The Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield

Episode 33- Smarter Buildings, Real Impact. Part 2 from Switzerland

• Henry R. Greenfield • Season 1 • Episode 33

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An 800-year-old bridge in Lucerne sets the scene for a forward-looking conversation about buildings that think for themselves. We bring together architect-CEO Jojo Tolentino and digital twin leader Tim Goring to unpack how open BIM, Siemens Building X, and AI-driven integration move design beyond handover into real operational impact. The theme is simple and urgent: you can’t correct what you can’t measure, and the biggest sustainability gains live in day-to-day operations.

We dig into Europe’s lead on open standards, why Switzerland has become a precision hub for smart infrastructure, and how the line between hardware and software has vanished. Sensors, controllers, and cloud services now speak a common language in data, allowing portfolios to be seen through one “single pane of glass.” That visibility lets CFOs compare apples to apples across new builds and heritage assets, prioritizing investments that cut carbon, reduce cost, and improve comfort. Digital twins act as a pragmatic control room—testing strategies, automating responses, and scaling best practices from one pilot to an entire campus.

AI doesn’t replace expertise; it removes the integration slog. Instead of years of bespoke pipelines, documents and databases are pulled together quickly, turning questions into modeled outcomes. This shift empowers architects to stay involved across the lifecycle—embedding smart building solutions into as-built models, connecting to FM platforms, and closing the loop so each project informs the next. As Jojo puts it, good design is the entry level; design plus data is the advantage. And for everyday users, the benefits feel natural: healthier spaces, fewer outages, smarter utilization—progress that’s often invisible, but deeply felt.

If you’re curious how digital twins, open BIM, and AI make net zero real—faster, cheaper, and at scale—this conversation offers a clear map. Subscribe, share with a colleague who cares about sustainable operations, and leave a review with the one question you want AI to answer about your buildings.

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SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to the Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield, your gateway to understanding today's geopolitical landscape. With 50 years of experience across 10 countries, Henry shares expert insights on world affairs, offering practical solutions, and engaging guest perspectives. Dive into the Greenfield Report for lively discussions on the issues that matter.

SPEAKER_03:

This is Henry R. Greenfield, reporting from Lucerne, Switzerland, one of the most famous and beautiful places in Europe and perhaps the world. We are right now across from one of those ancient medieval bridges after spending the entire day, in fact, the last two days, with two of the leading experts in the field of technology in their respective areas. First, we have, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves, but before I do, I do want to say if you hear a little noise in the background, that's because it is the end of Oktoberfest, and we are out enjoying ourselves with some fantastic Swiss beer. So please indulge us as we get into this conversation with our round table tonight. And first we're going to introduce Jojo Tolentino from the Philippines. Good evening, Jojo.

SPEAKER_02:

Hi, good evening, Robert, and uh thank you for having me. I'm Jojo Tolentino. I'm the group CEO of uh the Idea Group. We are a design and technology practice out of the Philippines, and uh I'm happy to be here. Enjoying uh this glorious autumn weather in uh Lucerne. Great beer, great company, great food.

SPEAKER_03:

Thank you. And also with us this evening is uh Timothy Goring. Tim, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, hi. Uh so my background was uh originally came out of land surveying and urban regeneration. I worked on big infrastructure projects like uh London Docklands Development and West Kowloon Project and some smart city projects. And then over the time I've I've kind of moved more into um digital twin and autonomous buildings and really trying to hook everything together to just basically make a smarter environment, a more conscious, environmentally conscious environment, but also a more productive environment using technology. Anything that can help connect things together and uh be data driven is kind of where I come from.

