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Welcome to our Case Study series, where we dive into case studies of real-life, large-scale deployments of smart building technologies, supported by the Nexus Marketplace.
I emphasize “real life” because this isn’t a marketing fluff story. We're here to share real lessons from leaders who have done the work to integrate smart building technology into their operations. I also emphasize “large scale” because we're not here to talk about pilot projects. We're here to talk about deeper commitments to changing how buildings are operated.
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Harris Capital was established in 2016 in Australia by Geoff and Susan Harris. They focus on fund management and investing. As an investment management company, its success is rooted in making informed decisions that lead to greater returns in the future. When Harris Capital sought to make Gate 8, a new home to the Harris family office, they made an intentional investment in smart building technologies with confidence that they would see a return in the form of satisfied occupants and seamless operation. Encompassing only about 100,000 square feet, Gate 8 doesn’t fit the typical mold of a smart building, which we usually see in the form of massive skyscrapers or sprawling campuses. Yet this iconic building is a blueprint for how small buildings can increase user experience and operate leaner by incorporating modern tech into their design.
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In 2018, Harris Capital had a vision to build a new home for the companies it invests in, a place for philanthropy, and a building that matched the character of the neighborhood it resides in. Just steps from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where people commonly use Gate 6 and Gate 7 into the stadium as landmarks, this building would become Gate 8: an extension of the elegant East Melbourne neighborhood.
“Gate 8 was designed to supercharge philanthropy, social enterprise, and the next generation of Australia’s great entrepreneurs,” according to Geoff Harris. The six-floor building includes an expansive double-story lobby, auditorium, gym, food and beverage services, offices, event spaces, and an entire floor dedicated exclusively to three not-for-profit companies to run their operations.
After surviving the postponements of COVID-19, the development of Gate 8 picked back up in 2022. George Garth, General Manager of Property Operations, led the project from the buyer’s side from the pre-construction phase to standard building operation. Garth sat down with us to discuss the project and provided insight into the vision for the building, “When the building was designed, the intention was to have the highest class technology. This ensures that when we open the building, me and my team can spend more time proactively managing the building and understanding what’s working and what isn’t without being reactive to issues when they arise.”
Beyond the operational efficiency Garth mentioned, the building design focused on user experience. Being the hub for “Australia’s great entrepreneurs,” providing the occupants with a world-class experience was instrumental.
Harris Capital was supported in the design of the building by NDY, an engineering consultant across Australia. Matthew Taylor, the state of Victoria Smart Buildings Lead for NDY, joined us in the conversation. Taylor described the NDY Smart Buildings Team as being responsible for all things technology, including IT, control systems, AV systems, security systems, and more.
When design turned into implementation, COMMSecurity played a critical role as the master systems integrator (MSI) on the project team. Justin Anders, General Manager for COMMSecurity, joined the conversation to provide his perspective on the project. COMMSecurity took a strategic leap into MSI work from the access control industry; as Anders explained, “COMMSecurity is predominately an access control company, but the synergies between access control, the integrated communication network (ICN), and smart building platforms intertwine together to create a really good package for clients and buildings, and when you have alignments with the whole delivery team, you can get some really good outcomes.”
COMMSecruity recently became an Australian-certified channel partner of KODE Labs, which offers data layer software coupled with applications that enable multiple technology systems to be visualized, managed, and optimized. The KODE Labs platform acts as the hub for operational technology (OT) devices and data throughout Gate 8, enabling Harris Capital to meet many of its desired outcomes.
With a well-defined project scope and representation from a diverse group of stakeholders, we asked Garth, Taylor, and Anders to walk us through the process of creating a rarity: a small building that operates lean, surpasses sustainability targets, and delivers a state-of-the-art user experience by integrating technology into its core design.
To best act as a playbook for other building operators, we had the project team unpack the project chronologically.
Before any construction drawings were made, Harris Capital and NDY defined what they were trying to achieve.
First, this building was intended to have a deep purpose. “What this building is trying to achieve is to be a legacy building for the Harris group of companies as well as an icon in Melbourne,” explained Garth. Architecturally, Gate 8 was built to show class. This can be seen through the intricate design of the grand lobby, auditorium, mezzanine, and terraces.
The Harris Capital investment portfolio has always focused on sustainability, and Gate 8 is no exception, achieving a 6-Star Green Star Rating and a 5.5 NABERS score.
Beyond aesthetics and meeting strict sustainability standards, Gate 8 was intended to offer incredible experiences to its occupants.
