings more efficient, sustainable, and, crucially, more profitable, couldn't be timelier.

Rahul illuminated the path forward with Siemens' Building X, emphasising its capacity to foster sustainable, autonomous, and profitable building operations. His pragmatic approach to the adoption of smart solutions, amidst budget constraints and regulatory landscapes, was particularly enlightening.

Join us as we explore the critical intersection of sustainability and technology in the built environment and uncover how Siemens is paving the way for a future where buildings not only contribute positively to our planet but also enhance our quality of life.

For those intrigued by the prospect of transforming our living spaces for the better, this episode is a must-listen. Your thoughts and insights are always welcome, so do reach out on LinkedIn or explore more on Siemens Building X. Here's to changing the way we live, one building at a time.

Don't forget to check out the video version of this podcast at https://youtu.be/IbgJHe2ieeI

Transcript

Rahul Chillar: 0:03

A building of the future is, three things: sustainable, autonomous buildings, that are profitable, sustainable, autonomous, profitable. If you're these three things, you'll be in business five years from now, seven years from now, profitably. If you do not do these three things, sustainability, autonomous nature, then your, your profitability will go down and soon you'll be out of business. This is the future state of every single building

Tom Raftery: 0:31

Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the Climate Confident podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices in climate emission reductions and removals, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. Don't forget to click follow on this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Climate Confident Podcast. This is a special edition sponsored by Siemens. My name is Tom Raftery, and with me on the show today, I have my special guest, Rahul. Rahul, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Rahul Chillar: 1:06

Thank you Tom. Hi folks. Thank you for your time. This is Rahul Chillar. You know, my last name is Chillar. My first job was designing chillers for buildings. I've worked in the, in the building space for the last 23 years of my life. I've invented 55 patents on, on many, many different things. And and you know, my current role is Head of Building X for Siemens Smart Infrastructure. So hopefully that's a quick short introduction. Don't wanna belabor that more.

Tom Raftery: 1:32

Sure. Great. No, that's, that's, that's fine. We are on the podcast today, Rahul, because Siemens released its Siemens Infrastructure Transition Monitor Report late last year, late in 23. And I had one of your colleagues on last year, Sabine, talking about the energy space and energy grids. And we are, as you mentioned today, gonna be talking about buildings. The Infrastructure Monitor Report is broken into three spheres. Sphere One was energy Sphere Two cities and three industries. Buildings kind of fits into both two and three, I reckon. Can you gimme an idea just roughly what the findings of the report were as it pertained to, to buildings? What's the current state of play with buildings?

Rahul Chillar: 2:22

So, so Tom, here are a couple of stats that I'm aware of off my head in the buildings universe that are relevant. The first is, is that 40 percent of world's energy consumption is consumed by buildings. Right. That's a big number. And so if we need to impact sustainability, we have to target this number. The second number is, is that 90 percent of our time as human beings, we spend indoors in a building. And so to improve the quality of life, change the quality of life that we have, we have to change our surroundings. We have to change our buildings and we have to make them more efficient. So these are some broad stats, but if you look at some stats from from a corporate side, you know, decarbonization is a key priority for Infrastructure transition. And almost every 100 percent believe that the progress is too slow. So the fact here is the stat here is 100%, right? 50 percent of executives believe that if we can make our building sustainable, if we can decarbonize, then we'll be profitable. But almost 50 percent of them again, kind of believe that that they don't have an effective sustainability decarbonization strategy in place. So there are big gaps here. And about, I would say about 30 to 35% you know, 40 percent rate their organizations as mature or advanced in this space, but the remainder say that, Hey, we have a long way to go. So, so, you know, these are, these are some of the numbers that I'm aware of off my head that are relevant for you know, the buildings universe that should help us make decisions in the right direction. And so if we have to change the way we live, if we have to improve the way we live, we have to improve the surroundings and it starts by the building. And so, so we are on a mission to transform the way we live with Building X and, and so, so it's absolutely relevant, absolutely important for Siemens and for for all of us as humanity, you know, as we go forward to, you know do innovation in the space and improve our quality of life where we spend the most amount of time.

