In this episode of The IoT Unicorn Podcast, Cory Clarke, VP of Product Management and Strategic Partnerships at RXR Realty, discusses some of the IoT solutions his company is using to facilitate a safer return to the workplace during COVID-19.

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00:00 Pete Bernard: Cory, thanks for joining us, appreciate you taking the time. And I've done a little bit of looking at your LinkedIn profile and kind of understanding where RXR is at, but maybe you can kinda give us a little introduction about who you are and what your story is, and then we can talk a little bit about what you're doing.

 

00:19 Cory Clarke: Sure. I'm Cory Clarke. I lead product at RXR's digital labs. RXR is a New York real estate company, we own around 26 million square feet, 20 or 30 buildings, many really iconic ones like the stair at Lee High or the Helmsley Building. And yeah. Before RXR, I worked at WeWork for a couple of years, leading their Powered by We Group and Powered by We Technology. That was the technology they were building for enterprise clients to improve the experience of the workplace. And always kind of been interested in the overall workplace experience, actually I trained as an architect.

 

01:03 S1: Yeah, I see that.

 

01:05 CC: Seven years of architecture school, and then got entranced by technology and started working in software development and never really looked back. I did a lot of work for companies doing intranets and a lot of employee enablement, and really got interested in how technology can transform the employee experience, and that's what led me to WeWork and ultimately to RXR.

 

01:29 S1: Yeah. Well, it's interesting, you mentioned that... I talk to a lot of folks, and it seems every company is turning into some kind of technology company, or every company needs to have an element of software technology as part of its strategy. There's no such thing as a kind of a pure play, non-tech company anymore.

 

01:47 CC: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Every financial company is a technology company, I think every real estate company is eventually gonna be a technology company.

 

01:55 S1: Yeah. I was actually... A kind of a side bar, but I was futzing around with these bluetooth connected water systems over my long weekend made by Orbit. And Orbit makes all these little sprinkler googahs. And... So now they have these Bluetooth connected googahs, and they have an app that you download, and it's pretty cool, but you can tell at Orbit at some point the switch went off to say, "We're not just a sprinkler company, now we need to be a tech company with sprinklers and we need to write apps and we need to do stuff." So I suspect realtors like RXR and other folks are like, "Yeah, we're doing this thing, but now we really need the tech to take it to the next level." And...

 

02:37 CC: Yeah. I think the real estate world's kind of where I feel like where retail was maybe in the late 90s, early aughts, where like the... Brick-and-mortar was making this huge transition to online and real estate really in the last five, 10 years has gotten a ton of investment in PropTech and trying to make that same transition into a more... Like... Technology enabled services.

 

03:02 S1: Yeah. No, I can imagine. I asked you this before we started recording, but... You're kind of... You said you were a East Coast, you're an East Coast transplant.

 

03:14 CC: Yes.

 

03:15 S1: Or you're a... You've acclimated to become an East Coaster. I'm from New Jersey myself, that's why when I saw the background in New York, I thought maybe you were East Coast-y. You consider yourself now the East Coast person.

 

03:28 CC: Yeah, I am naturalized... Naturalized.

 

03:31 S1: Naturalized, yes excellent.

 

03:32 CC: Yeah. I've been in New York City... There's definitely people that were born and bred here, but there's a lot of people that come here and never leave. And yeah...

 

03:43 S1: Awesome. Yeah, it's an incredible area. I was actually in Long Island this summer for a little bit and got the New York vibe there, so that was good.

 

03:52 CC: Yeah, it's definitely been interesting during this time. [chuckle]

 

03:56 S1: Yeah. Yeah, clearly. And speaking of crazy times... You guys are kind of right in the middle of a lot of big transformations going on, not only technologically from your business transforming, but obviously the world is transforming in the way we are being much more remote in what we're doing. And maybe you can share with us where does RXR see offices and office work sort of transforming and moving post-COVID?

 

04:29 CC: Yeah, and I think the... The phrase is, the reports of the office demise are greatly exaggerated. I don't see the office going away, but I do think it is gonna fundamentally change whereas... Prior to COVID, people worked in the office and regardless of the type of work there was, with most industries, like an expectation you were gonna come to the office to work. And now, this mass experiment in work from home has proven out that people can do work from home, and particularly do focused work. If I'm gonna sit down and work on a spreadsheet for eight hours, I can do that anywhere. I can do it at home, cafe, co-working, it doesn't matter. And I think companies are now comfortable letting their employees do that. There's trust there that they can get their work done and do it effectively, but the collaboration and teamwork is not as effective remotely.

