Tech Uncensored - An Altitude Accelerator Podcast

Hessie Jones

Hello. So by 2050 70% of the world's population is projected to live in cities, we are starting to evolve into an increasingly urban economy, and urban centers will will start to adapt and. Evolve to meet the demands of these growing populations from from an urban perspective, it could lead to economic growth. They can improve living standards, increase and improve cultural diversity. Here's some stats I want to share the world's urban population has been rising almost six-foldd since 1950, from 751 million to almost 4.4 billion people today that are living in urban. This is expected to continue with more people doubling in urban populations by 2050. Today, more than 56% of the world population. Now lives in urban areas, so when we talk about increased migration to these urban centers, it can pose other challenges. So, we see we will see accelerated demand for affordable housing with risk to potential overcrowding, pollution. And maybe rising conflicts and social inequity. So, this actually calls for more sustainable development to build the viable infrastructures, the transport systems, the basic services, the job opportunities to ensure that these cities are safe, they're inclusive, they're resilient and they're sustainable. So enter intelligent City and I'm going to bring both Oliver and Odie to the state. And so this is this company is based out of Vancouver, Canada, and they're founded in 2008 with a mission to empower people to live better urban lives. And so this company aims to streamline construction processes, standardized housing in an effort to actually create a commercializable and sustainable alternative. So we have the pleasure today to speak to one of the founders of Intelligent City, Oliver Lang and OD Craig, who is the CTO to discuss the future of increased urbanization and how this company is navigating their challenges towards a world where increasing sustainable practices. Becomes the norm. So welcome both of you.

Oliver Lang

Hi Hessie, very nice to to be here and and thank you for having us.

Hessie Jones

OK, I'll. I'll start with you Oliver. Tell me about your vision for intelligence, intelligence, city and a bit about the journey that got you to where you are today.

Oliver Lang

Yes, thank you for having us. Yeah. So we started until the city to really address 2 fundamental issues that we saw start seeing in the world maybe already 20 years or longer ago. Which really the immersion of, of climate change issues on one hand, on the other side, the the lack of choice and the lack of supply of affordable urban housing and and thirdly, also, we believe the lack of adoption of of technologies in, in particular in our industry like some. Have coined the term that we're sort of the last the construction industry development industries, the last laggard who has not really adopted the the powers of technology. This transformed pretty much all other. So yeah, it's about 15 years ago. We looked at what we think should be done and how we want to approach it and felt it was necessary to create a new company that would really take a very different approach to how we could get to these answers. That we thought are really those are global problems and that required sort of a highly scalable solution. To that, that, that could fit that that sort of scale of problem that's there. And as you mentioned with the the urban population, I think you know many of you probably heard the idea that you know to meet demand by 2050, we have to build essentially a Shanghai or New York City every every month for the next for the next 25 years and. If. If we want to do that, we have to do that and we not want to leave a planet behind the next generations. That is actually desirable to be on and we'll we'll have to really change the ways we conduct ourselves.

Hessie Jones

Sorry about that. I think I just muted myself. OD, You consider yourself a new generation of industrialized construction and in this advanced manufacturing platform on the route to a more of a carbon neutral future. So, tell me about a little bit of the overview of your plan.

OD Krieg

Yeah. So, you know, construction as everyone knows who has built a building, a house or was involved in any of that remotely is a is a pretty traditional and a very manual sort of workflow. You know every building. Is A1 off building every building is sort of a one time. Project where many many entities, many consultants and planners come together to design, engineer, and then ultimately build this building on a construction site. And that model has really not changed pretty many hundreds of years. Except that here and there are some technologies. Have you gotten hold? We are planning with computer software, but it is still a very sort of representational hierarchical approach to delivering a building and in any other industry we are. Looking at products. We are looking at, you know, laptops, cars and even ships. Anything larger even is a more productized approach or has a more productized approach which means that? The the engineering and the design and the planning of how it's actually being made is already done by the time a client comes and chooses a product. Right and to in order for construction to move into that area in order for construction to become industrialized, we need to productize, we need to think about a more holistic approach. What is the building made of? What does it need? How does it need to be pre engineered and understood from design? To manufacturing and to delivery on site to be to be more like a product and if that is the case, if we can achieve that, if we can get to that part. Now, now we can scale up the production of housing. Now we can actually start to make housing faster and provide it, you know, in a in an easier manner. Shortcut, sort of that, you know, typical 2-3 year process of trying to figure out how things work. And until you end up with a building that is. Extremely unique and and so we looked at developing a platform that allows us to design buildings within that platform from that platform. And customize them to the specific needs and the specific location of the building. Although it all comes from that same platform and by sort of bridging the gap between the scalability and the repetitiveness of a platform and the customizability that we need in our industry. We believe that we have a a balance where we can deliver housing at scale and that's really sort of the the fundamental of industrialization is now, we can scale up, we can speed things up. But on top of that, the question is always when it comes to construction, what kind of materials you're using, and mass timber is a very attractive material to use in an industrialized construction environment. Mass timber is anything that is, you know, thicker engineered timber. It's a specific description of thicker engineered plates and beams with which you can also build high rise. And it is easy to use in prefabrication. It is easy to transport, and it is a sustainable building material. And now you're starting to put a lot of building blocks together where you can say, well, we can build actually in a much more sustainable way. We can make use of the resources we have in Canada, can deliver housing. Faster and at scale, and by doing so also increase affordability of these buildings and so this platform is sort of the fundamental of of changing how our industry works. But you need to put together quite a lot of different puzzle pieces to to make it.