“We try not to talk about technology at the start. We try to talk about challenges, opportunities, and the experience. We try to understand how people are going to use the space first, and then we translate that into technology.” — Matthew Taylor, NDY
As we commonly discuss throughout the Nexus Labs Smart Building Strategist Course, Taylor perfectly describes how starting with the people before jumping to technology is critical in developing a smart building design. Harris Capital and NDY defined the key personas and jobs they do in the building to uncover use cases that could be solved by implementing smart building technologies.
The personas and jobs that can be done within a building are almost limitless. As Taylor explained, “We had over 100 different opportunities spread across user groups or personas, so we had to go through the process of whittling that down.”
The project team had to prioritize the people and experiences that they wanted to primarily impact with smart building technology. Through whittling down opportunities, they defined facility management, tenants of the building, and visitors as the key personas to hone in on. They then took a more critical look at the jobs these personas experienced to define use cases for smart building technology.
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Getting specific on the personas and jobs lets the project team take a bigger leap toward the design of technologies that could positively impact the experiences of these people:
For more on the critical approach to starting with humans, read our article Demystifying Use Cases.
Garth and his facilities management team wear many hats in managing Gate 8. This includes concierge services, office management, IT/Network management, and mechanical and electrical maintenance. This means that Garth’s team is responsible for keeping not only the building, but also its occupants, happy.
“What we want to be able to achieve is have a team of people who can focus mainly on the experience and the way people use the building, and have a smaller team running the FM side of the building. In order to do that, we had to lean on technology.” — George Garth, Harris Capital
Frequently, as we discuss in The Untapped 87%, smaller and simpler buildings do not receive investment in smart building technology because they operate lean and on low capital. Because of the low budget, they focus on construction only and figure out operations later. The Gate 8 team was able to flip this conundrum on its head - since Garth and his team run extremely lean on the facility management side of things, they incorporated smart building technology into their day-to-day workflows to help them operate more efficiently with less staff. Being a multi-use building made Gate 8 a place where a full spectrum of problems could arise, which gave the project team even more reasons to have everything integrated.
With lean and efficient facility management operations becoming one of the critical use cases, data layer technologies that supported the integration of back-of-house systems, like KODE Labs, emerged as a clear technology category that could improve the workflows of important personas.
After setting themselves up for success by putting outcomes before technology, Harris Capital and NDY had to pivot into ensuring that the use cases they defined were woven into all portions of the design. For the facility management use case, this meant determining which OT systems needed to merge and stating that within the drawings and specifications that were handed off to the builders.
BAS, lighting, emergency lighting, access control, and CCTV were all identified as base building systems that needed integration. Additionally, front-of-house systems like intercoms, building access, smart lockers, and food ordering systems were all specified to be integrated through a tenant-facing mobile app.
These integration concepts were packaged into specifications, and NDY used the traditional process of going to market to find a builder (i.e., general contractor) to run the job and hire the appropriate trades to complete all the different specialty jobs.
Taylor and Garth mentioned that this is the point at which it can be difficult to stop the price from ballooning, given the size of the building and the technology they wanted within it. The project team made a key financial decision to lean into SaaS options, which allowed them to keep capital expenses low and allowed the lean operations team to rely on service support with a lot of the technology they incorporated.
As for how KODE Labs was selected as the fundamental data layer for Garth’s team, that decision didn’t need to be owned by NDY or Harris Capital. By setting specifications with technology integration as a clear goal in mind, the general contractor and their subcontractors could decide the product that fits best. Anders and his COMMSecurity team had already been awarded the access control portion of the scope. Given their integration experience and familiarity with the project, they became a clear choice to take on MSI responsibilities and lead the implementation of the KODE platform into the build.
Anders and the COMMSecurity team were able to focus on the integration early in the project; a strategy often missed during the construction phase. Anders recalled, “I always remember the first meeting when I introduced myself and said, ‘I am the guy that's going to put your network in and get all of the data from all of the systems.’ And everyone's like, Okay, right. Not sure what that means.”
COMMSecurity’s scope as the MSI included ingesting integrations from each base building system listed within the spec: BAS, lighting, security, CCTV, smart lockers, and more. That meant developing an early relationship with many subcontractor organizations and ensuring they understood how data from their system would be ingested into a central hub. For smaller buildings like Gate 8, many of these subcontractors may not have experience with these integrations, considering it’s a step often overlooked. Anders emphasized, “All of the trades may not be fully aware of what a smart building platform is or does, but once they got the understanding, they’re all on board and eager to follow the process.”
