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019 RESET Healthy Buildings
85 Plays5 years ago
GUEST / Stanton Wong, President, RESET
HOST / Matt Morley
- Founder of BioBlu sustainable yachting
- Founder of Biofilico wellness real estate & interiors
- Founder of Biofit Health & Fitness
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Transcript
Introduction to Wellbeing and Sustainability
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to episode 19 of the Green and Healthy Places podcast, in which we explore themes of wellbeing and sustainability in real estate and hospitality today. I'm your host, Matt Morley, and in this episode, we're talking to Stanton Wong in China.
Interview with Stanton Wong: Data-Driven Building Health
00:00:29
Speaker
He's the president of Reset, a data-driven business that harnesses technology to monitor buildings from a health perspective.
00:00:37
Speaker
We discuss the differences between the concepts of green buildings in the West and healthy regenerative buildings in Asia, the surge in interest in air quality around the world post-pandemic, how the materials used in building construction and fit-outs connect with and impact indoor air quality.
Western vs Asian Building Approaches: Air Quality Concerns
00:00:56
Speaker
how to create biomimetic indoor spaces that behave more like an outdoor space, and the importance of high quality data collection around air, water, energy, and waste in benchmarking healthy buildings, which is basically what reset are all about. Santon is a super bright guy with a background in computer science. He's now at the helm of an organization that just seems to be in the right place at the right time.
Reset's Air Quality Standards
00:01:23
Speaker
Check out reset.build to learn more about their air quality standard, which is the first standard that they've launched with. You can email me at mail at mattmorley.net with any comments or suggestions, and please consider subscribing for automatic download of future episodes. Nada Maas, here's Stanton Wong from Reset.
Stanton Wong's Journey in Tech and Building Solutions
00:01:46
Speaker
Stanton, awesome to be with you here today. Let's jump into it. Why don't you give us a quick intro to
00:01:52
Speaker
your personal background and your career path to becoming president of reset.
00:01:58
Speaker
Hi, Matt. Thank you very much for having me. My name is Stanton. I'm currently the president of Reset. In terms of CareerPath, it's been a little bit windy, but I think it makes perfect sense on why I'm here right now. I am a computer science major, so I have a tech background. My first jobs were all computer science and software development related. I was visiting Shanghai, which is where one of our offices are in.
00:02:28
Speaker
Um, that's where my mother's from. So I was visiting Shanghai. I met Rayfer and then I really liked what they were trying to do. They were essentially trying to, um, look at how technology can affect and, um, figure out how to monitor and learn about building behaviors.
Cultural Shifts: Health Focus in Chinese Buildings
00:02:48
Speaker
So I joined in from the technology side and then tried to help build the product around it. And, um, gradually I took on more responsibility until I'm now
00:02:57
Speaker
the president.
00:03:00
Speaker
Good on you. You've touched on it there, but I've been going through this process myself, as I mentioned to you, of studying your reset error. And it's one of the things that's really come through is that sort of that data-driven approach. But another thing that's been immediately stood out for me was some of the content with the study materials around the difference between, let's say, green and healthy. So you kind of have this dichotomy in the market at the moment, right?
00:03:29
Speaker
Or is there? There's green buildings and there's healthy buildings and there's green and healthy buildings. And there was just one comment in some of the pieces that you've published online around how with China's 5,000 year history of regenerative medicine, perhaps, you know, it's sort of a different terminology or different way of thinking about that.
Biomimetic Design and Data Monitoring
00:03:48
Speaker
I just found that was a really fresh approach. So how did you introduce that idea into this sector?
00:03:55
Speaker
So when our initial, because we came from a Western background, our company, our initial thinking was green buildings, because that's traditionally what we've talked about. When we were pushing the idea in China, it was not very strongly received. And it was because traditionally,
00:04:15
Speaker
The environment, the concept of green, just wasn't part of the consideration. But very strongly part of the consideration was health and wellbeing in general, just for the average person. So once we started talking more about what a healthy building is for occupants inside, there was a lot more interest in understanding what that meant.
