Re: Re: DDDA / Docklands Miscellany

@jdivision wrote:

Given nearly everything designed and built in last five years had break up options of some description I’d fundamentally disagree with that idea

I am more than delighted for someone to disagree, it would make the outlook for the Irish economy a lot better. But I still get the intense feeling that commercial space is overhanging the market, with landlords hoping against hope, to try and land that one large tenant. It is like the mythical white unicorn out there at the moment, but I suppose hope springs eternal. Some old dinosaurs want to believe that the Celtic Tiger isn’t dead yet.

I don’t think that the solutions will come from within property management itself. I have some idea of how an Energy Services Company is going to work. It basically involves a lot of two-way communication through information technology systems between the consumer of power and the intermediate player, positioned between the consumer and the producer. The basic idea of the Smart Meter is that it broadcasts large volumes of information back to the producer or intermediate player. It is up to one of those two, to interpret the information that is coming back to them in order to understand the behaviour of the consumer. It helps the consumer him or herself too of course, to look at themselves and perhaps alter their behaviours in a way they judge fit. For instance, how many times a day do I boil a kettle etc. I think the ESCo can operate on the principle of nega-watts. The more energy consumption that the ESCo can save or reduce, the better it gets paid. It is like the opposite to the old formula, where the power utility encouraged you to use more.

I would welcome a situation in Ireland, where people were allowed to switch jobs for a year or two at least. For instance, someone in property management to go to work for Bord Gais or some other ESCo. To find out how they deal with the problem and develop and build information technology solutions. That notion of sharing of skills between different industries amounts to what I would call a really ‘smart’ economy. I left behind the small incestuous world of architects a number of years ago, to work in the larger and more shark invested waters of the engineering, project management and construction industry. You might argue it wasn’t a very large step to make, but the culture was different. Engineers tend to be more enterprising and swear a lot more. Often they engage in wrestling matches to settle matters between one another. This would seem strange within the architectural culture, where hand bags and bitch-iness are the preferred option. I attended a xmas party with some old architect friends a couple of years ago, and they wondered what had happened to me. Why was I now so ‘different’ to them. I would argue, that moving between different industries makes one much ‘smarter’ than the average bear.

Brian O’ Hanlon