THE ART OF SMART

Jonathan McFarlane is co-founder and CEO of PlaceOS. He and his team have been chipping away at the smart building industry for about 10 years. He works with clients to identify the challenges faced in their buildings and scope out user experiences to solve them. Globally, PlaceOS works with a number of partners like Cisco, but McFarlane feels most people don’t know about his company because it spends much of its time “behind the scenes, enabling everything”.

A big part of his job is using what his business has learned from customers to educate the industry because, he says, “We’re accidental experts in a whole range of things that are beneficial.” Today, this is more true than ever, with COVID-19 presenting new dilemmas to managers of buildings and personnel. Here, McFarlane explains how PlaceOS works and the limitless opportunities the solutions create to empower smart sustainability measures in Australian buildings, precincts and cities.

You’re helping a lot of people get back to the office. There are, obviously, many big changes taking place. Tell us what this new, safe office space looks like.

We have been integrating with location services and elements that power building user experiences for a number of years. We’re in a fortunate position as a platform; we can take those existing integrations and repurpose them for safety and getting back to work safely. So, if we’re after two main things to achieve a true smart workplace, it’s knowing who the user is, and knowing where they are in