Richard Corbridge has spent his digital leadership career turning smart ideas into production services. After working for some of the UK’s biggest private and public sector organisations, including the NHS, Boots, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Corbridge embraced a fresh challenge in 2024, when he became CIO at property specialist Segro.
Corbridge says the role provides a great education, even for an experienced executive like him. “Taking this role felt like a good chance to learn more,” he says. “The opportunity across the industry, and specifically at Segro, is huge because it is a place that has almost been proud of not adopting too much technology.”
The position also gave Corbridge the chance to work alongside Paul Dunne, Segro’s managing director for operations, digital and customer, whom he’d worked with at Boots. Corbridge was director of innovation and then CIO for the high street chemist between 2019 and 2023, before spending almost two years as chief digital information officer at DWP. He joined Segro in November 2024.
“The property industry is a relationships industry; it’s a people industry,” he says, talking about what he found when he joined the firm. “What this role is testing, probably more than ever before, is my experience of getting to the business language, getting to value first, and making sure that you’re telling the stories in a way that isn’t technology-led.”
Embracing challenges
Corbridge recognises that moving between sectors and organisations affects your digital leadership approach.
“It was something I was mindful of when I left the NHS for Boots,” he says. “Peers, mentors, colleagues and coaches would say the private sector is going to be a lot faster, a lot more ruthless, and would involve a lot more watch-your-back type scenarios, but that didn’t come to bear in reality.”
“Creating efficiency through technology either creates profit for a private organisation or creates efficiency and puts money back in the bank for a public sector organisation”
Richard Corbridge, Segro
Corbridge says organisations differ in strategies and structures, but some important consistencies also allow successful CIOs to move seamlessly between sectors.
“One of the things you learn is that creating efficiency through technology either creates profit for a private organisation or creates efficiency and puts money back in the bank for a public sector organisation,” he says.
“And if efficiency and growth are the two watchwords for digital leaders, then you can apply the principles to what you’re trying to do, whether it’s about making profit for shareholders and looking after customers, or you’re ensuring taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and achieving the goals you want to do.”
Reflecting on the initiatives he’s overseen during his career, Corbridge says he enjoyed taking his healthcare project experience and its focus on making wise bets to the private sector in his role at Boots, where he worked with around 600 IT professionals. He also enjoyed returning to the public sector and applying his experience of fast-paced change at Boots to DWP, where he worked with 5,500 colleagues.
“Now at Segro, I’ve got 35 people working for me, but in an estate of assets across nine countries, a very large amount of money in the organisation itself, and enormous value,” he says. “So, there are different priorities, but, interestingly, the themes within those priorities probably remain relatively similar from a CIO point of view.”
Leading change
Crucially, transformation – which Corbridge describes as creating change and delivering value – is part of his remit at Segro, which he suggests is a wise approach. It’s certainly a change from his previous role at DWP, where Corbridge worked with a director general of transformation who was separate from the digital department.
“At Segro, making a difference with technology, and working with our business to make a difference, is under my ownership,” he says. “After 12 months in this role, my team is making a difference because of how we’re using technology, both from a business and a value completion point of view.”
Corbridge says the general direction of travel for transformation at Segro involves three buckets that will hold his team’s priorities through 2026: implementing new technology alongside trusted partners to simplify complex business processes; making the most of enterprise data assets; and joining up point solutions to deliver business benefits.
“We’re trying not to end up just doing AI [artificial intelligence] for its own sake, and we’re looking at the orchestration that we could do with different technology solutions,” he says, referring to the systems and services that will enable transformation.
“Sometimes that may well be agentic AI, but sometimes it might just involve putting the data in the right place at the right time so people can have it.”
For example, Corbridge refers to his vision of a workbench, which would give the firm’s asset managers access to the information and insights they need to offer customers new opportunities to look after their buildings in the most effective manner and to help the company make the most from its existing client portfolio.
“That approach feels quite different from what some of our peers are doing, where they’re looking at big ERP [enterprise resource planning] replacement or deployment programmes,” he says.
“We took the decision not to do that and to go process by process. It’s about how we simplify the process, get the most out of it, and then bring technology to bear on that process, joining it up as an orchestration layer, instead of having lots of point solutions.”
Making progress
Corbridge addresses each of his transformation aims in turn. First, simplifying complex business processes. For this aim, partners IBM and HCL will play a crucial role.
“We [will] sit down with our two most forward-possible partners to see what they’ve done on a test and learn basis,” he says. “At the start of January, they began with three processes each, reviewed the inherent complexity of those processes, and will now make some technology simplification recommendations.”