SPEAKER_03:

So the reason why these two gentlemen are with me tonight is actually I have known Tim for 25 years and Jojo for about the same amount of time. Now, Jojo is being very modest. Uh he is one of the leading practitioners of design, uh engineering, construction, and he's here in Switzerland to create a partnership with Siemens as a goal partner, which will bring together all of this in a data-driven world. And this is the key for us this evening to talk about climate change and sustainability. And in order to do that, we have to save money and we have to optimize uh the equipment that we are using. Tim, on the other hand, as he gave a little bit of his background, he and I have worked together for a long time. Tim was part of the acquisition of a company called Ecodomus, was transferred from Australia to Switzerland, and has been working on this platform with Siemens to develop this technology to take out to the world through a product line known as Building X. So we're gonna kick it off with by asking Jojo, what has he seen so far in Europe and maybe also here in Switzerland, that gives him uh the idea that something special is happening or maybe not.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I've been traveling to Europe for the last two weeks, and uh I'll stay here for another week. And uh my first stop was uh in Berlin to uh look at the building, uh to attend the Building Smart Summit. And I have to say, Europe is leading the way on using technology uh to drive uh sustainability uh and to meet the sustainability goals that uh have been commitments uh of each of the European countries. Uh the uh secondly, uh the drive to open BIM is encouraging uh and to uh to open technologies, uh which we think uh will be the future. And now, as I met Siemens for the last two days, uh here in uh in Zoog, I saw that uh Siemens is also very advanced in the way they look at the use technology uh for the most important phase of building's life cycle, which is the operation side. Very encouraging, uh something that we think is very future forward looking, and uh that's something that we believe will be the gold standard of uh technology worldwide in the coming years.

SPEAKER_03:

Thanks, Jojo. Now, Tim, if you could. Uh not everybody knows what how big Siemens is. They're I think top five company in the world, industrial company. Uh and they're known, though, for all of their devices which uh maintain and operate and control buildings and campuses. So, how are they actually seguing to pull this together? Because there's a lot of competitors out there. There's Autodesk, there's several traditional competitors that are, let's say, on the um software side, and then there's also the competitors that are on the hardware side, Schneider Electric, uh, the American company Honeywell, and others. So, what is actually Siemens trying to do here, and why are people like JoJo and Idea Digital important for Siemens?

SPEAKER_00:

So, Siemens DNA uh for 175 years has very much been around anything to do with electrification. So, very much an engineering firm, engineering first, I would say, um solving problems and a lot of nation-building problems, so large hydroelectric dams, uh the entire power grid. Um, so they could basically go from you know microgrid, solar, photovoltaic. They've always had a very strong background in green technology, and they're one of the innovators and pioneers in in uh photovoltaic and wind. Um, but they and also um geothermal and and um so why did they buy this little company called Ecodomus?

SPEAKER_03:

And what are you trying to do for them?

SPEAKER_00:

So so basically, uh, I came into uh Siemens four years ago, and Siemens decided probably five or six years ago within a smart infrastructure division, which is basically building some power. That we uh we're a major technology brand. We provide a lot of the hardware from power stations to transformers to you know things in buildings, fire systems, security systems, whatever, all the way through to where there is no border now, there's no boundary between hardware and software, right? Every piece of hardware has software, software manages hardware, AI sits in the software, controls the controllers, which can control the environment, the IoT sensors sucking all that information together. So it's really a transformation, it's a data-driven approach. And um a lot of people have a lot of disparate things that don't talk to each other. So coming together to connect all these different things, all the devices, the processes, what people do, how people use buildings, how people use space, um, how to get to net zero, how to start automating how buildings operate, much like an autonomous car that drives itself, but buildings that will constantly optimize and drive run themselves, right? So the goal is really to have this autonomous future with smart buildings that run themselves, and this is all basically dependent on software. So Siemens went on an aggressive acquisition spree and brought a number of companies in this AI autonomous space. So my company was one of them.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, well, that's a great background, but now let's go back to Jojo, which is from an architect's point of view, you mentioned going all the way through to operations. Yeah, but first to give everybody a little bit of credibility on you, who are some of your larger clients so people can understand that you are working with some of the most powerful companies in the world.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, uh, we are a Philippine space firm, but uh we service global clients, the likes of JP Morgan, uh Procter Gamble, Nike, uh Asian Development Bank. And uh what we see in uh all of these companies, this the operation side is a big concern. Uh we all as designers, uh, we believe that there should be a paradigm shift wherein uh architects and interior designers don't only design up to uh uh the project is being constructed. We now have should have an end-to-end view where what we design should also be efficient in terms of operations, because the biggest uh optimization actually happens in the operation side of the project. And so, as designers, uh we educate our people and our clients to look at a more holistic view of buildings. Uh, after all, a pro a building will stand for at least 50 years, and uh, an opportunity to uh to really make uh the building efficient and sustainable is to look at the operation side and see how we can optimize. The other uh uh uh consideration is that we believe that you cannot correct what you cannot measure, and that is why technology comes into play. Uh, with the new technology that we have now, uh with the availability of data, we can look at performance and uh and uh find a way on how we can make intervention so that uh a building can operate more efficiently and make it more sustainable.

