hello I’m I’m David Briggs I’m the CEO
of the village group Danish roof window
manufacturers as you know and I’m here
today for two days here in Paris we have
the daylight symposium which we’re
sponsoring and organizing on day one and
the healthy buildings day again which we
sponsor and organise on day two I’m very
happy to be here
well village today is where a 77 year
old company we’re still family owned and
foundational so interesting that 90% of
our dividends actually go back to
society in form of of Grants back to for
research and societal good we are we’re
a very strong company we have a turnover
without group turnover including other
sister companies 2.6 billion euros with
presence in 46 countries around the
world we’re growing both in our core
residential market where we put daylight
and fresh air through the roof of houses
and we’ve also made acquisitions to grow
in the commercial segments so we are
actually now increasingly have an offer
for four buildings such as factories
warehouses but also airports offices
shopping centres and that kind of thing
many people will know villas for our our
roof windows which which have added
space and broad daylight into the it’s a
millions of houses around around Europe
but up until now we really were not very
focused on the what we call the
commercial segments so rather the places
people were work play and and and so on
so we’ve we’ve made three acquisitions
into that area that gives us a line of
products which are capable of bringing
daylight into buildings as well as
differences as factories people in
factories also need daylight’s and fresh
air and good indoor climate but even up
to airports so we have a huge project
for example in one of the biggest
airports in China recently which is
using our products to bring all of the
daylight into the
into the arena so I hope and believe
that we can take the expertise that
we’ve developed over 75 years in terms
of daylight and fresh air through the
roof and we can use that to bring
further innovation into the into the the
segments of the commercial segments as I
call it and so we have a we have an
innovation function we split it into
what we call front end so these are
people looking at mega trends and how
how those trends are likely to impact
people’s need for for daylight and fresh
air and and of course then we have a
product development team and I can give
you an example of something we did
recently we have also 10,000 or 11,000
now were the acquisitions colleagues
around the world and these are people
have built up a huge amount of
experience who are speaking to customers
every day we ran a an Innovation
Challenge we asked these people for
their ideas about what innovative ideas
they might have that we could take
forward into new products or new
services in two weeks we had 2,000 360
ideas from 11,000 people and I don’t
just mean a two-line idea
I mean 510 pages with sketches with
drawings it’s it’s a fantastic fountain
of ideas that we’ve got to deal with so
I can promise you you’re likely to see a
lot more innovation from villas in the
coming years and I think that
digitalization is something that as an
industry we need to get hold of I think
that to be fair architects have had
their part in digitalization for some
years but if you look across the entire
industry we are so far behind we are so
far behind and and this is something
which I think can speed up for building
techniques it can improve maintenance
schedules it can improve the building
process dramatically if we can
digitalize more and more so firstly I’m
a great believer in in BIM and I really
think that that can help the the
building process in valence we’re also
digitalizing our product so that now
actually you can
stall a solar driven motor into into a
Philips window it installs in 40 minutes
also into older older products our solar
driven shutters our solar driven blinds
and we can connect all of that to a
digital hub which uses sensors to to
look at the air quality in the house but
also the weather forecast outside and
therefore control your windows
automatically without you needing to
think about it and and that can
significantly improve the indoor climate
so if you take a country like a warm
country like Spain it can dramatically
reduce the need for air conditioning for
example which is good for the planet you
take a colder country like like Denmark
it can make sure that the house is
ventilated at the appropriate time so
that you have as much as little heat
loss as possible during that process so
digitalization I think can play a big
role for us whilst in the building
process but also in the whole lifecycle
of the products that we produce really
believe that if you look at the
challenges that we have in terms of
buildings where we’re going to have to
build and renovate significantly over
the coming 30 years if it’s a hit our
our target system in terms of carbon
emissions those challenges that we have
they involve the they require the
knowledge and the experience and the
ideas of people at all different stages
we can’t do that we can’t innovate
sufficiently alone as a manufacturer we
need to listen to researchers who are
doing cutting-edge work in terms of how
to bring daylight into buildings the
impact of air renewal and so on so forth
but we need also to work with
legislators because the legislation that
they that they bring to the table
impacts what people are allowed to do in
buildings so if we don’t work with
legislators and we allow that the the
legislation to go down a path of only
looking at energy efficiency it will be
a big disaster in our opinion because
nobody builds a building just to be
energy-efficient you don’t don’t live in
a house
the energy-efficient if you wanted to
just be energy-efficient we’d live in
case under underground we would all be
sick we would all hate it and it’s
ludicrous so of course by bringing
together these people who have these
different lenses at which they look at
the same problem we hope to inspire
everybody across the across the board
that’s super important for us and I
think it’s part of our responsibility as
a as a manufacturer who’s been here a
long time who’s committed to to the
future of the building industry