2016: The Year Of The 360-Degree View Of The Building

Using smart sensor technology to ensure that buildings are being utilized as intended

by John T. Anderson — Originally published in the January/February 2016 issue of FMJ—What was your New Year’s resolution? For most people, the resolutions they commit themselves to involve eating healthier, getting a new job, picking up a new hobby or just spending more time with family and friends. All too often these resolutions end up falling through because they’re easy to put off. But, there’s one resolution that savvy facilities professionals can’t afford to put off: establishing a data-driven 360-degree view of the building they manage.

What does it mean to establish a 360-degree view of the building? It means understanding both the intended and actual utilization of your building and using that knowledge to design for the future. Through a combination of software, hardware and sensor technology, FMs can analyze intended room and desk bookings versus actual occupancy levels of huddle areas, drop-in spaces, meeting rooms or phone booths. From there, FMs have a 360-degree view of their building’s pulse, not only monitoring where people are congregating in real time but also anticipating where they will go next.

The potential for smart technologies to transform the way facilities professionals understand and manage their buildings is a topic that’s been much hyped over for the last few years. And, this year, FM pros will find that smart technologies are now so widely spread and accessible that the data-driven 360-degree view of their buildings is a goal within reach. Furthermore, embracing it will have a tangible impact on both the facilities team and occupants’ everyday experience in the space, to say nothing of the bottom line.

The incoming flood of workspace data

Until relatively recently — not just for facilities, but for virtually all industries — data collection was a slow and steady process. The tools for gathering data were often tedious to use and in general had a significant time delay and lack of quality. By the time the analysis was complete, any insights that could be derived were already out of date.

Now, we have the opposite problem. The rise of connected devices and their integration into workplaces have already completely redefined the data landscape. Consider Gartner’s prediction that, by the end of 2016, the Internet of Things will span more than 6.4 billion devices worldwide.1 That number is expected to skyrocket to more than 20 billion connected devices across the globe in the following four years. With so many smart devices flooding the workspace, companies now need to be able to distinguish which data collection mechanisms are the most efficient at gathering only the data that provides useful insights.

FM professionals have more data than ever, accessed faster than ever, to draw on for extrapolating new conclusions and deploying new solutions. FMs can use tools that aggregate data from HR systems, badge security systems and other kinds of smart sensors to fully understand the pulse of their office. This information can, in turn, empower facilities professionals with a 360-degree view of the building. But while the power of data may be there, this raises the question: how can facilities professionals unlock it?

Drawing on big data for a smarter building

The 360-degree view of the building enables facility managers and real estate executives alike to constantly optimize how space in their office building is used, based on real-time or near-real-time data that tracks workspace efficiency. Rather than maintaining disparate snapshots of part of a building’s life, the 360-degree view makes a full profile accessible in one place.

By integrating smart sensor technology into common, day-to-day office tools, FM professionals can seamlessly gauge how employees are utilizing available spaces — whether meeting rooms are going unused or constantly double booked; whether sitting desks continue to reign supreme or standing desks have rendered them obsolete; and whether common meeting spaces are attracting clusters of employees to work together and spark productivity or if they spend most of their time unoccupied. Best of all, this can all be done completely under the radar, without disrupting the employees in question in the process.

All of this insight is incredibly valuable to FM professionals, who can use that data to adjust their building’s office plans accordingly. Real-time, 360-degree views of any given building allow facility managers to make workspaces not only more accommodating for current occupants, but attract new ones as well.

If there are spaces in a building that are being underutilized, you might consider renting them out to other companies, similar to how an airline might sell seats — with real implication for cost-saving. Now, thanks to smart building technology, all of the data analysis can be automated and done in real time, allowing FM professionals to respond faster than ever when it comes to designing a more intuitive and efficient facility.

Going green with smart buildings

Establishing a smart, 360-degree view of the building goes beyond just maximizing workspace use and efficiency. Smart sensor technologies also facilitate a significant push in building sustainability, empowering businesses to reduce their carbon footprint while benefiting from cost savings.