 

05:35 CC: And definitely from all of our surveys and research, there are gaps there and that's where I think the office is gonna be... It's gonna be focused on the teamwork. It's gonna move from focused work to teamwork. And I think it's gonna change the nature of the office where it isn't so much that you have a desk and you come into your desk every day, it's your team has a space, you may come in to meet with your team when you need to. It might be that you have a... Team norms and you come in Monday, Wednesday, Friday or it might be that you have tools that you can collaborate across the team and decide, "Hey, we're all coming to work tomorrow for a meeting." But I think it's gonna be focused on that collaboration and move away from individual... Individual...

 

06:25 S1: Yeah. Well, Microsoft have been on that journey as well in terms of shifting their office layouts from the individual office to more team rooms or team-oriented spaces. And so I think what you're saying is more flexibility around dedicated spaces and more team-oriented spaces and the idea of working from home is gonna be sort of baked into people's protocols, but obviously the personal collaboration still needs to be there at some point.

 

07:00 CC: Yeah. Yeah, I think it's gonna be an interesting challenge in terms of managing capacity. I think prior to this, most companies kind of allocated a certain amount per person, and it was...

 

07:11 S1: Sure.

 

07:12 CC: A couple hundred square feet with the assumption that most people would probably be in and most people would probably need somewhere to work and a desk.

 

07:19 S1: Sure, yeah.

 

07:20 CC: But I think all of those standards in terms of allowable square foot per person and overall density are going out the window because, if only half your workforce is gonna come in, or maybe it's a quarter, I don't know, but like, what... Being able to plan for that capacity, make sure you have enough room... You can flex when there's... Times happen when... It's the beginning of the quarter, and everybody wants to get together to collaborate...

 

07:48 S1: Right, right. Yeah.

 

07:48 CC: And you're planning, like, "How do you allow for 100%?"

 

07:51 S1: Right, exactly. Huh, yeah, no, it's interesting. One of the things I like about this kind of remote collaboration is that it tends to normalize the meetings in terms of who's in the room versus who's not. I mean, it used to be where if you were "dialed in", and not in the room, you were sort of in the... You were in the cheap seats.

 

08:10 CC: Yeah.

 

08:11 S1: In terms of the conversation. And now everyone's sort of in the same cheap seats, I guess, at the table. And so it'll be interesting to see how some of those norms transfer back into the physical office, you know? And the meeting protocols and things.

 

08:27 CC: Yeah, it has been interesting. So we've actually come back to our office, full time. Most of the people... I mean, there's still some people that are either higher risk or have... School hasn't opened yet... There's definitely a lot of extenuating circumstances. So it's probably like, 60% have actually come back full time. But it has already created some interesting challenges from like the collaboration standpoint where, yeah, there's... Again like, haves and have nots with like, "Are you in the room? Are you on the screen?" There's definitely more effort to include people on the screen now. Whereas I think beforehand, it was like you... Maybe you forgot to dial them in 'cause it was that one person. Or they're like...

 

09:08 S1: Exactly. Yeah, how many times does that happen? You start a meeting then half way through it's like, "Oh. We forgot to turn on the thing," you know?

 

09:10 CC: You can only come one the phone... Yeah. Where now there's much more conscious effort to include people on the line, but it is still hard to include them in the casual ad hoc conversations where you bump into somebody in the hallway or the... Standing six feet away from them in the kitchen, you know?

 

09:34 S1: Yeah, yeah. We used to have a thing, one of our... We had a, one of our satellite offices down in Palo Alto, and we had a kind of a live feed at the coffee machine, where we had a monitor and a camera, and it was sort of like permanently on and connected to the coffee machine, like the coffee area down in Palo Alto. And so anyone who went in to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen was sort of connected in real-time to the folks in Palo Alto, if they happen to bump into them and they're getting a cup of coffee there. So that was kind of a cool way of connecting spaces. But yeah, no, I'm sure I mean that's... Obviously, this has kind of been a crazy time and in so many ways, but in a lot of discussions I have with folks like yourselves, it's like, "Well, what are some of the things that'll stick? Or how do we... What are we gonna get out of this that will improve long-term the ability to collaborate and connect with other folks?" So that's interesting to hear. I know you guys are doing this thing called RxWell, and maybe you can talk a little bit about that. 'Cause one of the things that I understand about RXR is that you're a realty company and a big one, but also you're becoming more of a technology enabler, or a technology platform for other companies. So maybe you can tell me a little bit about what's the RxWell thinking approach.

