4 Considerations When Choosing A Smart Building Solution

The world is now on the cusp of a technological revolution with connected devices and the Internet of Things. IoT technologies and AI are new but provide many opportunities for the construction and real estate industry to improve user experience and streamline processes.

Whether you are transforming an existing building into a smart one, or building a smart building, there are plenty to consider. In this article, we highlight 4 important areas of consideration when choosing a smart solution to improve your building’s performance.

1. Address your building or facility’s needs

Before looking into what solutions are available, there are multiple factors to consider. An important first step is to identify the goals of your smart building, and if you’re working on a building with existing processes, access and review the processes.

An audit should give you a clearer picture of the current state and also help you rank important considerations according to your goals. Once you’ve identified your needs and priorities, the solution you decide upon should prioritise addressing them. Start by identifying the following:

1. What are your goals and how can processes be implemented or upgraded to meet those goals better?

2. What are the needs of your building?

3. And if you’re working on a building with existing processes, what are currently working well, and what are clearly not working?

2. Holistic system connectivity

Most IoT systems link multiple sensors via radio waves which helps with transmitting data. It is important to ensure that the network used by your chosen IoT system can support your devices as it has a great impact on reliability and performance.

Do ask your IoT partner about the networks they offer, how it works with your devices, and how they measure and guarantee success.

3. Advanced analytics

Most solutions do provide IoT sensors and plenty of data. However, what you should get out of it is valuable data analytics that indicate performance trends, utility usage, and more. A solution that can generate analysis and reports through AI, and provide actionable insights, will save you plenty of time and effort, and allow you to focus on making actionable change.

4. Time and cost savings

Implementing smart building solutions such as occupancy sensors that record utilisation information is the first step to obtaining and analysing this data. Once you have this information, you can identify where improvements can be made either through integration with other smart technologies and building systems that enable automation or by facilitating strategic decisions to be made.

Looking for a smart building solutions provider?

Speak with our IoT experts at Simpple. Simpple’s smart building solution provides IoT sensors, audit systems and more, that provides facility owners, site managers and contractors with an overview and deep analysis of the facility on a single dashboard.

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Ultimate Guide: 5 Reasons Why Investing in Smart Building is the Key to Growth

In this day and age, the term ‘smart’ has widely been used to coin systems that combine innovative technology — i.e. hardware such as Internet of Things (IoT) and softwares, aimed at making everyday life easier. With technology and construction materials getting smarter, it comes as no surprise that buildings are getting smarter too.

What is a Smart Building?

Smart buildings, also known as Intelligent buildings, are nonresidential buildings (i.e. shopping malls, offices, airports, hospitals, schools, etc.) that leverage intelligent automated systems to create a safer, more comfortable and productive environment.

With the ability of IoT devices, individual technical components and systems that once functioned independently within a building, are now integrated via a network. Data of each system and devices can be shared across multiple domains and real-time operations of a building may be easily controlled from a single software.

Challenge of adopting smart building solutions

While there has been a rise in smart building technology creation and adoption, 56% of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore still face some barrier with digital transformation due to the perceived high implementation cost. Is the cost associated with adopting a new tech solution worth the return on investment (ROI)? Well, understanding its fundamental benefits will be the key to breaking that barrier and unlocking new growth for your business.

Here are 5 reasons why you should transform your building into a smart one.

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5 key advantages of smart buildings

1. Reduce operational cost

Operational overheads are a significant cost for any building owner/user. While these are necessary expenses, the level of spend is often uneconomical because it’s not intelligently applied. Smart technologies provide greater visibility into operations and equipment and may identify inefficient pieces of equipment or wasteful usage patterns. This presents opportunities for deliberate improvements in your processes—and costs—overall.

2. Increase efficiency and productivity

Smart buildings conserve resources by using them more efficiently. Systems and solutions are implemented to increase efficiency, largely by removing repetitive and time-consuming tasks — this in return, reduces manpower costs associated with those tasks.

In addition, smart task management systems can increase productivity and efficiency by up to 90%, through eliminating inefficiencies in communication and by ensuring tasks are sent to the right person at the right time.

3. Improve accountability and transparency

Automated task updates will allow staff to better focus on their work on hand and have greater accountability. Managers can gain real-time updates on the environment of the location and status of staff and tasks all on one dashboard for easy overview.

4. Optimise performance management

With granular data monitoring and advanced analytics, the IoT will collect and present data about any aspect of your building or facility’s operation. For example, with feedback systems and IoT sensors, you will be able to gather data about utility usage, work status, inspection scores and more. Advanced analytics generated by machine learning technology will then drill into the details of tasks performance and automatically deliver real-time performance against preset benchmarks.

All the deep data at your disposal enables you to easily review and optimise performance on a regular basis.

5. Enhance user experience

User experience is always a key performance metric. As smart buildings deliver greater comfort for users, it adds attractive value to your facility and boosts the well being of users.

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Needless to say, smart building technologies pave the way for smarter business and operational decisions, and drive long term payoffs.

Looking for a smart building solutions partner?

Simpple works with hundreds of businesses to discover and implement smart solutions catered to their growing business needs. Speak with us to learn more about how you can improve your building’s performance.

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A Breakthrough in Security of Buildings

Under the National Environment Agency Incubate Programme, we developed a security module that seamlessly integrates Gaussian Robotics's ECOBOT machines and our security intelligence sensors at Heartbeat@Bedok to transform the building into the smart building of tomorrow.

More than just a simple cleaning robot, the newly-improved Security Bot is capable of security patrolling, detecting abnormalities and even broadcast messages, all while still effectively ensuring the cleanliness of the building.

The programme matches suitable technology companies to meet its environmental services needs and supports premise owners to adopt feasible technologies, solutions and innovations in their buildings.

The project is conducted in collaboration with Heartbeat@Bedok Community Centre. The facility management team experienced constraints in manpower for both cleaning and security functions. Cleaners had to clean large public spaces by using the robotic hard floor scrubbers, and the security guards had to regularly patrol the premises. Separate deployment of robotics for each of the functions would be costly. Hence, there is a need for the industry to come up with a solution that can automate both cleaning and security surveillance functions concurrently.

A multifunctional robotics solution under the GOVT-PACT initiative was developed, by deploying security features onto cleaning robots, and it was operationalised at the Community Centre. This solution helps to reduce the cost of automation while ensuring the quality of cleaning and security tasks are not compromised.

Under Enterprise Singapore’s Govt Pact programme, the National Environment Agency (NEA) is one of the participating government agencies to work with SMEs/startups to develop and test-bed innovative solutions. Participating companies will go through different stages of product development, from the ideation stage to pilot runs, with the support of NEA.

Future Plans

Through the 2-in-1 Cleaning + Security robot project, the team also realised that the future in Smart Building automation (Smart Cleaning) did not lie solely with the use of robotics, but rather how robotics fit into a building’s ecosystem where fleet management is not only amongst robots but also in co-existence with the human workforce where A.I. decides the best resource (be it human or robot) is sent to tackle the issue at hand.

The Simpple.AI was conceived for this purpose and automatically manages the site's workforce (human + robot) in environmental services, security and maintenance by deeply analysing the data input through IoT Sensors, CCTV cameras and data points collected through human and robot inputs.

The Simpple.AI presents the future of building automation through an Ecosystem of IoT sensors, Robotics and Human Workforce and the team believes this will drive the increased use of robotics as an ecosystem rather than robotics as merely a piece of equipment.