Corbridge says this process will help his organisation understand how its technology partners can help reduce complexity, as well as potential timelines, costs and long-term value generation. Deadlines were kept purposefully tight to test the partners, and the results look promising: “I’d go as far as to say that I’ve not seen anything like it in all the different partners that I’ve worked with.”
Open Box Software is another important supplier. This integration specialist manages Segro’s MRI property management system, which Corbridge describes as the company’s operational backbone. He’s working with Open Box to reduce complexity and increase simplicity, and is impressed with the output: “We truly have partners, not vendors.”
When it comes to the second aim of ensuring data supports accurate decisions, Corbridge says his director of data and AI will focus on two important objectives through 2026: establishing strong data governance to guarantee reliability, and getting accurate insights to key people for timely decision-making.
“Getting those elements right sets us up to move faster,” he says.
Finally, Corbridge refers to the aim of joining up point solutions to create business benefits. Here, he points to Sama, which is the Segro asset management app. This bespoke solution has been built by the company over the past two years. The technology team continues to roll out new monthly releases, functionalities and integrations to back-end systems.
“This approach means we can capture data once, store it once, and let others have access to that data,” he says. “Seeing something that has been built specifically for Segro is really exciting because it delivers how our business wants to work and we can deal with the subtle differences that are needed locally in Germany, Czechia, or Poland, without having to standardise everything.”
Adopting technology
In combination, Corbridge says those three transformational aims comprise his digital plan for Segro. He says it’s important to stress that the organisation has a plan instead of a digital strategy.
I want us to be seen as an organisation that is adopting technology, and it’s not a distraction to how we work with customers, where our assets are, or what our value is, but that it’s actually adding to that effort Richard Corbridge, Segro
“I don’t want to sit and write another digital strategy next year because everything’s moving so fast,” he says. “I want to get in there and get some delivery and value released to our business so that we can build excitement and deliver against people’s expectations. So, we’re going to focus on delivery and value this year against those priorities, knowing that, when we get to the end of the year, I want to be able to set the vision for 2027 and 2028 for where we’re going to get to.”
Two years from now, Corbridge expects the firm’s core MRI system will create value by delivering data to people around the organisation. The aim here will be to focus on standardisation and simplification by exploiting Open Box’s orchestration capabilities. He wants to ensure the top 20 tech-enabled processes across Segro are as simple as possible, supported by technology, with data captured once and shared where required.
Corbridge says the rise of consumerisation means people across the organisation have a much greater awareness of technology’s power. Everyone has a smartphone, and many people are using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT at home, never mind at work. This technological exploration means non-IT people will increasingly find their own solutions to business challenges. Corbridge wants to work with the business to hone the best of these ideas.
“Most importantly, I want us to be seen as an organisation that is adopting technology, and it’s not a distraction to how we work with customers, where our assets are, or what our value is, but that it’s actually adding to that effort. And that means a lot to me. We want to provide a clear view of what technology can actually do for this industry,” he says.
“There’s been a whole plethora of commentaries recently with experts saying, ‘At last, the property industry is starting to recruit CIOs. At last, the property industry is starting to adopt digital and technology.’ I want Segro to be synonymous with that march of difference.”
Once configured, setup proceeds much like the Aiper and pricier Irrigreen apps: You create a zone, then use the app to define its boundaries. Similar to the aforementioned systems, Oto’s sprinkler is designed for precision watering, firing water in a beam in a single direction instead of a wide spray. That said, Oto’s spray is comparably narrow, only hitting a single, designated patch instead of producing a two-dimensional curtain of water like Irrigreen’s “water printing” system. You get a nice preview of this as you set the boundaries of your yard.
Like its competitors, Oto lets you set each zone as a spot (for watering a single tree, perhaps), a line (for a flowerbed), or a 2-D area (for a yard). I tested all of these modes but spent most of my time working with area zones, which are the most complex option. When defining an area zone, I found Oto’s system to be virtually identical to that of Irrigreen and Aiper, though ever so slightly slower to respond to commands. Even so, it’s very easy to use: A simple interface lets you drop points around the sprinkler to define the boundaries of the zone. When you’ve made a full circle around the sprinkler, the area is complete.
Once configured, you can assign each zone a schedule, with copious options available around which days to water (odd days, even days, select days of the week, every day), and designate a start time (though there is no tying time to sundown or sunrise). Each schedule also gets a weekly watering limit (in inches of depth), which you’ll then parse out over each week’s watering runs. Weather intelligence features let you elect to skip watering if your zip code receives measurable rainfall or if winds are high (both based on internet reports); the user can tweak both the amount of rain and windspeed needed to trigger a skip. The app logs the 20 most recent runs and includes a calendar that details upcoming events.
