Transforming Industry

6 7 FINANCIAL SERVICES A safe reopening for business RXR Realty is the third-largest real estate owner in New York City, with over 25 million square feet of space across the tri-state area. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, RXR Realty needed a way to integrate new safety measures for tenants after its buildings reopened for business. Working with key partners McKinsey & Co., Infosys, Rigado, and Microsoft, the company used Microsoft Azure to create and deploy an intelligent, secure, hyperscalable solution—in just a few months. This enabled the company to reopen for business using Azure IoT and the intelligent edge to empower tenant safety. The solution, RxWell, grew out of an initiative RXR Realty had launched in early 2019 to transform RXR properties into smart buildings. The goal was to go beyond using tech to automate building systems, adding a more hospitality-focused experience for occupants—a blending of physical and digital offerings that RXR likes to call ‘phygital’. Cory Clarke, RXR’s vice president of Product Management, explains: “Landlords typically have a relationship with the tenant—the person that pays the rent—and not necessarily the individual occupier. We wanted to shift towards a more user-centric focus and serve that end occupier.” RXR worked with Leap by McKinsey to help establish and launch a whole new business unit with RXR’s Digital Lab as its innovation engine, creating new digital products and services, building proprietary software, and forging strategic partnerships with best-of- breed solutions. Infosys came on board as the Lab’s systems integration partner. Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the company already planned to leverage IoT to monitor buildings’ mechanical systems, air quality, and more. These devices would feed into a cloud-based platform where the data would be analyzed, powering real-time info dashboards for tenants and management. As a statewide stay-at-home order shut down all non-essential services in New York, development work on ” We wanted to shift towards a more user-centric focus and serve that end occupier” RxWell shifted as the initiative became a core means of coordinating essential services, communicating with tenants and occupants, and screening everyone who entered a building for signs of Covid-19. RxWell took shape as a comprehensive, public-health- based, data-driven program that merges physical and digital assets to help keep employees informed and supported during the pandemic and beyond. Powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) and the intelligent edge, and firmly rooted in responsible AI principles, RxWell leverages Azure to combine real-time computer vision, sensors, AI, mobile apps and dashboards, and in-person service offerings. It’s a new take on building management. “Instead of being focused on increasing density, we focused now on the reverse—on decreasing density,” says Clarke. “We’re managing the same numbers, but it’s with a different end goal in mind.” Read the full case study >