HVAC is imperfect. AI can help
Technology lives in the land of 1s and 0s: on or off, perfect or imperfect. Buildings aren't like that. Walls aren't straight, and every fitout carries a thousand small compromises that add up. Ours has a two-pipe HVAC system dropped into an open space on the basis that it was probably enough BTUs, resulting in five years of unwinnable aircon wars.
The thing that makes AI frustrating for many applications, non-deterministic output, is exactly what makes it good at this. Imperfect buildings don't need certainty, they need compromise, and compromise requires reasoning. Traditional if-statement logic you'll find in a BMS has never been good at that.
I'll walk through what we built: temperature, CO2, presence, solar output and room calendars feeding a model that re-plans every 15 minutes and writes its own rules from the results. What worked, what it cost, and where this approach earns its keep in a real building.
Session Speaker
Lawrence is a co-founder of Parallax and serves as Technical Director, where he leads on innovation in IoT, performance architecture at scale, and other emerging technologies that shape the way organisations operate. With a career rooted in building systems that don’t just perform but transform, he combines deep technical expertise with a sharp commercial mindset. He is passionate about the role technology plays in driving measurable improvements to the bottom line, using it not only as a tool for efficiency but as a lever for growth and competitive advantage.
Curious by nature, Lawrence thrives on getting under the skin of businesses to understand how they function at every level. He works closely with stakeholders to identify structural pain points, uncover hidden opportunities, and design solutions that bring clarity and measurable impact. His approach focuses on improving products, services, and internal processes, then applying the right technologies to solve challenges in ways that are both pragmatic and scalable.
Over the years, Lawrence has worked with a wide range of clients across both public and private sectors, from ambitious scale-ups to large enterprises. He excels at cutting through organisational and technical complexity, aligning teams around clear outcomes, and delivering strategies that result in tangible value. By bridging the gap between business ambition and technical execution, he ensures that technology investments deliver real returns while setting organisations up for long-term success.
