It will not have passed you by that we recently passed the anniversary of one year in lockdown, on 23rd March 2020 just over 27 million people tuned in to watch the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, address the nation and tell us that we must stay at home, roads went silent, schools shut with children forced to learn from their homes, parents and carers tried their hand at teaching and millions of us cleared our spare rooms, our kitchen tables and created workspaces with garden tables and piled books on top of each other to create laptops stands.
Demand Logic was affected like every other company, overnight our face-to-face collaboration vanished, the face to face internal conversations which had always been so crucial to get an innovative idea or new design flowing were put on hold; as were the spontaneous social evenings grabbing a drink down by the canal. We along with the rest of the country, watched the events of the year as they unfolded.
Thankfully, as a company we were able to adapt swiftly to the changing work environment, our cloud based Building Analytics platform and the online nature of our work meant that some of the challenging circumstances that others encountered were swiftly overcome.
The Tech in PropTech
Our DL tech team has many roles. Behind the scenes there are many elements to our system that work in harmony to categorise, model, store and crunch the millions of data values we ingest daily. Our infrastructure team is our own engine room, who keep the data flowing and the analysis crunching, ensuring that everything is done with the utmost focus on security.
Then there’s the development team who turn all the ideas and visions into reality through the wizardry of their coding keeping DL at the top of our field. Indeed, 2020 actually saw the release of some of our most innovative tech to date. How have the tech team, normally so used to collaborating together fared? One year on we spoke to some of them to find out about what had inspired them over the lockdown and how, despite the disruption they are still able to churn out new tech to help our clients improve the performance of their buildings, whether for net zero carbon or smart building strategies.
Some common themes quickly emerged: routine, a space to work in where you can shut the door at the end of the day, coffee, walks and nature.
Maintaining communication and collaboration
Historically the tech team has always leaned heavily on online communication software such as Slack and GMeet and it has embraced remote working for a long time too; so keeping things flowing has been a fairly smooth process. As Chris, our Senior Software & Infrastructure Engineer explains, “Our task management and project planning tools are all online and our meeting around those has been an online video call for a long time. We have always had people working remotely”. Despite this, Steve, our Senior Software Developer, noted the occasional wellbeing check-ins in their daily catch up sessions have been beneficial, he was also quick to point out the importance of actually speaking to one another - “just talking instead of text-based comms really helps when things get intense!” Perhaps this is something we should all remember and try to maintain!
One of the techniques that the team was already using was ‘pair programming’ - where one programmer writes the code and the other simultaneously reviews it. They frequently swap roles and lockdown has not reduced its effectiveness and value, in fact if anything it has been more productive. As Nils, our Chief IOT architect noted, “‘Pair programming has definitely become more valuable because you are working with someone and collaborating. It has become an important part of the routine” and as Senior Project Manager Phil pointed out, “‘In some ways I find it easier doing this remotely. Using screen sharing can be easier than huddling around one screen, especially with my eyesight!”
Many companies have suffered from an absence of the ‘water cooler’ moments, spontaneous, creative moments, arising from unplanned chats. We have definitely felt some pain around this but as Steve mentions, “In an hour chat about iconography somehow through the conversation we added what at first seemed to be -’icing on the cake’ feature but turned out to be ‘OMG this changes everything! Brilliant!’ This is the sort of thing that would happen on a bit more of a monthly basis when we were all together in the office but good to know it can still happen!”
The importance of a good work environment and an appreciation of the outdoors
Having a place to work where you can switch off at the end of the day has been key for many, not everyone has had the opportunity to create a new workspace but that is exactly what Sam Pikesley, our Senior Infrastructure Engineer, has taken the time to do; incrementally improving things with new monitors, a new keyboard and mouse, and then getting some proper cable-management sorted. In his words “it has basically been an excuse to fit-out the loft like the bedroom I would have liked to have had when I was about 17”
Sticking to a routine has clearly been vital for everyone, differentiating the work space and the personal space and sticking to a clear work pattern. Exercise has been a vital way of switching between the different phases of the day, work life to home life; as has coffee, which is a clear winner for most.
When reading the news a recurring theme from this last year has become clear no matter where you are: the appreciation of the natural world, of being able to go into our green spaces, our parks and to be immersed in nature. Steve has certainly embraced the natural world, frequently sharing photos amongst the team of the wildlife he has spotted in his garden, including this cheeky fellow!
Keeping the Innovation coming and technology relevant
As well as internal brainstorming, the team has still kept their finger on the pulse in terms of industry wide developments. Chris commented that it was a “shame that conferences were mostly cancelled last year, but newsletters, communities around programming languages allow us to keep tabs on how technology is moving, so we are still aware of the new tools or ways of doing things to some extent!”
Key however to keeping the tech and innovation relevant is understanding what our clients need from Building Analytics. So not only has the team itself adapted but they also adapted our tech to make it more relevant to our users during the pandemic. For instance they added a new service called DL Connect which allows users to remotely access their buildings, via our highly secure infrastructure, to make actual operational changes, vital when office based teams are forced to work from home.
In addition, one of the new flagship pieces of tech which Demand Logic developed over the last 12 months has been virtual meters which Nils explains were “envisioned, planned and came to life during the pandemic. They have been very good for the ops team and customers”.
If the tech team contains the engine room of DL, then the heart and soul of DL is the collective desire to continue to innovate the unique system we have, in our mission to identify the colossal energy savings and improve Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) with data driven, condition-based and predictive maintenance. Reducing energy wastage from buildings can ultimately help the UK meet its net zero targets and address climate change; in the hope that we can play our part in protecting the natural world, which so many have enjoyed and benefited from over this last year.
There is no avoiding the fact that the last 12 months have been difficult, for some more than others, so the message from the team is "look outside; look up". We are hopefully nearing the end of lockdown and will soon be able to see each other once again, share some drinks in the pub and keep on keeping on.
