We are excited to announce the appointment of Bimal Desai, Founding Member, Principal Architect, and Leader of DSP Design, as an Intelligent Buildings Industry Fellow. As an Industry Fellow, he will provide thought leadership and industry perspective for blending technology and design in next-generation buildings, campuses, and interiors. Bimal and DSP Design are global leaders in integrating technology into design and delivering leading-edge workspace environments across the architecture and interior design spectrums.

“Bimal and DSP Design have been visionary in their understanding of how proptech is influencing design, operations, and the entire occupant experience, which was recognized when they recently won ‘Best Proptech Architecture & Design Firm’ by Architecture & Interior Design Excellence Awards,” said Tom Shircliff, Intelligent Buildings Co-Founder. “We have known Bimal for years and have seen his work firsthand throughout India in Fortune 500 campus master plans and interiors, as well as numerous local developments,” added Shircliff’s partner and Co-Founder, Rob Murchison.

Under the leadership of Bimal and his partners, Yatin Patel and Mehul Shah, DSP Design currently ranks 49^th among the Top 100 Architectural Practices in the World by WA100 (2021) and 50^th among the Top 100 Interior Design Practices in the World by the Interior Design Top 100 Giants List (2021).

The organization has an established footprint across India and Southeast Asia with multi-faceted studios at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Gurugram, Hyderabad, and Singapore. DSP Design offers Architecture, Interior Design, and Smart Building Solutions across domains like high-density residential, corporate and commercial spaces, hospitality, industrial, retail, and education. DSP Design has recorded approximately 200 million sq. ft. across 1000+ award-winning projects.

We enthusiastically welcome Bimal and look forward to his continuing impact on the industry and our customers.

About Intelligent Buildings, LLC
Intelligent Buildings® is the only company focused on Smart Building advisory, assessment, and managed services at scale for both new projects and existing portfolios. We help our customers manage risk, enhance occupant well-being, and continually improve performance by providing unmatched expertise, practical recommendations, and targeted services. Since 2004, we are the most trusted and experienced name in Smart Building services.

About DSP Design
DSP Design is an international architecture and design practice catering to an array of verticals within Architecture, Interior Design, and Smart Building Solutions across domains like high-density residential, corporate & commercial spaces, hospitality, industrial, retail, and education. DSP Design has been inducted as an exclusive Indian architecture and design practice to ONE Global Design. Smart Building Technology and Sustainability form an embedded part of the entrepreneurial work culture at DSP, ensuring the practice delivers designs that cut across multi-generational spatial expectations.

We are excited to announce that John Hester has been selected as an Intelligent Buildings Corporate Affiliate. Hester is an accomplished Facilities Manager, Certified Energy Manager and a licensed Professional Engineer. He was most recently Executive Director of Global Building Engineering Services for Warner Media’s Global Real Estate team, where he provided strategic and technical direction for building engineering services across the portfolio and led Centers of Excellence (COEs) for best practices in areas including equipment maintenance, HVAC, critical systems, fire/life safety, utilities operations, infrastructure planning, work order management, BMS, electrical, plumbing, and energy management.

“John is one of the most experienced facilities executives in the industry and has been recognized as such by trade groups and peers who have designated him the Association of Engineers Energy Manager of the Year and ASHRAE Engineer of the Year,” said Intelligent Buildings Co-Founder Tom Shircliff. Tom’s business partner and Co-Founder Rob Murchison adds, “We were fortunate to work with John in his previous capacity and saw that he could be very helpful to our customers since he was on their side of the table for 26 years.”

Hester is currently the owner of Hester Consulting, which specializes in helpings facilities managers and other consulting firms in Energy Management, Building Operations, Smart Building Application and Program Management. He looks forward to providing insights and services to Intelligent Buildings customers in these key areas.

We enthusiastically welcome John and look forward to him sharing his experiences and insights with our customers and the industry.

Intelligent Buildings, LLC reaches new cybersecurity managed services milestones and releases insightful educational video on commercial real estate cybersecurity and vendor risk management.  

Intelligent Buildings is proud to announce that we have recently signed hundreds of new sites, representing thousands of systems and contractors, under our industry-leading cybersecurity assessment and managed service. This solution represents the culmination of years of research and development to address and simplify an area of cybersecurity that IT companies and IT departments alike have been unable to tame—the vulnerability, fragmentation, and inconsistency from building systems and contractors.

