Do You Know What Your Building Data is Telling You?

Do You Know What Your Building Data is Telling You? Industry Perspective

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IBM Industry Perspective

Do You Know What Your Building Data is Telling You?

We spend nearly all day inside buildings and have developed custom ecosystems and habitats. With modern technology, we can monitor and control nearly all the elements and conditions within our buildings. When you stop and think about it, our buildings’ data are its vital signs, telling us essential information about its health. This data is similar to how we monitor our heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol and related metrics to define our personal health, telling us a story about our health and well-being. As facilities and building managers, do you know what your building is trying to tell you?

With this industry perspective, you will begin your journey to explore how effective management of your building’s data creates new insights for your organization. This allows you to listen to what your building is telling you.

DEFINING THE SMARTER BUILDINGS APPROACH Our journey starts by exploring IBM®’s Smarter Buildings approach. Our buildings are creating troves of data, which deserve careful study and analysis. Let’s start our expedition by understanding the term, “Smarter Buildings.”

IBM® defines Smarter Buildings as: “Well-managed, integrated physical and digital infrastructures that provide optimal occupancy services in a reliable, cost effective and sustainable manner.”

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To explore this definition GovLoop spoke with five IBM® experts working on cutting-edge practices around IBM®’s Smarter Buildings programs: • Robert L. Biciocchi, Director of Smarter Cities Solutions, GBS, Public Sector, IBM® Global Business Services • Carolyn O. Marsh, US Federal Client Executive, IBM® • Brandon Patterson, Project Executive, IBM® Global Business Services • Greg Peterson, P.E., Manager, Global Energy, IBM® • Joe Phillips, Director, Smarter Buildings Solutions, IBM® “Smarter Buildings is really defined as accumulating the data from the building systems into one place, and then developing analytics or rules around that data to tell us if the building is operating efficiently,” said Peterson.

Smarter Buildings creates a command center for facilities managers, allowing them to see the core metrics and keep watch on their buildings. Peterson’s definition highlights that big data stands at

the core of smarter buildings. Modern buildings are collecting enormous amounts of data. With the use of sensors strategically placed throughout a building, you can track and manage nearly anything you can imagine. Data streams come from many sources, potentially including: • Heating and cooling systems • Lighting systems • Security systems and access control • Facility infrastructure • Leasing and administrative data Often this data is housed in separate locations.

With IBM®, the information can be streamlined and looked at holistically, allowing you to re-imagine how you manage your building portfolio.

Joe Phillips breaks down the data into classes, “The information that we collect from buildings can be put into three categories: condition of assets, consumption of energy, and utilization of data.” Individually, these data categories have value for operations, cost control and resource capacity. Correlated together, the value is much higher.

This data provides insights about condition, con-

“Not only are you meeting your goals and targets [with Smarter Buildings], you’re generating savings.

You could say, ‘I want to take these savings and put that out into efficiency upgrades.’ Maybe you want to change and spec it up. Maybe you want to change the lighting. Or replace the control system, things like that,”

Greg Peterson, P.E., Manager, Global Energy, IBM® sumption and use helps an agency optimize both the business of managing buildings and the performance of a building for its primary purpose - support the agency mission. To achieve the highest value, it is necessary to correlate data, break down siloes and identify new information previously hidden from organizations.

“Smarter Buildings is about getting to that information residing across various sub-systems and components. These sub-systems are proprietary and may do a good job on reporting on things happening within their specific operational purpose but can be completely blind to data being generated by other components of a different brand even though they operate related functions. Correlating that information into an enterprise view of systems in use and using deeper analytics on a enterprise composite of information has proven to optimize performance of business and operational objectives to new levels,” said Biciocchi.

5 BENEFITS OF A SMARTER BUILDINGS APPROACH Tapping into your building’s ecosystem to understand your data provides numerous benefits. IBM® experts highlighted five of them: 1. Increased energy efficiency: By looking at your

building’s data, you can reduce your agency’s carbon footprint, promote green IT and reduce energy consumption and costs.

2. Increased operational efficiency: This technol-

ogy reduces facility maintenance as well as operating and occupancy costs.

3.Increased cost savings: Looking at your data and

entire building portfolio can eliminate real estate penalties and over-payments. Organizations can also receive high returns from capital projects by taking a holistic view of the project by leveraging building data.

4. Consolidated data: The Smarter Buildings ap-

proach allows you to assess and analyze data that traditionally rests in siloes. By consolidating this information, you will develop new insights about your data.

5. Analyze in real-time: By implementing the

Smarter Buildings approach, you can receive realtime insights about your building.