After establishing early relationships with the different trades to support a seamless integration, Anders and his team brought NDY and Harris Capital back into the implementation of the smart building systems, which allowed for critical customization of how things were set up.
“We take George [Garth] and the client in as early as possible to bring them along for the ride as the platform is being built, rather than just handing them the keys to the new car at the end of the show and then running away.” — Justin Anders, COMMSecurity
When the MSI can include the building operator during the construction and implementation phase, they can hand off a system built with the operator truly in mind. For example, at Gate 8, levels two and three are both coworking spaces. Understanding that those two floors act as one zone in Garth’s mind, Anders was able to set up the system dashboards so that Garth could see all the data from those two floors in one space, allowing him to manage the coworking space as a whole effectively, not just random rooms or sections of the buildings.
Additionally, Anders was able to work with Taylor and Garth to make a sophisticated prioritization of notifications through the fault detection system. This plan for practical and realistic alarming allows Garth to be notified only when there’s a catastrophic problem and lets the building system handle all the rest by notifying contractors directly for minor maintenance concerns.
Anders highlighted how KODE’s experience with integration jobs like this acted almost as an extension of his MSI team. While Anders was focused on on-site communication with the design and construction team, KODE Labs employs a full team of remote support who are able to dig through the integration data and provide Anders with the questions and information he needs to be answered by Garth and the operations team in order to develop the most customized and efficient solution.
As of mid-2024, the final systems, including the lighting control system, are being integrated into the KODE platform to offer Garth an efficient platform from which to operate his building. After finishing many of the base integrations, Anders started stacking advanced features onto the KODE platform, including fault detection and diagnostics (FDD), automated functional testing, and meter analytics.
Anders and the other subcontractors can use the KODE platform for verification, alignment, and compliance. Once NDY endorses the system as meeting specs and Garth is confident in it through training and customization, the initial handoff occurs, and Anders and the MSI team can take a background role of support.
This case study aims to share success stories that can benefit building owners similar to Harris Capital, who are trying to design buildings with technology in mind. Garth, Taylor, and Anders shared some of the most significant challenges and lessons learned when applying these concepts to the construction of Gate 8.
As Taylor mentioned, “People have a set of preconceptions about what building technology can do, and you want to avoid those preconceptions.” Jumping straight to technology often ends in siloed systems that people don’t genuinely benefit from (a.k.a. technology for technology’s sake). Garth and Taylor put a massive emphasis on the humans within the building during the design and specification process long before any specific technologies were selected.
As Garth put it, “Once a smart building platform is realized with a benefit, it becomes cost-competitive to package services when budgets are tight.” Harris Capital was able to save money by packaging multiple systems together. Getting this concept into the design helped them avoid paying for redundant networking equipment and siloed applications. Using COMMSecurity as the access control vendor and the MSI allowed them to package their services to provide a more cost-competitive solution. Having the remote KODE Labs team supporting the integration of systems offered an efficient way of validating integrations by a team built to manage integrations efficiently. Finally, when the KODE platform is completed with custom notifications, alarming, point naming, and advanced applications, Garth can feel confident running Gate 8 with a smaller team.
While many buildings are designed without integration in mind to avoid additional costs, the Gate 8 team invested in technology at an early stage to eliminate expenses through efficiency.
Garth, Taylor, and Anders all commented on the unique challenges of implementing smart building technology in a smaller building. For example, given the building size, Garth didn’t have a significant CapEx budget to spend upfront on technologies. Instead, the Harris Capital team strategically decided to embrace SaaS expenses to distribute the costs evenly over a more extended period and embrace the ongoing support of the technology vendors.
Additionally, when working on a smaller building, it is typical to have subcontractors who are less familiar with the concept of a smart building, so the workload to explain the goal to the team is more considerable and needs to be addressed sooner. As the MSI, Anders found each of the subcontractors to be eager and willing to be a part of the smart building design when they were effectively communicated to early on in the process.
Gate 8 serves as a powerful example for building owners and designers striving to create innovative, efficient, and human-centered spaces. The project team successfully created a space that exceeded expectations by prioritizing occupants' needs, integrating smart technologies during construction, collaborating closely with an MSI, and leveraging a robust data layer solution. Gate 8 proves what’s possible for small buildings through a unified mission and teamwork across all stakeholders. Even modestly sized projects can deliver world-class user experiences and operational excellence: a true Small Smart Building.
