Belgian telco Proximus, together with BESIX and i.Leco, announced the creation of aug?e, a smart building application platform combining their respective expertise in building, ICT and energy.
aug?e follows the acquisition by BESIX and Proximus of stakes in i.Leco, a tech start-up specializing in buildings? energy management.
With aug?e, BESIX, Proximus and i.Leco said they are bringing to the market new solutions in the field of smart buildings. These solutions include innovative technologies to improve the energy performance and environmental impact of buildings.
Jan Van Steirteghem, general manager Europe at BESIX Group, said: ?The concept of smart buildings consists of creating buildings that are both physical and digital: we create the digital twin of a building. These twins are connected and interact with each other in such a way that a change in the properties of one applies automatically to the other. In combining the respective expertise of Proximus, i.Leco and BESIX in ICT, buildings energy management and construction and renovation, we have created aug?e. aug?e is a platform that connects the physical building to a series of useful digital applications that allow building users and facility managers to optimize energy consumption and reduce carbon footprint, which will help combat climate change, to improve comfort in the workplace and to facilitate efficient operations.?
?Proximus is contributing actively to help its customers to use energy smarter and reduce their carbon footprint. The energy transition, and in particular the contribution of buildings to a more sustainable world, is at the heart of our initiative to create aug?e. aug?e will help us to bring to the market an unprecedented ecosystem of solutions that will set a new standard for the way we think about user experience in buildings and will actively contribute to reduce their ecological footprint. In these buildings, data will be truly at the service of tenants, users, employers and facility managers,? said Anne-Sophie Lotgering, chief enterprise market officer of Proximus Group.
The partners noted that aug?e will allow developers and tenants to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy consumption of assets. By constantly analyzing and adapting the use of electricity, smart buildings can proactively reduce energy consumption by up to a third and significantly reduce the ecological footprint of cities.
The firms also said that these solutions will enable buildings to communicate with each other and integrate them into grids and networks, thus creating interconnected local energy communities in which buildings become both producers and consumers.
Stefan Lodeweyckx, CEO of i.Leco and aug?e, said: ?The combination of the expertise of BESIX, Proximus and i.Leco is unprecedented. With aug?e, smart and truly intelligent buildings are not about the future: we build them today, seamlessly, with data science as their foundations. i.Leco and its teams, along with our new colleagues and expertise, will be absorbed over time into aug.e in order to offer our clients first-class services in a simple, autonomous and highly transparent way, as well as to promote a collaborative and co-creative approach with all our respective ecosystems.?