00:04:36
Speaker
So once we started doing a few more talks and presentations, we realized that at least in China, the concept of health is a much stronger cell in terms of a concept than it is green. And you've also introduced the idea of this wonderful word, biomimetic. So you described the reset approach as being biomimetic, which is essentially, if I've understood correctly, inspired by natural evolution.
00:05:05
Speaker
Would
Data-Driven Approaches in Air Quality Monitoring
00:05:06
Speaker
that be right? And then how do you connect that with the idea of monitoring data? Because they can feel like two quite different concepts, right? Sort of more natural versus something entirely tech-based.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, so this word really started when we were exploring how we wanted to approach air. I want to give a bit of a background first. We didn't actually start with air quality per se. We were starting with materials. And when we were doing research into materials and just the data behind it, we were building calculators that would basically look at the TVOC data from certifications of materials and then try to
00:05:45
Speaker
calculate how much TVOC off-gassing would occur within a certain space.
00:05:50
Speaker
depending on materials we used. We realized that no matter how many versions of the calculator we went through, they were never accurate. And then at the exact same time, we were discovering that there were air quality monitor manufacturers that were developing monitors that were within a price range that felt very reasonable. And so we transitioned to looking at what would air quality, like if we were just monitoring air quality, would we get a better
00:06:17
Speaker
where we get better data. So that's how it started. And then the biomimetic part is from the concept that our founder, Rayford Wallace, he grew up in an area that was next to a lake and in a forest. So that's the environment that he lived in. And we were thinking, we spend so much time indoors, how can we create an indoor space that felt more like an outdoor space?
00:06:47
Speaker
outdoor spaces, they're constantly changing depending on what's happening around, right? So trees are constantly sensing the temperature, the humidity, the birds are sensing everything. You hear the birds depending on what's happening with the weather. So you're getting a lot of feedback. But in interior space, typically it feels a lot more dead because you're
00:07:09
Speaker
Your mechanical systems aren't automated. A lot of it's, you know, someone clicks a button and it starts or stops. That's kind of what the traditional indoor space is like. So our thinking was how can we create a space that felt more like an outdoor space by getting data that's collected to mimic or automate certain aspects of interior spaces to be more similar to outdoor spaces.
00:07:33
Speaker
which then kind of connects you with my favorite subject, the biophilic design, which is exactly the same concepts, but how can you do that through the physical space and the materials and perhaps the sounds or the sense that you're playing with in that room?
Reset's Performance-Focused Benchmarking
00:07:50
Speaker
So the biomimetic approach is then about, okay, capturing that data and, okay, as I understand it then,
00:08:00
Speaker
You've got this air quality situation in Shanghai that's obviously one of the worst in the world and that's clearly a huge background piece to all of this that's going on, right? So you're then from materials, you switch into air and start focusing more on that and create what is effectively a data standard and certification piece around
00:08:20
Speaker
Air quality which is your first step forward into this into this world still would that be fair to say okay but then like what what comes next like beyond that I how you then because materials are coming back round that seems to be like your next product or service coming to the market.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I think what we've discovered for ourselves in the past couple years is that the direction we want to take is data driven and performance driven. So just we want to look at what can data give us to help empower better solutions.
00:08:52
Speaker
We haven't focused internally on solutions. What we want to do in the future is highlight more of the different solutions that are being implemented. Our focus is to standardize the data collection aspect so that projects can be compared against each other. We can leverage larger sets of data to understand how different projects perform compared to others. Basically, we want to do a lot of benchmarking.
00:09:20
Speaker
So air quality is where we started at. We're going to go into materials again. I'll leave that for the last piece because it's a little bit more different. But from a continuous monitoring perspective, we want to go into water, energy, and waste. So with water and energy, I think it's relatively simple. It's really just continuous monitoring instead of having a monthly
00:09:46
Speaker
like paper trail of how much energy or water was used. We want to have it continuous. And the reason behind that is because we actually had clients asking about how does our air quality and HVAC system compare against our energy usage. And once you have that data layered on top of each other, you can start comparing and seeing how can we potentially save energy while maintaining good air quality.