Welcome to our Case Study series, where we dive into case studies of real-life, large-scale deployments of smart building technologies, supported by the Nexus Marketplace.
I emphasize “real life” because this isn’t a marketing fluff story. We're here to share real lessons from leaders who have done the work to integrate smart building technology into their operations. I also emphasize “large scale” because we're not here to talk about pilot projects. We're here to talk about deeper commitments to changing how buildings are operated.
---
---
Harris Capital was established in 2016 in Australia by Geoff and Susan Harris. They focus on fund management and investing. As an investment management company, its success is rooted in making informed decisions that lead to greater returns in the future. When Harris Capital sought to make Gate 8, a new home to the Harris family office, they made an intentional investment in smart building technologies with confidence that they would see a return in the form of satisfied occupants and seamless operation. Encompassing only about 100,000 square feet, Gate 8 doesn’t fit the typical mold of a smart building, which we usually see in the form of massive skyscrapers or sprawling campuses. Yet this iconic building is a blueprint for how small buildings can increase user experience and operate leaner by incorporating modern tech into their design.
In 2018, Harris Capital had a vision to build a new home for the companies it invests in, a place for philanthropy, and a building that matched the character of the neighborhood it resides in. Just steps from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where people commonly use Gate 6 and Gate 7 into the stadium as landmarks, this building would become Gate 8: an extension of the elegant East Melbourne neighborhood.
“Gate 8 was designed to supercharge philanthropy, social enterprise, and the next generation of Australia’s great entrepreneurs,” according to Geoff Harris. The six-floor building includes an expansive double-story lobby, auditorium, gym, food and beverage services, offices, event spaces, and an entire floor dedicated exclusively to three not-for-profit companies to run their operations.
After surviving the postponements of COVID-19, the development of Gate 8 picked back up in 2022. George Garth, General Manager of Property Operations, led the project from the buyer’s side from the pre-construction phase to standard building operation. Garth sat down with us to discuss the project and provided insight into the vision for the building, “When the building was designed, the intention was to have the highest class technology. This ensures that when we open the building, me and my team can spend more time proactively managing the building and understanding what’s working and what isn’t without being reactive to issues when they arise.”
Beyond the operational efficiency Garth mentioned, the building design focused on user experience. Being the hub for “Australia’s great entrepreneurs,” providing the occupants with a world-class experience was instrumental.
Harris Capital was supported in the design of the building by NDY, an engineering consultant across Australia. Matthew Taylor, the state of Victoria Smart Buildings Lead for NDY, joined us in the conversation. Taylor described the NDY Smart Buildings Team as being responsible for all things technology, including IT, control systems, AV systems, security systems, and more.
When design turned into implementation, COMMSecurity played a critical role as the master systems integrator (MSI) on the project team. Justin Anders, General Manager for COMMSecurity, joined the conversation to provide his perspective on the project. COMMSecurity took a strategic leap into MSI work from the access control industry; as Anders explained, “COMMSecurity is predominately an access control company, but the synergies between access control, the integrated communication network (ICN), and smart building platforms intertwine together to create a really good package for clients and buildings, and when you have alignments with the whole delivery team, you can get some really good outcomes.”
COMMSecruity recently became an Australian-certified channel partner of KODE Labs, which offers data layer software coupled with applications that enable multiple technology systems to be visualized, managed, and optimized. The KODE Labs platform acts as the hub for operational technology (OT) devices and data throughout Gate 8, enabling Harris Capital to meet many of its desired outcomes.
With a well-defined project scope and representation from a diverse group of stakeholders, we asked Garth, Taylor, and Anders to walk us through the process of creating a rarity: a small building that operates lean, surpasses sustainability targets, and delivers a state-of-the-art user experience by integrating technology into its core design.
To best act as a playbook for other building operators, we had the project team unpack the project chronologically.
Before any construction drawings were made, Harris Capital and NDY defined what they were trying to achieve.
First, this building was intended to have a deep purpose. “What this building is trying to achieve is to be a legacy building for the Harris group of companies as well as an icon in Melbourne,” explained Garth. Architecturally, Gate 8 was built to show class. This can be seen through the intricate design of the grand lobby, auditorium, mezzanine, and terraces.
The Harris Capital investment portfolio has always focused on sustainability, and Gate 8 is no exception, achieving a 6-Star Green Star Rating and a 5.5 NABERS score.
Beyond aesthetics and meeting strict sustainability standards, Gate 8 was intended to offer incredible experiences to its occupants.
