Leading the Future of Smart Buildings: Carsten Liesener

Marcus Emmet, Consultant at Beaumont Bailey, sits down with leaders from across the Smart Buildings space to discuss the year gone by, what trends have driven the sector and what to expect in 2024.

Carsten Liesener – CEO Europe, Middle East and Africa – Smart Infrastructure at Siemens

Over the last 15 years, Liesener has taken on various global leadership roles at Siemens Building Technologies in Switzerland. After managing the global fire safety business and later overall product sales, he was responsible for Europe as CEO of Building Technologies. In April 2019, he took on the CEO role for Siemens Smart Infrastructure, Solutions & Services in Europe, which was expanded to the Europe, Middle East and Africa region in October 2022.

How would you summarise 2023 for the Smart Infrastructure industry? 

It was a year dominated by three prevailing forces.

Firstly, we continued to see the long-term shift in customer expectations away from traditional key buying criteria of cost and quality, towards those orientated around digitalisation, software, connectivity, and energy efficiency requirements. This change was apparent long before 2023 and is set grow even stronger in 2024.

Secondly, there has been rapid technological innovation in the industry’s smart product and service offering, combined with IoT and non IoT software has laid the groundwork for new systems and solutions. Historically, for many product-solution-service businesses, the product and service business units have been highly profitable, and we may see the solution side begin to catch up.

Finally, there has been a significant amount of regulation and public incentives geared towards high energy efficiency, circular economy, cyber security, and wellbeing. These new initiatives are having a profound effect on the pace of smart technology deployment in the built environment.

What was the biggest success story to come out of your organisation in 2023? 

Despite 2023’s difficult market conditions, there have been many but the one that springs to mind is our strategic partnership with the University of Birmingham. In 2021 we teamed up with the University to deliver their carbon neutrality roadmap on their beautiful campus, through the deployment of our specialist technology. It was achieved by combining of digital sensors and analytic technologies. Decentralized energy generation and storage and renewable energy concepts will further help change users’ behaviour to transform the University’s Edgbaston and Dubai campuses into the world’s smartest university.  Through this partnership, the University of Birmingham has made a great start on the journey to Net Zero and digital transformation and we look forward to supporting them for many years to come. We’ve been so glad to be part of this amazing project, and in doing so have set the new global standard for smart campuses!

What is a trend that no one is talking about in the industry?

As an industry we could be more effective at communicating to the customer the value drivers of our technologies. These value drivers fall into two broad categories: installation excellence (linked to traditional purchasing criteria of cost and quality) and operational excellence i.e. the tangible benefits of new technologies.

We must continue to demonstrate to the customer the reduction in maintenance costs, energy savings, or additional revenue streams that will be achieved if our technologies are adopted. These outcomes not only have to be shown as proven, but more importantly guaranteed, which in-turn positively influence a customer’s P&L in an end-to-end way.

What can we expect to see in 2024?

As the global economy still looks to find its feet in 2024, we may see slower growth rates in some industry verticals. However, themes such as sustainability, decarbonisation and IoT will continue to persistently drive certain areas forward at high growth rates.

We’ll also see the normalisation of the product side of things. The supply chain issues of the last 24 months meant that when a supplier had available stock it was being snapped up incredibility fast. Now that things are more settles, 2024 should allow for more sustained and normalised growth rates in the product business.

What is one thing the smart building/infrastructure industry could be doing better in 2024?

There is no doubt that the industry would benefit from building up partner ecosystems – especially in the IoT world. These days the line between competitor / customer / supplier can be very blurred which creates huge opportunities for collaboration.

There is so much that we could learn from each other, which would provide genuine mutual benefit – so why not have positive exchanges through partner ecosystems? This is a core element of the Siemens Xcelerator ecosystem: a single interface for us, our partners, customers and developers to shape digital transformation together.

What is your one piece of advice for leaders who want to make positive change in the industry in 2024?

From a commercial perspective, leaders should ensure they are focused on the value proposition i.e. use cases and guaranteed outcomes you can deliver.

From a human perspective, to be successful in talent attraction you must communicate the wider benefit to society your business offers. Today’s younger generation are more purpose driven than ever before, rather than being motivated by financial or status incentives when deciding on a company or career path. Given that we as an industry are on the front line in the battle to reduce carbon emissions, we’re an attractive destination for many young professionals and as leaders we must capitalise on this.

At Siemens we are constantly investing in our people, and this is also crucial. Whether it be facilitating communities and networks within the organisation or developing robust learning platforms for individuals to continue to grow, it’s imperative to invest in the development of people.

If you would like to discuss any of the topics raised in this piece or if you need support with your leadership resourcing strategy, please get in touch with Marcus Emmet on marcus.emmet@beaumontbailey.com