We provide a cost-effective, high-value, monthly service that controls contractor remote internet access to the building. The service also audits and manages building system configuration, backup status, and contractor and staff policy compliance. This service extends beyond cybersecurity to include a full Vendor Risk Management (VRM) solution. Real estate executives understand that while having a strong remote access approach is important, it is system mismanagement and personnel mistakes that cause the vast majority of incidents—resulting in operational interruption, network hopping, and life safety exposures, as well as legal, regulatory, and insurance issues.

Additionally, Intelligent Buildings is releasing a promotional video that also includes an insightful educational aspect describing and explaining the historical context, the material risks and the areas of risk that must be addressed in unison. We hope that this can help the industry become more aware of what is really happing in the entire building stock. The video can be viewed directly from our cybersecurity page or by clicking on the link below.

If you are a real estate owner, manager, or stakeholder, you can visit our website to contact us for a no-cost assessment of your situation.

VIEW OUR VIDEO HERE

We are excited to announce the appointment of Dr. Rick Huijbregts as an Intelligent Buildings Industry Fellow. As an Industry Fellow, he will provide thought leadership, industry education, and key customer strategy support. Dr. Huijbregts is a pillar of the smart built environment movement, starting with his doctorate and roles at Harvard, continuing with his roles at Cisco in smart building and smart city strategies, and in his capacity at one of Canada’s largest educational institutions, George Brown College in Toronto.

“We have known Rick since our first year in business and have collaborated and learned from him all along the way. There is nobody more credible and trusted on this topic anywhere in the world,” states Intelligent Buildings Co-founder Rob Murchison. Rob’s business partner and Co-founder Tom Shircliff adds, “Rick has always been able to convey his vast knowledge and insights with disarming irreverence and an everyman approachability which makes an immediate impact.”

Rick is currently responsible for shaping George Brown College’s vision for 2030 and developing the corresponding business strategy, along with other key administrative, marketing and partnership roles. Prior to joining George Brown College, Rick served various executive roles at Cisco, including Vice-President of Digital Transformation and Innovation at Cisco Canada; Managing Director Americas of Digitization, IoT, and Industry Solutions Acceleration; and General Manager of Smart and Connected Communities and Real Estate. He is also a faculty member at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Executive Education, where he focuses on smart cities, smart buildings, and digital transformation.

Rick holds a doctorate from Harvard University Graduate School of Design, a Master of Science from Delft University, and a bachelor’s degree in construction management from the Tilburg Polytechnics College in the Netherlands.

We enthusiastically welcome Rick and look forward to his continuing impact on the industry and our customers.

2020 will be remembered as an unprecedented year for all of us. Professionally and personally, everyone has had to adapt to temporary, and perhaps some permanent, changes. Notwithstanding all of this, Intelligent Buildings has played a part in helping the industry through this trying time while also achieving some important milestones.

A number of Intelligent Buildings customers won awards at the 2020 Realcomm | IBcon hybrid conference, including AMP Limited, Carr Properties, Microsoft, CBRE, Charles Myers of Wells Fargo, and Steve Lefkowitz of Warner Media. We would like to congratulate them and thank them for our long-standing relationships and their role in the smart building industry.

We were also humbled this year that several of our leaders were tapped with invitations and appointments that recognize our continuing thought leadership. Darryl Benson was named a fellow at (CS)2AI; Fred Gordy was named an executive fellow at (CS)2AI; Rob Murchison was appointed to the APPA Higher Education Facilities Professional Affairs Committee; Tom Shircliff was named an advisory board member for the BuildingCybersecurity.org standards group, with Fred Gordy being named to their Cybersecurity Framework Working Group as well; and Craig Payne was honored by Controls Trends as the Progressive Consulting Engineer of the Year.

We began work on multiple new iconic projects in New York City, Orlando, Memphis, and Austin, each exceeding $500MM in development or redevelopment budget, and all of which remain on track even in the face of the pandemic. Many of these projects utilized our facility public health use cases, which leverage existing digital building systems and are part of our growing use case library.

Finally, we have recently signed hundreds of new sites representing thousands of devices and countless technicians under our industry-leading cybersecurity assessments and managed services. This has been the culmination of years of research and development to address and simplify an area of cybersecurity that IT companies and departments have been unable to tame: the fragmentation and inconsistency found in millions of building systems and contractors.

We look forward to a safe and exciting year ahead and wish our customers and partners all the best in 2021.