00:10:11
Speaker
Because good air quality doesn't mean you have to clean the air 100%. It's making sure that it maintains a certain level of air quality. So, for example, if you have an empty office space, you don't need to have fresh air systems on 24-7. You only need to turn that on when there are people in the space and the CO2 levels are getting higher, for example. PM2.5 filtration doesn't have to be on the whole time unless there's actually a higher level of PM2.5 in the air.
00:10:39
Speaker
So those kind of concepts start coming into play. And we realize that there probably is a lot of intersection between data in different as in the different categories.
HVAC Challenges and Air Quality in Shanghai
00:10:50
Speaker
So for energy or waste or water, there's probably something that can be compared. So we're interested in setting a standard for collecting the data initially. And then we will do research into how we can cross reference it some more. So and then sort of basic terms, obviously, you've got the type of
00:11:10
Speaker
the HVAC system, which is, if you like, the sort of the middleman between the indoor air that we're breathing in a building and the type of outdoor air that's coming in. So we touched on it briefly at the beginning, but I did just want to ask that the idea of, you know, clearly in location, when you get a project coming in, it's like, okay, if you don't know where the location is and you don't know what the, you don't know what your bench line outdoor air quality is, like that's clearly got a,
00:11:35
Speaker
From your perspective, let me be neutral on that. From your perspective, how much of a role is that playing? If you're in central Shanghai and you've got another one of these dark clouds floating around, surely there's got to be so much more work to do to ensure good quality baseline indoor air quality, or is it just something that these HVAC systems can handle as long as they're fully equipped and spec'd for that type of work?
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, so this is a really, really good question. What we've discovered is that traditional HVAC systems, the all-in-ones, they're not a very good fit for this kind of situation. So I'll give an example. One of the reasons we started separating corn shell and commercial interiors is because there's two different roles. One is the central HVAC system. Corn shell is the property owner controlling the central HVAC system that includes fresh air systems.
00:12:28
Speaker
And then commercial interiors is typically tailored to the actual tenant or occupant space. In the occupant space, you want the air to be clean no matter what. But you don't actually have control over the central HVAC. Typically, you ask the landlord to turn. You need more fresh air or something. They'll help you figure something out. But it's not instantaneous. They have to configure something. It's not automatic.
00:12:54
Speaker
What we've discovered is, at least for PN2.5, there's now a lot of single units that you would install in your occupant space, like in the ceiling. For some reason, I can't remember the term for it, like in ceiling units. Yeah, the recirculation ones, right? Yeah, recirculation ones. You're not having the portable ones. You don't want the portable carry around ones. You want them installed in the ceiling.
00:13:21
Speaker
Correct, because we want it to be automated. We don't want it to be something where people are pressing to turn it on and off because it should be more natural. And when it's installed in the ceiling, you can have the tubing, have the intake be on one side and the out take be on the other side so that there's actually more circular motion, air motion. So it cleans the air better than a unit that's sitting on the ground and just trying to clean the air around it.
00:13:50
Speaker
which is already what we're seeing almost this kind of like this sort of knee-jerk reaction to,
Impact of COVID-19 on Air Quality Awareness
00:13:57
Speaker
yeah, I'm seeing it in crazy places where, you know, go to the physiotherapist and clearly they haven't got enough ventilation in there. You can see that the HVAC system is really just not doing what it needs to be doing. And they've got like one solitary floor
00:14:13
Speaker
fan, if you want to call it that, trying to do the work of the system. So and that places it in the context of what's happening around us, right? So like, how have you were in the middle of a of an airborne pandemic? And how has this impacted what you're doing? Or do you just feel like now actually, it's finally you're getting more attention, the attention that your work deserves, and that you just need to speed it up. And that maybe you're able to grow and expand over the next year or two.
00:14:42
Speaker
I think the pandemic has definitely generated a lot more interest in air quality. Air quality has always been relatively invisible. Aside from temperature and humidity that you can feel, most of the things people can say, oh, CO2 level is very high. You don't know it, but you might feel dizzy or sleepy, et cetera. You feel it, but you don't have any numbers to leverage to understand what's actually happening.
