Dr Matthew Marson is an experienced leader, working at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and the built environment. Having founded WSP’s Smart Places practice and grown Accenture’s offering in this field, Matthew led a €100m business across a range of asset types and geographies.

Marson was named as the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Young Engineer of the Year 2022 for his contributions to the global Smart Buildings industry.

As a recognised thought leader, Matthew is a keynote speaker at international industry events related to emerging technology, net zero design and places at the building and city scales. He was an author in the Encyclopaedia of Sustainable Technologies and a published writer in a variety of journals, earning a doctorate in smart buildings.

How did you become involved in the Smart Buildings industry?

It was at Accenture. I was pulled into some projects given my Architecture and Engineering degree to work on some real estate specific-stuff and it went from there. They taught me about consulting and tech.

What excites you about the Smart Buildings industry?

Technology is finally catching up to our ambition. We’ve always had high hopes for smart buildings (even back in the 50s when the Cyberneticists dreamed up buildings with feedback loops) – but lacked a lot of the technology capture, mix and match and automate stuff based on data. Now we have IoT platforms, low-code methods and modelling capabilities that give us robust capabilities.

We understand you have written a book about ‘The Smart Building Advantage’. Can you explain why you have written the book?

The book is based on 10 years’ worth of learnings from all my projects around the world, be they offices, hospitals, stadia, universities or cities and it charts the business reasons for creating a smart place. It outlines a method using a series of rule-of-thumbs that I’ve created so you can make your own robust business case. Across the 100+ projects, I learnt that for every $1 invested in smart building technology, a business stands to generate $3 in business value over a 5-year period. That relationship only gets better when you increase the scale of deployment.

I wrote the book because the industry needs to move forward. We’ve been trapped in a loop of break-throughs becoming commercial secrets. Those who haven’t been able to select the industry’s best skill have been left with unfulfilled business cases which is increasing industry scepticism. Through sharing the research I started as part of my PhD, I hope to break that cycle and see some proper adoption of tech in our industry.

Who is the book aimed at?

The book is aimed at anyone who needs to put their money where their mouth is. It could be a design engineer that needs to demonstrate the value of their design, it could be a cost consultant who’s never had to price software before, a development director that knows that smart is desirable but struggles with the value for a landlord, or even a head of corporate real estate that needs to articulate why smart buildings make sense for their company. It has a brief history of smart and how it’s focus has changed over the years, as well as some advice on future-proofing.

When is it out?

Monday 9th September from all good bookshops.

What are the benefits of a smart building?

The book outlines a model for how you can plot all the benefits. It could be energy consumption reductions, improving productivity leakage, better waste management, or controlling IT management expenses. The list is wide and varied and all comes down to a measurable financial line item that a business should be able to get their hands on.

Who has been the biggest influence in your career?

The Swiss-French Architect, Le Corbusier. He pioneered the Modernist movement, using the technology of his time to fundamentally shift how we thought of and designed buildings. His tenacity has undoubtedly given me a blueprint for why arguing against the norm is an important thing to do.

What is the question you are most often asked in your business life?

Got any cool examples of “x”?

What are the best/worst things about your job?

Best: getting to work on some of the biggest, coolest, most ambitious projects in the world – be that something like NEOM, the Salesforce Tower in San Fran or 22BG in London. Scale and world-firsts really excite me.

Worst: Having to have the same conversation on loop. When the thing you do is so new to so many, you have a responsibility of education.

What advice would you give to someone starting out in the industry?

Don’t take any nonsense. There might be a good reason why something isn’t done, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right reason. The industry is rife for change and if not you, then who?

Look at what’s happening in the broader world of tech. How could real estate benefit from that?

Where would you most like to live?

Pre-pandemic San Francisco – there’s just something in the air.

What is your favourite book?

Towards a New Architecture – Le Corbusier

How do you relax?

With some house music. I always listen to Pete Tong on BBC Radio 1.

What is your desert island disc?

Xpansions – Move Your Body

The Smart Building Advantage: Unlocking the value of smart building technologies is available from Emerald Publishing (ISBN: 1835498795)

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