Steve Rogerson talks with Faye Bowser of Siemens about her new role in charge of smart buildings infrastructure.

When anyone says the word autonomous these days, my mind immediately turns to driverless cars and robotaxis. They are the ones making the headlines. But the massive developments in AI in just the past year have brought the concept of autonomy to far more areas, and one of those is buildings.

A statistic from Siemens, for example, found that 54% or organisations are ready for their buildings to be run autonomously. This is a massive shift in such a short time.

“A year ago, we weren’t hearing about autonomous buildings,” Faye Bowser from Siemens told me when I caught up with her this week.

I, of course, asked her to expand on that, but first let me tell you about Faye. She started working for Siemens when she was just 16 as an engineering apprentice. That was more than 23 years ago, and she only knows that because her LinkedIn profile (www.linkedin.com/in/fayebowser/) recently reminded her.

That same profile will also tell you about her new job. Earlier this year, she became managing director of Siemens’ smart buildings infrastructure business in the UK and Ireland.

“I am very proud of where I am now,” she said. “This is the company I have grown up in and I am very passionate about being in a role like this that I find hugely rewarding.”

Putting sensors in buildings is not new. Many commercial and industrial buildings have had them all over the place for a while now, providing information about air condition and temperatures, where the building’s occupants are at any time, work flows through the buildings, warnings of potential fires and other hazards… The list goes on.

What has changed is AI.

“This is the next step change,” said Faye, “where a building doesn’t just react but learns and adapts. Building owners are under pressure like never before. They need to reduce energy and keep on track with sustainability targets.”

But a problem they have faced from lots of sensors gathering data, is what to do with all the information. How to make use of it.

“Companies say they have an abundance of data and they struggle to get outcomes from those data,” said Faye. “They want to integrate their data and make sense of them. They want to serve the people who occupy the building. How do you make them safe and comfortable?”

The first step is a step back. Look at the building as a whole. Look at the rhythms of the building during different times of the day. All buildings have rhythms, whether, hospitals, universities or whatever. The AI has to understand that by taking in all the data.

Through these data, the AI can build an optimum profile of a building. It can find ways to reduce energy consumption without affecting the work being done or the people doing the work. It finds the right comfort levels.

“And it does all that without manual intervention,” said Faye.

A company such as Siemens, which can provide the technology and knowledge to help owners transform their buildings, has to deal with not all buildings being at the same stage in development. Some have legacy systems. Some owners want to build up smart systems bit by bit.

“They are all at different points in their journeys,” said Faye. “They run pilots of smart buildings systems, but how do they learn from those pilots to build a roadmap? They have to look at time, resources and so on. If you look at, say, a university campus with more than one building, we will look to see where their biggest need is.”

This is an area Faye is familiar with from her previous role at Siemens as global vice president for the higher education vertical. She worked with universities to modernise campuses and accelerate the transition to low carbon, digitally enabled infrastructure.

“The risk is getting stuck in pilot mode,” she said. “They need to get over that hurdle to a wider adoption.”

Though she is a fan of AI, she acknowledges that many have fears and unease about the technology, which is why she is keen to stress that people have to be at the centre of any smart building implementation.

“The thing that is the most exciting is innovation around AI,” she said, “because it is happening so fast. The rate of rollout and adoption is really incredible. It is a fantastic time to be in this market, but there needs to be a human-centric approach.”

She said she would love to fast forward and see where AI will have taken us five years from now. “I am learning all the time how AI is improving our skills set,” she said, while noting that care has to be taken over issues such as cyber security.

“We have to be aware of those,” she said, but that should not stop the adoption of AI. “Think about the opportunities it brings.”