In the first episode of QED's new podcast series, Professor Jason Monty from the University of Melbourne's School of Engineering sat down to discuss where indoor air quality (IAQ) is headed over the next five years, and what building owners and facilities managers need to know now.
Professor Monty specialises in fluid dynamics, the study of airflow, and has spent recent years working directly with hospitals and building owners to understand how airborne transmission and indoor air quality are shaped by ventilation design. When asked what the key issues will be for building owners over the coming years, his answer wasn't about emerging technology. It was about a gap in how that technology gets applied.
The technology already exists
According to Professor Monty, the tools to meaningfully improve indoor air quality are already available, and in many cases, well understood. What's missing isn't innovation. It's clarity.
"We do have a lot of solutions," he explains. The real challenge for building owners is working out which of those solutions actually applies to their space, and whether the investment is even necessary in the first place.
Owners are left asking the wrong question, or none at all
Professor Monty points to a simple but often unanswered question: is your ventilation system actually protecting the people using the building? For many owners, that question is hard to answer, and harder still to find someone qualified to answer it for them.
This creates a costly guessing game. Should you commit to a significant HVAC upgrade, or would a smaller, more targeted solution do the job? Without a clear diagnosis, owners are often left choosing between expensive assumptions and doing nothing at all.
Not every product on the market can be trusted
Building owners are increasingly approached with air quality products, particularly since the pandemic accelerated interest in the space. But as Professor Monty notes, there's currently no consistent, well-defined testing standard that owners can rely on to separate effective solutions from ones that simply don't deliver.
That leaves facilities managers to make high-stakes decisions with limited ability to verify manufacturer claims, a gap that adds risk and cost to what should be a straightforward improvement process.
Where the industry needs to go
Professor Monty's view is that closing this gap is critical to near-term progress on indoor air quality. Building owners need a clearer path from "I want to improve air quality in this space" to knowing exactly what to install and who to call to install it.
This is where independent, evidence-based advice becomes essential. Rather than relying on product marketing alone, building owners benefit from working with consultants who can assess their specific building, identify whether a genuine issue exists, and recommend solutions proportionate to that risk, not the other way around.
QED is Australia's only NATA-accredited provider of NABERS Indoor Environment ratings, helping building owners and asset managers understand exactly where their indoor air quality stands and what, if anything, needs to change.
This is the first episode in QED's new podcast series, where we sit down with leading researchers and practitioners in the built environment to unpack the issues shaping indoor air quality, ventilation, and sustainability.