A building’s performance matters to everyone who uses it. For facilities teams, that means understanding what needs attention. For owners, it means managing costs and improving efficiency. For the people inside, it means feeling comfortable and confident in their surroundings.

These priorities come together in Bob Sharon’s conversation with Anthony Sapountzis on the DevReady Podcast. Blue IoT’s founder returns to discuss the company’s evolution and the purpose behind its technology: helping organisations create healthier, safer and more energy-efficient buildings.

Connecting information to action

Bob describes a vision of bringing information from multiple building systems into a single source of truth. Connecting building management, energy monitoring and other infrastructure can give teams a clearer understanding of how the whole building is operating.

That visibility serves a practical purpose: helping teams fine-tune performance while considering comfort, operating costs and environmental impact together. Bob’s ambition extends to offices, shopping centres and public buildings, with particular concern for people who are more vulnerable to illness and want greater confidence in the spaces they visit.

A platform shaped by experience

The conversation also explores the rebuild of Blue IoT’s platform. Bob explains how earlier processes required substantial manual configuration, including coding individual alerts. Greater self-service capability now makes the platform easier to manage, alongside clearer visibility into whether sensors are connected, their signal strength and their battery condition.

These changes reflect a practical lesson from developing building technology: making a system easier to operate also matters to the cost of delivering and maintaining it.

Understanding conditions where people actually are

Indoor air quality is a central theme of the episode. Bob challenges whether a few sensors can adequately represent a large floor when conditions differ between individual spaces.

At a Gold Coast school, he describes how elevated CO₂ readings prompted an evolving response involving monitoring, exhaust fans, door vents and airflow improvements. The project has also contributed to research with Queensland University of Technology and Thrive IAQ, exploring classroom air quality, absenteeism and student performance.

Choosing technology around the problem

Bob also discusses why different applications need different connections. Wireless monitoring and critical plant control have distinct requirements, making the choice of infrastructure an engineering decision.

Looking ahead, the conversation explores how AI, machine learning, airflow modelling, digital twins and human expertise can work together to improve building performance. The direction is clear: use better information to guide practical improvements, then keep assessing the results.

Watch the full conversation

Hear Bob Sharon and Anthony Sapountzis discuss Blue IoT’s journey, indoor air quality and the future of connected buildings in Episode 328 of the DevReady Podcast: How AI and IoT Are Creating Healthier, Smarter Buildings.