by Brianna Crandall — May 23, 2014—KGS Buildings, a cloud-based building performance analytics company, just announced the integration of its software platform into facility operations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). KGS has deployed its Clockworks performance management platform on over 60 buildings at MIT spanning over 10 million square feet, monitoring and providing analytics on over 7,000 pieces of equipment using over 14,000,000 data points per day.
MIT’s forward-thinking Department of Facilities personnel use Clockworks automated diagnostics to prioritize operational problems by cost, comfort impact, and maintenance severity. These priorities are especially important in directing corrective actions, issuing work orders, and justifying resources. In just one 450,000-square-foot lab building, through proactive operations responding to automated diagnostics, MIT is expected to save $286,000 per year in avoidable energy cost, allowing MIT to capture utility incentives for reducing electric and gas consumption through its utility provider, NSTAR.
The Clockworks Commissioning Dashboard module provides executive-level performance trends illustrating which buildings and equipment have faults or inefficiencies over time, and how much those are worth. Users can view the associated avoidable costs as well as the impact of faults and opportunities.
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KGS Buildings is a building performance management software provider with global industry partnerships. Clockworks was developed based on more than 30 combined years of research and development, leveraging academic research and cooperative research with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The software supports MIT’s Comprehensive Stewardship Group, whose charge is to proactively maintain buildings to maximize the impact and return on investment in MIT’s infrastructure, including maintaining energy efficiency and mitigating operating costs.
MIT has been moving to a proactive stewardship model, which is especially critical in the research-intense environment required by its facilities. The Clockworks platform has provided them an easy-to-use tool to help achieve that goal, which is useful for the trades to help diagnose problems, and for management through several dashboard and metric views, says KGS Buildings. Clockworks’ data-based prioritization is designed to increase the ability to best focus limited resources. In addition, it helps to achieve energy performance goals through correlating maintenance efforts with energy impact in real time.
Clockworks prioritizes recommendations for operational efficiency every day by running diagnostic algorithms tailored to specific buildings and equipment with control sequence and engineering parameters. Real-time and historical data from building management systems and utility metering can be accessed through online dashboards, with tools and metrics for many facilities stakeholders.
“Whether the priority is energy cost reduction, improving comfort, or proactive maintenance, our solution provides facility managers prioritized action items to meet their goals. We leverage cloud technology and automated analytics to uncover hidden savings opportunities and identify the root cause of under-performing systems,” said Nick Gayeski, Ph.D., partner and co-founder of KGS Buildings, LLC. “Universities, like many organizations, have tight budgets and a laundry list of maintenance needs, which is why it is so important to know which repairs will yield the greatest benefits. Our automated diagnostics and cost calculations help customers focus on achieving the best results with constrained resources.”
Founded by three doctorates in Building Technology from MIT, KGS Buildings is a technology company offering building performance management software with automated diagnostics to building operators, managers and service providers. A member of the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure Technology Partner Program, KGS partners with Schneider Electric to bring advanced automated diagnostics to its customers. The company is also active in leading research to commercialize building diagnostics with universities, national laboratories, and trade associations. KGS has delivered real results for reliable energy savings, proactive maintenance programs, and more efficient operations to customers throughout the building industry.
