Understanding Essential vs ‘Nice to Have’ Tech in Smart Buildings - For Building Owners

The main drivers for smart buildings are environmental sustainability, changing occupant expectations and the rise of IT and IoT technology. With that in mind, there are a lot of emerging technologies that solve advanced building problems; they can create amazing, futuristic environments but are not necessarily vital in order to create a smart building.

These extra services can bump up the price of a smart building retrofit considerably, and it can be hard for end clients to distinguish exactly what they really need in their building. Everyone has their own definition of what a smart building is. The lack of standardisation in the industry currently means there is no clear route to achieving a smart building; it is a bespoke solution every time.

As a starting point, a smart foundation needs to be created, which can be added to in the coming years; something that is interoperable and future-proofed should be installed so that data can be collected and viewed/interacted with through a user-friendly dashboard.

It’s important to set out goals and expectations at the start of the project. What do you want to achieve with this refurbishment? Is it to save operational costs? Make the building more sustainable? Improve the wellbeing of occupants? Or something else?

We have compiled a list of areas we deem essential for a stage 1 smart building project.

A Building Management System or Smart Building Platform

A system that unifies all other systems and devices, pulling data into a central source is essential; otherwise, lots of siloed data exists and managing it can end up being very costly and time-consuming. Also, as the data is in lots of different places, no high level, building-wide patterns can be determined, meaning the data is only useful for individual, niche purposes.

Data Insights – Analytics

Once data is collected, it is really important to have some kind of analytics platform that can take the raw data and make sense of it for the user. It should highlight key areas that are deemed a priority for building owners to review, suggest energy savings and report on all aspects of the building, from security to maintenance.

Smart Lighting

Lighting is ubiquitous in buildings; it is a necessary service to allow people to see clearly and be able to carry out their tasks. Therefore, it makes sense to make it smart; sensors can be installed on the lighting network allowing various parameters to be monitored; data can be transported to a central source through the existing network. Lighting can be used as a medium facilitating communication throughout the building by utilising a pre-existing, reliable network. It can even react to factors, such as occupancy - turning on when it detects presence but also UV lighting - disinfecting areas when no one is present or supporting other systems such as security or safety.

In addition, adding circadian lighting can add further benefits for occupant wellbeing. Discover more here.

Smart Security

Again, security is a fundamental element of a building, but by making it smart, it can offer advanced benefits. By using IoT, wired and wireless technology, the systems can become more robust. It can alert the right people as soon as there is a vulnerability or a breach of security. A smart security system in a building is very similar to cybersecurity software installed on your laptop; it requires investment and upgrades to stay secure.

Smart HVAC

HVAC is the largest consumption of energy in a building, making it smart can dramatically save energy and cost. Collecting data about the environment and correlating that with occupancy data collected through sensors that may be installed in the lights can allow the system to operate much more efficiently.

Fire Safety

Another vitally important service in buildings is fire safety; this cannot be compromised on. Smart technology can improve operations and advance the level of safety. One example is emergency lighting; historically, it has been a very manual process that is time-consuming to maintain. However, with the advent of IoT and smart connected buildings, emergency lighting systems can be hugely improved through preventative maintenance and automated testing. Smart components can report on the status of the device, battery and lamp, and data can be provided in a user-friendly tool, which allows issues to be flagged and addressed ahead of them occurring. In addition, some tests can be automatically scheduled, saving time, money and improving overall safety by removing some of the risks of human error.

Energy Management

We are targeted with reducing carbon in commercial buildings; having the ability to collect energy data throughout the building allows small changes to be made that can add up to big results. All of the IoT devices throughout the building and all of the services and systems mentioned above should feed all of the data back to a central source; this is then the perfect place for an energy management system to operate; it can have a full view of the building and use AI/ML to find patterns, make predictions and create algorithms to reduce energy consumption. Even less advanced systems which simply present energy management data are a step forward for most buildings; managers can have insight for the first time as to how much water the building is using, how much electricity is used throughout the day and night and determine where savings can be made. 

Asset Management (depending on the organisation/sector)

This is something that can be extremely useful but is not necessary for every building. For example, an office building will probably be able to manage without this addition, but having asset management in somewhere like a warehouse or a hospital can be extremely useful. It can dramatically improve efficiency and save businesses large amounts of money. By tagging assets with smart tags, it smart enables any object. This allows people to do their job quicker as they can simply look up an item on the system and see exactly where it is, whether it needs maintenance and who used it last.

If you found that overview useful, our white paper ‘7 Considerations for Smart Lighting and Building Implementation’ might be of interest. You can download it here.

We are also part of the Smart Building Bootcamp. Our Director of Product, Jon Couch, is part of the faculty delivering the syllabus. To get smarter about smart buildings, you can complete the course - https://smartbuildingbootcamp.com/