Prabhu Ramachandran, CEO of Facilio says tenants have changed the dynamics of building operations.

The role of facility management and building operations teams have changed over the last few years - they are now tasked with keeping spaces comfortable, sustainable, safe, healthy, and the list keeps growing as buildings are expected to deliver more. More can include meeting climate change goals or meeting occupants’ experience expectations.

The expectations of tenants have changed - they want workspaces which are industry-certified for energy efficiencies & connectivity (such as LEED, WiredScore), flexible enough to support hybrid work models and adapt to their changing needs. Add to this high office vacancy rates and longer lease renewal cycles, making property operations even more challenging. This puts increasing pressure on building owners & operators to rethink operations that suit this new and dynamic reality. CRE businesses should focus on providing value that sets them apart and makes them a preferred brand for tenants. This can only be done by consistently delivering great experiences for occupants.

The good news is that it is possible to efficiently navigate these demands and challenges using the power of data. And much of the data you need to uncover useful operational insights is already available within your existing infrastructure (BMS, HVAC systems, sensors, CMMS, BIM). Making buildings smarter is mostly a matter of finding ways to connect these existing systems and unlock its full potential in real-time.

The foundation to building a data-driven model

Property owners are increasingly recognizing the business value in viewing building data as a whole, finding patterns in it, and deriving meaningful insights or KPIs in real-time. And the most efficient way to accomplish this is through data-driven operations.

Data-driven operations refer to the process that facilitates freeing up data across operational silos, consolidating it in one place (often referred to as a “data lake”), and then making it accessible on-demand for any system, software, or stakeholder that needs it.

In most buildings today, data is dispersed in silos. Some exist in the Building Automation System (BAS). Some in a Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) tool. Others in Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). When this data is centrally available, it can be leveraged in so many useful ways: What if all the data across your HVAC systems could be gathered to be viewed and analyzed in real-time? What if—with minimal pre-configurations—you could deploy condition-based triggers, alarm notifications or reports? Now imagine your CMMS has access to this data. You could compare real-time HVAC information against its warranty/work order information and optimize maintenance schedules. Imagine tailoring your BAS sequences and schedules based on this data.

By unlocking just the HVAC information, you are able to optimize for energy, equipment health, and occupant comfort. Now think even bigger—imagine unlocking this value from data across all your building systems. And then across an entire portfolio of buildings.

The opportunities that this data-driven approach opens up are multifold. We’re talking about a world with centralized data, portfolio-level insights, interoperable systems, contextual software, remote operations, and more. It’s exciting, but again, none of it is actionable unless we start somewhere, which brings us to the next important discussion:

What lies at the foundation of a data-driven framework?

A practical framework to get started

The most practical way to power data-driven operations is to have a platform-powered architecture that can bring together real-time information across disparate sources—BAS, HVAC, and other building systems, equipment or sensors—into one place.

Such a CMMS platform can become the centralized hub to manage and share information that drives all sorts of operations and maintenance workflows—from monitoring HVAC performance to making informed equipment purchase decisions to controlling building automation and systems via the cloud. It essentially brings people, processes and systems together to form a tight loop so that nothing is missed. Such a Connected CMMS platform empowers O&M teams with connectivity and visibility by integrating with the systems already in use. This overlay structure would coordinate across geographies and technically disparate systems to provide granular insights and incisive functionality.

While the possibilities look futuristic to us today, the technologies are actually tried and tested, and have been revolutionizing other industries for decades. Take Salesforce for example - it helped business teams focus less on software and more on the business. Having a centralized operations platform can empower your teams to focus less on managing data and software—and more on creating wholesome and real-time experiences for your customers / tenants.

And here’s how.

Insights on-demand

Once all building data is centralized, it’s possible to get a complete view of your entire operational scope—be it a single building or a large portfolio of buildings. This holistic view allows you to understand, and eventually influence, the ‘why’ behind what’s happening in your properties.