00:15:10
Speaker
By having monitoring, it helps you start understanding your space, the air in the space and all that stuff. Last year, while the pandemic was kind of really serious, we were doing research into how the metrics that we're monitoring affect how easily it is to transmit aerosol viruses through the air.
00:15:35
Speaker
And we actually did come up with an equation looking through 100 different research papers on viral transmission that leverages temperature, humidity, PM 205 and CO2 on the pot, like on, if you were optimizing a spit, like optimizing interior space on these parameters, what would it need to be to have to be perfectly optimized?
00:15:59
Speaker
So obviously, if you optimize it perfectly, it doesn't prevent viral transmission 100% because if one person comes in with the virus and they cough on somebody, the building can't do anything about that. But at least you're maintaining a system that lowers the chance of virus, viral survivability and improves immune system, like human immune system so that you're at the strongest to defend against it. So, so that's something that we've been playing with and we're trying to figure out how to make that more available.
00:16:29
Speaker
But generally, I think with the pandemic, a lot more people are aware of the importance of air quality and are looking into how they can have more control over it.
Sources of Indoor Air Pollution
00:16:41
Speaker
Because we're talking about COVID, but the underlying concept and principles behind it are airborne diseases, right? And that's a constant. So that's one factor in terms of why indoor air quality is so important. But from your perspective, what would be the other, and possibly it's not something that many of us think about, but what would be the other possible sources beyond outdoor air and airborne
00:17:06
Speaker
viruses or diseases that other things within an indoor environment that could cause pollution or that might be Damaging or lowering the quality of the air in let's say an office building Yeah, I think the most common is the material choice. So where where we started was materials and
00:17:28
Speaker
Materials is not where you would generate PM25, but VOCs is the big thing. So most offices have a period where they're flushing out the air, right? And the assumption is that most materials will off-gas all their VOCs within a week or two, and then you're done.
00:17:47
Speaker
The unfortunate thing is it depends on the material and it depends on the temperature in the space. So, for example, if certain glues, if they're not high quality, it's possible for them to off-gas for a long, long time or certain varnishes as well. At the same time, if, for example, it's a really hot day, it's
00:18:05
Speaker
40 degrees in door when the sun is shining and before the air conditioning turns on. That can affect how stable the varnish is and lead to off-gassing a year or two afterwards. So if you don't have good material choice, it's very possible that you're in an interior space that's relatively toxic, especially if there's not enough fresh air coming in to dilute the VOCs in the air.
00:18:31
Speaker
So we're talking about varnishes, glues, paints, possibly the carpet, fabrics used, or even the stuffing inside, furniture such as sofas and things. These are all potential sources of volatile organic compounds, right? Correct. We mustn't be distracted by the organic word.
00:18:52
Speaker
These are negatives. Not all of them are harmful, but some of them are. And if those levels rise too high, then the impact of that on us is what will be some of the symptoms then of a typical sick building that we might recognize, but not have known the sources of. So if you're getting
00:19:13
Speaker
If you're getting headaches or you're feeling like your throat is uncomfortable and itchy, those are very simple and basic symptoms of breathing air that's not great. So, yeah, those are those are probably the most obvious ones. With a lot of VOCs, you're going to smell it as well. So a lot of when you're entering a newly referred
00:19:38
Speaker
newly furnished space, you're gonna smell something. A lot of, like in China at least, pregnant women, once they smell that, they're immediately telling their company that they're not working in the office. So, cause they know that that can have actually long-term detriment to their baby as well. It's possible. And it's not a risk they want to take. So it's, a lot of these effects from air quality is much more longer term and it's not obvious right away.