Tom Raftery: 4:24

Sure, sure, sure. The building space has gotta be a complex one to deal with because there are many, many stakeholders. The majority of buildings, I'm guessing, are either publicly owned or privately owned, and privately then breaks down more than likely into commercial-industrial, and private as in residential. I'm guessing in Siemens case you're dealing less with residential and more with commercial-industrial and publicly owned. Would that be fair?

Rahul Chillar: 4:53

So, so different businesses and Siemens deal with different aspects of it. So we have a sensor business that probably, you know, works a lot with residential also. I personally work with the commercial real estate and, and, and so on, so different entities. But look, if you look at it from a Building X perspective, I would say that 60% of worlds real estate is managed by about 10 big real estate companies. So, you know they, they, they manage over a million plus buildings globally. And so ability to change that would be easier if we could bring those companies on board with our journey and, and, and, and so on. So I hope that that give you a flavor of of, of Tom that my goal is in building access to work on everything. If it's a building, if it's consuming energy, if it's adding to the carbon footprint on planet Earth, if it's being occupied, then we need to have solutions to be able to optimize that building, optimize the energy consumption, optimize the sustainability, optimize the cost of maintenance, optimize the safety and security of the building, optimize the indoor air quality, make it a better place to live, and we have to be able to do it in a way where we can connect to the building, pull the data out of it. By data, I mean pull the occupancy data. How many people are there? Pull the data of the assets. How many chillers do they have? How many elevators do they have? How many escalators the building has? How many pumps? How many motors? How many air handling alerts? Figure out how you maintain the building. How many facility managers do we have? What are the work orders? What are the alarms and alerts that have come from the security system? Get all that information out, optimize it and pipe the inputs and the actions back to the facilities team in the building to take intelligent decisions and and, you know essentially make their building more profitable. So, lots to do on this front, but it's fair game to go work with anyone in the space. Doesn't, doesn't have to be limited to residential or commercial real estate. We work with hospitals, we work with schools, we work with financial banks. We work with by financial banks, I mean the buildings that the banks own, right? And and, and so on.

Tom Raftery: 7:07

Okay. And from what you're saying there, a lot of what you're doing is creating, for all intents and purposes, digital twins of buildings for then the facilities management team to work with, to then take actions based on the data they're receiving from the building. Is that a fair summary of what you were saying?

Rahul Chillar: 7:30

So that's a beautiful summary of what you're saying. First, I'm gonna pick that up in my talk track, but. It's not limited to just the facility manager. Let's say I'm a mult, multi-billionaire, and I have 600 buildings in my portfolio and I rent them out. 50 of my buildings are rented by Tom. A hundred are rented by someone else, 50 are rented by someone else, and I rent it out and I collect rent from all of these buildings. Now as a portfolio manager today, I have no clue which building is more profitable. I collect 1 million rent. I paid 300 K maintenance. This one, I collect 2 million in rent, but I pay a hundred K in utility bills. I pay 400 K maintenance. I have three complaints every month on this building. I have safety events on this building and so on, so I do not have a clear portfolio view that helps me improve the profitability of my 600 building portfolio. What I want to know as a portfolio owner is, which buildings are great that I can bump the rent on. Which buildings are not that great, and you know what? I should just sell that off and not even put it in my rental portfolio, which buildings I need to improve from a sustainability standpoint, and I need to buy solution from Siemens to improve my sustainability so that I don't pay a penalty in the state of New York or carbon and, and, and taxes and so on. So that's the first level. And so now I have a view of my 600 buildings, much, much like the health checkup of our community. Hey, we did a health checkup in your neighborhood. 40 of you have heart issues, 30 of you, high cholesterol, blah, blah, and now you can give medicines. So the buildings that have high cholesterol or have high sustainability or or poor sustainability, you would then say, you know what? Let's buy Building X Sustainability Manager and now Building X Sustainability Manager deployed on those 30 buildings will help improve the sustainability of the buildings. It'll tell you what your scope one, scope two, scope three emissions are. It'll tell you how to optimize those emissions. Now comes the facility manager. The facility manager will look at that emission report and say, Hey, you know what? I need to turn the chiller off at 6:00 AM in the morning, I need to turn it on at seven. I need to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now my sustainability targets can come down and I will pay less penalties. So it's all the personas. The, the message that I was trying to get to is, it's not just the facility manager, but it's every single persona in the ownership of the building. If it's the occupant, the occupant wants to know how good my building is doing. The occupant wants to know am I in a building that has good air quality? Am I paying rent for a building that has good sustainability because I wanna be a good citizen? I don't wanna be, you know, contributing to so much emissions on planet earth. So the occupant needs to have an, an application in Building X that provides you occupant experience. So like this, we have different solutions for different personas with the common theme of improving the way you live.

