Smart Buildings: It's Not (Just) About the Technology

By Stephen Perkins, Building Services Technical Director, Beca

Stephen Perkins, Building Services Technical Director, Beca

Smart buildings: a buzzword that is past its sell-by date? From smartwatches to smart fridges to smart boards, it is either cringeworthy or confusing. The good thing is, like smart cities and smart manufacturing, the industry has emerged from the ‘trough of disillusionment’ and projects are being scoped and delivered sensibly and practically.

One of the reasons why we believe that the froth has settled is this: clients’ attitudes have become more measured as their understanding grows more sophisticated, and it is not just about technology. While it is IoT, data analytics, cloud, and machine-learning that are powering today’s smart buildings, clients are not enamoured by technology for technology’s sake, after seeing projects suffer from the fate of over-promising and under-delivering.Rather, they see it as a means to deliver benefit—to tenants, visitors, and building owners alike.

Benefits of smart buildings range from increasing operational efficiency, site security, and service quality, to providing building users with direct control of their personal environment. And, all done in a reliable, secure, vendor-neutral, and cost-efficient way. In tandem with increasing benefits and better use cases, significant reduction in ICT costs has enabled powerful networking and data analytics to be used on most projects. Our ICT specialists in network design, data analytics, and software development work hand-in-hand with our mechanical and electrical engineers to integrate physical and virtual worlds seamlessly. Data security, privacy, and redundancy are carefully considered, and wired and wireless networks are designed to be flexible and scalable to accommodate the inevitable changes imposed on ICT networks over their lifetime.

But Rather, is it a Problem Worth Solving?

Features and benefits notwithstanding, critical questions to ask are, “is it a problem worth solving”, and “is it worth your while to deploy a technological solution?”

There is an ever-growing list of solutions that can add ‘smarts’ to a space—no matter the scale. Ranging from small tenancy fit-outs and high-rise commercial towers to sprawling campuses spanning dozens of buildings. Decades of experience delivering innovative building projects gives us a deep appreciation of stakeholder’s needs, with the ability to make sense of the complexity and sheer number of technological options available. The secret lies in our ability to uncover pain points of building owners and tenants, where we tap on our institutional knowledge while conducting project-specific consultation workshops. This enables us to tease out these needs and craft a rich customer journey map. We then apply a range of technology could potentially meet the defined needs, centered around business priorities, budget, and schedule.

Does Technology Deliver Real Value?

What do we mean by ‘real value?’ There are many ways to define the value one can derive from technology.

Decades of experience delivering innovative building projects gives us a deep appreciation of stakeholder’s needs, with the ability to make sense of the complexity and sheer number of technological options available

Often the most suitable solutions will meet multiple needs, sitting at the centre of overlapping economic, social, and environmental perspectives, and some of these examples are highlighted below.

Economic solutions provide additional revenue, raise productivity, and deliver both operational and capital cost savings. Return-on-investment is a critical litmus test to determine whether the solution provides real value. More progressive clients investing in innovative solutions go by our rule-of-thumb of 1-2 percent of total construction cost, and the ROI should be of equal magnitude.

Building data analytics systems sitting on top of existing BMS continuously compare actual building operations against a digital model, identifying performance issues that impact cost and comfort. It is not uncommon for energy consumption to climb after it’s been fully occupied, and ideally buildings should be retro-commissioned to ensure that energy usage is not left unchecked. Having a system that continuously enables savings of 10-30 percent post-implementation.

Hunting for available meeting rooms is a major pain point for tenants, and particularly annoying when rooms booked are not occupied. Integration of tenant resource booking systems with occupancy monitoring systems releases booked rooms when they are not occupied, thus, increasing utilization. Similarly, landlord facilities booking systems which are integrated with tenants’ productivity software, offers convenient booking by tenants of high-value shared facilities (auditoriums, maker-spaces, meeting facilities) provided by the landlord—providing additional landlord revenue while the tenant avoids the need to use their own space for these facilities. With more data and connectedness between systems and the rise of the sharing economy, landlords have an opportunity to provide new or better services to their tenants, beyond just real estate.

Social solutions enhance users’ access to information, control of their local environment, and create a safer community. As more of peoples’ lives are lived online, there is growing expectation that the people-to-building interaction becomes more intuitive. Mobile applications allow users to directly control audio visual systems, lighting, and temperature in their local space, personalizing the space to users’ preferences. In addition, augmented and virtual reality in learning environments provide enhanced communication, which can be useful for remote users.

Video analytics systems monitor digital surveillance camera feeds in real-time to identify human and vehicle behaviors which could pose safety and security risks. Upon identifying anomalies, security personnel are dispatched by the system to address the situation—potentially before it escalates. We have implemented these systems on a wide range of government and private sector projects to significantly enhance their safety and security performance. This is augmented by facial recognition systems and mobile apps which is more convenient for users than the traditional RFID cards.

Environmental solutions reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources and are especially important in the light of global commitments to reduce carbon emissions of buildings across the industry value chain.

Solutions such as building data analytics for improved energy performance, mobile apps that allow users to directly control temperature, and augmented reality solutions that reduce the need for travel, overlap with environmental outcomes, which make them even more compelling. Other environmental solutions include smart irrigation sensors that save water by managing watering based on actual weather conditions, and video analytics systems that automatically reduce demands on lighting and cooling systems when the video surveillance system observe spaces that are unoccupied. These are often linked with facilities booking systems. To close the maintenance loop, it is integrated with facility staff dispatch systems that direct cleaners to spaces in based on their occupancy, odour, and real-time feedback.

We believe that the market for smart buildings will continue to progress along the ‘slope of enlightenment’—technology solutions that are cool and shiny but are not solving stakeholder problems, and bringing real value will find it challenging to excite the sophisticated market we have today.