 

10:56 CC: Sure. Yeah, so I think... Actually, before COVID, in the... Those wonderful days before COVID, [chuckle] we'd actually started developing our own technology to do two things. Like, one to perform... Like, improve the operational performance of our spaces and use technology just to have more insights on how the buildings are being run, how our energy's being used, whether we're meeting sustainability goals and have kind of a unified view on all of our buildings in terms of how they perform. And then the other was really changing our relationship to occupants. Most real estate companies are focused on the tenant, which is the person that signs the lease.

 

11:43 S1: Uh-huh. I see.

 

11:44 CC: And... So that might be a head of real estate, that might be somebody that's... Never even comes to the building 'cause they might be making these decisions from afar. And then there's the actual occupants, you know? Their employees that come in every day. And we're trying to pivot towards a more user-centric focus and serve those individuals. So making tools and technology to improve the experience for our occupants. So, we kind of started that journey, as I said, pre-COVID, then around February, March did a major pivot. The technology and the underpinnings are the same but focusing a lot more on safety and wellness. So using the same kind of data pipeline and IoT infrastructure to get information about the building and air quality, occupancy, the same stuff we were gonna use for managing operational excellence, now we're able to use that data to make sure that we're managing our humidity to stay within 40% to 60%. Because that reduces transmission of COVID.

 

12:52 S1: I see.

 

12:54 CC: And make sure our occupancy is below 50%, because that's been mandated by New York State. We've built a suite of tools that really help us manage the performance of the buildings, and around COVID related factors and give those insights to our property managers as well as our tenants. But then the tools we're working on for the end employees, we've also launched those. And there are features to improve their experience. There's news about the building, and we're able to push alerts to them, there's food and beverage ordering, but a lot of that stuff has become much more critical during COVID, so that...

 

13:34 S1: Sure.

 

13:34 CC: Food and beverage, we've made relationships with a lot of different caterers so our... People in our buildings can get food.

 

13:40 S1: Right. Of course.

 

13:41 CC: They get it delivered in a touch-less way. We're rolling out touch-less access, but more importantly, taking the data that we're using to manage them and providing that to the end users too. So I can open up my app today and know how many people are in the building right now, but also even what the foot traffic is in the lobby and when the next peak foot traffic is, so that if I wanna go out to lunch, I can avoid the crowd.

 

14:08 S1: Right, right. Well that makes sense. So like traffic management, that's interesting. So there's kind of the lobby traffic, and this is also interesting, because I think people's attitudes toward data around themselves are also changing in this pandemic and they're more willing to give data about themselves, or have themselves more "monitored." I'm using air quotes here. But so in terms of traffic management, like people counting, do you foresee things like being able to understand occupancy in rooms and things too in terms of monitoring that, or how does that... Does that fit in there somehow?

 

14:46 CC: Yeah, so we've started at the building level to make sure that we're opening our buildings and managing in the safest way possible, but we've also been developing the tech at the space level and piloting it in our own spaces. So we're able to, with the overhead sensors we've installed, understand how many people are in every single conference room, at every single desk, and it's been invaluable to us in bringing back our own employees, 'cause we know exactly the density levels we have, and we've invited everyone back to the office, but we know only a certain percentage are showing up. We know that it's still safe from a density standpoint. The sensors that we have in place, they use imaging device and computer vision. It's not a camera, it doesn't provide enough resolution to recognize anybody, but...

 

15:44 S1: Image sensor as opposed to camera, which is different.

 

15:47 CC: Yeah. But it does provide enough information to know whether everyone's social distancing, and the average social distance in our space has been over seven feet just... By just bringing back 60% of the office. So it's been really helpful in managing towards our goals relative to COVID and managing behavior, but then also is gonna be useful as we re-plan for however we're gonna be managing space going forward, we know...

 

16:17 S1: That's fascinating. Well, 'cause you're talking about forecasting for capacity and now you're actually building up data to say, "Well, if you have this many employees and they're coming in this often, we can show the data that says, "This is how much space you really need." Especially when... Now, when you're talking about distancing and other density issues, right?

 

16:35 CC: Yeah, and a lot of the conference rooms that we had for eight, 12, 20 person meetings, or even two-person meetings, a lot of those are happening partially online, so maybe we don't need a two-person meeting room anymore and we need a one person phone booth.