Tom Raftery: 10:40

And how much of this is financially driven? How much of it is driven by building owners wanting to be good landlords, let's say, or good stewards of their buildings, good global citizens by being more sustainable. And how much of it is driven by regulation?

Rahul Chillar: 11:01

So I think the regulations are kicking in

Tom Raftery: 11:04

Hmm.

Rahul Chillar: 11:04

slowly. And what I say is, is the following that if a building management company or building owners or rental portfolio owners or real estate owners want to be relevant five years from now, want to have a profitable portfolio at their hand, they have to you know take proactive decisions today for occupant ,experience for being, Hey, I wanna make sure that when you enter through that door, you have a good experience in my building.

Tom Raftery: 11:38

Yep.

Rahul Chillar: 11:38

Will I get paid for it today? Probably not, but is it important for me five years from now to be in business? Hell yes. Will I get, will I be paying a sustainability penalty today if I consume too much electricity for my building? Probably not. Not everywhere, but five years from now, will I be paying a penalty? Yes. Will the value of my building be what I expect it to be five years from now if it is not a sustainable building? Answer is no. If you expect that your home is gonna be valued at, let's say, $1 million five years from now, if you have high energy consumption at your home and if you have leaky windows, and if your sustainability of your home is bad, I'm sorry, nobody's gonna pay you 1 million for it. They're gonna pay you 700 K and your portfolio, so you lost the bigger game. So it's in best interest for the building universe to embark on this journey now, so that you set yourself up for success and existence five to seven years from now. And so, my, my thought is, is that at the moment it's mainly profitability driven. It's driven based on I need to reduce my cost. I'm under pressure, rent pressure, blah, blah, blah. And oh, yes, sustainability is coming. But you know, I just need to know my sustainability score at the moment. I'm not sure I'm gonna take many actions. The smart ones are, are taking decisions in their hands and, and so I would say probably 50 50 is the answer, is that a majority of them are still profit driven, which is okay. But they have to take the longer view and say that I'm profit driven today, but I wanna be profit driven five years from now, so let me invest some in this space.

Tom Raftery: 13:28

What does the regulatory landscape look like? I mean, we've had recently regulations in the eu, the EU Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, for example. But is, is there more coming and are there more regulations that outside the EU people should be aware of, for example?

Rahul Chillar: 13:47

So, so, you know, it's, it's difficult for me to talk about exact regulations and what's coming in and so on. There's a, there's a massive team here in Siemens that, that works on it and provides us that insights. It's, it's complicated because country by country, re region by region. It changes. So if I, if I make a judgmental call that, oh yeah, France has regulations coming in I might be completely wrong, but my belief is, the trend is in this direction is that every country, every region, most of these real estate companies or most of the portfolio owners are global. Rarely is it only one country, one place. So regulations are coming in. There's no escape from it. There is no escape. The only thing is, is it coming in six months? Or is it gonna be there in in you know, two years? But it's gonna hit all of them. So, so yeah, that's where, that's where we are.

Tom Raftery: 14:38

Okay. And obviously for people to take action on their buildings, to make them more sustainable, more energy efficient, lower emissions, they need access to data. I mean, this is, this is a common theme across multiple industries. The whole, the term digital transformation gets bandied about a lot. And it's, it's almost overused, but we can't get away from the fact that without proper data, we can't make informed decisions and we can't get proper data unless we, to your earlier point roll out sensors in buildings, find out what's going on there, get that data back, and then we can make those decisions. Is that fair?

