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An Interview with Javad Hatami

from Builtrix

November 21, 2022

Javad Hatami is the CEO and Co-Founder of Builtrix, a fast-growing provider of data-driven energy intelligence solutions for energy experts, consultants and facility managers.

Can you tell us more about the predictive renewable energy source and demand optimisation tool for buildings that you’ve developed with PLATOON?

 

Builtrix developed an intelligent solution for Roma Capitale (RC) to overcome their challenges with energy monitoring, benchmarking, and forecasting with the aim to detect anomalies and support municipality energy managers to foster the implementation of the right actions for performance improvement and carbon footprint reduction. RC owns more than 2,000 buildings, mainly schools and offices as well as 70 sports facilities and 800 residential buildings with 27,000 apartments. Most of these assets need energy efficiency audits and interventions. All tertiary buildings owned by RC are equipped with a remote-control system within a performance contract addressed to heating, cooling and comfort management. It includes 6,500 electricity meters, 700,000 heat plant efficiency indicators and 160 of its buildings are served by photovoltaic (PV) plants ranging from 3 kW to 60 kW. We developed a solution for RC that can automatically analyse big data coming from gas, electricity meters and PV plants. This solution includes benchmarking tools for energy consumption & performance in municipality buildings, energy prediction, and ultimately to help RC to develop Energy communities using renewable sources. Builtrix solution is a plug-n-play solution for PLATOON energy big data analytical toolbox for optimised real-time energy system management in a simple way for energy managers.

 

Part of your award from PLATOON was an invitation to join the Transfer Programme. How do you feel this has benefitted your company?

 

We have been able to increase the TRL of our solution during the Tech transfer program. It also helped us to understand the real challenges a big city like Roma faces in terms of big data management of energy. During the programme we handled multi-stakeholder challenges that include people from Roma Capitale, SIMU, consulting firm work with municipality, utilities, and DSO that all of them involved in the value chain around energy big data. I am confident that after the programme, our technical and business competencies will have been significantly improved and we will be ready to deploy similar solutions for other cities, municipalities, and districts across the EU.

 

Besides the Technology Transfer programme, how do you feel your company has benefitted from its involvement with PLATOON? And what advice would you give to other companies given a similar opportunity?

 

Beyond technology advancement, the close collaboration with a multi-stakeholder challenge gives us more depth knowledge in working with the public sector and what challenges lay ahead in developing an innovative solution for this sector. This is not only a product issue, but also to engage with client and other consultants/partners. For example, we built our analytic toolbox on top of a data acquisition platform developed by the Italian partner ENGINERING.

 

The close collaboration with our partner was very important in mitigating the risks developed during the program. My advice to other companies participating in similar challenges is to understand the stakeholder concerns and priorities as it might change through the course of the opportunity, and engage with them as early as possible to mitigate risks associated with the development of the solution.

 

Your data-driven energy intelligence solution is offered as SaaS (Software as a Service). Why did you choose this format for your service, and what benefits do you think the format offers users?

 

Builtrix energy intelligence solution is a web-based software that also can be sold as an API to partner companies. We choose SaaS as this business model could reflect how the customer envisions using such a software service. This is a common model for software companies. For the customer, it has the benefit that they usually pay-as-go. We have a subscription model in that customers pay for our service as much as they need. This is a huge advantage for some customers that don’t want to invest upfront Capex to acquire new solutions. Moreover, it provides cost-efficiency, flexibility and scalability for us.

 

Javad, what inspired you to found Builtrix, and how did your previous experience in supporting SMEs and working on the Mariott TestBed programme help you?

 

I founded another start-up, named Optishower, with other co-founders in 2016. It was about a solution for water and energy monitoring in the hospitality sector that got attention from several hospitality brands such as Marriott hotels. We have piloted this solution in Marriot hotel in the Amsterdam which gives us lots of experience working with such an amazing brand. I scaled up the company and sold it in 2020. Based on this experience, I founded Builtrix in 2020, which focuses on energy big data.

 

Our world is going through hard times as climate adaptation is one of the key and important areas that is usually underrated. I have a big passion for living healthy and eco-friendly. My previous experience working in the water and energy sector helped me to find the opportunity to build a company that its ultimate mission is to accelerate the energy transition/decarbonised economy through data. I am also a member of the European Digital SME Alliance and work with other acceleration and EU-based programmes such as Erasmus For Young Entrepreneurs to help other Entrepreneurs to launch and grow their business.

 

At present, your platform is designed for commercial buildings. Do you have any plans to develop a solution suitable for firms constructing domestic buildings?

 

We started with the commercial and sector services as our niche market to develop and validate the business because it's a considerably big market with lots of opportunities to disrupt. Also, the regulation for the commercial sector is stricter compared to the residential sector, so there is more opportunities to alleviate the pain in this market. Meanwhile, EU roadmap to achieve net zero has a special focus on the commercial sector.

 

In future, we want to expand to the residential market by partnering with relevant stakeholders such as utilities and DSOs. I could imagine one of our products such as our Virtual Energy Disaggregation solution that we recently launched for one of our customers in Switzerland could be very interesting for the residential sector. Because without any extra Capex investment to acquire sensors and hardware, our NILM algorithm could help property owners to find out the device’s contribution to their power load, and find abnormalities and energy-saving opportunities in their properties.