The Smart Building Market
The Smart Building market is currently undergoing a radical change. The markets are driven by a desire to reduce the environmental footprint, while increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and improving customer experiences. The European markets are expected to show high demand for Smart Building solutions in the years to come due to the ambitious CO2 reduction targets of 55% by 2030, set forth in the European Green Deal agreement.
The Smart Building market comprises of investments in intelligent solutions with IoT technology as the backbone and solutions that utilize the building data to optimize energy, maintenance costs and workflows in the buildings. The main areas of
IT spending focus on installation services, application areas like smart grid, freight management, omni-channel operations and smart building/smart home solutions.
The use of data for optimizing facility management, service and consumption, is increasingly interesting as customers seek IoT providers that can orchestrate integration with existing systems. In addition to integration, service providers need to have capabilities in data analysis, data management/use and security.
The multi-vendor ecosystems in many buildings are often difficult to master and rely solely on in-house IT resources. This often leads to limitations, given the complexity and need for specialized technical knowledge.
Our Smart Building Business
rifork Smart Building remains focused on fulfilling the need for solutions to support smart buildings and smart factories, thereby actively contributing to CO2 reduction and, ultimately, CO2-neutral ambitions. We see a growing demand for frictionless user interaction and digital connection with the physical world. In Denmark, we launched an initiative named Industry 4.U (industry for users) to optimize user experiences in industrial production and make the information easily available for users in an intuitive way. This leads to less training time in the use of machinery and faster workflows.
With the acquisition of Vilea in 2021, we grew our footprint for Smart Building in the Swiss market. Vilea works with a range of solutions that are in the cross- field between Smart Building and Smart Enterprise. One example is delivering an IoT solution to a top international lift supplier, while another example is the implementation of a building inspection app for a Cantonal Building Insurance company.
Within the Smart Building business area, Trifork currently runs two high profile R&D efforts in TSBOne and TSBThree. These are two Trifork-designed office buildings that will serve as research and development labs for our teams. Here, we have a live environment where ideas and solution concepts can be tested in a real-life environment. The buildings will, to the greatest extent possible, be constructed of wood to reduce their carbon footprint. They will be fitted with solar panels on the roof. Also, when design and technology can complement one another, a range of technical installations will be added to minimize the building’s energy consumption at the same time as ensuring an optimal indoor climate and work environment.
Our vision with the Smart Buildings is that our customers can benefit from these improvements in R&D and even benefit from Trifork’s data-driven innovation. One example is our implementation of securely-bridged digital twins in the cloud in combination with edge computing and artificial intelligence. Trifork believes that open application programming interfaces (APIs) that facilitate communications across systems are advantageous.
In 2021, Trifork Lab also invested in the cleantech company, Dryp, which uses IoT technology and big data to enable waterworks and wastewater companies to optimize operations and planning, including the prevention of sewer overflow and congestion of drainage systems.
Strategic Priorities
- Increase focus on Smart Factory and Industry 4.0/4.U concepts to increase reve- nue from existing customers
- Expand in existing markets by scaling and promoting existing product offerings
- Develop new attractive and scalable con- cepts through R&D in TSBOne and Trifork Labs companies
- Grow outside the existing geographies with a first priority in Switzerland
