Page 21 - RC19 RealcommEDGE 2019 Fall Issue

Other challenges were more common and well-known
to international partnerships. The ability to work collab-
oratively across teams with differing time zones and
work days was an area to surmount; cultural differences
between countries and languages was another. The UX
design team found that their user interface and mobile
app needed adjustments for linguistic differences
because of the way the Arabic language is structured
and the way sentences are visualized on the app.

The Future
Beyond the environmental attributes, Bee’ah was
ultimately designed to be a personalized, intelligent,
frictionless environment. It is accessible to interaction
in different ways: through a mobile app, through voice
or through a chat. There is no longer a need for tradi-
tional badge access or a receptionist; a digital assistant
or interactive screen helps visitors with entry and the
system remembers that visitor and their preferences.

The Sharjah headquarters serves as a showcase for
Bee’ah’s customers, visitors and the public. Based on
these successes, the company is now consulting for cit-
ies and municipalities, and hopes to replicate its model
of success in other areas.

JCI sees lots of interest in developing these technol-
ogies for smart offices in Asia and the U.S. Lessons
learned from the Digital Twin use cases include new
ways of thinking about space planning and manage-
ment. It has uncovered a new, seamless way to manage
the whole life cycle, from design to construction to
maintenance. Perhaps the end result will be to digitize
every building on the planet.

Ada Ma leads Platform & Strategic Partner-
ships of the Johnson Controls’ Digital Vault, a
data management platform for the smart built
environment, and creates the partnership
ecosystem to drive growth of the platform. She
was part of the co-founding team for the creation of Johnson
Controls’ first data lake, and her passion is to help customers
digitally transform their buildings and operations to provide
better experiences and outcomes.

Elyse Hobson is a product manager of the
Johnson Controls’ Digital Vault, a data manage-
ment platform for the smart built environment.
She serves as a lead product manager for the
smart transformation of the Bee’ah headquar-
ters. Her passion is to help customers digitally transform their
buildings through the development of smart experiences which
leverage cutting edge technologies.

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