Smart Building Monitoring, Control and Insight – A Modern View [Part 2]
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In Part 1 of the blog, we discussed how smart buildings are the ideal opportunity for digital transformation and provided the key drivers to consider for a smart building. In Part 2, we discuss the smart building solutions available and the benefits they provide.
Smart Building Solutions
The goal of every facilities manager is to improve their facilities’ environment, employee behaviour patterns and asset movement. These factors can deliver huge improvements in productivity, employee wellbeing and staff retention. It can also help ensure that business strategies remain on track and that impacts from unexpected external forces don’t critically derail those strategies.
As an example, linking air quality technology with your building management systems makes a positive difference. Recent research found:
- Better indoor air quality promotes individual productivity.
- Better individual productivity leads to better organisational results.
- Productivity and organisational results can be measured and expressed as a return on investment
- This has proven to be true in working offices around the world, as well as in controlled laboratory environments.
The link between indoor environmental quality and organisational performance is a critical factor in the correlation between productivity and ROI. The British Council for Offices (BCO) report “Defining and measuring productivity in offices” suggests that overall productivity benefits of 2-3% could be gained by improving workplace air quality alone.
Benefits of a Building Monitoring System at a glance:
- Reduce costs and identify energy-saving opportunities
- Identify carbon footprint reductions
- Gain complete visibility of buildings in real-time
- Remotely control building environment and safety systems
- Reduce issues caused by human error
- Automatically comply with legal and safety standards throughout an entire estate
- External Compliance and Governance
Smart Building Monitoring & Control Systems
Using smart building sensors, facilities managers can achieve complete visibility and transparency over all aspects of an estate. Below are a few examples:
Automating buildings compliance reports
Protecting public health and preventing contamination are some of the most critical considerations for building managers. Additionally, as environmental legislation for building design continues to develop, managers are increasingly looking for ways to streamline the monitoring of environmental control systems while reporting on maintenance and routine cleaning.
Systems can now provide an intelligent platform to automate many of the time-consuming upkeep practices that burden facilities managers and allow them to generate schedules and reports instantly. Platforms can deliver real-time notifications, event-triggered alarms, asset tracking and more.
Asset Tracking and Monitoring
Smart Tags can help facilities managers monitor their assets’ location and usage anywhere within their estate. With dynamic control and efficient reporting on your assets, you will benefit from insight-driven decisions that promote profitability.
Smart Lighting
Smart building monitoring and control platforms can leverage smart lighting to give users ultimate control of their lighting systems. Users can choose from any colour and lighting temperature. More importantly, they can set specific operation times with automatic shutdown whenever any part of the building is empty for a specified amount of time.
Occupancy and Traffic Monitoring
Traffic monitoring systems allow managers to monitor their buildings and staff with real-time information on room occupancy, hot desk usage, vehicle car park thresholds and more. The system enables users to proactively manage their workforce, making the best use of space in smart buildings, improving energy efficiency, and encouraging better collaboration.
Building Energy Monitoring Systems
Building energy monitoring software allows users to monitor utilities and identify where energy is being wasted. Additionally, systems can alert users to cost-saving opportunities and carbon footprint reduction ideas. Managers can benefit from automatic electricity load balancing, sub-metering solutions and peak power output control.
Air Monitoring
Managers can observe and monitor the air quality within a building to comply with legislation while protecting staff in line with health and safety regulations. You could use outdoor sensors to monitor the air for pollutants. In contrast, indoor sensors are perfect for insulated buildings where air quality can be affected by high occupancy levels.
Building Temperature Monitoring Systems
Smart thermostats offer real-time temperature monitoring and direct control capabilities within rooms, floors, buildings, and estates. Managers can also gain granular HVAC control and comply with minimum and maximum threshold warnings for fridges and freezers.
Building Fire Safety Monitoring Systems
Facilities managers can automatically run checks on fire safety equipment. The intelligent sensors can remotely monitor fire doors, fire extinguishers, alarms, and smoke detectors, alerting users immediately to any change of condition.
Conclusion
The automation of the workplace to make it smart is not about replacing employee roles with robots, bots, platforms, or technologies. Instead, most organisations will use technology to deliver a better working environment for their people, ensuring they have access to the tools and information they need along with a working environment that’s conducive to high productivity.
Digital transformation is changing our workplaces and the way we work. It’s transforming our buildings and the way they work too. The right monitoring system can help you understand how your building is operating, at any time. Smart buildings are an ideal opportunity for digital transformation.
Tech Data are specialists in Smart Building Technology and their team of experts can help building owners to navigate the technology needed to transform buildings and help to optimise their use now and for the future. Future proof your building and talk to the Tech Data team today.