There’s real-time data on the function of various systems and equipment, what went wrong and when. Using the power of real-time analytics on top of these consolidated data sets can unlock powerful insights for multiple stakeholders.

It can provide drilled down insights into the root cause of every event, fault or condition trigger so your operating teams don’t have to spend the majority of their time putting out fires. Having centralized data also makes it so much easier to create reports and monitor KPIs that can offer comprehensive business insights. Imagine viewing energy star benchmarks, peak energy usage, and total utility spend for all your properties, side-by-side and in real-time—without having to scramble across multiple systems or spreadsheets!

For example, the team at Dubai World Trade Centre’s One Central, which is a mixed-use development building, use their IoT software platform to conduct trend analysis, track asset run hours, and consumption of every tenant in the building. Their real-time dashboards help them monitor delta T and compare with minimum threshold values to avoid penalties. Using these metrics, they can comply with regulations, optimize energy usage, and maintain a comfortable and healthy indoor environment for tenants.

Context is everything

Today most core O&M functions use software that lacks real-time context and/or is disconnected from building information. A glaring example is your CMMS. Teams use it for service requests, asset and maintenance management, and more. Making the CMMS data-driven is however hugely complex, including painful system integration, data extraction from dispersed silos and redundant storage.

Having CMMS capabilities on a centralized platform instead of as a siloed solution allows for optimizations like: automated work orders from alarms, proactive service resolution, optimized maintenance schedules, and more - thus unlocking contextual insights and use cases. Ideally, this platform should lock in all moving parts and bring all stakeholders like vendors, tenants, technicians and executives together into one ecosystem.

Quick deploy, bias for action

Without a common data model, just about any automation or efficiency-based initiative becomes a huge project with too much overhead. A centralized operations platform can establish bi-directional communication with your building systems and enables automation for workflows, approvals, replenishing inventory, initiating set-point corrections for operational anomalies, create and assign work orders based on operating conditions of assets, adjusting HVAC based on outside weather conditions and occupations, and much more. This essentially transforms your CMMS from a system of records for maintenance and asset information, into a system of action, enabling proactive action.

Take the case of the UK's largest property development company, British Land. Using a unified IoT platform, they gained access to reports on the impact of occupancy and footfall on indoor air quality (IAQ) and identifying rooms that were heating/cooling at total capacity even when there were no bookings for the day. They also got visibility into occupancy and behavior through features like visitor management, behavior tracking, conference room occupancy. For example, they were able to employ additional personnel at the reception on days when a higher number of visitors are expected and plan resources for cleaning when meeting rooms are tightly booked. With this, the British Land team gained real-time 360-degree visibility and predictability, and were able to deliver a better occupant experience.

Democratize building operations

The real-estate industry has come a long way from the days of legacy on-premise systems. Today, FM teams want an operating system with which buildings can run on autopilot; an application that they can modify and deploy as easily as installing other apps on their phone. The future is democratizing operations across your portfolio. It’s gaining the freedom to operate and optimize without any limitations.

For example, Investa, an Australian commercial real estate firm used their Connected CMMS platform to integrate various functions like management of assets, incidents and audits, as well as relationships with vendors, technicians and tenants - across portfolios. This platform served as the command center for them, providing complete visibility into their entire portfolio operations. With transparency in the operational workflow, from inventories to purchase orders, FM teams could quickly identify bottlenecks and resolve issues. They also had several workflows that were unique to their processes. So they were able to build their own custom apps for different use-cases, without much coding, within 2-3 days. They also had the flexibility to refine/change workflows whenever needed. As a result, the company was able to reduce their tenant escalations by 85% and achieved better vendor compliance and SLA adherence.

Conclusion

With the advent of data-driven property management made possible by cloud-based platforms, there are opportunities to enhance profitability, energy and resource efficiency, deliver exceptional customer experiences, and achieve true brand differentiation. By adopting this framework, CRE businesses can navigate the complexities of the market and capitalize on emerging opportunities.