Rahul Chillar: 15:26

Look. Absolutely. So here's the stats that I will give Tom, out of every a hundred buildings on planet Earth, about 10 have BMS Building Management System that collects all the data from all the systems in the building.

Tom Raftery: 15:43

Right.

Rahul Chillar: 15:44

So BMS would pull the data from elevators, escalators, chillers, air handling units, lighting systems, access control, and we could connect into A BMS and pull that information out. So 10 out of a hundred buildings have BMS in, on average,

Tom Raftery: 15:59

Right.

Rahul Chillar: 16:00

the remaining 90 do not have a BMS. Now out of the remaining 90 50 buildings are mom and pop shops with two window air conditioners and maybe a small heater.

Tom Raftery: 16:12

Mm-Hmm.

Rahul Chillar: 16:12

So there for them, the optimization will always be, let me just change the windows. Let me put LEDs and I'm just gonna flip the switch on and off and I'm done.

Tom Raftery: 16:21

Yep.

Rahul Chillar: 16:22

So now you're left with 40 buildings on planet Earth that are in the space of, you know what, we could do something, but they don't have a BMS. So how do you get the data out?

Tom Raftery: 16:33

Mm-Hmm.

Rahul Chillar: 16:34

So that's where the investment that has to be made is, is that these buildings have to have sensors, intelligent sensors, intelligent edge devices that can determine the occupancy of the building, that can determine the health of the assets in the building, that can determine the air quality of the building, and route all of that information to the cloud, to solutions like Building X. And then we can optimize them. So we have to provide these sensors to those 40 buildings. So 10 buildings, we connect into everything all good. We got the solutions. 40 of them we need to solve for not only the cloud based software and optimization, but how do I get the data out, clean that data contextualize it, and then deploy it in the BMS. So sensors and edge devices are very important. And then these sensors vary from asset to asset, building to building. And, and, and this is a space that we are, we are working on.

Tom Raftery: 17:31

Okay. And what do you reckon is the kind of breakdown between the need to make physical changes to buildings or make digital changes to buildings? Because in some cases, they're single paned windows. They should be double glazed, you know, in some cases they're double glazed. They might need to be triple glazed or whatever it is, you know, so there's, there's, there's probably some kind of balancing act between how much digitization is going to help and how much actual physical changes are gonna make.

Rahul Chillar: 18:03

Look the smart building owners would actually first do a survey of the building. And they would, they would split it in two, like you said here, the infrastructure changes in the building, increase the window size, change the window panes, add some blinds, you know, HVAC is 30 years old, replace it with a new HVAC, put solar roofs on the building, EV charging, blah, blah, blah, and all that. And then here are the software optimization aspects that can help me squeeze the juice out of all of this. So the funny thing is, is that regardless of whether you do the hardware or not, the software will still do its job. Even if you have a single pane of glass or double pane of glass, the occupancy app will optimize the occupancy of the building,

Tom Raftery: 18:50

Hmm.

Rahul Chillar: 18:51

right? It'll, it'll, it'll look at the occupancy and, and then it'll optimize the HVAC, it'll optimize the set points. It'll optimize you know, air quality, your air changes, and so on. It'll optimize your energy. So so software will still do its job. And then hardware is a CapEx investment that the, the property owner has to decide, which should happen too for relevancy, I believe.

Tom Raftery: 19:17

Yeah, of course. Of course. And what kind of innovations or trends do you think will most kind of significantly shape the future of sustainable buildings? You know, from smart to autonomous buildings, that kind of thing?

Rahul Chillar: 19:31

Yeah. Tom, my belief is the following, I think a building of the future is, is three things. Sustainable, autonomous buildings, that are profitable, sustainable, autonomous, profitable. If you're these three things, you'll be in business five years from now, seven years from now, profitably. If you do not do these three things, sustainability, autonomous nature, then your, your profitability will go down and soon you'll be out of business. This is the future state of every single building. Now, autonomous nature could vary. You know, I, I checked into a hotel a week ago and there were two staff. There was a line of seven people waiting to get their key cards. And I looked at that and I said, geez, this is so not autonomous. You know, in the future you may be able to take your passport, scan it, and it spits out your, your key key fob and with, with the preference. And there's there's only one person there managing the entire floor in the, in the hotel. So it's coming. It's, you know, hotels will not be profitable if they have a standing crew of 20 people waiting to greet guests on a, on a regular basis. So this is where I see the world headed. And and the smart companies will be making investments in these directions.

