Leading consulting engineering and infrastructure advisory firm Zutari and AltX-listed 4Sight delivered a joint presentation at a recent Smart Cities and Buildings workshop to showcase their combined value offerings for clients. The focus was on fast-tracking the successful implementation of smart buildings and cities.

The combination of 4Sight’s domain expertise in digital transformation and Zutari’s scientific and engineering knowledge creates a unique value proposition to help customers maximise the value of their assets, particularly in terms of optimising energy and water use, and ultimately reduce their carbon footprints.

Both companies emphasise that their approach is strictly agnostic when it comes to technology—the co-created value is derived from consolidating the information from the underlying systems and making it available to the customer.

The collaboration between 4Sight and Zutari has been established in the context of the prevailing need to manage finite resources more responsibly. Companies and government entities, for example, need to put sensors in place to obtain granular information about their systems and facilities. However, it is also about a ‘big picture’ overview to meet environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals. In this context, accurate reporting saves costs in the long term by bringing about new efficiencies.

“Every customer is unique, and Zutari’s approach is to begin with gaining an understanding of our customer’s existing systems and business processes before we develop a suitable engineering approach to achieve their strategic objectives,” says Richard Matchett, Digital Practice Lead, Zutari.

“We recognise that a systematic, digital approach plays a key role to unlock value for our customers. The Internet of Things (IoT) generates lots of information, which can only create value if it is consolidated, analysed, and made available to decision makers and operators. That is where 4Sight comes in,” says Matchett.

4Sight’s Rudi Dreyer agrees, saying that his focus is very much on a sustainable data strategy to make the information in the various niche applications available in an easy-to-understand format for the various management roles within the customer base. All information, including data from the ERP, HR and BMS systems, is consolidated in what is termed a datavault.

4Sight follows the datavault 2.0 methodology to create a sustainable source system  and scalable data strategy. This one version of the truth is then available for reporting analytics and even prescriptive AI. It puts the customer’s management team in a position where every business decision is based on true, real-time insight and foresight.

"Because the platform is independent of the systems that generate the data, customers’ existing investments in technology are protected, and they can change or update those systems without compromising the data strategy,” says Dreyer. “The combination of Zutari and 4Sight creates a genuinely ground-breaking offering capable of turning the hype about smart buildings and smart cities into reality.”