 

16:51 S1: Right. Yeah, yeah, the phone rooms. We have some cool phone... Well, back when I used to spend time on campus, we had, in the newer buildings, phone rooms, focus rooms, team rooms... They were sort of like Russian nesting dolls of space that you could put yourself into, which I think makes sense. The old school buildings we had were, yeah, you've got the 24-person conference room or the 18-person conference room, and you'd have two people sitting in there which made no sense, but... So that's interesting. And I wonder also, are you doing things around... 'cause I know when I go to the local health club now, which has re-opened, I'm talking about tennis, but I walk up and it does a little temperature scan of me, and... Is that another part of the building access that you guys are thinking about, or is that...

 

17:39 CC: Yeah, so the RxWell platform, it's a full solution for the building. So it has the hardware and software, so we have installed thermal temperature scanners or elevated body temperature scanners at every single entrance. So that when people walk in, the ones we've deployed, scan fast enough that they catch you at pace so you don't have to pause.

 

18:03 S1: Wow! Cool.

 

18:04 CC: You can just walk right past. And then the data from those, we actually, again, push it into our platform, so we are able to watch trends of elevated body temperatures throughout the day. So we don't let you in if you have a fever, but...

 

18:17 S1: Sure.

 

18:18 CC: If the number of people trying to enter with a fever keeps going up, it probably means something's going on in the building. And we can also just view average body temperature of the entire population of our buildings, again.

 

18:34 S1: Wow!

 

18:35 CC: So that's been interesting, and then the app itself that we've rolled out for the employees also has the New York State's mandated... Basically that we ask three questions of every person...

 

18:44 S1: Right, you're self attestation... [18:48] ____ and everything there...

 

18:48 CC: So we get analytics on that as well, and interestingly, we've also made a partnership with a local health provider for telemedicine, because we found as people were taking that questionnaire... The second question we have is, "Do you have any symptoms of COVID? Do you have a headache? Do you have a dry cough?" And you start to read those questions and you're like, "I kinda do have a headache, and [19:15] ____ it's linked to having COVID"

 

19:16 S1: Yeah. Who doesn't have a headache? [laughter]

 

19:18 S1: Yeah, so you can actually call a medical professional during that flow, and they'll talk you through it and help you with a diagnosis and even get you testing if you think you have it, 'cause it's... Yeah, it's just... From a user experience standpoint, it's a little daunting the first couple times you take one of those questionnaires and you really...

 

19:39 S1: Yeah, sure.

 

19:40 CC: Think about it.

 

19:42 S1: Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I think that's fascinating. That's gonna become kind of the standard, I think of the kind of stuff that you're looking at, which is cool, especially how it works together. And then... Then you get data, you get history, you get real analysis over time of a real population of people and how they're behaving. You've mentioned actually, the shift from the...

 

20:04 S1: The rent payer versus the actual occupier, does that also apply in this world where people are gonna be working from home or other places? Does the platform sort of follow the person too? Would that apply maybe to some home use as well? Do you foresee a world where an employer is like, "Hey, we have this platform that's going to help you maintain distance and temperature and health when you're at the office... " but your home office is also technically, it's sort of like, can we consider that a part of the office as well? Does it extend to the person at home, maybe?

 

20:41 CC: It does in that... The questionnaire, we've definitely had some tenants that require it regardless of whether you're coming to the office or not, 'cause they just wanna use it to understand the overall health of their workforce. And then we have been particularly thinking of the post-COVID use cases, like building and functionality so people can express intent as to whether they're coming in today. 'Cause if we're on the same team, I'm gonna come into the office but I'm not gonna come in unless you're coming in because what's the point in coming in to do team work if my team's not there? So [21:17] ____ ways...

 

21:18 S1: Right, right.

 

21:18 CC: For people to know when they should or shouldn't come in or when's the best time to come in? But it's been more focused at the hybrid, the fact that people are gonna be both remote and in the office versus just servicing that kind of remote user... Yeah.

 

21:40 S1: Yeah, no, that's...

 

21:41 CC: We're also coming at it from the real estate owner perspective, so... [chuckle]

 

21:46 S1: Right. Yeah, of course. Of course. Yeah, and it's kind of a big question mark, we'll see. Even... When things open up, I think there'll be this hybrid experience for people and it also depends on the industry, obviously. So we'll see how people do that. I actually just finished my long weekend. I actually just remodelled this room here in my house to be a more, I would say, semi-permanent work from home office where it was very transitory previously. But it looks like it's gonna be a long haul work from home space. Even though I only live like two blocks from Microsoft campus, I figure I'm gonna probably be... A pretty big chunk of the time.