Tom Raftery: 20:48

Okay. And speaking of those investments, how do building owners, how do they manage or operators balance the pursuit of sustainability targets with the realities of budget constraints?

Rahul Chillar: 21:04

So today it has to be to, to big degree it's top down driven where the CEO of the real estate firm or CEO of the portfolio management company saying, I want to pay less fines, or have sustainable buildings, or improve profitability and, and my 500 facility managers across my 500 facilities have to do A, B, or C, and then they embark on that journey. So it's a top down driven mandate. They also want to gamify this. What this means is if they're 500 facility managers, they wanna gamify manager A versus B versus C versus D. Where, Hey, your building, which building is the best in sustainability? Ah, it's number one. You're the best. Who's the best in energy? You're the best. And next year, whoever's best in energy, whoever beats Tom's facility number five for energy will get blah, blah. So that gamification is becoming real. And the gamification could be on a weekly basis, monthly basis, and so on. So the, these are two things that I'm, I'm, I'm seeing, but mainly it's top down driven. Rarely am I seeing under central, let's say independent run facility that is significantly large enough. I'm not seeing the facility managers make the buying decisions for software or take that leap for, here's how I want to do it, because let's be honest, many of them have been in the role for 20 years. They've been managing that building for the last 10, 15, 20 years, and they know everything about it. They know how that chiller works. They know which light works, they know which access control door works. They, they know the details so they feel comfortable with it. For them to adapt these solutions is, will be a little bit of a, of a, of a change so we have to ensure that we can make their life easier. And the second piece is the new guy who shows up for work. As the facility owner readily adapts these solutions because they're green and they, they want to, so, so those are some of the, the, the fine nuances that that I'm seeing in the, in the industry.

Tom Raftery: 23:04

Okay. Considering the status quo. Considering where we are right now with our global building stock versus the urgency of the changes we need to make to our building stock, how can we speed up progress to get to where we need to be by let's say our 2030 goals, for example?

Rahul Chillar: 23:32

So, I believe 90% of the buildings are existing Brownfield, only 10% of the buildings will be greenfield. The Greenfield buildings are being designed for sustainability, autonomous kind of nature, most of them, right? Almost all of them. And they're having the new tech and everything. So they're on good path, but it doesn't mean that they do not deploy software and they do not ensure that they squeeze the juice out of, out of that piece, the even the digitize and the optimize, the double pane window buildings, right? They still want to have their world class chiller. Still be occupancy based, optimized with the software. So, so that trend is happening for the remaining 90% of the buildings that are in brownfield state, we have to proactively take action and and we have to ensure that we can we can make the adoption of these solutions easier, which means deployments have to be plug and play. Which means facility managers should be able to log onto the web and say, look, I, I'm not happy with my energy costs in the building. I wanna optimize my energy. They should be able to download software that can optimize their energy and so on. We have to make their life easy. And if we do that, I think a significant portion of these portfolios will adopt and jump onto this next generation optimization. So we have to make it easy for them to adopt the solution. We have to make it easy for them to see the value the solution has delivered, which means we need to be able to show to them that we've saved you $5,000 this month for them to continue that, that solution. And we have to incentivize we have to gamify, make, you know, gamification makes life fun, right? It's, it's a healthy competition. And so we have to do all these things step by step for adoption across the brownfield space. And I think we are headed in that direction. So you will see the trend. There's no escape from it. You know, the, the way I say it is, is that, five to seven years from now, there are gonna be winners and there are gonna be losers. The winners are the ones who are gonna adopt these solutions and capabilities today, and the losers are the ones who are going to see that you know what? This building is not profitable. I'm unable to turn this, it's a business. I'm unable to turn it around, and I think I have to write it off or I have to sell it. And so you're gonna see that that happen across the globe.