Between the U.S. and China’s pact to cap their countries’ carbon emissions in 2014 and the recent talks in Paris about curbing climate change, never before have we seen such a worldwide and concerted push for greener and more sustainable living. In order to achieve these larger goals, facility managers can do their part to achieve more sustainable offices. Sensor technology makes this easier than ever to track and accomplish.

Facility managers can use their integrated dashboards to not only gauge space usage, but determine usage of utilities like light, water and heat as well.

Odds are you’ve already seen iterations of this kind of technology around the office already: motion sensors that turn a meeting room’s lights on and off depending on whether or not someone is in the room; smart thermostats that automatically raise or lower the temperature of the office based on the weather and eventually learn to determine a building’s most comfortable base temperature; and motion-activated faucets that only run water if there are hands are underneath, ensuring you never run the risk of leaving the faucet on and wasting water again.

Smart building dashboards streamline all of these processes, coordinating utilities monitoring into a single easy interface and giving FM professionals a real-time, 360-degree view of how efficiently a building is consuming these resources. With that kind of data on hand, facility managers can then implement new measures to better regulate how the building taps into these resources, ultimately resulting in a more cost-and energy-efficient office building.

Not only does this serve a larger mission of fighting worldwide climate change, it also saves on the building’s bottom line too, ensuring a decrease in utility spending.

Looking ahead to a smart building future

If anyone is still skeptical about the imminent rise of the 360-degree view of the building, just look around: all of the conditions are already in place. Many FM professionals already use a variety of tools to manage and understand different aspects of their facilities.

But a centralized workspace management toolkit unifies these features into a single, consolidated dashboard that makes tracking, collecting and processing these data streams more intuitive than ever.

Through graphical representations of space utilization and heat maps, FM professionals can more quickly identify where employees’ preferences lie and where improvements can be made. This can range from streamlining meeting room scheduling to avoid double bookings (or eliminating spaces that are never booked), designating common workspaces for greater productivity, sub-leasing unused spaces to new tenants that could better utilize them and remapping office layouts to better accommodate current tenants.

Best of all, these improvements can be made without conspicuously disrupting employees’ day-to-day routines and yield serious cost savings in the process.

Adapting the 360-degree view for you

The New Year’s resolution that should absolutely be on FMs’ minds is designing a 360-degree view of the building. Understand how the current workplace plan is functioning by planning, defining, enabling and measuring the actual utilization of the current space. Then, maintain a constant feedback loop to determine the intended future use of the space.

This resolution yields benefits all around: for the building managers, for facility occupants and, on the efficiency front, for the greater fight to create a more sustainable footprint. A better managed office, more productive employees, optimized workspaces and energy-efficient utilities usage — a 360-degree view isn’t just how office buildings should look in 2016, it’s the baseline for how all offices should run.

REFERENCE
  1. www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317

John T. AndersonJohn T. Anderson serves as the chief revenue officer of Condeco Software where he is responsible for all facets of revenue generation and field sales operations for the Americas.

As a visionary executive with 30 years of success building teams to accelerate growth and meet aggressive revenue and profit targets, Anderson has played a pivotal role in the transformation of software technology organizations into market leaders in the workplace management space. At Condeco, Anderson applies his business development and leadership skills toward helping clients realize the greatest possible value from Condeco solutions. Learn more at www.condecosoftware.com.

FMJ, the official magazine of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), is written by and for workplace professionals and is published six times a year. FMJ is the only magazine that draws on the collective knowledge of IFMA’s global network of thought leaders to provide insights on current and upcoming FM trends. For more information on FMJ, visit www.ifma.org/publications/fmj-magazine.

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IFMA, founded in 1980, is the world’s largest and most widely recognized association for facility management professionals, supporting 24,000 members in more than 100 countries. IFMA advances collective knowledge, value and growth for Facility Management professionals. IFMA certifies professionals in facility management, conducts research, provides educational programs, content and resources, and produces World Workplace, the largest series of facility management conferences and expositions. To join and follow IFMA’s social media outlets online, visit the association’s LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter pages. For more information, visit www.ifma.org.