Smart Building Monitoring, Control and Insight – A Modern View [Part 1]
Audio Blog Version:
Introduction
Irrespective of the industry you are in terms like digital transformation, digital twins, automation, smart something are common place. Digital transformation has been described as creating a digital twin. When it comes to Smart Buildings, a digital twin is a term used for a business to see exactly how your building is operating, at any time. Smart buildings are the ideal opportunity for digital transformation.
The new hybrid economy has changed our working lives profoundly: people are increasingly working remotely and on mobile devices, however they still need to work collaboratively with colleagues face-to-face. As a result, how buildings are used have changed too; we now expect them to support a flexible working environment and make our working lives easier in other ways – like reducing travel time or making it easier for staff with disabilities to navigate around them safely. It is no longer just about cost optimisation but also staff wellbeing, the employee experience, workspace automation, environmental health and getting intelligent and real time actionable insight about the building. Estate teams need to be able to switch on air conditioning if temperature and CO2 levels are too high or to be alerted that hot desks on one of the floors of the building is full and employees need to be directed to other floors.
Other influencers on your building including compliance and compliance reporting. From energy monitoring to EV charging stations, systems from smart technology providers can deliver smart building solutions that can transform facilities management tasks from reactive to proactive.
Anyone responsible for managing a building or campuses can achieve significant insights with dynamic asset visibility and real-time alerts for a complete site overview. Decision making becomes quicker and more accessible, saving costs, reducing incident severity, and solving problems before they can develop.
Digital transformation has been described as creating a digital twin.
A digital twin is a virtual representation of the physical world, in this case your building. A digital twin is a digital representation of an asset, where the asset can be any part of the building such as windows or doors.
A key part of building management and maintenance is understanding how well the building performs and what its operating condition is at any given time. This can be done either manually or automatically through sensors that monitor things like temperature, pressure and humidity to provide insight into how well the building is operating without having to physically go inside it every day. The purpose of the digital twin is to provide insights into how the physical asset or system performs in real time, and also to predict future performance based on past performance data.
Smart buildings are the ideal opportunity for digital transformation.
The smart building is a great example of digital transformation. The benefits are clear: you can use technology to improve efficiency in your building operations, increase occupant satisfaction and productivity, decrease energy consumption and mitigate risk.
A smart building provides an unparalleled opportunity to embrace innovation that creates value both now and into the future by enabling sustainable solutions that positively impact people’s lives on multiple levels.
The right monitoring and control system can help you understand and control your building system performance and data-driven insight can help you make better business decisions.
In today’s economy, every company needs to be smart in order to survive in the competition with other companies around the world. The best way for this is by implementing an effective building automation strategy that gives you real-time insights into your buildings so you can use them as assets rather than liabilities when making changes or any other decisions related with what happens inside them (e.g. heating up/cooling down).
Creating Workplaces that Work Better
If you’re a building owner, manager or tenant, it’s important to understand the value of creating workplaces that work better. Not only do they provide an environment that encourages productivity; they also have significant advantages for business, people and the environment. Good buildings are more cost-effective to run, more profitable and less vulnerable to disruption. They also encourage employee satisfaction through greater flexibility and choice.
Key Drivers for a Smart Building
A few things to consider:
- Upgrading your building processes and capabilities has never been simpler. Smarter building systems can drastically enhance your operation, allowing you to keep costs low and productivity high.
- By monitoring and automating workplaces and spaces, managers can not only better understand the physical environmental factors that can improve employee wellbeing but they can control spaces within their buildings and external workspaces to help employees become more effective in their day-to-day tasks.
- Technology ranges from simple temperature and humidity sensors to AI-enabled camera systems that consider employee flows, security posture and other vital workplace factors.
- A smart building needs to guide managers in their decision making, by modelling the outcomes of any changes that they might wish to make – thus helping managers to make the right decisions that will have the most positive impact on their workforce and environment whilst meeting all compliance requirements.
- Outcomes may include reducing the amount of staff downtime, improving and maintaining environmental conditions, and ensuring that employee safety is maintained.
- Smart Building technology not only helps HR, Compliance and Facilities Management, but they can also be employed in every department – including visitor management, support, service delivery, customer centres and so much more.
Better environments
Smart Building helps organisations make the most of their real estate, delivering intelligent insights into room layouts, environmental conditions (such as heat and humidity) to drive better employee workplace conditions. The aim is to deliver a happier, healthier, and more productive workforce. Good solutions will help an organisation with smoother offices so employees can work together in teams and with the tools that they need.
By employing a smart solution, organisations can better understand the integrated insights that their systems produce – and act on those insights for smarter business outcomes. Managers can now track space utilisation throughout their estate to optimise employee performance and prevent bottlenecks and down-time. Managers can also track everything from the location of individual assets to the sanitation quality in bathrooms.
Smart Building management doesn’t stop with the employee. It can also help visitors to navigate a large campus with maps and wayfinding software. Office guests can more easily orient themselves with the workspace and locate permitted people, assets, and facilities to improve their experience.
In the next blog – Part 2 we will discuss the smart building solutions available and the benefits they provide.