On Thursday 9 June, the first edition of the RE SMART “prop tech” exhibition was held at Parc Alvisse in Luxembourg. A great success for the organizers with more than 300 participants and more than thirty exhibitors who came to exchange for the day between professionals and discover the technological advances applied to the world of real estate.
Numerous conferences were also offered throughout the day, in particular on the theme of the ecological transition, innovations for real estate agencies, major projects in Luxembourg, or major trends in the residential sector.
On the exhibitors’ side, many stands were intended for promoters (project management and monitoring, 3D animations), other stands more on energy savings, software for agencies, professional associations (Luxembourg Real Estate Chamber, LuxPropTech …), crowdfunding (crowdlending, tokenization) or space management and interior layouts.
In addition to interesting exchanges throughout the day, many contacts have been made with the aim of offering you more and more investment solutions without the slightest hitch.
Created in 2012, the Smart Buildings Alliance (SBA) aims to enable its members (industrialists, service companies, design offices, architects, builders, developers, developers, integrators, installers or innovative start-ups) to contribute to the development of the Smart Building sector and draw the value of the building upwards, for all stakeholders : owners, users, communities. The SBA also publishes flagship standards and promotes the use of interoperable solutions based on open standards.
In 2018, a first conference in Luxembourg was held on the theme of building efficiency and the concept of smart buildings. This year, the focus was on energy consumption in a context of rising energy prices and possible shortages or blackouts this winter. By 2050, we will have to reduce our energy consumption while increasing electric mobility at the same time, hence the importance of flexibility and global connection at the micro and macro level for efficient resource management.
The SBA recently published the 2nd version of its R2S Label, after 18 months of consultations, which aims to be a reference guide on the concept of Smart Building. Today, there are about a hundred buildings undergoing R2S certification, including by Certivea.
1st Round Table: Building Operating Systems
* Third parties need connectivity. However, banks are very reluctant to do interconnectivity and prefer two separate networks.
* There is still a lot of work on the smart part and energy management: the installations are still too little optimized to take into account the occupation. * System optimization and space automation still have room for improvement.
* Siemens offers new applications to meet the demands of owners, managers or users of the premises for buildings to talk to their users in order to improve well-being, safety, access, space reservations, and even provide information on the menus of nearby restaurants and waiting times.
* On the new smart lots, there are high expectations on the energy part (price and / or regulations to come) and on the optimization of work since the pandemic.
* Digital twins of buildings (3D models) are also designed.
2nd round table: Smart home
* The Smart is to be dissociated from the home automation gadget
* Some data must be able to be shared at the neighbourhood level (open but anonymous system)
In Luxembourg, the approach is mature and the country can become the bridgehead in Europe according to Emmanuel François, president of the SBA
* The deployment of the smart home allows flexibility and monitoring of load curves and electricity production (especially with the multiplication of heat pumps and electric cars)
* Smart vision is shared in project management projects but in reality, it is limited to the management of lighting and sound in the house while the goal should be to avoid any type of manual adjustments.
A real pedagogical work is to be carried out upstream of the construction to integrate the equipment of the houses.
* It also requires new professionsto support contractors and start from uses.
This will be healthier and simpler than the centralized “Jacobin” approach of GAFAM that has invested in the market.
* The multi-service operating system with user interface will be one of the key success factors of the smart home
35 professionals from various industries met in Liege on 05/05/2022 to visit the new office building and private jet terminal from ASL Group. Building Office Buildings and the private jet operator organized the event which also included a networking dinner
One of the contractor showed us the different rooms of the building and the hangar and told us some interesting anecdotes about the construction of the building :
For instance, a lot of time was wasted to get the permit and the zoning from the City and the power source was still located several kilometers away from the building even after the opening (28 months from initial request to the power company to bring the power directly to the building!).
The windows you can see on the picture also came late, forcing the workers to start laying the tiles in the wind.
In the hangar, the roof was assembled under heavy snow.
Werner Bullen, director of Building Office Buildings then spoke for a few minutes to thanks ASL for the warm welcome in their facilities and also showed us a presentation video about the purposes of his organization : to help build healthy offices, to have happy people and eventually sucessuful businesses.
Next events that will be organized by Building Office Buildings : a 2-day visit in Luxembourg (Cloche d’Or and Belval), the newly renovated city hall in Antwerp, Netherlands and a tour of Muscat, Oman
Philippe Bodson, founder and CEO of ASL Group presented us his company that he founded 25 years ago. From one plane in 1997, ASL now own 45 aircrafts of small and medium sizes and is able to deliver many additional services (travel agency, planes and parts brokering, medical airplanes, semi-private flights to Innsbruck in the winter and Ibiza in the summer, flying academy…) with an annual turnover of €75M in 2021.
Christian Delcourt from Liege Airport gave us the milestones and key figures of the airport which is now the 5th cargo platform in Europe with 1.412.000 tons of freight last year, 60 million e-commerce parcels and nearly 10.000 direct and indirect jobs.
Christian also explained that Alibaba opened his first European hub in Liege and is expected to add 100.000m² in the coming years. The Airport will keep investing in the next 20 years (€600M) to develop the area and leverage on the multi-modal capacities of the region (river, sea, train with a direct line to Yiwu, China) to target a cargo capacity of 2.500.000 tons per year.
Last speaker of the day was Kris Vermeire, pilot and flight instructor for ASL, which presented us the ASL Academy that will welcome up to 22 students in 2022 with 7 dedicated aircrafts and 2 Advanced Redbird Simulators.
The cost of the training will range between 12 to 15.000€ and can last between 1 to 2 years depending on the learning speed of the students.
A lovely and delicious networking drink and dinner was also provided to the guests.
We could talk to many experts in the field of construction (architects, furniture designers, HVAC, roofing, flooring, or heat pump specialists)
