SEGRO, James Power, Director of Digital and Technology
Can you please tell us about your role at SEGRO?
I lead the development and execution of our digital and technology strategy. I’ve been with SEGRO for 10 years during which time the common theme in my work has been technology. Over the last three years we have increasingly embraced digital innovation as we – alongside our customers and our stakeholders – started evolving our business and our portfolio to the increasingly digital world. We own, manage and develop modern warehouses and light industrial property totalling over 8 million sq m of space across the UK and Europe, serving customers from a wide range of industry sectors.
How would you define SEGRO’s digital and technology strategy?
Ultimately the strategy is geared towards enabling us to achieve advantage from our digital assets – complementing our people and our real assets.
There are a number of strands to our approach, but at the core is helping our people right across the business be as effective in their jobs as they can be. In real estate, the decisions we take are relatively few, but high-value and have a long impact. Our second focus is bringing better data and insight to the table to enable better decision-making.
Thirdly, the digitalisation of back-office processes will make them as agile and cost efficient as possible – enabling the ‘front end’ of the business to be entrepreneurial and continue to deliver growth. Finally, adopting digital innovation helps positively differentiate our assets to perform better and improve our services to customers.
How is SEGRO implementing new technologies in its buildings?
We’re constantly innovating with new technologies in our buildings, but one we’ve invested a lot of effort in recently is a programme of smart building pilots. We’ve installed a range of smart technologies in a representative range of buildings – small and large; light industrial and big box; vacant and occupied – in the UK and on the Continent.
Working in close partnership with our customers, the programme is exploring the practicalities and benefits of a range of technologies which we believe will improve the operational performance of our buildings – especially environmental and wellness performance.
What learnings have you taken to date from this smart building pilot?
We’ve had a very positive response from our customers who – while having a very diverse range of requirements – are very clear in agreeing that sustainability, environmental performance and employee wellbeing are right at the top of their agendas. Over recent years the industrial customer- base has diversified and the operations within warehouses have become more sophisticated but the physical envelope – the warehouse itself – has not always evolved at the same pace.
Can you give us an idea of the kind of technologies you are implementing?
We’re using the latest generation of sensors to deliver real-time data on utilisation and the environmental, energy and plant performance of the building, to complement the operational data many of our customers already collect. This data gives our customers and ourselves better visibility and understanding of the performance of the building, enabling better decisions, which has multiple benefits. For our customers the data should improve the operational and energy efficiency of the building, reducing costs and carbon emissions. A better understanding of space utilisation and environmental conditions also leads to better working environments, positively impacting employee wellbeing and productivity.
These improvements should also in turn make a smart industrial building more sustainable and attractive to local communities.
What are the main challenges which lie ahead?
Industrial buildings present several unique challenges for smart technology, not least their sheer size, which is one reason it’s still in its infancy in the industrial sector. While customers are responding very positively and there is a shared interest, we have more work to do to make the product simpler and lower cost.
We are learning all the time. There is no template to follow, so we maintain an open, ambitious approach and are prepared to try new things. As a long-term investor, developer and manager of industrial space we have a shared interest with our customers to stay ahead of the curve and ensure we are embracing the best technology that delivers high-quality, high-performing and sustainable buildings.
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Real Estate Rebound - A tech-accelerated recovery
Name: James Power
Title: Director of Digital and Technology
Company: SEGRO