SPEAKER_03:

So let's take it back here for just a moment and talk about it in this way. So we have on uh my right-hand side here uh Jojo Tolentino with a team of 300 people, uh registered architects, uh highly qualified, working in the 3D space with uh global firms such as uh Nemichek in from Germany, meaning GraphicSoft and Archicad, and Autodesk, of course, which is my old firm. In fact, I work with uh Jojo on both of those product lines. And then on the other side, we have Tim, who brings together other types of software, including GIS software and several other types of software. But in the past, and this is the reason why we're having this conversation today. In the past, Tim would have to write very complex programs to do what is called data mining. And we don't want to get into the weeds too much, but Tim, I'd like to talk about, if you could, a little bit about what's the difference of where we're going in particular with AI versus the old days, how this would take a long time. And in fact, my view, which is by the time these large consultancies, let's say Accenture or PwC or Mc McKinsey, by the time they're done architecting a solution because of AI, they may in fact be out of date.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it's it's a it's a good point. So I mean historically we spent a huge amount of the time when we started the digitization, digitalization process, you know, sometime in the 70s, 80s, 90s, when all the records are being digitized, uh, and and and this really powered the online app creation because you had the data. So you could write an app to look at mapping Google Maps because someone had bothered to capture all the maps of the world and put them in one place. So the digitization has been going on for a long time. But the problem is it's a huge amount of effort and a huge amount of investment. One of the things we're seeing now is most people have their data. They have the digitalization that's already happened, but for various reasons to do with processes, formats, uh, standards, uh, use cases, uh, political will, cost. These things have not been integrated. So we don't have this common view. So I work specifically on digital twin and industrial metaverse, and we're looking at building this holistic view of the a digital version of the real world, and then we can do a hundred things with that. We can use it to drive that building more efficiently, we can use it to increase the the you know the take up of students in university lecturer theaters. We can use it to get to net zero, we can use it to determine what would happen if there is an emergency and how do we evacuate the building quicker? So that's there's thousands of use cases, but we they're all data driven. That's the point.

SPEAKER_03:

So let me ask you the key question here is are we ready to cross the chasm? Meaning that taking all those traditional solutions, will AI allow us to cross the chasm and allow Jojo and his team to go from all that design construction stage into actually the operational stage, allowing all those applications to come together and for him as an example to provide additional value?

SPEAKER_00:

Or are we not ready? I mean, I think I mean my basic premise on this, and we're less talking about sort of chat GPT and ability to generate, you know, uh no reports. We're actually more talking about at the moment using AI and AI tools to streamline and and build, aggregate, and build kind of a what we call a single pane of glass, which is really about putting everything together. So the AI is very much an ability to very quickly pull all of this disparate information, like PDF documents, Word documents, databases, pull it all into one place and very quickly suck out all of the useful information into a concise place where we can basically do our modeling of the real world. So a lot of that effort is being removed. So the speed to getting something operational is massively improved. And then we have the ability now, we have the data, we can almost use AI to solve so many questions, we can answer so many questions. The biggest problem right now is not answering the question, it's thinking of the question. So we have a hundred AI developers sitting there asking people like myself and Jojo and Robert, what question do you want to answer? We have the data, what do we want to do with it? So there's so many opportunities, and I it's not a time to market, it's not an effort-based problem now. The problem is what do we want to solve and how do we want to solve it? Once we have the data, we can start ticking all these different use cases and you know, different business models off, at least.

