At the heart of Riyadh’s ambitious urban expansion lies Murabba, a new city district being built as part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 programme. The project aims to create a sustainable, technologically advanced environment that sets new standards for smart urban living. Among the many consultants involved in this pioneering initiative is Douglas Noon, a Facilities Management (FM) Consultant with CNS Ltd, who is helping define the city’s operational backbone. While the project may be cutting-edge, Douglas’s approach is built on simplicity, reliability, and proven tools. One of those tools is the Tinytag data logger – a compact, portable monitoring device that’s become an essential part of his FM toolkit.
Douglas comments: “I’m one of the hard services technical consultants. We’re setting up the buildings on Maximo and ensuring that all the preventative maintenance strategies are in place right from the start.”
From Riyadh to the National Museum of Scotland
Douglas has used Tinytags across a range of high-profile and highly varied environments.
He comments: “I’ve taken them everywhere I’ve worked — Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and now Saudi Arabia. They’ve also been used closer to home, like in the National Museum of Scotland and at Coventry Hospital’s Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit.”
In each of these cases, the goal is the same: to monitor temperature and energy usage in a building, identify inefficiencies, and use that data to inform smarter decisions about maintenance and energy performance.
He adds: “Energy savings within buildings is a big part of what I focus on.”
The Value of Simplicity
For Douglas, the power of the Tinytag logger lies in its ease of use, commenting: “The software is excellent. You can set them up in seconds. Pull in data at your preferred intervals, download it, export to Excel, and generate graphs quickly.”
When time and accuracy are critical — as they often are in large-scale or remote projects — having a tool that doesn’t require constant technical support makes a real difference.
“They’re also cost-effective. For the kind of work I do, they’re really well priced,” Douglas comments.
Built-In Trust
Over the years, Douglas has become a vocal advocate for Tinytag loggers, introducing them into several organisations.
He says: “Everywhere I go, I tend to tell people about them. They’re part of my routine now.”
He’s currently preparing to return to Riyadh to continue his work on the Murabba project and is keen to retrieve site photos showing Tinytags in use. With a bit of a laugh, he adds: “I should be getting commission!”
While the humour is appreciated, there’s a serious takeaway too: simple, affordable, and reliable monitoring solutions can play a significant role in supporting smart, sustainable building environments — even in the most complex or ambitious urban projects.