Hessie Jones

OK, so you mentioned. A couple of things there. And So, what I'd like Oliver to do first is to explain a little bit more about mass timber and how why that is, first of all, more sustainable, but what exactly is it and why not like why move away from the traditional metals? Plastics, gypsum, asphalt. Apart from the fact that they're not as sustainable, why is mass timber more of your optimal solution?

Oliver Lang

Yeah. So we. Had a very, very conscious choice a long time ago that we would use mass. Timber as a as. As the almost the foundations of everything that we use for a number of reasons a, it comes from a renewable resource resource that you know you know when trees grow, they they actually they sequester carbon, they store carbon. And so you instead of having a lot of carbon emissions, let's say, when you do a concrete building in the embody carbon footprint or everything that goes into the building, the construction of a building. With the timber building, you actually not emitting, you actually do the opposite. You're actually using the material that has embodied carbon is now sequestered into it, and is is a more sustainable solution. From that perspective. Further, it's against. You know, they understand that a lot of people have a structure, they actually extremely strong because in mass timber other than in stick frame that many people refer to as timber construction and mass timber, you cross laminating things together and an engineered product that's extremely strong and dimensionally stable. You get to something that is fire resistant. You know, if you ever try to put a match to a a log on a campground, you know that you can't set it on fire. You continually would. But with mass timber you can get to that. So you can we have structures right now that are completely fully exposed timber. Structures of the two-hour fire rated 2-hour fire resistant right again so. So that's a bit the revolution in in, in this. And then there's a whole biophilic aspect which we people actually love living with natural material and and be surrounded with something. That's most sustainable, but but maybe most importantly for us at the end was a decision we wanted a natural material that allowed us to bring together this natural resources with the powers of industry 3.0 back then our industry 4.0 now it is entirely machinable millable we can use industrial robots right now. To machine this material. To precisions of a millimeter or or or further and then and then assemble through Advanced Fastening, gluing technology, and so forth. Very large building systems from it, right? So it's a it's a. It's almost a dream material to industrialize in our sector that didn't exist before. And then beyond that. What's been really exciting is, and we've been working on this, you know, for a long time with regulators and so forth. But that now the building codes over the last few years have been adopted that mass timber construction across the North American continent in most of the States and many of the Canadian provinces. To allow to build. Up to 18 story mass timber buildings now under the building code. And under a more and more unified building code. That allows us so. That we can scale across what you can do in other industries, right, a reliable predictable regulatory framework and so so many advantages by using this material that is really the foundation for almost everything that we do.

Hessie Jones

Now, can I ask either of you like from what if you start to compare even the process of traditional construction with what you're doing, what is the difference in time to market?

Oliver Lang

So time to market in terms of if I can clarify your Question Time to market in terms of how long does it take our product to reach a construction site?

Hessie Jones

Probably yes I would.

Oliver Lang

Say that there are a number of options. Where we can reduce the total time of construction by up to 50% a because we're first thing we're doing is what the prefab industry has done for some time. Right now that we're basically while we're manufacturing in the factory. The other people, people advance things on site and you essentially get parallel construction, right? And so that that speeds things up. But beyond that, you can also get to a point where you can get approvals faster, which is always introduced a lot of uncertainties, right? So when you combine that possibility of fast approvals. On on development permits and building permits. Because you've productized because you have certified solutions, right, which is what we do, right? So we don't just do a one-off solution for that project as already mentioned, we go through full program of testing, prototyping, testing and certification so that we can use it across a whole number of projects. So we don't innovate on the back of a single client. We actually don't invent on the back of clients. We create a product and we delivered to market so that it can be deployed rapidly.

