Our industry is starting to embrace real change, taking the first steps towards moving away from making decisions based on theoretical understandings to embracing and trusting in data-led decisions for the first time.

The actual value around data does not come from data itself or its quantity, but only from its quality – how good is your data, how you use it, and what you create from it.

Data can and will provide a full building picture, from customer profiling and journey mapping to maintenance strategies. The key to understanding the vast amount of data is to identify what you want to achieve from accessing it and, most importantly, verifying the data legitimacy.

Data can impact all aspects of the built environment, monitoring a building’s energy, how well its performing, management systems, remote monitoring and more.

A smart building is now becoming a very different landscape from anything that has gone before. The UK-based European Intelligent Building Group defines an intelligent building as one that creates the environment that maximises the effectiveness of its occupants, while at the same time enabling the efficient management of resources.

Understanding how your property and its occupants work is vital in data-led decisions. In order to harness such data our multiple building systems have to be interoperable and must provide a simple, cost-effective means of establishing interconnectivity across platforms. This information or data will ultimately be analysed and actioned outside the conventional building envelope by way of cloud-based services analysing real in-use building data to inform short, medium and long-term management decisions.

Data from a building’s automation and energy management systems, along with the customer presence and requirements, will become seen as a minimum requirement in future decades, to create sustainable productive environments for all.

Disparate systems should be interconnected and amalgamated into a single network to provide vital information as the bedrock for reporting. Gathering and interpreting this information from multiple systems simultaneously will then provide leverage in enhancing asset management, which will profoundly influence our current understanding and – in terms of energy performance – take typical building consumption from 174kWh per sq m energy intensity to 70kWh per sq m to meet the 2050 Paris commitment.

These significant reductions won’t just come from optimisation of plant or building infrastructure but from engagement with customers; appreciating their needs and expectations through the analysis of building data.

Understanding the impact of our decisions is generally the only way that we will continue to evolve. Open technology, smart engagement and analytics systems that harness the power of standard smart devices, coupled with cost effective Internet of Things (IOT) wireless solutions, will provide the tools.

These systems will not only give asset managers and management teams a deeper level of understanding, but also assist in educating our customers that their actions have direct consequences on performance and the environmental conditions for the communities we operate in.

We as property management professionals must not underestimate the pivotal role we play in harnessing information to make decisions based upon real in use building data across different occupations and schemes. These systems will become vital tools in providing connected smart environments. Everyone is responsible when it comes to data, but to avoid some lack of governance and accountability for data, you need clear roles and responsibilities, strong policies, procedures, training, guidance and support.

It is our job to educate and promote action to allow us to ‘connect’ with asset owners and decision makers to provide a connected sustainable asset to work, learn and play for years to come and for future generations that follow.

Further information

Contact Andrew Jackson or Sylvain Thouzeau

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