Tom Raftery: 25:53

And. We've talked already about the fact that in the regulatory space, buildings that are not performing can be fined for, for lack of performance, or that's maybe where the regulations are headed. But what about the opposite? What about, you know, the, the carrot as opposed to the stick or the carrot and the stick approach where buildings are given incentives to refit or to put a new digital infrastructure in place or similar. Do you think there's a a room for that as well?

Rahul Chillar: 26:26

Oh, I would love for that. Right? I remember many, many years ago, somebody knocked on my door in my house and said, Hey, if you put solar panels on your, on your roof, the state of Georgia will give you, you know, $20,000. And oh, by the way, your lighting your, your utility company is gonna pay you back for every extra kilowatt of energy you pump back into the grid, you're gonna get 10 bucks back or something. And, and so, you know, this is. Blah, blah, blah, here's the balance sheet and here's the profitability. So look, these regulations will definitely help. I am unaware of any such regulation at the moment that says, you know, let's push for digitization. And so far the regulations are supporting outcomes. The outcome being that if you're gonna use renewable energy, you will get so much credit if you're gonna use blah, blah, blah. It's so much credit, but I think, I think it, it we have to find that right way to to, you know, ensure that sustainability and autonomous nature of buildings is is rewarded beyond beyond the reward of you know, the tenant being happy and beyond the reward of I saved so much energy bill and beyond the reward of I have a profitable portfolio. It has to be some sort of reward through policy also. I I don't think we are there as a society yet, but that's a great idea.

Tom Raftery: 27:44

Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, we've talked a lot about digital platforms now but in terms of industry collaboration and open digital platforms, for example, do you see those fitting in and in the space and you know, their ability to contribute?

Rahul Chillar: 28:02

Oh look, absolutely I mean you know Tom, I'll give an example of Building X at Siemens that, that we lead. It's an open platform. We are in year two of our journey where anyone who wants to build an application on Building X to do anything for the building. As long as the data is in there, they can take that data through APIs or, or, you know, use the foundational components of the platform that we have and build an app on it. And, and then, you know, do what you want with that. You want to go sell it out, you want go deploy it on the 50 buildings that you have. Go for it. Much like you know, your Apple iPhone. I mean, no different than, than, you know, you have your Apple operating system, which is Building X that we have. And then you have your applications on top. We have our own applications. We have Energy, Sustainability, Operations, Healthy Buildings app, Occupancy app you know, and Security Manager app, so on. We've got, you know, a dozen plus. And then we have partners building applications on this. So far we have three partners. We've all launched applications on Building X and, you know, hopefully we'll see this hockey stick effect where we'll learn more and more. I do this and then, you know, let's say Tom, you build a world class app on Building X, that, that does occupancy based optimization and ensures that your air quality increase the air changes per hour and ensure that your air quality is top notch when the building is occupied by people, so that there's no viruses. You may wanna sell that application across the world to every facility manager, owner, and so on. Much like we can download applications on Apple iPhone from anyone. So that's what we are enabling. It's, it's getting there. It's, and it's super exciting space,

Tom Raftery: 29:46

Fantastic. And do you have any successful customer stories you can speak to?

Rahul Chillar: 29:53

Look we have plenty of customer references at the moment. The first is, is that Siemens itself is a real estate company, right? We have 2000 buildings worldwide that we manage, where I'm sitting in a Siemens building, which is six stories and has, you know, hundreds of offices. And so we have Building X deployed in this building. And I could log into this building and look at energy consumption in my room and the room next door and the light consumption and so on, and I'm sure the facility manager downstairs is, is, is having his eyes on it. So we have our own portfolio that is consuming our own applications and and we have plenty of referenceability on that. So we are consuming our own dog food. Now we've gone and sold this to many other customers outside globally. We have, a customer in Greece with 500 buildings that has bought the solution. We have customers in Germany that have bought this for their entire portfolio of three or 400 buildings. We have global financial institution in United States that has bought this for 2000 plus of their buildings. And so on. Now, I could give these names there at the back of our mind, but I just don't know if I have the, I have to go, go ask my legal team if I have the permission to speak the name out. So, you know, don't want to get anyone in any trouble. So, so, so just giving some references. But but yes, we have plenty of, plenty of these.

