As the industry endeavours to construct, deliver and operate Smart Digital Buildings, I am often asked “what does it mean to make a building truly ‘Digital’? How does this differentiate from a ‘Smart Building’?”. Given buildings are by definition amongst the most analogue things you could imagine, it’s a fair question! 

The concept of a Smart Building is one where the building utilises the sensors and controllers within IoT Systems (namely Building Automation Systems or BAS) such as the BMS, HVAC, EMS, Lighting Control, AV, CCTV, Access Control, etc. to make optimal decisions through data analysis and run more efficiently and sustainably. This is often achieved through integration between the systems so that, for example, a room identified as empty by an occupancy sensor in the Lighting Control System can not only turn off lighting for that room, but can also notify the BMS/HVAC system that the air conditioning unit serving the room also be turned off to save energy. 

Smart Buildings can and do deliver significant operational benefits, improve building performance, reduce energy consumption and save money over their lifetime. Use of IoT systems (namely BAS) is a key factor in Governmental statutory legislation and regulatory requirements (such as the EU Clean Energy for all Europeans Package and California’s Title 24) that are the practical implementations of national and international commitments such as the Paris Climate Accord or the UK Government’s commitment to Net Zero Emissions by 2050. 

Digital Buildings take the Smart Building approach further, developing a coordinated and fully integrated suite of IoT Systems that are integrated into Enterprise networks & applications, cloud platforms (such as Google’s Cloud IoT and Amazon’s AWS IoT) and mobile applications. Doing this enables the leveraging of technical developments in the IT/IoT space such as Digital Twins and open APIs, to create secure, cloud-based virtual models of building assets that update and change as their physical counterparts change. This in turn enables building owners and operators to leverage the combined benefits of advanced analytics, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (from providers such as Google’s Deepmind and IBM Watson), open standards, cyber security best practices and bidirectional (two-way) communication with in-building IoT systems across their entire building portfolio. In so doing that they can operate more flexibly in response to demand and create digital mobile applications for building users that improve their experience when using a building and its services. 

All of which sounds very technical - what does it actually mean? Simply put, with Digital Buildings enable Building owners / operators to: 

• See what is happening in any building within their entire property portfolio securely online anywhere in the world, at any time - from a strategic multi-property ‘regional or global portfolio level’ view right down to the individual sensors, controllers, users and assets in a room 
• Use machine learning and analytics to develop and implement strategies that run buildings more efficiently at scale 
• Make physical world changes to a building’s assets and systems in response to actual data and events viewed in the virtual online model to make them operate more efficiently and flexibly 
• Integrate with digital (web/mobile) applications so that users can use buildings in a user-friendly and simple way from their own devices 
  

Example applications that a Digital Building may feature include: 

• Space utilisation and optimisation to determine compliance with Covid-19 H&S requirements 
• Mobile applications for building users that enable them to access buildings through mobile keys, wayfinding, user preference (such as climate settings) and make use of in-room systems such as Audio Visual 
• View menus and order food from in-house catering or partner restaurants and takeaway / food delivery services 
• Determine usage patterns for staff that enable building operations to be more agile & flexible, with building operations optimised in response to demand and designed better in the future. This can mean lift systems using machine learning / AI to improve their algorithms so that waiting and journey times are reduced, meeting room utilisation/allocation can be improved and busy / quiet periods better understood across the building footprint and BAS performance optimised to meet changing demand across an entire building portfolio 
  

The challenge for doing this when constructing or fitting out a building is to procure and deliver this kind of innovation and long-term vision in the context of construction projects that: 

• May lack the required specialist technical knowledge within the design team to coordinate, integrate and deliver highly complex IoT / IT systems of different types across multiple stakeholders 
• Are delivered by contractors whose natural focus is to deliver physical buildings rather than long-term strategic and technical goals
• Often multi-year projects, spanning the lifecycle for technical innovation 
• Typically face a downward pressure on costs, are prone to time delays and subsequently tend to be sensitive to commercial risk/change 
  

We at FPC are uniquely placed to help you meet these challenges and realise the benefits of Digital Buildings at scale right across your property portfolio. If you’d like to know more about how we can help you to create and deliver your vision for Smart Digital Buildings then please get in touch.

We are also actively hiring for technical positions within our IoT Group supporting new Digital Smart Buildings projects, open positions can be viewed on our website here