Commercial buildings with top efficiency ratings can still leak energy through their daily operations, a Qatar-based technology founder has said, arguing that hitting the country’s sustainability targets depends less on how buildings are designed and more on how they are run.
Even modern structures with high efficiency ratings incur energy waste due to minor operational inefficiencies that go unnoticed during routine facility maintenance, said Arfaz Khan, founder and CTO of ARVIS.
Reflecting on how his own thinking on the subject has shifted, Khan said: “Before that, I probably thought about sustainability as something you design into a building. Now I see a lot of it as something that happens in the way a building is operated every day.
A building can be designed incredibly well and still waste energy because of a small operational inefficiency that nobody notices.
“A system runs longer than it needs to, equipment behaves differently under certain conditions, or the same issue keeps happening because everyone is focused on fixing the immediate problem,” Khan explained in an exclusive interview with Gulf Times.
Incubated at Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP), ARVIS was established by Khan alongside co-founders Afnaz Khan and Muhammed Naseef. To Page 4
The startup developed Adaptive Building Intelligence (ABI) as an advisory platform, integrating directly with existing Building Management Systems (BMS), heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, and energy meters to analyse operational performance.
Khan explained that analysing months or years of historical operational records helps building managers spot recurring forms of waste that remain invisible during day-to-day operations.
“What interests me is that these things usually don’t look significant when you see them once. They become significant when you see the same behaviour happening again and again. I started wondering whether the operational history of a building could reveal forms of waste that are almost invisible in the moment.
“If you can recognise those patterns, you can potentially improve how the building operates without necessarily adding more infrastructure. I’ve started to think that sustainability isn’t only about using less. It’s about understanding what we’re already using well enough to know where we’re wasting it,” Khan noted.
Khan highlighted Qatar’s Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS) as a vital regulatory framework driving market demand for operational efficiency technologies.
“The clearest example I can point to is GSAS. Qatar built its own green building standard rather than simply adopting someone else’s, and for new commercial developments, certification is a requirement rather than a preference. There’s a big difference between a problem people say is important and a problem someone is actually measured against.
“The second one creates real demand. And what’s interesting is that GSAS has since been adopted across the Gulf. So, something that started as a national priority in Qatar has the potential to influence how buildings are assessed beyond Qatar as well,” Khan stated.
To safeguard data privacy, he noted that ARVIS processes all operational data locally on-premises.
“The building has a memory. We just haven’t had a good way of making use of it. The question for me is: what if a building’s past could actually help it make better decisions about its future?” Khan added.
The startup developed Adaptive Building Intelligence (ABI) as an advisory platform, integrating directly with existing Building Management Systems (BMS), heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment, and energy meters to analyse operational performance.
Khan explained that analysing months or years of historical operational records helps building managers spot recurring forms of waste that remain invisible during day-to-day operations.
“What interests me is that these things usually don’t look significant when you see them once. They become significant when you see the same behaviour happening again and again. I started wondering whether the operational history of a building could reveal forms of waste that are almost invisible in the moment.
“If you can recognise those patterns, you can potentially improve how the building operates without necessarily adding more infrastructure. I’ve started to think that sustainability isn’t only about using less. It’s about understanding what we’re already using well enough to know where we’re wasting it,” Khan noted.
Khan highlighted Qatar’s Global Sustainability Assessment System (GSAS) as a vital regulatory framework driving market demand for operational efficiency technologies.
“The clearest example I can point to is GSAS. Qatar built its own green building standard rather than simply adopting someone else’s, and for new commercial developments, certification is a requirement rather than a preference. There’s a big difference between a problem people say is important and a problem someone is actually measured against.
“The second one creates real demand. And what’s interesting is that GSAS has since been adopted across the Gulf. So, something that started as a national priority in Qatar has the potential to influence how buildings are assessed beyond Qatar as well,” Khan stated.
To safeguard data privacy, he noted that ARVIS processes all operational data locally on-premises.
“The building has a memory. We just haven’t had a good way of making use of it. The question for me is: what if a building’s past could actually help it make better decisions about its future?” Khan added.