Hessie Jones

OK. I wanted to add some stats here because I think what one of the reasons why you're looking at a more sustainable solution is because. The traditional construction industry does actually lend a lot in terms of, sorry, generating a lot of waste. Canadian Construction Association indicated almost 9 million tons of waste annually in Canada and the waste management industry this is 2/20/18. Quite old, but they indicated that the construction sector accounted for almost 25 to 30% of the total waste generated by all industries. So from your perspective, how much are you actually? Saving do you think or reducing in terms of waste?

Oliver Lang

There is a significant saving reduction on the way side because when you, when you productize for building, you basically lay out all the systems in a way that they are most materially efficient. Right. We position machine everything for that particular component and we're trying to have as little waste as possible and other than some sawdust call it that from from the from the machining itself so that that's the the waste reduction. On that end, I think that's very, very powerful. The other one is on to optimized buildings overall would really be materially efficient. So that's the the layout of buildings, the form of buildings that they how they fit in the urban environment, everything is done around really highly optimal design and engineering principles. So that that design and manufacturing are brought together. They're not one is an outcome of the other, but we call it, you know, design for manufacturing. And that's, I think a a thing again that was done in, in many other industries, but it hasn't been done in the construction. Sector. Yeah.

OD Krieg

Yeah. And if I can add to that, you know, I think prefabrication in general. Of a lot of the making of a building from a very chaotic environment to a planned environment, right. And the reason why construction is adding so much to waste is because it is a very chaotic environment. It's not very controlled and not very planned ahead. And so you do have simply because of all the trades working on site. And not coordinating very well. You just generate a lot of waste because of. But of course you also create much less quality because of that, right? So it is. It is literally like taking the pre-Ford era making of cars from sort of you know a very custom manual one at a time approach to an industrialized. Approach, which obviously has a lot of things have to change when you do that. But one of the effects is that you reduce waste and mass timber is great in a sense because it is wood and so even the wasted wood can be reused, can be used for energy generation, it can be, it can be recycled or or even upcycled sometimes. And so there is a lot of that that we're creating. An ecosystem here of using the natural resources that we have in a sustainable way, and of course we have to also maybe as a side note, we have to use sustainable forestry to actually do that. But then the wood that we are using and that we are consuming and the waste that comes out of it can also be reused and ultimately create a much more sustainable construction industry.

Hessie Jones

OK, thank you. I'm going to pivot a little bit because we we're starting to talk about how the the world is increasingly going to be more urban centers. And so intuitively, once it once we start to see increased migration to urban centers, we would assume that we're going to have increase in densely populated areas that it's going to increase the demand for materials for energy, it will drive up. Cost of housing it will impact the quality of life and even affordability. And also let's not forget that, you know, we could we actually have the risk of increasing CO2. Levels in in more urban areas as as we get more people into these centers. So Oliver could you respond to some of these risks of urbanization that the effects of greenhouse gases? Let's, let's take one of them at a time like heat islands. For example, low rising temperatures and surrounding areas can be exacerbated because of the effects of global warming, more at the local level.

Oliver Lang

For sure. Yeah. So, I mean the issues impact of of climate issues like, you know, heat island effects and transportation issues and and everything that really we're dealing with in cities right now, there are there are there there are strategies to counteract these right and that ultimately create an urban environment that has more. Green space. This is buildings that are really far more intelligently integrated from a from a design perspective to allow for to counteract these effects, right. And so this goes back to design engineering solutions. This goes back to landscaping. This goes back to, you know, different pavements. That you use to allow for absorption of water, you know, and counteracting like heat, island effects and so forth to make sure that buildings function with low energy needs. So you they don't give off a lot of heat because they're designed, they highly energy in, in in very many ways. With low energy needs, low cooling and heating needs, they don't overheat by design. If you look right now in urban landscapes, you know many of the buildings are just glass towers with very low insulation value that dramatically overheat and wants out of the building. And the only way to keep them cool is to run mechanical systems that then give off a lot of heat and a lot of energy. In return, right? So. So what? What can we do? How do we address that? How? What can we do this so we can we optimize. So maybe want to sort of back up for one second here in the definition of because I don't think we have explained that sufficiently that we're really. As a product company, we're designing engineer buildings and we bring together these mass number building systems. We bring advanced manufacturing automation, robotics together with advanced software and all of that allows us to actually sweet spot buildings in ways that we couldn't before. So it's very, very powerful to look. God. The energy consumption of a building when you go through optimization, you can look at the construction cost. You can look at the carbon footprint from a number of different perspectives, from the embodied carbon to the operational carbon, and you can find that optimum between the the effect that the building has on the environment and the effect that the building has from a cost. Perspective in the cost of construction, the cost of operations and so forth. So the discussion about the environmental impacts become also one of affordability. What I've said at the beginning, right, so dollars and cents. And they're not. They're not contradicting each other, then building environmentally sound and carbon neutral doesn't mean it has to be more expensive. In fact, if you do it right, it becomes more affordable because you don't unnecessarily heat the world around you. You're actually only heat and cool for what you need because you're creating a proper envelope. You don't unnecessarily. Waste materials and build with carbon intensive materials that require a lot of Labor that we don't have available. We actually use a material that we can we can get industrialization at scale right and so these things are all interconnected in so many ways. At the end, our sector, our industry, is directly responsible, 40% of carbon emissions. And if you add to it what the way how we plan cities and how poorly we plan cities force people into cars, then all of a sudden over 60% of carbon emissions.