When watering an area, Oto takes a novel approach to covering the lawn, first moving in circular arcs directly around the sprinkler, then slowly increasing in range with each successive swipe. When finished, it does additional “clean-up” runs to hit any areas that the initial watering arcs didn’t reach. The speed is slow enough and the size of the water’s beam is large enough that the resulting coverage is solid. After test runs, I found the yard to be plenty wet across the entire zone, with no dry patches.
As with all sprinklers, changes in water pressure can make for occasional over- or underwatering of areas, but I found this to be a minimal problem when using the Oto. However, when watering at the terminus of Oto’s range, the power needed to throw the water that far can make for a strong splashdown, which may result in some soil erosion or damage to more sensitive plants.
The Oto also has a “play mode” option that lets you use the sprinkler for a watery game of chase or a more random “splash tag” mode, aka “try to avoid getting hit by the water.” Pro tip: It’s impossible not to get hit.
It’s likewise smartly designed, packing up into—as you likely already gleaned—the shape of a suitcase. The heavy-duty handles and latches are strong. Though the Nomad is 28 pounds, which is a bit on the heavy side for a single-hand carry, the shape and large handle actually make it easier to carry than smaller and cheaper models.
The Nomad uses a dual-venting system to achieve good airflow, even when the lid is closed. The vents, combined with the raised fins on the bottom of the grill (which elevate your charcoal, allowing air to flow underneath), allow for very precise control of both high and low temperatures. If you live and die by overlanding, this grill could be your new constant companion.
Photograph: Weber
A Great Budget Portable Grill: WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson also loves the simple Weber Jumbo Joe ($90), a smaller version of the classic Original Kettle. It’s an easy choice for tailgates, especially. And if you want to use it at home, you can build yourself a stand for home cookouts. It’s low-cost, light, and dead simple. All are virtues.
Other Grills I Recommend
Recteq X-Fire Pro
Photograph: Kat Merck
Recteq X-Fire Pro 825 for $1,400: Pellet smokers rarely crest much over 450 degrees Fahrenheit, which does not offer the sear you’d get on a charcoal or gas grill. But Recteq’s 825-square-inch, dual-pot X-Fire Pro wants to be your everything device, notes WIRED reviewer Kat Merck. In Smoke Mode, the left fire pot ignites for classic low-and-slow smoking. Switch the big knob to Grill Mode, and both pots fire up, with an adjustable damper over the right side. The damper, controllable with another knob, allows you to open access to the right fire pot just a little bit, or all the way to the gates of hell—1,200 degrees Fahrenheit. It takes about 20 minutes for the fire pot to get going this high, and if you don’t clean the fire pot first, it’ll kick off a lot of sparks in the process. Who knows why you need to get to 1,200 degrees? But as Merck notes, this is a company known for a cartoon bull logo and bull-horn handles. “Recteq likes to be extreme, so it tracks,” she says. If you keep your sear to a more human 600 degrees Fahrenheit, it’s a solid grill and sear experience. But keep in mind that the high power draw from the dual igniters will require a 10- or-12-gauge extension cord, which is probably better than the cord you’ve got at home. The X-Fire also didn’t produce the same smokiness as WIRED’s top-pick Recteq Flagship 1600, according to Merck’s testing, which means you’ll end up using smoke tubes at low temperature if you want to get more smoke in the meat. Note, too, that the advertised 20-pound pellet capacity is split between fire pots. This could mean refilling a 10-pound hopper multiple times during a long cook.
Photograph: Brad Bourque
Traeger Woodridge Pro for $1,000: The Traeger Woodridge Pro is WIRED’s previous top-pick pellet grill and smoker for most people. It still exists beautifully at the intersection of value and utility, and is likely to make you popular in the neighborhood. It’s a straightforward beast of a thing that’s easy to clean, easy to dial in for a perfect rack of ribs, and big enough to cook up two pork bellies at the same time. My new top-pick Recteq has a couple smart features that make us prefer it, like temperature history on its meat probes, and an easier learning curve on smart features. But this Woodridge will still make you quite popular in the neighborhood.
Photograph: Traeger
Traeger Timberline Wi-Fi Wood Pellet Grill for $3,300: If you’re serious about grilling and smoking, Traeger’s Timberline is almost a step up from a smoker. It’s the perfect all-in-one outdoor kitchen. It uses the same wireless smoking smarts as the Woodridge but adds some extras, like an induction burner (perfect for adding a last-minute sear with a cast-iron pan or steaming some veggies). The insulated smoke box has room for six pork shoulders, or about the equivalent racks of ribs or chickens. Former WIRED editor Parker Hall has managed to feed hundreds of people using it. (As a longtime food and barbecue critic, I can vouch heartily for Hall’s resulting brisket and ribs.) If that’s not enough, there’s also an XL version that’s even bigger. “All of my meats heated evenly and were perfectly cooked right when the smoker said they would be,” Hall says. If you want flawless smoking from the comfort of your couch and price is not a factor, the Timberline delivers.
