Our Story
At SmartViz, we're on a mission to transform the broken buildings industry and make buildings truly SMART.
Buildings are dumb
Our story begins with the realization that buildings, even the so-called Smart Buildings, are dumb and wasteful. They consume 3.5 times more energy than they're designed to, contributing to a staggering 40% of global emissions.
But what's causing this problem?
Buildings are actually quite dumb. They don't know how many people are inside and where they are. They don’t know when and where to heat or cool the building, how much to heat or cool, and when and where to stop. By not looking at people they can’t effectively control the CO2 and humidity levels to suit people. This means that even when buildings are empty, they continue to consume energy, while occupied buildings struggle to provide an ideal environment for their users. This results in energy waste, carbon emissions, and poor environments that negatively impact productivity and learning.
The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the hype around smart buildings generated a flood of data, but it also created data silos. Systems like space planning, lighting, facility management, energy, and building management don't communicate effectively with each other.
Buildings remained dumb and stupid.
Birth of SmartViz
In 2017, the visionary Smart Space and Analytics team led by Shrikant Sharma at Buro Happold turned their attention to this problem. They soon realised the core issue is that most building systems ignore people! Recognizing the crucial aspect of people in building optimization, they embarked on a mission to study how people interact with buildings. By examining human behavior, preferences, and movements within buildings, they developed a unique predictive human behavior model. This model allowed them to overlay actual building conditions, such as temperature, humidity, CO2 levels, noise, and energy consumption, and correlate them with human activities.
What emerged was SmartViz—a game-changing solution with a unique predictive human behavior model.
Check out an intro video on SmartViz and why we created it.
The journey since
SmartViz quickly became a valuable tool for organizations looking to optimize their building design, operations, and energy consumption. It empowered companies like Vodafone, saving them a remarkable £40 million annually by analysing their global portfolio of 3,500+ properties. With SmartViz, Vodafone optimized meeting spaces and efficiently planned their assets for the next five years. Soon, airports, museums, universities, schools, and hospitals embraced SmartViz to manage their estate portfolios, achieving substantial cost savings backed by objective evidence.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, SmartViz played a critical role in helping universities implement social distancing measures, enabling 200,000 students to continue their education safely. This also won us the Covid-19 achievement award by CIBSE.
In 2022, SmartViz took a significant leap forward and launched as an independent startup, transitioning from a consulting offer to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product. This shift allowed SmartViz to scale rapidly and drive the implementation of its revolutionary solution across numerous buildings.
The next chapter…
As we write the next chapter of our story, SmartViz holds the potential to become the front end to every major building, saving hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions. In just our first year as an independent startup, we've demonstrated our potential by achieving profitability while bootstrapping and experiencing remarkable growth and significant clients on our books.
We invite you to join us on this exciting journey. Whether you're interested in contributing as an employee, a partner, or simply want to connect and learn more about SmartViz, we would love to hear from you. Together, let's make buildings truly smart and sustainable.
You can read more updates from our first anniversary here.
Check out our careers page if you would like to be part of the exceptionally talented team behind SmartViz.