How to make an Old Building Smart?
There is a misconception that in order to make a building smart you have to build a new one. It is a lot more environmentally friendly to refurbish the buildings we already have; and upgrade the infrastructure to enable them to become smart. The wide range of both wired and wireless solutions on offer mean that there is a solution to suit every style of building.
To put it simply, a smart building is one that gathers data, interprets it and either automatically makes changes or notifies Facility Managers when relevant changes should be made. For example, this could be to make the building more energy-efficient by reducing the brightness of the lights or to highlight that a component is due for an upgrade.
Smart buildings improve insight which is a huge benefit for Facility Managers who are often tasked with managing multiple sites, maintaining relationships and strong communication with key stakeholders, and managing multiple services, systems, and assets; whilst aiming to reduce repair and maintenance costs.
You can read more about how smart buildings can benefit Facility Managers here.
However, smart buildings are increasingly about benefiting the people within them. This used to be seen as a soft benefit, a ‘nice to have’, but since the COVID-19 pandemic, healthy buildings that optimise the environment for people within them has become a primary driver.
A connected ecosystem of IoT devices, that share data and present this data in a user-friendly dashboard can very quickly help to make a building smarter. Smart devices such as internet-connected fridges, machines, lighting etc. and sensors that monitor a range of factors including vibration, ambient light, force/pressure, humidity, presence, and much more relay vast amounts of real-time data. Taking this one step further, integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence allows the system to only show the user what they’re interested in. It learns preferences and automatically adjusts things like indoor temperature based on the activity, the number of people in a room and outdoor temperature.
A building management system (BMS) that links all of the building services into one single pane of glass pulls all of this together. This allows lighting, HVAC, security, energy management, water management etc., to all be controlled via one central interface.
An interesting concept that explains how a building can become smart is a digital twin. We interviewed Dogu Taskiran about smart cities and digital twins. He is a software developer, a smart city thought-leader and the CEO of a virtual reality and augmented reality studio. He states that…
A digital twin is a virtual digital equivalent to a physical asset (e.g. a building) and there are 3 main prerequisites for something to have a digital twin, it needs to have a physical asset in real space, a virtual asset in virtual space and the interconnectivity of data to tie these 2 together. This allows users to see how their building is used in virtual space, combining this with virtual reality, you can actually walk around the virtual building and interact with it. Information gathered from the physical asset can be used to simulate things in the virtual asset allowing users to understand how changes will impact the environment e.g., how it will impact energy usage.
You can watch a clip from the interview here.
However, there are some common problems encountered when trying to create this utopia. The main one being a lack of interoperability. Many older systems are proprietary and therefore cannot communicate with newer devices and systems. This is where SmartCore can help. SmartCore is an advanced IoT platform that acts as a middleware integration layer connecting disparate devices and systems within a building, converging sensor and status data. This data can then be published through MQTT, BACnet or HTTP interfaces allowing for BMS integration or passing data to the cloud. This presents powerful new opportunities for seamless integration within smart buildings - SmartCore is much more than just an intelligent lighting control system.
A smart building consultant will work with you to understand your needs and challenges; this allows a solution to be installed that suits the application and does not include lots of additional features that will never be used and therefore are unnecessary extra cost.
Engineers, System Integrators and Contractors will commission and install the solution providing you with an app, smart switch or web-based dashboard. The building itself can become smart but look no different, however, it will feel different. It will support you with day-to-day tasks, optimising your environment and improving your health and wellbeing by ensuring the lighting, air quality and temperature are at the correct levels. You’ll also be able to understand what is going on within the building, helping you to make more informed and considered decisions.
Therefore the answer to the above question is not straightforward. There are many routes to making a building smart and many definitions of what a smart building is. But, there are many easy, cost-effective solutions that can be incorporated quickly to make a building more intelligent, sustainable and human-centric.
In a couple of weeks, we are interviewing SmartScore on our podcast. SmartScore is a global standard for technology in the built world and, they certify smart buildings ensuring they meet a specific standard. Subscribe to amBX - The Smart Building Podcast now so you don’t miss the episode.
