Location used to be paramount to businesses seeking office space. But now, firms are also seeking something else: Smart buildings. ’Smart’ or ‘intelligent’ buildings use technology to lower the operating costs of tenants. And although the trend is just starting to catch on, experts predict tenants will slowly begin to demand such features.
For example, 56 percent of respondents to a recent Building Owners and Managers Association International (BOMA) survey said they are now located in a building with at least one of the 13 ‘intelligent’ features listed on the organization’s survey.
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Among the 13 intelligent features were: fiber optics capability, built-in wiring for Internet access, wiring for high speed networks, Local Area Network and Wide Area Network connectivity, satellite accessibility, high tech energy efficient HVAC, and automatic sensors installed in faucets and toilets.
Some of these technologies, such as the energy efficient HVAC, make it easier for companies to ensure that their offices are comfortable. In the BOMA survey, it was one of the most common features among the 56 percent of the respondents who said their building have any of the listed intelligent features. Twenty-three percent of tenants that had intelligent features had high tech HVAC systems.
By integrating technology into building management, companies are able to spend less money and time on facility problems, said Andy Fuhrman, who is a senior consultant for CFI, Computerized Facility Integration LLC, based in San Francisco.
“The point behind the intelligent building is to optimize your utility costs, improve efficiency, (and) create a more productive work environment,” said Fuhrman, who is also president of the International Facilities Management Association International’s computer applications council.
“The main focus of this is to help businesses bring their products to market sooner, reduce product cycle times, solve problems more quickly,” he said.
In order to use the building’s intelligent features to reduce costs, businesses must minimize the number of redundant databases cluttering a company. In many firms, he said, the facilities and Information Technology departments create databases that contain the same information, which reduces efficiency.
Fuhrman helps them cut the time it takes to solve building problems by getting the facilities department to share its primary level data on space, people, and organization with the IT department, which collects this data, utilizes it, and shares it with the maintenance department – the department that actually deals with the intelligent technology features of the building.
“We’re trying to improve efficiency and minimize redundant databases,” he said.
The benefit of this is that companies are able to reduce their downtime when problems arise. In the case of financial services companies, an hour of downtime can cost the company millions of dollars, he said.
But while the building and facilities industries think of intelligent buildings in a wide-ranging sense, including everything from LAN and WAN connectivity to “smart” elevators that group passenger by floor destination, the telecommunications industry’s definition is a bit more specific.
“A smart building is a building that has a high level of technology installed in it that allows its tenants to more freely access (their) basic voice and data needs,” said Jeffrey S. Deckman, chief executive officer of Synet Inc. of Warwick, a company which can outfit buildings to take advantage of smart building technology.
An example of the voice and data needs to which companies have better access when they work out of intelligent buildings include access to increased bandwidth at a reduced cost, which means faster Internet connections at a lower price.
Many of today’s office buildings were not designed to provide high-speed Internet access, Deckman said. This leads to what those in the telecommunications industry call the ‘last mile’ problem – the difficulty that telecommunications companies have in getting their fiber optic and high-speed bandwidth into buildings. The buildings’ construction or their conduits are often the problem.
A solution is to put a pipe under the building that allows the owner of the building to divide up the bandwidth among the tenants, which Deckman said allows the tenants to get higher bandwidth at a lower cost.
Synet can work with a building owner to turn his or her building into a smart building, Deckman said. He will also assist the building owner in marketing the building, answering the technical questions of prospective tenants.
While the trend toward intelligent buildings is starting to take hold, it has yet to take hold in Rhode Island, according to Deckman.
”Manhattan is starting to show some activity, Boston is showing a little bit,” he said, “Providence hasn’t shown much, but I think that will change.”
Part of the reason it will change is that tenants will demand it, Deckman said. And building owners and developers will want to use intelligent features as a way to market their buildings, he said.
That is not to say that every company needs these features now. It is possible that companies may be satisfied with the services they have. The BOMA survey stated that, “Just because an intelligent building feature is available does not mean tenants will value it as important, suggesting that building owners and managers need to be careful before retrofitting their buildings with any intelligent building feature to make sure their tenants really want or need it.”
Which is why proponents of smart building features are careful to point out that the decision to install them should be made carefully.
”It’s an expensive thing to do, and you don’t want to go through the expense if you don’t have the business in the buildings,” Deckman said.
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