Read the exclusive interview with Rogério Marchante, Head of Facilities & Services at Nova SBE, where he talked about the collaboration with the Bios startup, the innovative environmental and social projects the school is working on, and how important it is to create resilient infrastructures now and into the future.
Rogério, as Nova SBE's Head of Facilities & Services and one of the main stakeholders involved in collaboration with the Bios startup, what does the development of this cooperation mean for Nova SBE, mainly for our campus?
As the main responsible for our campus, I always seek to support innovative projects that can add value in operationality, efficiency, user experience, sustainability, and circular economy. These are challenges that I greatly enjoy working on and implementing at our school while contributing with all my know-how. These projects put our school and our campus at the forefront of the best solutions and waking towards the future.
The Bios project's innovation consists of using the building's waste energy to grow locally produced and fresh vegetables. Where and how will it all take place, and what are the main benefits?
This project will be implemented in the technical area of building B – Cascais Academic Hall. This was a space used to exclusively house the building's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) equipment (offices and classrooms). From now on it will be used to produce vegetables that will be consumed on campus. Additionally, the goal is for the CO2 extracted from the campus' spaces to "feed" this greenhouse (that will need that compound to be developed), and, by capturing it, there is less of it going out into the atmosphere.
In what concerns Nova SBE's infrastructure, and taking into account future challenges, how do you currently evaluate our campus? And from a technological innovation and sustainable and inclusive spaces standpoint, how does it stand out?
In my opinion, the campus and its infrastructure are prepared to answer future challenges. We are developing a platform from which any idea and/or project can "absorb" the available data and work on it. Hence, there will be no limitations to the projects that can take place.
In light of the SDGs and how they lead the school's strategy, how important was this collaboration to continue your team's work in creating resilient infrastructures? What other inclusive and sustainable initiatives would you like to highlight that our community and civil society might not know about?
This collaboration is extremely important because we believe that decentralizing the production, whether of energy or food, can bring significant advantages as the Bios project does. We want to assess them and understand how the buildings of the future can be. It is important to note that we also have other initiatives taking place regarding energy efficiency, campus' management through artificial intelligence, urban farms, and air quality, among others.
Our school will also be the center stage of Cascais Smart Pole by Nova SBE, an experimentation space that will allow the school to walk towards carbon neutrality to develop new lifestyle and well-being solutions for its community. How do you see the integration of another innovative environmental and social project with everything that's taking place on campus?
These innovative projects are precisely what moves us. We can't get enough, and we are more active and watchful of these kinds of initiatives, and we encourage them to incubate at our campus. It is embedded in our DNA, and that's what we like to do.