5 ground-breaking Smart Buildings benefits

Intelligent buildings are typified by automated systems which enhance building operations, allowing facility managers to realise significant energy and cost savings. With new technical advances, the benefits of smart building technologies have gone beyond resource optimisation and maintenance cost reductions. (1)

Building management systems (BMS) enabled with Internet of Things (IoT) interconnectivity allow building owners and managers to champion groundbreaking sustainability initiatives, foster innovative workplace opportunities, and monitor critical parameters in real-time.

Smart buildings are especially capable of detecting areas for potential energy savings. Using translational software, it is possible to track high-energy use and implement changes to dramatically improve energy efficiency. This initiative is central to automating processes such as temperature controls and air conditioning systems.

Using optical proximity sensors, typically infrared sensors, lighting and HVAC management can be fully automated to realise significant low energy cost benefits. Estimates suggest that energy consumption can be reduced by 5–35% using smart technologies. (2)

Smartly reducing energy consumption naturally yields high cost and efficiency savings too. Using discrete IoT sensors, BMS can obtain fully anonymized data about space utilization and occupancy, which allows for quantifiable business process management and optimization.

As part of Terabee’s People Counting professional services offering, you have access to support from the design of your project, through to its deployment and commissioning.

Key efficiency benefits can be realised almost immediately by limiting energy use to areas of the building where energy is required.

Furthermore, long term efficiency benefits should not be overlooked. These include the ability to proactively address occupant issues by detecting these issues before they become a problem and to drive occupant satisfaction by focusing on essential quality of life changes to the environment. (3)

Resource optimization is closely related to the efficiency enhancements associated with smart building technologies. Space is considered a crucial resource in commercial real estate, and the ability to make data-driven decisions regarding space optimization is a significant boon to property managers.

Likewise, workforce can be deployed most effectively when coupled with IoT devices: repetitive tasks can be automated, intelligent access controls can supplement security, and preventative maintenance can be scheduled based on historical data trends to mitigate the risk of building disruption. (4)

Commercial properties have weathered severe disruption over the past few years. The global smart building market dropped by 17.4% from 2019 to 2022 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand for smart building integration has been relatively low ever since.

However, smart technologies offer property managers a unique opportunity to embrace the new flexible working culture. Novel BMS solutions enable greater proactivity when it comes to staff management at a time when hot-desking and remote working is becoming the new norm. (5)

The data derived from a truly interconnected BMS is at the heart of each of these benefits. Information is central to the efficiency, security, wellbeing, and other benefits of novel smart building solutions.

But what truly sets IoT-enabled BMS solutions apart from other data integration platforms is the ability to access that data in real-time.

Decisions can be made with unprecedented agility and with absolute confidence, whether you are accessing data from motion sensors, gas sensors, humidity sensors, and so on. Smart building solutions put real-time data at your fingertips and empower you to act on that information immediately.(6)

If you would like to learn how to deploy sensing solutions to realise the many benefits of smart building technologies in your facility, contact a member of the Terabee team today.

1. Integrating Buildings with the IoT  https://www.azobuild.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8264

2. 5 Key Benefits of Smart Buildings https://www.trueoccupancy.com/blog/5-key-benefits-of-smart-buildings Creating an efficient future https://smartbuildingsmagazine.com/news/creating-an-efficient-future

3. Creating an efficient future https://smartbuildingsmagazine.com/news/creating-an-efficient-future

4. Integrating Buildings with the IoT https://www.azobuild.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=8264 

Image: Corporate building photo created by fanjianhua