The Tech Leader Has a New Remit: Smarter Buildings

The South Australian city of Adelaide is not on everyone’s radar, but vigorous competition is underway to build the smartest next generation building.

In many ways, it makes sense. Adelaide suffers from a lack of rainfall and searing summer heat, and of all the Australian capitals, its climate is arguably the most severe.

Good reason to invest in smart buildings, and the city’s planners have embraced the concept, with each new building seeking to push the boundaries a little further.

Public utility SA Water set a high standard last decade with its new headquarters, which included smart fountains that remotely monitor and generate cleaning and maintenance schedules. A showcase fountain was provided to the public, with built-in smart solar lighting.

SA Water has been a global leader in developing a state-wide smart technology network to optimize water use in Australia’s driest state, so its headquarters was always going to aspire to smart status.

A new office building, GPO Exchange, had no such corporate incentive but laid claims to being Australia’s smartest commercial building. The building’s sensors capture 32,000 separate data points delivering insights into its performance across a range of metrics from occupancy levels, waste generation and energy use.

Driving value chains 

Smart buildings are many things, but one of the keys to their design is how they marry data with physical design and construction.

A recent Gartner report shows how far this thinking has come and how this has put smart buildings into the remit of the technology leader.

“Smart buildings and spaces require data-driven value chains that encompass building management, sustainability targets and user experiences,” according to a recent paper by analysts Bettina Tratz-Ryan and Marc Halpern.

“CIOs need to build a holistic framework based on a common data environment to realize efficiencies, predictive management and innovative service capabilities.”

The research paper is all about data. Smart buildings, it says, have a “fabric of data streams” which are aligned with the focus of the building.

“Smart buildings and spaces require data-driven value chains that encompass building management, sustainability targets and user experiences”

It is not easy, however, and there are blurred lines of responsibility. Isn’t it up to the architects and building managers, and where does the technology leader actually come in? 

Many of the smart building users are not IT professionals. They have low levels of data literacy, so systems need to consider this, deliver less friction and promote collaboration.

According to Gartner analysts, technology leaders have a critical role in smart buildings. Still, they face a challenge in creating use cases for software applications and data organization.

Despite the advances which have been made, “many business users do not have adequate data skills or an established team culture to start a data-driven smart building program.”

Buildings need foundations, so a data strategy should be central to the initial design. A strategy to create a common data environment is essential to connect the “value chain” between operations and services using the data fabric.

A key recommendation is to “construct scalable smart building use cases by applying data orchestration based on data governance.” 

This will help the automation of data collection. Technology leaders can then face the challenge of integrating multiple data sources, often on separate platforms, to triangulate data and create insights to drive building performance.  

It is a process that will also inform the development of a digital twin of the building, which is another essential element in the technology leader’s remit. The twin can test, for example, how the cooling system can cope with a 10% increase in building occupants and deliver information on the optimum system settings.

Enhancing the user experience 

There are several positive outcomes from the smart building approach. There are clear improvements in sustainability as the world seeks to decarbonize. It is estimated that less than a third of businesses right now know how energy efficient their building is.

Smart buildings enhance the user experience and business efficiency and also reduce costs.

In the Adelaide GPO Central building, the smart systems strictly regulate access to areas of the building using an app, improving security.

There are also potential health and safety benefits. The development of UVC lighting has given building owners a new solution for how buildings can be kept clean and even disinfected to remove pathogens on surfaces and in the air.

The systems need to be backed up by smart data to operate effectively. The smart systems will know when an area is empty, and then doors can be locked and the lights illuminated to perform their cleaning tasks.

All of these operations are based on a combination of IoT, automation and data integration and analysis. 

Technology leaders have traditionally gone into buildings to work and perform their role in managing the IT for the business. For some CIOs, managing the IT of the building is now their business. 

Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].

Image credit: iStockphoto/metamorworks