Hessie Jones

That's it. That actually is a good segue. I'm going to ask this question about so. So now you have people moving into these beautiful places. Can you actually help control energy efficiency now that you have more people in these urban centers and there's going to be increased ability.

OD Krieg

Well, that's a it's a very multi layered question. You know because on the one hand if we look at our current cities, we see evidently problems of mobility, right, so. If you keep. Everything is as is and you only change one variable. You will probably not really get to a more efficient. More and more sustainable urban infrastructure on the other. And if you think about what happens if you change the way a city is laid out or you change the way dense a city is, you can actually at the same time increase its efficiency and sustainability because naturally certain demands will emerge, right? So tSo, the problem that we have in many North American cities is that we have this. Our contrast between very, very dense urban centers and very, very low density around the single-family housing. And so you have in in the in the single-familysing areas, you have too little density to actually. To make sense for public transport, transport or other public infrastructure to be in these areas, it has too few people in that area to really have, for example, public transport. So if you increase the density to a certain level, you can create an environment where you have. Public transport, but now you also have enough density to simply naturally create communities where people don't even need to travel that far anymore, right? So that's kind of the idea of the 50 minute city you have enough density for enough people to be in a 50 minute radios, so you have all the stores, you have everything that. You need. Plus you have enough density for for public transport to also make sense and now these people can move around without needing a car. So you have these compounding effects, but you need to increase the level of density to a certain extent. However, you don't need to increase the density to have sixty story towers. That's also completely ompletely miscommunicated because that level of density actually doesn't help us and it and it makes our cities, you know, it kind of increases that level of heat islands and and you don't have enough space for even greenery to be planned in these cities. So, you need to have a sort of a middle way and that middle way is what many talk about when they mentioned the missing middle which is sort of the four stories. To, you know, eight stories or 12 stories construction, where you have enough density for all of this stuff to make sense, but not too much density. So you still have a very healthy city and then mobility and energy consumption is the most efficient. And I think that's the a trajectory where our cities haven't really gone yet. And for the most part it is because steel and concrete construction are very efficient. When you build really, really high and especially concrete gets really efficient when you build 4050 sixty story towers and it's not very efficient, not very cost competitive. When you build 8 story tower. Or eight story buildings. But that's exactly where mass timber is. Is perfect, and mass timber is excellent for 812 stories up to 18, and that's where it's cost competitive to concrete and steel. So you can actually build for less money and at the same time you also build a much better building and a much more sustainable building. And you incentivize that, cities become more sustainable. And sort of become a more healthy. Environment.

Oliver Lang

Just app, just one point there. When you look at North American cities, they're actually, they're spoiled so much that many of the city centers have actually reasonably low density walk around maybe other than Manhattan also, but most North American cities have long avenues, long corridors of 123 story buildings. And all these buildings are perfect for densification and that is what's happening right now. There's like three things that starting to align. One is is the trend that people don't want to commute and spend their days in cars. They want the 50 minutes. Cities are realising and they're absorbing these urban arteries so that you can put in 8 to 12 Storey buildings in the future and then as I mentioned, you have this new building code that now allows to do that in timber construction because before, if you wanted to build an 8 story building in concrete, let's say it's not this scale of which. Concrete construction is really efficient. Concrete shines above, you know, 20 stories, 25 stories. We're really out. The the repetition where where it's more. Effective. And so we have all of a sudden the tools available that we can densify our cities within the boundaries of what's there. And then as already mentioned before then really make make take advantage of, you know, public infrastructure investments for rapid transit and schools and anything you need to have a a vibrant. And there are many examples around the world where that has worked historically. That scale of sort of 6812 stories, you know, most of Tokyo's at that scale, it's the most populated city in the world. With over 30 million people and functioned extremely well at that scale, the city of Barcelona is beautiful example that has that density for well over 150 years now and so that's an opportunity right now. And again the the new set of regulatory frameworks and development of technologies that that we're working on. Opens that opportunity.