Courtesy of Masterbuilt
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 800 for $899: This spacious Masterbuilt offers a nice combination, notes WIRED reviewer Chris Smith: charcoal flavor with the temperature precision of gas or electricity. The large, top-loading charcoal hopper uses gravity (hence the name) to feed heat into an internal housing, and an integrated fan enables precise digital temperature control—on the device or via the app. You’ll reach 700 degrees Fahrenheit within 15 minutes. Temperatures are remarkably consistent once stabilized, and if you want to add smoke flavor, just throw wood chunks into the ash bin and let falling charcoal embers do the rest. But the versatility comes with caveats. You may miss the ability to sear directly over a flame, and you’ll need to change out the internal housing before switching to the flat-top grill.
Courtesy of Yoder
Yoder YS640S Pellet Smoker for $2,700: Most grills do one thing well and several others poorly or not at all. Yoder’s YS640S is a more versatile tool, thanks to a design that allows easy access to the auto-feed firebox. Like Traegers that are half the price, this Kansas-made grill uses an electric fan and an auger to feed wood pellets in for a slow smoke session. It’s all driven by a control board that sends temp alerts and allows you to adjust the temperature via Wi-Fi. As a smoker, it easily handled ribs and a chuck roast, holding the temperature better than most. This is thanks to its bomb-proof 10-gauge steel construction, which means this grill weighs as much as a refrigerator. Where the Yoder really stands out, though, is as a grill and possible pizza oven. By removing a steel plate positioned over the fire pit, you can sear burgers directly over the flame or remove the grills and plop on a hefty pizza oven attachment ($489), which uses the pellet feed system to maintain a constant 900-plus degrees Fahrenheit.
A Grill to Avoid
Courtesy of Ace
Kamado Joe Konnected Joe for $1,900: There’s a lot to like about this kamado-style grill. Indeed, WIRED previously recommended it for its electric ignition and Wi-Fi connectivity that allows you to measure the temperature of the interior and the meat via two probes. But over long-term use, WIRED commerce director Martin Cizmar has had constant problems with the electric grill tripping the 2-year-old GFCI outlets on his patio. Once it even tripped the breaker. A Reddit thread reveals this is a common problem. Like the Redditors, Cizmar found temporary relief by running an extension cord into an outlet in his kitchen, but even that has failed him a few times during testing. Unfortunately, this grill is a hard pass until the issue is resolved.
During the Trinity nuclear test on July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert—the world’s very first test of an atomic bomb—a new material spontaneously formed. It was discovered only recently, by an international research team coordinated by geologist Luca Bindi at the University of Florence, which identified the novel clathrate based on calcium, copper, and silicon. It’s a material never before observed either in nature or as an artificial compound created in the laboratory.
What Are Clathrates?
The term “clathrates” denotes materials characterized by a “cage-like” structure that traps other atoms and molecules inside, giving them unique properties. Of great technological interest, these materials are being studied for various applications ranging from energy conversion (as thermoelectric materials capable of transforming heat into electricity) to the development of new semiconductors, to gas storage and hydrogen for future energy technologies.
The New Material
To discover the new material, researchers focused on trinitite, a silicate glass containing rare metallic phases. Using some techniques like x-ray diffraction, the team was able to identify a type I clathrate based on calcium, copper, and silicon within a tiny copper-rich metal droplet embedded in a sample of red trinitite.
The new material, the researchers say, formed spontaneously during a nuclear explosion. This indicates that the extreme conditions, such as extremely high temperatures and pressures, can generate new materials that are impossible to obtain by traditional methods.
Natural Laboratories
The discovery is even more interesting because in the same detonation event another very rare material was formed: a silicon-rich quasicrystal, already documented by the team of experts led by Bindi a few years ago.
A quasicrystal, as Bindi told WIRED at the time, is something that is not a crystal, but looks a lot like one. “Their peculiarity,” he said, “is that the atomic arrangement that is not periodic, but nearly so, creates incredible symmetries from which derive amazing physical properties, among other things, very difficult to predict.”
Establishing the link between these structures therefore helps scientists better understand how atoms organize under extreme conditions and expand the possibilities for designing new materials. “Events such as nuclear explosions, lightning strikes, or meteoritic impacts function as true natural laboratories,” the researchers explain. “They allow us to observe forms of matter that we cannot easily reproduce in the laboratory.”
In essence, this research opens new vistas for the development of innovative technologies, demonstrating that even destructive events can bequeath discoveries useful for the future.
This story originally appeared inWIRED Italiaand has been translated from Italian.
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