The story of Infogrid, a smart building solutions company founded in 2018, is a story of noticing a single task being done inefficiently, and extrapolating it to solve a global issue. 

The founder, Will Cowell de Gruchy, worked at a private equity business and was involved in conducting due diligence on businesses the firm planned to invest in or acquire. On one visit to a dairy farm targeted for investment, he noticed a sheet of paper with temperature readings recorded at the same level and weeks in advance. He wondered why capturing and tracking temperature in the facility couldn’t be automated using sensors, which would save time while also building accuracy into the process. Upon investigating, he found that, while there were commercially available sensors that could record temperature in a building, they were expensive and pushed out an endless stream of data that could not be used effectively to make intelligent decisions. That led to the vision of building sensors that were cost-effective, smart enough to provide useful data, and connected in order to allow smart management of an environment. And thus Infogrid was born. 

Now boasting 200-plus employees across North America, Europe and Asia, Infogrid is working to use building operations data to help reduce carbon emissions. 

Infogrid’s main customers are enterprise and mid-level clients with a significant real estate footprint. Hundreds of organizations use Infogrid make their buildings and facilities safer, more secure places for their employees.

Twenty-eight percent of all global carbon emissions come from the operation of buildings. Infogrid looks to reduce carbon emissions by tracking the performance of a building — including levels of CO2, pollutants, ventilation, and cooling or heating of rarely used spaces.

Infogrid’s platform has been built with scale and affordability in mind. They are a sensor-agnostic business and use cost-effective, easy-to-install sensors so that any building can be retrofitted, which creates greater efficiency in multiple buildings. 

Although some companies were hurt due to the pandemic, COVID-19 accelerated the need for businesses to bring their real estate into the 21st century. At the start of the pandemic, Infogrid saw a huge increase in demand for its remote monitoring offering.

As the pandemic has eased and employees return to the workplace, the company’s growth is being fueled by workplace managers in monitoring air quality, occupancy, and cleanliness in their buildings. In doing so, they can track when a building is busiest, where people spend the most time, and what the CO2 levels are like in different areas of the building.

The company has big plans for the future. Its current focus for Q2 is the launch of an environmental, social and governance (ESG) product. From talking to customers, the company learned that asset and sustainability managers spend an inordinate amount of time trying to pull together sustainability metrics into one place. Some need the data to meet statutory reporting requirements, while others need it to be able to demonstrate to employees, investors and clients that they are taking their role as global citizens seriously. Getting to this data can take months for some clients, but Infogrid allows to it be accessable in minutes. Additionally, Infogrid can provide insights to reduce a building’s carbon footprint and maximize the healthiness of the workplace.

For more information, visit Infogrid’s website.