Smart building technology designs have already proven able to help owners reduce energy costs, enhance security, and achieve other operational goals. Building owners and operators already know that data can drive more powerful decision-making. Now, owners managing large real estate portfolios are finding that technology capable of delivering portfolio-wide insights – and enabling sweeping action across multiple sites – can generate far greater returns.

Owners already deploying these systems have seen positive results. In fact, one retail operator found that within 90 days of its deployment of an intelligent building platform across nearly two dozen sites, they received a 54% return on their investment. This type of return isn’t simply the result of having access to more data. It comes from thoughtful technology design targeted to address specific operational challenges.

Bigger data delivers bigger value across portfolios

For years, building automation systems have proven valuable for their ability to give building managers deep insight into their buildings’ operating systems. This data has helped operators reduce energy usage, track preventative maintenance, and enhance occupant comfort and safety for buildings of all sizes. However, there have been limits to what these systems can do. These systems have also traditionally limited integration with other building systems, as many automation and energy management systems are proprietary.

Today’s emerging intelligent building software options are designed to pull data from across multiple building systems – like HVAC and plumbing to surveillance and access control – from an owner’s entire portfolio. Moreover, these systems enable two-way communication that allows building operators to rapidly act on data. By giving owners command of all building systems at a global level through a single pane of glass, today’s software solutions make it possible to identify trends across regions and building types.

Among other factors, a portfolio-based view of operations makes it possible to identify proactive maintenance opportunities based on performance trends across all sites. For example, operators can identify specific system irregularities for which to watch. At the earliest sign of these irregularities in operating conditions building managers can schedule proactive maintenance. This also creates an opportunity to perform some remote troubleshooting, potentially reducing maintenance calls.

Owners may also use this data to compare energy demands across buildings of similar size or age. This data can spur the investigation that identifies whether there is a problem to fix, a need for decommissioning, or complementary site or design factors that should influence future real estate purchasing decisions.

Through the two-way communication afforded by new software solutions, owners can also more easily participate in local utilities’ demand response programs. Through these programs, owners gain meaningful savings and cash rebates by proactively reducing their energy consumption at their utilities’ peak operating times. When owners can easily make changes to HVAC setpoints and schedules across their regional footprint, they have the ability to compound gains through more rebates.

Smart building design delivers ongoing returns

New intelligent building software sits atop other software solutions and can be easily integrated with countless other building solutions. The biggest challenge is often determining which integrations to add. Working with the right partner, such as a technology project manager, can help. The right partner may begin the smart building systems design process by asking owners and other building stakeholders to identify operational challenges they’d like to solve. Challenges might range from energy management and sustainability goals to a range of safety and security issues. Understanding those challenges allows system designers to determine the right technology to solve those issues.

The right partner will design a system that addresses these issues and features the appropriate level of cybersecurity to sustain operations. Once the system has been deployed, your partner should help create dashboards that bring in the right data to address your needs. Data is collected in real time and normalized across the enterprise. With some platforms, machine learning models can further optimize operations.

This data should be reevaluated on an ongoing basis as improvements are made. Your partner can help plan for future technology designs, investments, and deployments that may further enhance the value of your platform. Because intelligent building systems work across systems, they give owners the freedom to move away from legacy software that may have locked them into a single proprietary brand.

Through continuous improvement, owners can increase their returns long beyond the initial installation period.

Ready to start multiplying your returns? CRUX can help.

Smart building solutions offer a tremendous amount of possibility, but few building owners seem to be capitalizing on the full intelligence afforded by smart buildings. That’s because many building owners and architects install the latest technology solutions without ensuring the maximum integration and interoperability that truly makes building technology “smart.”

Smart buildings harness the data produced by Internet of Things (IoT) connected building technologies to automate a wide range of processes. Through machine-to-machine communication, building systems can be programmed to respond to certain stimuli or preset conditions. These automated processes can drive significant reductions in operating costs and increase building safety, among other major benefits.

Yet, despite the fact that most technology systems today can be connected to one another, there often remain significant siloes between systems. Without a proactive design approach that leverages the full advantages of smart technologies, many building owners may be missing out on easily achievable benefits.

Understanding how the building systems that most owners already include in buildings can work together will allow designers to create an overall smart building strategy.

3 ways smart building solutions solve building challenges

Many building owners and designers continue to focus on smart technologies rather than smart buildings. This shortsighted approach does not fully appreciate the ways in which smart building solutions can solve a number of the problems building owners face today:

1. Smart buildings lower operational costs. Smart buildings give operators better intelligence about what’s going on in their facilities so they can find opportunities to reduce energy usage. Building sensors can provide information about how much energy is being consumed at given times and compare it to occupancy patterns, sunshade use, and a range of other data to automate energy-saving performance. When individuals leave an office or other space, this can trigger changes to lighting and temperature that prove more cost-effective.

There’s ample evidence at this point that smart buildings can reduce energy usage by as much as 23%. The payback for a building owner’s investment is becoming shorter all the time. In fact, the growing prevalence of affordable commercial IoT solutions combined with the lower price tag of renewable energy solutions puts net-zero energy buildings within easier reach for many building owners.

 2. Smart buildings support safer environments. Connected smart buildings can reduce or remove human intervention to speed response times in the event of emergencies. They can orchestrate individual system capabilities to enable more sophisticated responses to various emergency situations. This may include automating actions such as sending out a mass notification prior to a severe weather event, turning on generators or alerting utilities after a power outage, shutting down elevators and lock doors to prevent asset theft, or guiding first responders to the location where a panic button was pressed.

These safety solutions have their own impact on operational costs, because they can reduce business downtime and potentially lower insurance costs.

3. Smart building solutions increase property value. No matter what market you’re in, creating a more personal occupant experience is increasingly critical for attracting tenants. This is an area where smart technology can be a powerful differentiator. In a smart building, the arrival process for office workers, hotel guests or even hospital patients can trigger preset conditions for their rooms’ lighting, automated window shades, and temperature, among a range of other conditions. When individuals leave these spaces, this might trigger an alert for a just-in-time approach to housekeeping, keeping  restrooms and conference rooms clean, accelerating housekeeping’s response to surface wipe downs based on busier than normal usage, triggering automatic disinfection systems, and more.

Real estate ownership groups will find that they can charge a higher premium for Class A buildings outfitted with infrastructure that supports smart building connectivity.

It’s smart to consult designers early on

Building owners miss out on maximizing the benefits listed above when they do not take a holistic approach to technology during the design stage. They may leave tremendous cost savings on the table by adding smart building solutions into a facility one at a time as they become aware of them, missing opportunities for integration. They also run the risk of prioritizing one specific benefit afforded by IoT technology without recognizing how easy it is to leverage other benefits with the same data.

Creating smarter buildings requires that building owners work with their technology design consultant early in the building design to identify operational goals. By providing more information upfront about your use goals, the right consultant can offer insight into the investments and level of integration most suitable to meet your needs. If you’re developing a mixed-use high-rise with multi-family units, for example, what level of amenities do you need to offer to be competitive? What does living and working in that space look and feel like? Answering these questions can help create the right experience for your budget and needs.

In addition, smart building solutions make it more important to involve all stakeholders early in the design conversation. Depending on the number of systems these system integrations will impact, building owners will likely need to involve facilities and operations teams, security, IT and other departments in design discussions to create an effective experience.

We are happy to share with you how you can get more value from the building systems you are likely already buying—the possibilities are almost endless!

Today there are seemingly endless possibilities for transforming the built environment through technology. To start the conversation about how a smarter building might make sense for your next project, contact CRUX today.