00:20:11
Speaker
Let's say if you were to take a project that was in a rural location then, or say a yacht in the middle of the sea, you might think that the outdoor air quality coming into the building passing through the air conditioning system would be, well, what could be better, right? But then materials,
00:20:32
Speaker
If you've stuffed that indoor space, whether it's a residential building or a commercial building with materials that are bringing in off gases or that are producing off gases, then you're potentially creating a situation whereby the outdoor air quality is really quite good. It's fresh air. There's no
00:20:52
Speaker
industrial use nearby, et cetera. But you've got to reduce quality of indoor air because of the off gases being produced by your furniture, your glues and paints and varnishes.
00:21:03
Speaker
Yep, so indoor air is almost always worse than outdoor air because of the way that we've built our world.
Evaluating Consumer Air Quality Monitors
00:21:13
Speaker
The indoor air issue wasn't nearly as much of an issue for our ancestors because we didn't have such enclosed indoor spaces and we didn't spend nearly as much time indoors previously.
00:21:25
Speaker
Even, for example, in China, most families are very used to the fact of opening windows every day. They want to bring in the fresh air. Obviously, now we have the PM2.5 issue, but previously the idea was you want to dilute the air, you want to bring in the fresh air. Because there's an indoor buildup of potentially chemicals or other things if you don't know what's going on.
00:21:52
Speaker
Most simple way is just opening windows, bringing in fresh air, diluting everything. VOCs are not a problem outdoors because it's been completely diluted. It's so diluted. So it's all about how much of a dose you're getting. That's how you determine how much it affects you. And I know you guys are really big on
00:22:13
Speaker
on the quality of the monitors in place. In fact, a lot of going through this process of becoming a creative professional, a lot of it is like, how good is the monitor and what grade is it and how is it deployed and where is it deployed? And I found that going so deep into that was fascinating, but it then raises the questions like, there's been this huge surge in
00:22:36
Speaker
let's call them consumer-grade monitors. I'm standing here with one of these Dyson air-cool fans that constantly sends me readouts that don't seem to make much sense and I can never quite work out what's going on. So let's cut through all the marketing talk. Realistically, these consumer-grade monitors and fans that we have on our desks or in our bedrooms,
00:23:04
Speaker
Is there any merit in that? Is there value in it? Is it really just a marketing ploy? Or how do you see it from an insider perspective? I think there's two different things to consider. One is the accuracy of the monitors. And then the second thing is it really is about where it's placed. So for example, the Dyson one, right? And a lot of filtration, air filtration units, they have a monitor on it.
00:23:32
Speaker
The issue with that is the way air filtration works is it cleans the air around it first. And if the fan is not blowing hard enough, it's still only going to clean the closest air around it. So when I'm recommending my friends to a solution for air quality at home, I tell them to buy a separate air quality monitor, put it on the opposite end of the room,
00:23:59
Speaker
from the filter. And so that's how you determine whether or not the air quality in the room is actually clean. If you're using the monitor, if you put the monitor right next to the filter, most of the room is actually not at the level that you're expecting.
00:24:15
Speaker
So that's one thing. The other thing is consumer models are actually very good at giving a basic trend of understanding like what's happening. The thing that they're not very good at is the accuracy between the units. So what we've seen a lot is if you buy
00:24:31
Speaker
Um, five consumer units and you place them all next to each other. It's very possible that two of them are reading a little bit or quite a bit off from the other three. So it's not balanced in that way, but all of their trends are probably going to be very similar. So they're going to all peek at around the same time. They're all going to dip at around the same time.
00:24:48
Speaker
But their numbers are not going to be quite that similar.
Data Quality over Prescriptive Solutions
00:24:52
Speaker
That's something that we've seen. So if you're in an office space where you're trying to demonstrate that you are leveraging air quality for either automation or you're trying to show that you have
00:25:05
Speaker
high-quality data, you want to use something that is more consistent with numbers of reports. So that's why we've been doing testing. Our tests are really just asking manufacturers to give us five different monitors of the same make, and we test it over three weeks to a month and see how they perform in different situations. And even grade B ones that we've tested, multiples of them have failed the first test.
00:25:34
Speaker
And we have to send them back with a report telling them what's wrong. And then they have to fix the factory calibration process. So before it gets shipped, if it's not properly calibrated, properly stored before shipping, then it's very possible that the numbers will just get wacky. Because sensors are not completely stable yet.