Hessie Jones

Do you think that like because I know we're headed this way because we have to, based on the the Paris Accord. But as we're building for this new type of, I guess environment that that is our future. How do you see policy changing to reduce emissions when it comes to energy consumption or even just to promote more sustainable practices? Because I'm assuming that what you're building will enable habits, better practices from the people that live there. But it's still going to take time for people to transition to this new way of living.

Oliver Lang

Yeah, I mean we definitely, I mean, at least in our environment in Canada, we see a lot of policy change to enable you know the, the, the biomass sector. So you know timber construction is of great interest to Canadians. And I think to know people in North America across the board that you can use and activate and. Renewable resource that right now we don't add any value to. We just turn into pulp but and and yet trees, forests are really in many ways away to solve this problem. How do we build housing for 4 billion people on this planet? And so I think that that realization has started to come in and so as energy efficiency, right, really if you make buildings far more energy efficient now all of a sudden you have this moment where things switch because now you can use alternative forms of energy, you can use, you know ground. Source heating and cooling. You can use heat pumps. You can use solar because you just don't need that much energy on a per building on the per home basis any longer, and so it changes that and I think regulators have come into to understand now and the incentive. Realizing so you can get for example, in Canada right now, much better lending terms underwritten by the federal government. If you're building needs, so-called passive house standards or 90% reduction of energy needs on a building and you can get additional density in cities, for example in like in Vancouver, for example, was just released. You can make it another 20 or 25%. Extra height and density if you build in timber and we're hearing from some cities now, they're incentivizing the size 50% additional height and density, so it changes it. It creates an incentive. Of on one end, regulation, as I mentioned from the building code to development bylaws and also provide far less hurdles and to adopt really these new technologies.

Hessie Jones

Thank you, Oliver. OK, I'm going through the last question at OD Intelligence city is the name of your organization, but Canada is still actually, I guess wrestling with with building its first smart city. And I assume where you are is probably going to be in Vancouver. But like from their perspective? What are the lessons that we can learn from sidewalk labs here in Toronto? I don't know. I think it was less than less than 5-6 years ago to create an environment that really works for citizens.

OD Krieg

Yeah, uh, we work in Toronto too. Umm actually. So this is definitely an important question. Uh, Sidewalk labs try to build a smart city neighborhood with a heavy focus on, uhm, data collection and using that to make the neighborhood, you know more efficient? Definitely, but I think. What led to a lot of pushback is the idea that a single company would hold a lot of data. And I think that is something we will have to consider as our buildings and our cities become smarter or more intelligent and more interconnected. You know, I think there are many, many reasons why we want to have data collection. If you look at a single building, I think a single building is a multifamily, but. Is is would be very. It would be very beneficial for that building to collect information and to know about, for example, at any given point how many people are currently at home, how many people have their windows open, how much heat or how much cooling is needed in that building? How much energy do I need to? Take from the network how much energy can I maybe produce if I if I have solar panels? On my roof. There's a lot of data that can be managed even for maintenance, right? Lots of sensors can be used and and the data can be interpreted to understand if any maintenance is coming up or if anything is going to fail. That's also where AI comes in. I think. Also that sort of data collection, big data interpretation of what's going to happen. With this building, but then of course, on a city scale, you want to also understand or communicate between different buildings. I think especially as the overall energy consumption of buildings gets reduced, the energy creation on buildings such as solar panels or you know in. Ground can actually be shared between buildings, and we can. Create a network of. Energy sharing and brokering. But of course, cities also might want to understand if they can introduce more intelligent transport solutions. So, for example, you know, what's the current demand on public transit? Do I need to increase the number of buses or trains are to decrease them to save energy. So all of that ultimately. Access to a more efficient and more sustainable infrastructure and and better buildings and cities. But the data has to be anonymous. The data has to be not held by a single company. It has to be shared. It has to be completely anonymised. And I think we need a big framework and I think that's a policy comes into a data framework, a data infrastructure where these things can be communicated as safe and reliable way and not be exploited for, you know, making specific decisions for a company to to make more money. Out of it, rather than actually helping the city to become more sustainable.

Hessie Jones

Thank you. That's a very good answer for some, for someone who's actually addressing somebody who's a Privacy nut. OK, so that's all we have time for today. And I thank Oliver and OD from intelligent City for joining us. I look forward to a future where people can live at this convenience of the smart city. It's more resilient, it's more sustainable. And these days, especially with rising inflation, it's more affordable. So. Tech and sensor. By the way, is powered by altitude accelerator and produced by blue mix and transistor radio. My name is Hessie Jones and until next time everyone have fun and stay safe.