Technology

Building Credibility

By Finnian Durkin April 13, 2012

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With all the time we spend in large buildings, their environments can have a huge impact on the quality of our lives. Does one tenant have a recording studio blaring bass-heavy music at all hours? Is there enough natural light? How energy efficient is it? Thats all information a tenant might want before committing to a long-term lease. But its information thats surprisingly difficult to find until its sometimes too late to do anything about it.

Into this information gap steps Honest Buildings, a virtual Facebook- style fan page for individual buildings thats being beta-tested in Seattle with the goal of providing a public arena so tenants, landlords and companies that provide services to buildings can share information.

As of yet, there is no place where the ecosystem of an entire building can meet and congregate, share information and promote new ideas, says founder Riggs Kubiak.

Honest Buildings provides a social-media platform for each building in its portfolio. A buildings page might offer information about square footage, parking and upcoming maintenance. There are chat boards on which tenants, landlords and other stakeholders can make comments, exchange information, perhaps even arrange to have lunch. With people increasingly finding ways to network based on common interestsbooks, movies and sports, for exampleHonest Buildings provides a venue for people who happen to live or work in the same building.

Prospective tenants might want to know how a buildings energy efficiency rating compares to others in the area. Landlords might want to gauge the quality of service provided by the company maintaining its heating and air conditioning systems. Tenants will be able to rate those services while owners and vendors alike will be able to add and edit content, which will be checked and maintained by Honest Buildings IT department.

The built environment has historically been a very closed book, says Kubiak, whose cofounders are his sister, Garrett Kubiak, and her friend, Cody Roberts. By increasing transparency about buildings, Kubiak believes tenants will be able to make better choices and building owners will be inclined to increase services and improve such things as energy efficiency to meet consumer demand.

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