 

22:27 S1: But then it's like, how do I extend my work space into this room even though I have another office a few blocks away? And extend the Microsoft work experience here. So I think people will be experimenting with that too, just kind of where they're at, but... Yeah, interesting. And anything, I guess another question, since you're operating in Manhattan, what's that been like in terms of the real estate market in Manhattan and how have you guys navigated that? There's probably just a lot of uncertainty right now, I assume.

 

23:04 CC: Yes and no. It's interesting, our... Almost every... All of our tenants are... They are coming back to the office. They haven't expressed any intent to abandon. I think what's been shifting is more how they're using the space. And part of it is they're decreasing density because of COVID. So even if they're decreasing the number of people, they still kinda need the same amount of space, 'cause they're also decreasing density. But one of the things we've seen, and it's interesting... RXR is a... We own both urban and suburban real estate, so we have spaces in Westchester and Long Island around New York. We've had a lot of our tenants looking for... To switch to like a hub and a spoke model, where they have a couple anchor offices in the city, but they also wanna have satellite offices that are closer to home for people so they have a kind of third space. Where they... Maybe they don't wanna work at home 'cause you know, whatever, there's kids, dog, distractions, something, they wanna be able to come to a space to work or do their video conferencing, but they don't wanna come to the office, per se.

 

24:23 S1: Right, right. So sort of deconstructing the office space...

 

24:27 CC: Yeah.

 

24:27 S1: Into more atomic elements.

 

24:29 CC: Yes, so we've had...

 

24:31 S1: Yeah, and I think Microsoft's starting to do some of that too, in terms of also just making sure we can attract a good, diverse set of talent. One of the issues we had is obviously moving to Redmond, Washington or whatever doesn't really make sense for a lot of folks, and I think one of the benefits maybe of this kind of deconstruction of that office space is that it allows people to be part of the team without necessarily always physically being here. And we can hire from a broader talent pool that doesn't have to necessarily pack up their house and move cross country to Redmond. And maybe this idea of these satellite offices and things where people can go... You're right, you don't have the dog barking and all the other stuff going on, but you can work and be focused. So that could be a really interesting part of the story as well. By the way, I should also mention, just as a nod to our sponsors here that this all runs on Azure, all your stuff, so that's like...

 

25:31 CC: Yes.

 

25:32 S1: That's a good thing. Hashtag Azure. Gotta pay the bills, you know. Cool. So yeah, no, this has been great. Any final words you wanna add? Any kind of words of wisdom, prophecy that, [chuckle] you want to give us a heads up on?

 

25:51 CC: No, other than... I think being in New York has been interesting in that we were, for better or for worse, like the beginning of the outbreak in the United States, and really the hotspot for a while, and it's been... You know, we're knock on wood, kinda through the woods, it's been calm through lockup as well.

 

26:09 S1: Coming through the other side, yeah.

 

26:11 CC: But we're, I think, the first suffering the aftermath as well. I know my first day back at work was a little... Made me nervous, you know. It's like...

 

26:25 S1: Yeah, sure.

 

26:25 CC: I gotta get on the train, I haven't even left my house in a month, right? I kinda became a xenophobe. But we've come back, it's been... We have not had any outbreaks in our space. We're able to maintain our social distancing. It's...

 

26:45 S1: Right, right. It's working.

 

26:48 CC: Yeah, it's working.

 

26:49 S1: Yeah, yeah. Well.

 

26:51 CC: And just been... Been nice.

 

26:52 S1: That's a good thing. That's a good thing. Yeah, it is that confidence of... I think I'd mentioned tennis. I hadn't played for almost six months and played a doubles match the other day, and we were kind of distanced and all that. And kind of... About halfway through we were like, "Is this working? Are we... Is this good?" And we were like, "Yeah, this actually, this works." So I think people are getting confidence that these new things can work. They're getting more comfortable with it, and... Yeah. And just kinda move forward. But yeah you guys have been sort of at the epicentre here so... Sort of good lessons learned. But yeah, no, great. I appreciate the time, Cory. I think the stuff that you're doing is definitely cutting edge and... [27:31] ____ have a big impact for folks in your area and hopefully beyond as well, so... Yeah. Really appreciate the time.

 

27:39 CC: Oh, thank you, I appreciate you having me on.

 

27:42 S1: Sounds good. Alright, Corey. Take care.

 

27:44 CC: Alright, thank you.