00:25:57
Speaker
So something we haven't mentioned thus far is that the approach that the reset takes is very much more about, it seems to me, the destination than the journey. You're non-prescriptive. You're not saying you must do X, Y and Z in order to secure air quality. You're really focused on the quality of the monitors, how they're deployed, how they're maintained, how they're installed.
00:26:19
Speaker
where they're located, and then really it all goes into a cloud-based data storage system where you're constantly monitoring the quality of the air in the space. And your focus is very much on that, right? Rather than saying, well, you must, I don't know, use only natural materials in your space, or you must use this type of ventilation system. You've chosen to focus very much more on the data outputs, right? That's kind of your key differentiator.
00:26:45
Speaker
You're completely correct. So we're based in China. Actually, I'm based in China right now. And so in China, we have to take into consideration PM2.5. That's a common issue. If you're in certain parts of Europe, if you're in a more rural area, that might not be something you need to care about. So you don't need as many recirculation units that are filtering the air.
00:27:13
Speaker
Well, and the other thing to think about is also like CO2 levels. There's no way to prescribe exactly what a space needs because the density of different offices are different. So if you're in a space, like if you're in an area where land is relatively cheap,
00:27:29
Speaker
you're going to have an office space that's significantly larger than a city center. So the way that you design your HVAC systems might be completely different. So instead of saying that you have to have a certain type of solution, we recommend that you have the data to figure out what is the most optimal solution for your kind of space. Because it doesn't make sense to spend so much money to have something that doesn't really make a difference. I'll give an example. In China, because of COVID,
00:27:57
Speaker
They had a rule where all HVAC systems had to run a, I think it was 100% fresh air capacity. That means bringing in so much fresh air that there's not enough time to heat it in the winter or like to cool it in the summer. It's just so the indoor spaces feel very uncomfortable.
00:28:19
Speaker
but you got all the fresh air, right? And so that's not a proper solution for a situation like that. Instead, if you had CO2 monitors, you wouldn't understand how much fresh air to bring in so you can maintain a system that is more energy efficient and produces all the effects that you need. So that's just an example. But our concept is if you have the data, you would know how to create a solution for the project.
Reset Certification Process
00:28:43
Speaker
So that might suggest then that you would,
00:28:47
Speaker
Let's look at the process then of going through the reset certification because that might not necessarily involve an MEP consultant, for example, if your data coming out within those three months is immediately good, right? So if everything's working fine. So at what point might you expect
00:29:05
Speaker
What's the team? What's the resource going on? How does that process go from a project making a request to become part of the standard and to take the certification? Who might they need on their team to make that happen?
00:29:21
Speaker
So our recommendation is almost always start just by monitoring. Just one monitor in your space is better than having nothing because it gives you, it first brings awareness to the air quality data because that's never been, that's not something that's talked about. In the US, for example, ASHRAE doesn't have very much content around continuous monitoring. It's all spot testing, one-time test, and then what do you do with that data? That's the information they have.
00:29:46
Speaker
So continuous monitoring using this data to figure out what to do is still relatively new. Even if you bring in MEP experts, a lot of them don't know how to approach this exactly. That's really the biggest issue that we're encountering right now. It's that, yes, you can get the data, you can monitor, but what do you do after that?
00:30:07
Speaker
If you have a good space and the air quality data is already good, it's not very complicated. You just get certified. You install the monitors, you go through the process, which includes three stages. The documentation, which is you show where you're going to install your monitors. The site audit, which is we verify that they're installed properly in the right place. And then the data audit, which is a
00:30:31
Speaker
is a continuous audit of the space forever. You get the certification after three months, but we need to continue tracking the project because if you stop, then we assume that something has happened and you lose the certification. So we're not a one-time certification. It's more of an operational certification where we're tracking the whole time.
00:30:58
Speaker
Yeah and then you get into and then you know I can imagine it might provide peace of mind, it might provide transparency for let's say a commercial building owner, landlord who through their facilities management wants to communicate to their tenants that look we're doing everything's good, you've got good indoor air quality, we have nothing to hide equally.