SPEAKER_03:

Okay, so JoJo, now let's take it from your side, which is you've designed the building or a series of buildings with famous architects like Norman Foster, and anybody who's in this business would know Foster uh uh architects and associates. So now you've designed that building, you've taken it to the end of construction. What can you offer? Because it's not about a bin thing anymore. Okay. So what are you going to offer to your clients? Because I know that where you are, you work with very large property groups and you've been doing that for a long time. What are you going to offer in order to make this solution really mean something to them? And I want to go back to our sustainability, climate change, because a lot of places in Europe in particular, Australia and another one, Singapore, these are all become regulatory requirements and to measure exactly how much energy is being saved, and regardless of what our friend President Trump thinks, that climate change is not here, most of the world outside the United States is going the opposite direction. Didn't mean to put in a little political thing there, but how does this affect you and what do you want to do with it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, first of all, Robert, we are in a unique situation as a designer. That we are uh the entity that starts the data in the form of a BIM model. And as we go through the different stages of a building's lifecycle, we can populate that model with information and with data so that it can be used uh beyond uh the design and construction application. So uh we uh, for example, after construction, what we do is we take on the BIM model uh and uh design it so that it can take on smart building solutions, uh, and that those Bartme solutions could be embedded in the BIM model and the Ash built BIM so that you know it could be connected to a facilities management platform and other operational systems. That will and other operational systems that will uh measure real-time building performance. The other thing that we can that we see out of this is that uh we can now truly say that there is a so a single source of truth for any project, for any building, and it's all digital. So it's something that will always be live, that will always be current, and something that we can use for uh for, let's say, the redevelopment of a particular project. Now, the last thing is because of technology, we can get real data uh and performance information that we can apply in the next similar project. So it goes full circle so that we can now use evidence-based information that we can apply in the new project. Uh, and in turn, that will make the design and the performance more optimized.

SPEAKER_03:

So, just to give uh our listeners a little bit of background here as a concept of trying to take something and not just have, let's say, a pilot project or a proof of concept, because that is nice, but that's a lot of work. So, what JoJo is talking about right now is not only the learnings, but the data can be reused, reconfigured. And this is, I think, where Tim, I just, if you could give us a couple words about this, which is having a customized approach, again, using AI, instead of having those two or three years of systems instead of having those two, three years of writing out programs and software that in in the end you can customize on the fly, how long would that take? How much money are you going to save compared to let's say using the big uh consulting firms? And is that really truly possible today, or is that something down the road?

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, what we have is a speed to kind of operation which we have never seen before. Okay. Um, if we get our uh pieces in order and we adopt some best practice standards and some data standards, standards really enable the connectivity and the scalability. Ultimately, we can treat, I call it an apples and apples, apples and oranges. If we have a hundred buildings, we're a university, we've got 10 new buildings, you know, um 90 older buildings, it's very inconsistent, all different systems, they're not connected the same way. We have different data. What we can do now very quickly is bring all this together and treat it as one environment, one digital representation of the real world, and then we can basically compare apples and apples. So, why is this big performing better than that? Why what is the scenario to improve and get better outcomes of this, uh, whatever the use case is? So now we can kind of templatize best practice, and then we can start applying that and retrofitting that to old buildings, anything from a castle to a brand new building, we can apply the same rules and have the same visibility. And this is one of something that senior management and the CFOs and the people spending money on maintenance and design of buildings get very little visibility of actually what goes into building them and also why every year it costs more to maintain them. And this visibility is quite a basic thing, but they've never had this kind of single kind of aggregated view of everything that's going on, which is actually going to drive how they get a fund and actually invest in improving buildings and eventually buying more buildings.

