IOT Facility Managment Design Thinking Workshop at Tieto Austria

Everybody is talking about IOT for everything, and yes it is possible the technology is available and capable of delivering value to customers and certainly, IT companies can build spectacular solutions.

The open question we tried to answer in this workshop was "How can IOT (Internet of Things) bring real value to facility managers on a daily base?

Yes, we know that today we can connect every single escalator, light bulb, radiator, elevator, air conditioner and radiator to the cloud.

And yes we can use Big Data and analytics to do some number crunching, but where is the value for today's facility manager what is necessary to help them master the complexity of today's work environment?

Of course, I can't share all outcomes of the workshop but I think there are some very basic learnings that give food for future thought.

1. Facility managers are fed up with proprietary systems that lock them into contracts and vendor build systems and don't manage to hold pace with the rapidly changing reality and new technology in the building industry.
2. Facility managers need full control to adapt and extend existing systems, integrate new technology, and know-how and this has to be possible on a daily base without calling an expert or programmer to make the changes.
3. Sensors and data points are great but you can't solve everything with extensive monitoring because data capture and data processing do not only add an additional layer of complexity, which also needs to be managed creates costs and needs technical updates, but more importantly is an additional source of errors.
4. The biggest challenges are missing standards and the inability to map the entire complexity and context, regarding a specific incident, to various systems that use totally different technology.
5. Most of the data available are raw data and this data is irrelevant for quick problem analysis and problem resolution. Good facility managers with many years of experience outsmart all available building management systems currently existing when decisions need to be made immediately.

To sum it up the crucial problem that needs to be solved for IOT to make sense for facility managers is not how to monitor each and every single device and how to send the data to the cloud and share it with manufacturers and vendors.

The problem that needs to be solved is: how can relevant data from various systems be identified and linked together in a single context so expert systems and manufacturers can better support facility managers in the future.

To give a simple example to highlight the problem let's assume the facility manager is responsible for a large office building with fifty floors a view hundred rooms and one thousand individual heating radiators.

1. And let us imagine this building is connected to a distant heating supplier and the service is interrupted because there is a technical break down in the heat supplying power plant.
2. And let's also assume each radiator has a heat sensor connected to a facility management system and all data is shared with the manufacturer of the heating system in real time.

I think it is clear that the missing long-distance heating will result in each and every radiator in the building creating an alert and sending a message to the building management system. In addition, this alarm is sent to the heating system manufacturer who is also monitoring the system remotely.

The vendor might detect a huge problem after all one thousand radiators seem to have a problem at the same time and that needs urgent resolution.

From a facility managers point of view, it's no big deal, there is simply nothing he can do if the external head is cut off. He is not interested in all the individual alarms and doesn't need Big Data and analytics to see what is going on. The situation is totally clear and he probably will inform the long distance heating supplier of the problem and inform the tenants about the incident.

The contextual information the heating manufacturer needs is not only getting all alarms from each radiator but he needs to be informed the long distance heating provider has turned off the heat.

I believe IOT for facility management will make sense if it brings contextual data with system specific data to manufacturers so they can leverage their expertise and know-how and help facility managers better utilize their existing system.

The last thing I want to share is the value proposition for facility managers we agreed on in the workshop.

A facility management portal shall be a vendor-independent, customizable and extendable cloud-based solution that promotes standard interfaces and data exchange but ensures 100% in-house control for critical actions. In addition, global monitoring and local management shall be supported, and different end-user should only see information relevant to them on mobile devices and desktop applications. 

I especially want to thank the five facility managers that were ready to share their know-how and years of experience to make this workshop happen.

Here is the complete result of this one day workshop. If you are curious, don't try to zoom in on the picture the resolution is so low you won't be able to read much of the notes, but the picture will give you an idea of the value of using Design Thinking workshops to understand users needs when designing new application or service for the future.

If you are curious you can participate the next time we rune an IOT Design Thinking workshop for facility managers at Tieto Austria.

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