00:31:22
Speaker
it can raise an alarm. And at that point, you can imagine the project then, whether it's MEP, or it might be that they have a materials issue, or there might be off gases going in. And so your data will be able to give some sense of where the problem is based on whether it's CO2, whether it's PM2.5, PM10, or some other point that's creating issues. So you'd be able to get pretty close to sniffing out where the problem is.
Solving Indoor Air Quality Issues with Data
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, our best case studies, our best stories are all around how quickly people found out what the issue was. So I'll give two. One is a commercial interiors case, like a story. There is a project that was passing every month, right? They've already got certified and everything and all of a sudden one month they failed.
00:32:12
Speaker
They looked at the data and saw that on, I think the 16th or 17th of a month, all of a sudden the TVOC numbers went up and it stayed up. So TVOC, if it spikes and then drops, not a big issue because perfumes, alcohol, all that stuff can affect today's TVOC sensors. So Friday afternoons, typically a lot of offices will have a high spike of TVOC because it's happy hour.
00:32:39
Speaker
But if TVOC goes up and it stays up, that means something just got installed that is permanently off gassing like a significant amount of TVOC. So we looked in the data, we told, we helped, we asked the tenant, what did they install or add to the space on that day? And they found out that they installed a whiteboard and the glue used for the whiteboard was off gassing TVOC heavily.
00:33:09
Speaker
So they removed it, they scraped off all the glue, and then the TVOC went back to normal. So that's an example of having the data to figure out what went wrong. Another example that was really good was TVOC in an office building can affect other tenants because a lot of the HVAC systems are all connected. So there was a newer building in Shanghai,
00:33:38
Speaker
They only allowed construction teams to come in at night to work because some of the other spaces were already occupied. They noticed that on a certain afternoon that TVOC and PM2.5 were spiking on one of the floors. They had monitors in the HVAC systems. And so they sent a security guard over and they found two workers trying to catch up on some of the work that they had to do.
00:34:03
Speaker
And then obviously, they kicked them out. But they did this within half an hour of seeing the data spike. So it's just little things like this. First of all, their team is starting to leverage the data, which is something that they probably wouldn't have done before if they didn't have the data. And with the data, you can make really quick response times. You can solve a lot of issues.
00:34:26
Speaker
It's an important point to mention also the idea of I know you actively promote the communication of that data, right? You encourage like maybe having a display screen in reception or by the elevator. So as people come in, they get some sense of where we're at on the day, right? So you really, the data isn't managed and stored in your cloud and it stays there. It's very much kind of this positive feedback loop, right? Where it's constantly coming back through to
00:34:52
Speaker
each project that then communicates that to the occupants themselves.
Promoting Air Quality Data Visibility
00:34:58
Speaker
I think that's key because there is often that sense of things taking place at some strategic level, but then the occupants maybe not engaging with it or worse, having an air quality monitor on their desk and trying to take ownership of it, but it's poor data and it's just not reliable, right? So you're trying to put a building level system in place.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, speaking of the monitor on the desk, one of the first one of the impetuses for starting the standard or making the standard official was also a legal case where somebody said that
00:35:35
Speaker
They brought a monitor into the office and said the air quality in this office is crap, right? But then the office obviously had nothing in place to fight back. They had no data. They had nothing that they could show, right? So they had to settle. But that's, by making it official, you're showcasing that you've installed monitors and
00:35:56
Speaker
the right places. They're not installed in some closet, which is still things that we see where the data is faked. And having a third party verify just means that everything is legit and above board.
00:36:11
Speaker
I love it. I'm a real fan. I really encourage people to check out the cert. An honest piece of info is that it's very reasonably priced. It's not a prohibitive cost, whereas some of the other certs can really come with quite a heavy price tag. And I love the fact that you've priced yours to make it much more accessible to a wider audience. I think that's key. And in a sense, it invites a longer term relationship, which I think is also
00:36:40
Speaker
So it raises the question, what's next? What's coming in your pipeline over the next one to two years? What are you working on for the future?
