Oriol Pla, DEXMA

Name:Oriol Pla
Name of the Company: DEXMA
Business Area: R&D
Position in the Company: R&D Project Manager
INESC TEC Centre with which collaborated: Centre for Power and Energy Systems (CPES)
Project managers (INESC TEC): Filipe Joel Soares and André Guimarães Madureira
Title of the project: FEEdBACk

What is your professional background with INESC TEC? 

I started working at DEXMA in February 2019, as R&D Project Engineer, in order to collaborate in the FEEdBACk project, which is led by INESC TEC. DEXMA got invited to participate in a H2020 proposal back in 2017, when our relationship with INESC TEC started – that proposal turned out to be a winner. Other colleagues from DEXMA have known INESC TEC for quite some time, since they’ve participated in several FP7 & H2020 programmes, and they pointed out that the relationship was excellent, both professionally and personally.

Briefly describe the main projects you have carried out in collaboration with INESC TEC.

The aforementioned project, FEEdBACk, is a H2020 project successfully led by INESC TEC, and DEXMA has been working closely with INESC TEC over the last three years. The main goal of this project is to improve the energy efficiency in tertiary sectore and residential buildings, through changes in behaviour encouraged by a gamified application. The DEXMA Energy Management Software (EMS) is the tool selected to monitor the energy.

What are the significant outcomes of these projects that you can highlight?

The FEEdBACk project’s main objective is to deliver energy efficiency through behavioural change. In order to achieve this goal, the main outcome of the platform is to create a gamification strategy within a broader ICT based platform (where DEXMA’s platform is included) to help stakeholders saving energy, while involving the end users on the energy equation. For DEXMA, this project was our first interaction with gamified behavioural energy efficiency techniques.

At the moment, the project is in the middle of its pilot stage, where users from three European cities are using the Gamified App to improve their energy behaviour. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has halted the demonstration in public buildings, so we are currently discussing and planning an alternative to carry on with the energy behaviour assessment.

What is your opinion on your experience working with INESC TEC?

I would like to highlight the professionalism of the INESC TEC team, always open to help out and collaborate with a high level of excellence. Besides, in my experience, they are excellent people from a personal perspective. At the last consortium, both Filipe Soares and André Madureira encouraged me to speak in Portuguese with them and complimented my Portuguese level, which was very kind of them.

What is the possibility of future collaborations with INESC TEC?

We are very thankful for their invitation to join this “H2020 R&D world”; moreover, and if DEXMA decides to participate in collaborative projects in the future, we will certainly be very happy to work in partnership with INESC TEC.