From Data To Action: Transforming Buildings Into Energy-Saving Smart Facilities

On Wednesday, 21st of February, Nicholas White , Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Smart Building Collective | Certification , James Thomas , Head of Smart Buildings & Technology at SES Engineering Services , and Tomi Teikko , Workplace Strategist - Head of US at Haltian , joined us on this session about the transition from zero to energy-saving smart facilities.

It was a pleasure to host our fantastic speakers and learn about the steps to bring data and technology into your building to save energy and respond to stakeholder interests.

In case you missed it, here are some key quotes from this week's webinar.

The session recording can be accessed through the link here:

https://proptechconnect.com/from-data-to-action-transforming-buildings-into-energy-saving-smart-facilities/

Webinar Highlights

• Smart Building Trends: Where are we in terms of net zero goals??

Tomi: "Every building can actually save energy and it all starts with adding more data points. Not having enough data points creates a core problem. Our biggest competition in the smart building industry is doing nothing."

Nicholas: "The goals that we’ve set to ourselves are incredibly ambitious, as they should be, but there is a lot of waste happening. There is a shortage of tech in buildings, but there is not a shortage of tech out there. Our biggest constraint at the moment is human processes and understanding, it's getting ourselves structured and organized in a way to actually make use of all this technology."

James: "There are new things driving companies to net zero that perhaps haven't before, such as legislation, as well as really good certification schemes that are helping us head towards achieving net zero. We are now looking to assess the performance gap, so stopping delivering buildings without really understanding how they're performing against how they were intended to perform. (...) We as a business are looking at building performance data n granular detail. And to do that, we're looking at things like digital twins and looking at where we can bring data into a common data environment and then compare it to exactly how that asset was performed to operate."

• Smart Buildings Data Leverage: How do you utilise data effectively to save energy?

Nicholas: "Smart is going through a moment of recalibration. We need to move the industry away from thinking about smart buildings as something you buy and you're done after that point. It's really about how do you organize yourself as an organization, we're talking about enterprise change here. If you put smart technology into your building, you also have to put in the process in place to use that data in a meaningful way to save costs and energy. It's not only about the technology, it's what you do with it that actually makes a difference."

James: "I prefer to use the terminology of a digital building rather than a smart building. I see smart technology is an enabler, it's a means of producing data. You've then got to consider how are you going to consume that data, what benefit you are trying to drive from it, and also understand that there are different stakeholders involved in an asset. So for example, owners and developers want different things from the data that they're going to gather from the building. That data doesn't just come from smart technology. It comes from all the MEP systems that we install to deliver the building services. Your BMS, your EMS, your lighting control, all those individual systems are all data producers. (...) It's really having a clear data strategy to begin with and almost having that set out at the beginning. (...) This will help you deliver a more effective ecosystem. None of the systems that you install in a building should be considered more important than another and this should improve the effectiveness of each other as well."

Tomi: "To start with using data, the fastest return of investment is just to measure indoor air quality from the location where people are. For example, often thermostats are not located in the rooms where people are sitting, so their confort level based on indoor air quality cannot be measured. This is why having things like our wireless sensor is important. So when thinking how to start saving energy, we can start by using the data that is missing from the existing building automation systems. Often the return on investment will be less than one year, it can even be a few months and visible in your utilities, so CFOs cannot refuse something that provides ROI so quickly."

(Bonus question) How far along actually are we in terms of using machine learning to help us make decisions on data that actually lead to a result??

Tomi: "We all know that there are thousands of different versions of building automation software and user interfaces to actually reschedule heating and cooling to save energy. This requires competence, so the role of AI in the first place is to create user instructions based on the data. (...) The next step would be to have real-time occupancy and space utilization as a next level of optimization. I would recommend to start with just indoor air quality because your savings are instant, and to then bring in AI to help to do these user instructions on reconfiguring and rescheduling the building automation manual."

• Data Security: How can building owners create an effective system to safeguard their data??

Tomi: "In the case of a smart building solution just for measuring indoor air quality, I can guarantee there is no big security risk as the only information that is transferred to the vendors’ data cloud is temperature data. When we get to the next level and introduce real-time occupancy and indoor positioning, or event on the third level, which is the Empathic Building that utilises our bio data from humans as a sensor, the story is different. The sharing of this data can violate privacy and can include identification of humans. However, I would not worry the data security in the first two steps at all, especially as vendors get audited every year."

Nicholas: "Not all data is created equal. There was a famous case from a few years ago where one of the large retailers in the US had the credit card information of their entire database taken through the indoor air sensor. So they had it on the same network and therefore they had a breach. Cyber security will be big topic over the next 10 years as we digitalise buildings, but there's a lot of incredible cybersecurity knowledge out there from all the enterprise technology that's been used for many years, so it's just about learning from those, taking those standards on board, and putting them into practice."

James: "You can build different levels of cyber security into your actual infrastructure. You need to think about the way that you deliver your network, the way that you use things like VLANs to separate your lighting network from your corporate network so that you haven't got a route through to people's credit card details, using things like firewalls, using things like certification. There are many things to consider in what connectivity you put in the building to deliver your smart infrastructure. It's about having that in mind in your overall ICC architecture. That's how you deliver the foundation of a smart or a digital building - it’s about building it from a strong, solid, and secure foundation like you would build any building."

• Retrofitting old buildings: How do you retrofit them with smart technology?

James: "Retrofit starts with understanding what you already have in that building. You can't change anything unless you understand what it is that you're trying to change, so you need to do application reviews, look at the systems that are already installed and review how modern are they, how they can be digitally enabled, and whether smart technology such as gateway technology could be introduced to convert from a traditional building protocol to IoT. That would be our first approach."

Tomi: "We think of technology similarly to what AI is doing now, it is your co-worker. It is not about redoing the building, it is about using the existing facility and automation, and to fill the gaps in what it offers."

• Action Points: What are the first two steps to decarbonise a smart building?

James: "First it is about understanding what individual stakeholders are trying to achieve and understanding their goals and targets. I tend to put them into three categories: the owner or the developer, the operator maintaining that asset, and the occupier. Each one of these will have different commitments that they're trying to achieve, but also different outcomes that they want from smart technology. (..) There's always a blurred line between occupant experience and the negative impact that this could have on things like energy efficiency or carbon footprint. So there's a fine balance and you need to accept that each stakeholder needs to be considered in the overall plan. Secondly, in what it comes to bringing technology intro buildings, it is all about the ecosystem approach that I mentioned previously. (...)"

Nicholas: "The first steps are to understand where you are and where you want to go. I would add in understanding some benchmarks and talking to companies and buildings that have done this journey recently. There’s a lot to takeaway from the experiences of companies that have done this before. Then, when you actually dive into existing and new solutions, try and get multiple options around the table or multiple opinions at the same time to try and understand which ones you want to progress with. So educating yourself on what solutions are out there is the first step."

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