What do Smart Buildings do?

Smart buildings utilise technology to capture data and learn preferences making life easier for the Facility Manager but also improving the experience for occupants inside the building. Simultaneously, the building becomes more energy efficient, only using what is needed.

This is achieved through sensors, smart software, connectivity between devices and unified control.

Ultimately, the building can become autonomous, which therefore improves the efficiency of tasks and acts as a second pair of hands, working with the management and occupants to enhance their working or living environment.

At amBX, we produce smart software for commercial buildings. We have years of experience in lighting control which led to the development of SmartCore, a platform that truly addresses the needs of the market. We found that the problems hindering smart lighting and smart building adoption were proprietary systems and devices, lack of training, lack of understanding and poor reliability – we want to address these issues.

Often, Facility Managers are managing multiple systems from different vendors, which can be time-consuming and costly. As none of the systems communicate with one another, no data is shared. Therefore understanding valuable insights becomes difficult, and this does not create a very energy-efficient solution.

SmartCore is an open architecture, interoperable, secure, reliable, flexible and user-friendly platform which is uniquely created in software. It is ever-evolving and completely scalable meaning it is suited to a single room or a whole campus of buildings. We have begun to address the interoperability issue within buildings by acting as a middleware layer that can translate information from different protocols simultaneously, passing information both up and downstream. We are compatible with various building protocols, including MQTT, HTTP and BACnet, as well as various lighting protocols, and more are getting added all of the time.

Our vision is fully connected, digitised buildings that put the needs of occupants and the environment first. One that is easy to install and manage and can be relied upon. We have partnered with various key stakeholders across the supply chain to start to implement this idea.

But what else do smart buildings do?

Well, as discussed, they’re living assets; they’re no longer lumps of concrete. Obviously, all smart buildings are different and designed to meet the client’s requirements. But let’s, imagine a user journey in a generic imaginary smart building.

The user will arrive at the building, and there may be touchless entry; they get out their smartphone and scan an app which opens the door, the system then recognises who this person is and calls the lift to go to their usual floor, or the user can input their desired floor on the app when prompted. This will automatically sign the user in, meaning the building is compliant with fire safety regulations. The system can learn the preferences of each user, so it may then send a notification asking the user if they want their usual coffee; this will then start the coffee machine so that the user can simply go and pick it up. This person might then have a meeting later that day; the room booking system will then communicate with the other building services to turn the lights on in that room, active the heating/air conditioning, and turn the TV on; switching off again once the meeting has finished and the sensors no longer detect presence in the room. The lighting in the office space will also be reacting dynamically to natural light coming in the window, causing the artificial light to dim down. Circadian lighting can also be activated, meaning it fully supports occupants circadian rhythm, ensuring they get the right light level, colour and intensity to suit their tasks and benefit their natural body clock.

There are many other examples of what a smart building can do, and there are new innovative technologies being developed all of the time. The main priority is interoperability; if all technologies going forward are interoperable with one another, the potential is huge.

Another thing to note is that a smart building should operate without the user having to think about how it is working; it should just work and assist them, allowing them to excel in their tasks.