“We try not to talk about technology at the start. We try to talk about challenges, opportunities, and the experience. We try to understand how people are going to use the space first, and then we translate that into technology.” — Matthew Taylor, NDY
As we commonly discuss throughout the Nexus Labs Smart Building Strategist Course, Taylor perfectly describes how starting with the people before jumping to technology is critical in developing a smart building design. Harris Capital and NDY defined the key personas and jobs they do in the building to uncover use cases that could be solved by implementing smart building technologies.
The personas and jobs that can be done within a building are almost limitless. As Taylor explained, “We had over 100 different opportunities spread across user groups or personas, so we had to go through the process of whittling that down.”
The project team had to prioritize the people and experiences that they wanted to primarily impact with smart building technology. Through whittling down opportunities, they defined facility management, tenants of the building, and visitors as the key personas to hone in on. They then took a more critical look at the jobs these personas experienced to define use cases for smart building technology.
Getting specific on the personas and jobs lets the project team take a bigger leap toward the design of technologies that could positively impact the experiences of these people:
For more on the critical approach to starting with humans, read our article Demystifying Use Cases.
Garth and his facilities management team wear many hats in managing Gate 8. This includes concierge services, office management, IT/Network management, and mechanical and electrical maintenance. This means that Garth’s team is responsible for keeping not only the building, but also its occupants, happy.
“What we want to be able to achieve is have a team of people who can focus mainly on the experience and the way people use the building, and have a smaller team running the FM side of the building. In order to do that, we had to lean on technology.” — George Garth, Harris Capital
Frequently, as we discuss in The Untapped 87%, smaller and simpler buildings do not receive investment in smart building technology because they operate lean and on low capital. Because of the low budget, they focus on construction only and figure out operations later. The Gate 8 team was able to flip this conundrum on its head - since Garth and his team run extremely lean on the facility management side of things, they incorporated smart building technology into their day-to-day workflows to help them operate more efficiently with less staff. Being a multi-use building made Gate 8 a place where a full spectrum of problems could arise, which gave the project team even more reasons to have everything integrated.
With lean and efficient facility management operations becoming one of the critical use cases, data layer technologies that supported the integration of back-of-house systems, like KODE Labs, emerged as a clear technology category that could improve the workflows of important personas.
After setting themselves up for success by putting outcomes before technology, Harris Capital and NDY had to pivot into ensuring that the use cases they defined were woven into all portions of the design. For the facility management use case, this meant determining which OT systems needed to merge and stating that within the drawings and specifications that were handed off to the builders.
BAS, lighting, emergency lighting, access control, and CCTV were all identified as base building systems that needed integration. Additionally, front-of-house systems like intercoms, building access, smart lockers, and food ordering systems were all specified to be integrated through a tenant-facing mobile app.
These integration concepts were packaged into specifications, and NDY used the traditional process of going to market to find a builder (i.e., general contractor) to run the job and hire the appropriate trades to complete all the different specialty jobs.
Taylor and Garth mentioned that this is the point at which it can be difficult to stop the price from ballooning, given the size of the building and the technology they wanted within it. The project team made a key financial decision to lean into SaaS options, which allowed them to keep capital expenses low and allowed the lean operations team to rely on service support with a lot of the technology they incorporated.
As for how KODE Labs was selected as the fundamental data layer for Garth’s team, that decision didn’t need to be owned by NDY or Harris Capital. By setting specifications with technology integration as a clear goal in mind, the general contractor and their subcontractors could decide the product that fits best. Anders and his COMMSecurity team had already been awarded the access control portion of the scope. Given their integration experience and familiarity with the project, they became a clear choice to take on MSI responsibilities and lead the implementation of the KODE platform into the build.
Anders and the COMMSecurity team were able to focus on the integration early in the project; a strategy often missed during the construction phase. Anders recalled, “I always remember the first meeting when I introduced myself and said, ‘I am the guy that's going to put your network in and get all of the data from all of the systems.’ And everyone's like, Okay, right. Not sure what that means.”
COMMSecurity’s scope as the MSI included ingesting integrations from each base building system listed within the spec: BAS, lighting, security, CCTV, smart lockers, and more. That meant developing an early relationship with many subcontractor organizations and ensuring they understood how data from their system would be ingested into a central hub. For smaller buildings like Gate 8, many of these subcontractors may not have experience with these integrations, considering it’s a step often overlooked. Anders emphasized, “All of the trades may not be fully aware of what a smart building platform is or does, but once they got the understanding, they’re all on board and eager to follow the process.”
