The Complete Guide to IoT Smart Buildings

Drivers for Smart Building Adoption Include:

The smart building market is expected to continue on its upward trajectory

A smart building uses sensors and connected devices to monitor various building elements, analyse data, and generate insights that can be used to optimise the building’s operations.

For a building to be ‘smart’, it needs to have a holistic system of integrated hardware, such as sensors and gateways, that make building functions ‘smart’ via real-time data transfer, two-way communication and automation.

Smart Buildings are Not a Recent Phenomenon:

What’s the Difference Between Smart Buildings and Building Management Systems?

Although sometimes used interchangeably, there are some key differences between what’s commonly classified as a ‘smart building’ vs a ‘building management system’.

What is a BMS?

A Building Management System (BMS) is a computer-based system installed in buildings to manage and monitor facilities management equipment. The BMS control system can be used to monitor and manage the mechanical and electrical services in a building or facility. 

These can include:

• Power
• Elevators
• Lights
• Access Control
• Ventilation
• Heating
• Air-conditioning 

By linking the functionality of individual pieces of building and facilities equipment, a BMS enables these entities to operate as one integrated system. 

The hardware and software technologies of the BMS were created back in the 1960s. Over the years, however, the BMS infrastructure has grown organically alongside advances in technology, adding layers of communication protocols, networks, and controls. With IoT functionality, new generation BMS’ allow for the integration of multiple system vendors.

So, what’s the difference between smart buildings and building management systems?

Typically, a facility manager will use a building’s BMS simply to monitor for problems and carry out basic controls for heating, ventilation and HVAC; possibly also for lighting, access control and power monitoring. 

But with an increasing focus on energy efficiency, sustainability, as well as changing tenant needs and expectations, traditional building management systems are being pushed to grow and evolve. Fortunately, advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, IoT and analytics are enabling new and broader capabilities.

The next-generation BMS’ integrate and aggregate all of a building’s data across multiple business and operations systems and sensors; essentially, turning a building into a smart building.

• With the advancements in IoT technology, it has become easier and less expensive for manufacturers to add controls, sensors and IP network connectivity to more of their systems and devices. 
• Connecting devices and systems moves the BMS from simply making the facility manager’s job easier to assisting tenants directly. 
• Using Big Data analytics and AI technologies makes building operations and management more automated, reliable, efficient and proactive. 
• Cloud computing provides the power, storage and security for analytics and AI. 

These IoT technology evolutions have enabled the development of smart building technology. Thus, a smart building can be seen as an evolution of a BMS.

THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON SMARTER BUILDING TECHNOLOGY

When people think of smart buildings, they often default to thinking about shrinking carbon footprints, lowering labour costs, and reducing energy consumption. Of course, these are all important objectives. But the coronavirus pandemic has seen the key driver of smart buildings shift to focusing on the health and safety of the building’s users.

Across the world, businesses and public spaces are under pressure to retrofit their facilities with capabilities to clean and sanitise more intensively, enforce social distancing, enable contact tracking and ensure business continuity despite changing workforce dynamics. This is more than a passing pandemic response—COVID-19 will cast a long shadow and most industries will be affected by long-term operational changes.

Wireless technologies help to create a safer and more trusted workplace environment.

Remote Building Management

With more people working offsite, remote management technologies have come to the fore. A cloud-connected smart building management system enables off-site engineers to receive alerts from sensors or notification of security risks through a series of sensors and video analytics. This allows remote personnel to monitor, optimise, and fix buildings remotely.

Examples of tasks that can be automated and operated remotely include:

• Automating locks for the safety of employees and staff
• Operating window shades to open and close with the sun
• Occupancy monitoring
• Receiving real-time alerts on building problems

With access to all of a smart building’s data from one dashboard, managers can fully manage and optimise their buildings in real time.

Safe Return to Work

As employees return to work, a renewed emphasis on health and wellness helps to reassure employee safety. Today’s workplace and the workplace of the future must continuously commit to usage-based sanitation, occupancy and traffic controls, and tracking and monitoring the environment for elements such as temperature, humidity, lighting, and sound. IoT platforms and the sensory network of systems behind them play a pivotal role in enabling a full range of benefits and advantages for employees, employers, and commercial facility owners.

Example use cases include:

• Managing and monitoring air filtration through a smart HVAC system to minimise the spread of airborne exposure to the virus
• Employees can schedule meetings and occupy spaces by locating areas with real-time availability and social distancing requirements
• Access control based on facial recognition, temperature readings and mask-wearing 
• Enabling optimised cleaning schedules based on actual usage of a particular space 
• Creating touchless functionality for high-touch surfaces such as elevator buttons and door handles 

Such smart building uses will greatly help businesses not only to automate increasingly complex facilities management processes, but also to enhance health and safety, practice effective crowd control and meet obligatory regulations.