One smart-building, living-lab location is a four-building, 890,000-square-foot office complex — dubbed Place Innovation — in Montreal. The Smart Building Living Labs Initiative is supported by Morguard, CENGN and Nokia.Morguard/Supplied
A new, cross-province initiative is evolving the living lab environment by testing and developing smart technologies and building solutions before they go to market.
The $6.5-million project – dubbed the Smart Building Living Labs Initiative – in Ontario and Quebec is powered by Morguard, CENGN (Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks) and Nokia. It will demonstrate smart technologies in three types of real estate: commercial, retail and residential.
Smart buildings contain advanced technologies, automation and robotics to collect data and make real-time adjustments, helping maximize a building’s efficiency, comfort and safety. “These types of living labs are always pushing the envelope and looking for new solutions,” says Pratish Mahtani, CBRE’s vice-president of digital and technology. “We’ve been doing these kinds of living labs for years … I see these smart building living labs as more evolutionary than revolutionary.”
Get smart
Integrated smart features include everything from lighting to heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, as well as safety and security technologies for buildings, their computer networks and tenants. A few examples include lighting that responds to building occupancy, AI systems that predict equipment failures and networks of sensors that detect the needs of an environment in real-time – making adjustments to energy usage immediately as opposed to operating on a fixed schedule.
“Smart building solutions are now focused on reduction in maintenance, operating costs, sustainability, energy usage, and making sure the equipment within a building is operating as efficiently as possible,” Mr. Mahtani says. “A newer focus is on the workplace experience, making sure that facilities provide the optimal experience for the end users.”
He offers a possible scenario of the type of technologies that could come out of these smart building living labs: “Imagine an employee being able to work in the office more easily without a company having to increase costs or be worried about health and safety by having a robotic receptionist or concierge that can help that person find their way through a big commercial office space. I believe we are going to see more of that in the next two to three years.”
Testing smart building tech
There are three future homes for CENGN’s Smart Building Living Labs Initiative at existing Morguard-managed properties. These include a four-building, 890,000-square-foot office complex – dubbed Place Innovation – in Montreal, the St. Laurent Shopping Centre in Ottawa and the Bay Club apartments in Toronto.
“The living lab will be an accelerator for smart building technologies,” says Sandra Cutrona, CENGN’s president and chief executive officer, who assumed leadership in November. “We bring in the main stakeholders: the end user, which is Morguard as the owner and developer of the properties, and Nokia, the 5G network technology expert.”
Through the living lab initiative, CENGN is giving small businesses the space and infrastructure needed to help them commercialize their products, Ms. Cutrona says. “We will also bring in adopters, so even though the building is a Morguard site, any real estate company or tenant, like an R&D tenant of a building that wants to solve a problem with technology, could come to us and then we can connect them with small businesses with applications that can solve their challenge.”
This fall, CENGN issued a call for proposals for smart building technology startups and scaleups to submit project plans for participation in its living labs project. At minimum, companies applying are expected to target one of the following six areas: smart energy management, computerized maintenance management systems, operational safety and security, tenant experience and services, power management and water risk management.
The three-site smart building project is part of CENGN’s overarching living lab initiative and long-term commitment to support and drive innovation for more than 100 Canadian startups and scaleups.
The overall initiative involves access to a total of eight living lab sites, including the three smart building ones, in a variety of sectors – the others of which include agriculture, 5G advanced performance, smart mobility, connected robotics and advanced manufacturing.
The St. Laurent Shopping Centre in Ottawa will be another living lab location as part of the Smart Building Living Labs Initiative, which is part of CENGN’s overarching living lab initiative and long-term commitment to drive innovation for more than 100 Canadian startups and scaleups.Morguard/Supplied
Canada first
CENGN’s initiative is supported by a $45-million investment through the federal government’s Strategic Response Fund, which was created to help domestic companies innovate, adapt and compete in the global economy.
The Strategic Response Fund is one of several measures that Prime Minister Mark Carney launched on Sept. 5 in response to escalating trade and tariff wars with the United States. The living labs initiative is timely since its mandate is to help domestic startups and scaleups to test products and ideas that will benefit Canadians first.
“I was at a talk recently where they stressed that a strong and sovereign Canada starts with a strong and sovereign economy,” Ms. Cutrona says. “Supporting intellectual property in Canada is paramount … These living labs offer ways to support Canadian IP, support the economy and key public sectors and to showcase our resilience.”
Sharing spaces
Living labs create shared spaces that encourage collaboration and accelerate innovation by tapping into knowledge and expertise from a broad community of stakeholders, all with an interest in the challenge being tested. This group might include everyone from the landlord to academics, government agencies and other companies.
Another key benefit of living labs is the shared infrastructure, which reduces costs for all the partners involved in these real-world test sites. Testing in a safe environment before bringing a smart solution to market also helps mitigate risk by making sure the tech is market-ready and scalable.
CENGN’s call for proposals just closed, with the organization confirming that the chosen smart building projects will be announced in January.
“This initiative is about collaboration and setting up a place where Canadian innovation can be built and validated for the market,” Ms. Cutrona says. “At CENGN, we are all about innovation. These living labs position us as a tech accelerator.”