After establishing early relationships with the different trades to support a seamless integration, Anders and his team brought NDY and Harris Capital back into the implementation of the smart building systems, which allowed for critical customization of how things were set up.
“We take George [Garth] and the client in as early as possible to bring them along for the ride as the platform is being built, rather than just handing them the keys to the new car at the end of the show and then running away.” — Justin Anders, COMMSecurity
When the MSI can include the building operator during the construction and implementation phase, they can hand off a system built with the operator truly in mind. For example, at Gate 8, levels two and three are both coworking spaces. Understanding that those two floors act as one zone in Garth’s mind, Anders was able to set up the system dashboards so that Garth could see all the data from those two floors in one space, allowing him to manage the coworking space as a whole effectively, not just random rooms or sections of the buildings.
Additionally, Anders was able to work with Taylor and Garth to make a sophisticated prioritization of notifications through the fault detection system. This plan for practical and realistic alarming allows Garth to be notified only when there’s a catastrophic problem and lets the building system handle all the rest by notifying contractors directly for minor maintenance concerns.
Anders highlighted how KODE’s experience with integration jobs like this acted almost as an extension of his MSI team. While Anders was focused on on-site communication with the design and construction team, KODE Labs employs a full team of remote support who are able to dig through the integration data and provide Anders with the questions and information he needs to be answered by Garth and the operations team in order to develop the most customized and efficient solution.
As of mid-2024, the final systems, including the lighting control system, are being integrated into the KODE platform to offer Garth an efficient platform from which to operate his building. After finishing many of the base integrations, Anders started stacking advanced features onto the KODE platform, including fault detection and diagnostics (FDD), automated functional testing, and meter analytics.
Anders and the other subcontractors can use the KODE platform for verification, alignment, and compliance. Once NDY endorses the system as meeting specs and Garth is confident in it through training and customization, the initial handoff occurs, and Anders and the MSI team can take a background role of support.
This case study aims to share success stories that can benefit building owners similar to Harris Capital, who are trying to design buildings with technology in mind. Garth, Taylor, and Anders shared some of the most significant challenges and lessons learned when applying these concepts to the construction of Gate 8.
As Taylor mentioned, “People have a set of preconceptions about what building technology can do, and you want to avoid those preconceptions.” Jumping straight to technology often ends in siloed systems that people don’t genuinely benefit from (a.k.a. technology for technology’s sake). Garth and Taylor put a massive emphasis on the humans within the building during the design and specification process long before any specific technologies were selected.
As Garth put it, “Once a smart building platform is realized with a benefit, it becomes cost-competitive to package services when budgets are tight.” Harris Capital was able to save money by packaging multiple systems together. Getting this concept into the design helped them avoid paying for redundant networking equipment and siloed applications. Using COMMSecurity as the access control vendor and the MSI allowed them to package their services to provide a more cost-competitive solution. Having the remote KODE Labs team supporting the integration of systems offered an efficient way of validating integrations by a team built to manage integrations efficiently. Finally, when the KODE platform is completed with custom notifications, alarming, point naming, and advanced applications, Garth can feel confident running Gate 8 with a smaller team.
While many buildings are designed without integration in mind to avoid additional costs, the Gate 8 team invested in technology at an early stage to eliminate expenses through efficiency.
Garth, Taylor, and Anders all commented on the unique challenges of implementing smart building technology in a smaller building. For example, given the building size, Garth didn’t have a significant CapEx budget to spend upfront on technologies. Instead, the Harris Capital team strategically decided to embrace SaaS expenses to distribute the costs evenly over a more extended period and embrace the ongoing support of the technology vendors.
Additionally, when working on a smaller building, it is typical to have subcontractors who are less familiar with the concept of a smart building, so the workload to explain the goal to the team is more considerable and needs to be addressed sooner. As the MSI, Anders found each of the subcontractors to be eager and willing to be a part of the smart building design when they were effectively communicated to early on in the process.
Gate 8 serves as a powerful example for building owners and designers striving to create innovative, efficient, and human-centered spaces. The project team successfully created a space that exceeded expectations by prioritizing occupants' needs, integrating smart technologies during construction, collaborating closely with an MSI, and leveraging a robust data layer solution. Gate 8 proves what’s possible for small buildings through a unified mission and teamwork across all stakeholders. Even modestly sized projects can deliver world-class user experiences and operational excellence: a true Small Smart Building.
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