Tom Raftery: 31:18

and they've seen meaningful reductions.

Rahul Chillar: 31:22

Oh, absolutely. Otherwise they wouldn't they wouldn't subscribe for this. Why will, why will, why will you pay for a service? Is everyone happy? No. They want more, which is great because that's what we want to do. We are on a journey, and this is a journey where we keep improving, keep improving, and that's the software business, is that we give you a piece of software that does some optimization and then we are investing significant chunks into this, and then the customer gets the latest, greatest version that does 2% more. Then three months later, they get the next version that does 4% more. And so they keep improving their energy efficiency over a period of time and we keep adding capability and the customers keep getting. So I would say largely, I would say satisfaction is at 80, 85%. It should get higher. We have a phenomenal roadmap to ensure up to, you know, 30 40% optimization of energy consumption for buildings. 80 to 90% reduction in, health events when, in a building, in improving the health of your buildings, optimization of your carbon emissions. So you set your targets and then you are, you are here and this is your target, and you put a timeline. I need to get there in three years, step by step recommendation, how you get there. That target could be a 20% reduction, it could be a 40% reduction. And, and so lots of, lots of goodness. But again, you know, we have to we are on this journey. I mean, we, we, we have a car. We need to keep improving that car. And we wanna transform into a Porsche over the next couple of years. You know, we have a Toyota, we make it into a Porsche.

Tom Raftery: 32:54

Sure, sure, sure, sure. That was, I mean, my, my, I, I typically as one of my last questions I ask people, you know, what are your plans for development for the next 3, 4, 5 years? You've answered, I think most of that now, but is there anything, if I were to say to you, you know, what are your plans for Building X between now and 2030? Is there anything you haven't mentioned that you'd like to make sure is in Building X between now and 2030?

Rahul Chillar: 33:18

So, so look, my, my call is, is this right? Anyone who's listening to this podcast and has has a line of sight to a building that needs optimization, or a portfolio that needs optimization in buildings, I mean, you know, give us a call add me on LinkedIn, let me know. And we'll, we'll ensure that you get a get a snippet and, and some details on, on what we can do. But our North Star is clear is to deliver a solution that makes your building sustainable, autonomous, and profitable, ensures that you are in business in the future. And our mission is we change the way you live. It's as simple as that. Building X changes the way you live. Or we may say Building X improves the way you live in the future. And we are building solutions to deliver outcomes to become sustainable, autonomous, and profitable. So multiple applications encourage you to go on the Siemens Building X website and and reach out to us for any any opportunity to collaborate, partner or, or show you what the solutions can do.

Tom Raftery: 34:21

Great, great. We're coming towards the end the podcast now, Rahul, is there any question I haven't asked that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to think about?

Rahul Chillar: 34:34

I, I, you know, Tom, I, I can't, I I think you've been very thorough, to be honest. You've, you've gone around for, for the level of detail that we, we discussed in a podcast. I think you've, you've you've touched on all nuances. So, so, so grateful. Grateful for, for all the questions you've asked on this opportunity.

Tom Raftery: 34:51

Fantastic. And if people would like to know more, Rahul about yourself or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, remind us where, where, where they should go.

Rahul Chillar: 35:00

You know what, the best place is either you could contact me on LinkedIn, just add, add me on, on, on LinkedIn, and, and I'll route your your questions and queries. And then of course we have Building X. If you Google search Siemens Building X, you'll land up on our webpage. And you'll see all the solutions, the capabilities, the demos, and so on. And we can take it from there. I think these are the two easiest methods and we'll connect.

Tom Raftery: 35:23

Fantastic. Great. Rahul, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Rahul Chillar: 35:28

Thank you so much Tom, Thank you.

Tom Raftery: 35:30

Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about the Climate Confident podcast, feel free to drop me an email to tomraftery at outlook. com or message me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you like the show, please don't forget to click follow on it in your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.