SPEAKER_03:

So, to me, what this is the aggregate is great. Slicing and dicing is even better because I've got my building operations managers, I've got my uh space managers, I've got my admin people. Uh we're feeding data, or you're feeding data now to people. You talked today about uh ERP and other systems that it would feed into, like SAP. Now, this is all very grand, and let's just say that that works today. But before we wrap this up, I I'd like to, you know, ask, what about the average person? Um, either one of you can speak to this. Uh, I leave it open. Can the average person really benefit from this, or is this really a big company thing for Siemens and a big client thing for you?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, I mean, everyone is benefiting from it because if the buildings are more efficient and they're more comfortable and they're more accessible, and your utilization is higher, so you need less buildings for the same amount of staff, all these things are generally going to improve uh day-to-day outcomes. You may not see what's going on under the hood, so to speak, or behind the scenes. I think for everyday people, this will almost just be invisible to them. They'll they will go in their their office experience, their their home experience, everything will get a little bit easier, much like much of automation, uh, whether it's you know cars, whether it's buildings, whether it's uh transport, everything will get a little bit easier. It'll be incremental. You may not notice, you may notice. Um, I think where it becomes really interesting is everyone's gonna have access to a level of responsibility. So you'll be able to say, why is this the way it is, and very quickly get a picture of that. And if you want to move in a slightly different direction, you'll you'll you'll have the ability to quite quickly change the way you operate your business or something.

SPEAKER_03:

So it's kind of empowering people at various, a lot of different levels, not just seniors.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. The data should empower a lot more opportunities and a lot more, perhaps different uses and perhaps a little bit more dynamics. So the speed of change, uh, you can you can you can pretty much be very nimble about how you want to run things. And if your staff want to work in a slightly different way, you can work that way. Uh, we work a lot with long-term asset owners, so it would be data centers, hospitals, universities, airports. Um and these are people who generally care about not just you know getting to net zero, not just a user experience for their staff or their students or whomever, but also they care about their impact on the environment uh holistically. I I've got a responsibility to look after my heritage buildings, I've got a responsibility to create a good living environment for my neighbors. This this is gonna enable a lot of that kind of thing to be done holistically with other things which go to day-to-day operations, and that's gonna benefit everybody in the long run. This smart city concept um and has been very difficult to achieve for 20 years, but rather than top-down, it's a lot easier to do it uh precinct by precinct, campus by campus up, and build a better living environment.

SPEAKER_03:

Now, Jojo, you have quite a reputation in uh you train other architects, you train interns, you've got uh a lot of special programs that are very community-oriented and community focused. Uh-huh. Um, I'd like you, if you could just finish this off, what is this going to mean for you, your business, your people? And as a broad question, even the future of architecture, is this going to uh help architecture become more relevant? Because a lot of people downplay architects these days, let's be honest. Yeah is this going to really uh make a difference or is it just a dream?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Well, first of all, uh I just want to build up on what Tim said in your previous question. Uh to me, uh the ultimate test is whether the benefits of technology will trickle down to the common person and to the user. Because uh all of what we're doing here should benefit the people who live in the city who use the building. Now, uh, in terms of uh uh the benefits to the industry, I think that uh, as they say, data is a new oil, and that uh no business will survive unless it becomes a data business. And that's the same with architecture. So uh if we are to accept that premise, then uh even the practice of architecture has to change. It has to be something that is not only creative, but it has to be technologically leveraged, it has to be something that that uh uses real-time data and something that also uh you know is uh driven by technology. So uh that is what we're trying to develop in our people's mindset. Uh the delivery process now of design goes beyond the traditional design service. In order for architects to be relevant, we have to be uh we have to be involved in all phases of the building's life cycle. And to me, that's a big mindset change. And that's something that I think will be the architect of the future. It's no longer just design. I think good design is the entry level. It's design plus a lot more, and that other factor has a lot to do with technology.

