An “intelligent building” is any structure that uses technology to connect and control operations, including alarms, HVAC, lighting, or power.

Enabling these objects to connect and exchange data is the IoT Remote Monitoring, the network of physical devices or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity. Tying these “things” together allows a building to become an intelligent or smart building. This trend in intelligent buildings has been growing steadily over the last decade, and has proven benefits that extend far past corporate real estate, its tenants, and their vendors. If your organization isn’t taking advantage of IoT, see how other companies are finding success with implementing IoT into their organizational ecosystem.

Intelligent building scenarios:

Corporate/Enterprise/Office

  • Workplace stations track usage and temperature to monitor room capacity, humidity, and air quality and lighting
  • Technicians utilize sensor data to determine a more accurate, predictive maintenance schedule

Service Providers

  • Real-time analytics from multiple systems and sources allow service providers to offer recommendations for asset improvement

Industrial

  • Sensor-embedded equipment relays equipment temperature, utilization, and settings, allowing managers to analyze the data, adjust the workflow and achieve optimal performance
  • High-value areas are monitored for increased liquid or moisture to avoid a flooded data center

With these intelligent building scenarios in mind, the next logical question is “where do we start?”

Operational Impact of Intelligent Buildings

Companies interested in intelligent building technology are analyzing how IoT can be leveraged across the larger organization.

Two examples include HVAC and Lighting. With the ability to remotely and automatically assess which rooms are currently being occupied instead of ventilating, heating, air conditioning and switching on all the lights for a whole floor or building, serious savings can be made for just switching these on when someone is in the room.

Executives can see other measurable impact in the following areas:

Office and Field Operations

Employees using wearable sensors can monitor activities and record information. This data can be leveraged to enhance productivity, increase safety, and lower costs. From fatigue monitoring to air quality, the data is valuable to both employees and the enterprise.

COVID-19 mitigation integrations with IoT – such as cleaning management software solutions that help customers optimize cleaning schedules by automatically sending out a cleaning schedule after a meeting – test whether your workforce is safe to go out in the field or come into the office, and will become a 'must have' going forward.

Alerts and Historical Data

By detecting changes in temperature and light, you can improve the transport operations of valuable cargo , including perishable items, or temperature sensitive assets (servers, hardware, etc.). In addition, historical data can be used to improve and control other similar scenarios. For example, server rooms, tech transport, or machine maintenance.

By uploading historical data from several different sources into our software you will be able to establish baselines as compared to current utility and energy bills, for example. Once the new software is in place, real cost savings and areas for improvement can be identified in real time from a single dashboard, giving you one version of the truth.

Accumulating Big Data

With the investment in intelligent buildings, comes a much needed adaptation in the way companies handle large amounts of data, aka the cloud. Big Data allows for companies to track and analyze previously unavailable data about employee movement/occupancy, asset temperature, vibration, and light in addition to other discernable conditions across network connections. Understanding how drivers react to city traffic, or employees with integration and security can provide a much-needed outlook in this area.

With a single dashboard that continuously monitors all integrated data points, you only action real alarms, you see predictive points of failure and respond early before breakdown with reduced downtime, you only send relevant technicians to fix a problem or even enable remote fixing and you enable energy efficiencies as you run your equipment at optimal levels.

Accruent Bridges the Gap

As companies continue to adopt technologies across all areas of their business, there is a fundamental need to improve operations continuously without negatively impacting consistency or efficiency.

Accruent’s IoT solution has proven to reduce downtime and money spent on unnecessary reactive services. Connecting assets via IoT allows organizations to enhance their intelligent buildings by putting a preventive maintenance plan in place, controlling asset settings remotely, and moving beyond a condition-based maintenance plan to predicting equipment failures.

To learn more about IoT remote monitoring in corporate real estate, contact us today.

corporate real estate, contact us today.