Udaya Shrivastava

Tell us about Honeywell, your role and your responsibilities?

Honeywell Building Technologies (HBT) is transforming the way buildings operate, helping improve the quality of life of its occupants by making buildings that adapt to the needs and wellbeing of the people who use them.

I joined Honeywell in 2014 as the leader of the Safety and Productivity Solutions team in India, driving strategic growth through next generation offerings. Prior to my current role, I served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Commercial Fire Safety at HBT. Today, I continue to focus on our new product introductions globally that deliver on the promise of our brand to our customers.

How do you envisage next-generation technologies playing a vital role in further advancing building sustainability and achieving ambitious environmental goals?

In general, commercial buildings account for more than one-third of global energy demand and energy-related CO2 emissions. As such, there must be increased focus on new solutions that can make current and future buildings more sustainable. Many building owners, operators or cities need more specific insights into asset-level energy use and carbon impact, which is possible now with Honeywell technologies.

Modern connected technologies can now be used to determine where and how electricity, gas, water and other utilities are consumed across a company’s buildings and the related direct or indirect carbon emissions. By monitoring carbon emissions on a fundamental basis, organisations can gain better insights into their carbon impact and how they can optimise their energy usage going forwards.

Could you provide examples of specific technologies that Honeywell is currently developing or utilising to enhance building sustainability?

There are a variety of sustainable building solutions available across Honeywell’s diversified portfolio, with many others in development. Recently, Honeywell launched Honeywell Forge for Buildings, a comprehensive approach to building systems operations and management. The solution features software, hardware and services that deliver on key outcomes to help building owners and operators achieve sustainability, operational efficiency, occupant experience, compliance, safety and security, and resiliency goals. The solution enables building owners to optimise building air quality and energy efficiency in real-time, using data from sensors and leveraging AI technologies to constantly monitor, model, and automatically adjust building controls. 

Given continuous indoor air quality (IAQ) data is the key to an effective HVAC strategy, Honeywell IAQ sensors can help provide visual confirmation of air quality within a building. These IAQ sensors can connect to Honeywell’s most advanced controller platforms to meet specific building management needs as well as send data to Honeywell Remote Building Manager, optimising energy use whilst also improving IAQ. 

What do you see as the most significant opportunities and challenges for the widespread adoption of these technologies?

Leaders of large multinational companies recognise that sustainability is now key to their success and that the energy efficiency of the buildings they own or lease is a strategic business priority as well as an environmental imperative. A huge challenge lies in the assessment of the enterprise-wide installed assets for ageing, operating conditions and optimisation opportunities. This needs technologies that offer insights to drive capital deployment planning decisions that help to achieve the ESG goals.

If more sustainable building technologies were adopted, an immediate improvement would be the reduction to the overarching amount of carbon emissions from the built environment. As an example, we realised that plug loads drive a fifth of buildings energy consumption during operations, Honeywell recently launched a connected socket offering in the UK region. Considering the UK’s built environment is responsible for a quarter of the UK’s carbon emissions, the more sustainable building technologies are implemented the better the chances are at reducing this percentage and helping buildings meet their sustainability targets.