Steve Barton, VP of business development, PACOM, discusses his journey in the industry and emerging trends in the intelligent buildings market.

Could you tell me a little bit about yourself and your role?  

I’ve been in the industry for over 40 years – I was one of the co-founders of PACOM Systems back in the 1980s. 

I’ve worked in the security industry for all those years, mostly developing products. So I’ve got a very strong development background. I spent a lot of time doing the development of all the original products.  

I left PACOM around 2016 and started a company called SPG Controls. That company started developing cloud software, IoT devices, moving us into space where I thought the industry was going. (SPG Controls has since been acquired by PACOM.)

How do you define intelligent buildings?  

It’s about leveraging technology to improve the operations and performance of a building, cost savings and reducing the environmental footprint of a building.  

So the focus is on “what are the types of technology that can deliver advantages in that space?” A smart building for me is using technology to leverage operational efficiencies in a building. 

What are some of the trends that we’re seeing in intelligent buildings at the moment?  

I think it’s regionalised.

If you look at the Asia region, it’s very much around biometrics and leveraging systems that could give you much better access to facilities.

Whether it’s visitor management, or just using QR codes or phone apps. That’s one area I see as a growth area. 

If I look at Europe and maybe the Americas, it’s smart technologies like building management. It’s monitoring temperature and facility management systems, as well as elevator control systems, smart elevators, destination dispatch, more of those hardcore physical things.  

The other clear trend is around using the cloud to facilitate data collection and management. I see that as a trend everywhere. 

With a lot of conversations about the IoT and cybersecurity, are there any sort of misconceptions there that you’d like to clarify?  

Cybersecurity is definitely a hot topic.

It’s something that everyone’s afraid of, because we’ve had a lot of severe cyber-attacks in many countries.

As consumers, we use our mobile phone for doing banking and we feel comfortable doing that, we use our mobile wallet for doing transactions, so we feel pretty comfortable.  

But we need to ensure security systems are adequately protected also.

I think the technology of securing the data is pretty good. And we leverage that technology in our products.

The other thing that I would see that’s becoming quite prevalent are the standards that people would expect to have around software to protect them from cyber-attacks.

For example, ISO 27001 – which is becoming much more prevalent as well.  

What are some of the main advantages of creating an intelligent building, thinking from a security perspective, but then also from more of a business operational perspective? 

On the security side, biometrics and facial recognition are becoming quite common now, if you want that extra level of security.

That’s one that I see as a trend, but not in all regions.

Europe doesn’t have a great biometric acceptance, but it’s certainly something that’s coming through.  

In terms of the operational side of things, I mentioned before about building management, so monitoring temperature, humidity, turning lights off when there’s no one in the room, monitoring the actual temperature of a room, that’s becoming quite important as well as we’ve changed the way that we do work.  

I think one of the things that has changed post-COVID, as well, is this global demand for lowering greenhouse gases (GHGs), which has put a very big demand on temperature sensing, monitoring, reducing electricity bills and efficiencies around that area.  

People are so much more focused on sustainability these days. I come to work, and I expect the air quality to be good.

I want to have sensors that are actually telling me that the air quality in this room is good. 

Technology is helping us to solve that problem.  

You mentioned COVID, and how much that changed things, how are we going to see things change or evolve?  

I don’t see a big change.

We’ve had a couple of big leaps in technology over the last five years.

I think it’s not going to be as rapid.

It’ll stabilise a bit, it’s going to be more about integrating technologies, rather than developing a new technology.  

Biometrics will evolve in their own way because facial recognition will keep improving.

It’ll keep improving over the next three to five years. We’ll leverage that because we’ll partner with those products.  

In some ways that shows we’re on the right track.

What we’re doing at the moment is what we need to do, we just need to improve those technologies further and increase integration. 

One technology that I think might be disruptive is artificial intelligence.

I think AI might make the biggest impact, but it’s still a bit of an unknown.

But what does artificial intelligence mean?

For me, it means collecting data, making decisions around data, and acting on that.  

So that’s quite broad.

I think smart buildings will start to leverage artificial intelligence a bit better.

It will help predict there will be a problem with the air conditioning system or predict that we’re going to have a problem with car parks, for example.

There are probably elements of that that will actually improve efficiencies as well.

But AI is probably where I see the biggest impact over the next three to five years. 

This article was originally published in the October Edition of Security Journal UK. To read your FREE digital edition, click here.