SPEAKER_03:

You know, right now, I think that's beautifully said, Jojo. Right now we are in uh Switzerland again, across from an 800-year-old bridge. We've got a lot of resonance going on here in this big long corridor. Architects in the past were not just designers, they were builders. They were people who understood materials. There's been some getting away from that. But this is a very interesting uh extension of the architectural practice all the way through to the operators and to the end benefits, as you said, even to society at large. So, Tim, as we close, if you could give us a little bit on uh Switzerland. You've been here now a few years. Why Switzerland? Why is Switzerland a traditional place here that makes watches and they make, you know, they have finance and they've got these beautiful old cities, but why Switzerland for this type of technology?

SPEAKER_00:

Switzerland is uh has a lot of global headquarters, um, not just for uh Amir and Europe but also globally. Uh actually, Switzerland has proven to be a very fantastic place, a sort of a hub in Europe. Um I call it the Singapore of Europe. Uh it attracts that kind of multinational and and they bring forward with them this kind of suck in a lot of the best global talent. So Switzerland is a country that uh actually has a very strong kind of industrial design uh background. There's a lot of manufacturing still goes on in Switzerland today. Uh, things like companies like Leica and uh Rolex, I mean, these are known for building very high precision uh engineering devices for hundreds of years, and then that still exists in Switzerland. So it's a good country if you want to bring together engineers, innovation, and finance. And uh it's actually a very comfortable place to live as well. Um my wife and my children, we've had a wonderful time here. It's a fantastic gateway to the rest of Europe. Uh yeah, I have I've had a wonderful time, and I recommend anyone who to come and live in Switzerland to try it.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm gonna sign off now by saying that to remind everybody, Switzerland is the number one safest country in the world. Over half of the household have long guns, they have very minimal violence, they have strong social cohesion. It's true what they say about the Swiss. If you do something that they think is not socially correct, they will actually remind you and say, uh, no, that's not the right thing. It's similar to Singapore in that Singapore is sometimes called the Switzerland of Asia, and we've all three of us have lived and worked there. I personally am very, very pleased to see Siemens making this uh commitment and also key firms like Idea Digital, led by CEO Jojo Tolentino, and also thanking here Tim Goring. Who moved his family and may not be here in Switzerland forever, but he's really contributed a great deal. And now take that knowledge out to the world and using AI in its best way forward to jump the chasm, and that chasm or leaping the chasm is really what this is all about. And we believe that young people still have a spot in there. And Jojo, if you could just finish by talking about the young people on your team and why you think they still have a great future in this, and that the future of AI is not going to take their jobs from them, but that they will still have a good future in your field.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, we always tell our people that uh AI will not uh make architects obsolete. But architects who don't know AI will be the ones who will be obsolete at some point. So uh as early as now, we train our architects not to just think of design and to make design a limitation, but to look at design in a different way, that it has to be paired with technology so that they are ready for the future of the practice. Uh and uh many of our people stay with us because of that uh thinking, uh, and it's become the DNA of idea. And we think that's something that will best prepare the next generation of staff, architects, and leaders of the firm for the future.

SPEAKER_03:

This shows that a global firm can be developed out of the Philippines. It also shows that a global technology, including the use of AI, can come out of a place like Switzerland and that can be working together, they can take it out to the world. It doesn't have to be all out of Silicon Valley, it doesn't all have to be out of a lot of expensive hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. It takes people, it takes focus, it takes bringing together key people who have great experience, by the way. And I'd like to thank again uh Jojo and Tim for being here.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Robert.

SPEAKER_03:

This is Henry R. Greenfield. That's R for Robert, Henry R. Greenfield signing off from Lucerne, Switzerland, across from the 800 Euro Beer Bridge, enjoying our Oktoberfest evening.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for joining us on the Greenfield Report with Henry R. Greenfield. We hope today's insights into the ever shifting geopolitical landscape have sparked your curiosity and broadened your perspective. Stay connected with us for more in depth discussions and expert solutions. Until next time, keep exploring the world beyond the headlines.