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, so the first thing that we're trying to do right now is to flesh out our suite of standards. So I mentioned that we're already doing air. I mentioned that we're going to be doing water, energy, and waste. Waste is interesting because it has been done before with continuous monitoring. What we're imagining is to have
00:37:12
Speaker
IOT scales that will monitor how much weight gets put into a trash bin. And then once that trash bin is lifted and the weight is removed, that gets stored into a system. So you're tracking how much waste is being generated every day from a weight perspective. Obviously, it's not a panacea. It doesn't give you all the right information, but it gives you a starting point to understand how much
00:37:35
Speaker
is being how much waste is getting created. And if you want to take it a step further, it will be separating the bins and tracking each bin separately. So for example, a bin would be for recyclables, and another bin might be for organics. Every region has their own kind of separation strategy, so we're not going to set one in stone. But we're going to make it available that people can select different organization structures for this.
Expanding Reset Standards Beyond Air Quality
00:38:05
Speaker
Hopefully, making this data visible will make it so that there's more awareness to how much waste is being generated. So that's the initial concept. For all four of these, the long-term goal is to create a benchmarking system that allows you to compare projects between projects. So in the long term, we're not looking at setting specific standards globally.
00:38:28
Speaker
in terms of thresholds for what the data level should be. It's going to be probably something that's collaborative with a local group because, for example, let's just say air quality. Temperature and humidity is different for every region, right? If you're in the tropics versus if you're in a colder area, the numbers are going to be very different. So what you're targeting might be very different as well.
00:38:53
Speaker
you might not like the optimal humidity and temperature might not be exactly the same for different areas. So we want to work with the local region to set the thresholds for that.
00:39:04
Speaker
Our focus will only be on making sure that you're collecting the right data or the most accurate data. And so our focus for our standards will always be around that. The other standard that we're going to be doing is materials. And again, our MO, our focus is going to be on collecting data. So for materials, every project has a list of materials that is actually installed in the space.
00:39:29
Speaker
We want for every project in the future to have that list. And we start scoring that list based on how much information in regards to health or carbon or safety of each material is collected. So the scoring system is not necessarily going to be initially based on how good the material is, because once you see it, you'll realize whether or not it's good.
00:39:57
Speaker
Because that's the stuff you're installing to your space. Instead, we want you to do the research of the materials that you're aware of what you're actually putting into your space. So the scoring system is based on how much do you understand what's actually going in? Are you actually collecting the information? Do the materials that you select actually have any of the information that you're looking for?
00:40:17
Speaker
And materials that are actively trying to collect more information for these aspects will be more noticed. So we want to incentivize materials to really care about the health aspect, the carbon aspect, that kind of stuff. Yeah, so you're very much part of a wider infrastructure, which includes product health certificates or healthy environmental product declarations, things like that.
00:40:47
Speaker
Yeah, there's then that middleman that's sourcing the materials that have already been through that rigorous process of securing certifications for that individual product that then gets installed within a wider fit-out with a green procurement policy that then secures the right kind of standards for materials and indeed knock on effect air quality. So it's really this sort of Tetris puzzle, right? And you're sort of encouraging that network of players to come together to do the work
00:41:16
Speaker
to collaborate and then measure and monitor those results over time. Correct. I love it. I think it's great and it's exactly what we needed for the industry. I think you've got some amazing growth years ahead of you. So best of luck. Congratulations with that. Where can people find you? What's the best way to reach out and follow along for all the work that we set at doing?
00:41:38
Speaker
So we're constantly updating our website. The website is reset.build, R-E-S-E-T dot B-U-I-L-D. There's no dot com, dot build is the end of it. And that's probably the best way to follow us. We also have a newsletter. So if you scroll down to the very bottom of the homepage of the webpage,
00:42:00
Speaker
there will be a link to follow our newsletter. If you have any questions, info at reset.build is the go-to email. If you want to email me directly, it's stanton at reset.build. Awesome. You've been very generous with your time. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for having me, Matt.