RE-IMAGINED PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT: THE GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION STORY Recently, IBM®’s Smarter Buildings program allowed GSA to unlock insights from their building data for improved decision making. This initiative included:

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• 55 GSA buildings • 33 million square feet of real estate • 50,000 sensors points, updated every 5 minutes • 8,300 different pieces of equipment from HVAC, chillers, pumps Marsh said, “The GSA project just went live this summer, and we are just starting to see results. We integrated 26 different types of building automation systems, from GSA’s largest energy consuming buildings throughout the US. This project is a proof point that smart buildings analytics can be implemented in a large scale, and across a diverse kind of equipment landscape.”

GSA is one example of how the Smarter Buildings approach can benefit large and small organizations.

GSA shows the power of unlocking your building data to reduce your carbon footprint and cut facilities costs.

THE ROCHESTER STORY IBM®’s Rochester, Minnesota, complex was one of the first IBM® campuses to benefit from the Smarter Building approach. The campus contains: • 3.2 million square feet of space • Over 32 buildings • Manufacturing facilities, test labs, offices and a data center In his role, Greg Peterson was tasked with trying to achieve four percent energy conservation every year. He immediately witnessed benefits when Smarter Buildings was applied to the Rochester complex. “When we implemented Smarter Buildings in Rochester, we were getting a 12% energy

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IBM Industry Perspective

“When Smarter Building came along, it was a new technology, and it was a new idea that I looked at. And I said ‘Wow, it’s looking at things and doing things we haven’t done before,” Greg Peterson, P.E., Manager, Global Energy, IBM®

savings just off the equipment, in addition to other maintenance savings. I was very surprised, and thought if we could get a few percent savings, I could be happy, but when we were achieving 12 percent, that really surprised me,” said Peterson.

The project shed light on new insights for IBM®, and helped them make improved decisions to drive savings across their company. Peterson said, “The bottom line was based on this pilot, and the returns that we saw, both from a savings standpoint and maintenance savings, we realized that we’re efficient, we operate efficiently, but we can even improve on the efficiency with smarter buildings.”

BEST PRACTICES: YOUR FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS To help you on your Smarter Buildings journey, IBM® experts provided best practices to get you started. They provide valuable insights to guide you as you seek to leverage your building data in new, transformative ways.

• Understand your data: “Organizations need to

understand the extent to which they consume energy,” said Brandon Patterson. This information is essential to build metrics, understand usage and create baselines of data for future comparisons.

• Identify performance metrics: Once your data

is understood, organizations must begin to identify which data points they find most valuable, and define metrics around the data.

• Start with the big energy consumers first: Our

experts recommended that you start by identifying equipment that produces the most energy, and move to other savings from there. For most buildings, the highest consumer is likely your HVAC system. Once you tackle your largest consumer, prioritize which system to tackle next and move in phases.

• Collaborate: As with any data project, collabo-

rate with everyone who will be influenced by the changes. As Bob Biciocchi said, “It is the systems engineering and design group that also extends out to the facilities technicians, the guys that are out in the field making the repairs and working on these systems on a daily basis. It must also include the budget and financial oversight executive offices who must see that the business case produces a return on investment. I would get everybody’s input as you’re designing the system and figuring out

what your priorities are.” This is how to get buy-in and fully leverage the solution technology.

• Create standard operating procedures: Once

you have consolidated the data and it starts to come into a single location, it is important to develop a process to handle alerts. For instance, if you are notified that a chilled water valve is stuck open in the middle of winter, be sure there is a process to know that it is closed out and action has been taken. Closing out alerts and using them to provide attention to issues can save agencies thousands of dollars, and improve communications.

• Invest heavily in change management: Marsh

said, “Doing a lot of communication up front and engaging in change management assures employees that this change is for everyone to help each other improve the operations of the buildings and share lessons learned.” Clearly articulating how the system will work and what people can expect will shape the success of your program.

• Create data baselines: “If you understand your

data and have a baseline, two months, six months or years down the road, you can understand how you have performed with the new technology. Without this data, it will be hard to know what you have achieved,” said Brandon Patterson.This information is essential for making comparisons to the past and continuously improving organizationally.

Buildings have their own ecosystems, equipped with their own unique environments to meet the needs of their inhabitants. By leveraging your buildings’ data, we can control our ecosystems to maximize productivity, help reduce organizational costs, and achieve our goals. Your building data is speaking to you, and with the Smarter Buildings approach, you will know exactly what it is telling you.

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For more information about this report, please reach out to Pat Fiorenza, Senior Research Analyst, GovLoop, at pat@govloop.com, or follow him on twitter: @pjfiorenza.

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