For generations, the role of the facilities manager has barely changed: maintaining electrical networks, supervising security and cleaning services and ensuring the safety of fire prevention and elevators all continue to be the foremost responsibilities of any building manager.
Now, as the data revolution reaches even the most traditional areas of the economy, digital technologies are poised to transform the day-to-day business of facilities management. By collating data from different sources in the building – such as security cameras, building meters and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) controllers – technology companies are able to provide facility managers with a single online dashboard that shows in almost real-time how a single building or even multiple facilities are performing. Facilities managers can then make the changes needed to increase energy efficiencies and deliver cost savings.
“It is not easy for facilities managers today to know just how much their building is consuming at any one time and to measure their sustainability,” says Mary Clark, Chief Product Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at New Jersey-based technology firm Synchronoss.
“With our Internet of Things (IoT) platform, we can pull separate data from multiple systems and sensors into one single control point. It means that facilities managers can benefit from new insights into a building’s performance and identify any issues pre-emptively.”
Synchronoss has teamed up with some major players to bring the innovation to market. One of its early partners is Microsoft, which is working with Synchronoss to monitor, control, and optimize energy usage and reduce costs at cloud computing company Rackspace’s one-million-square-foot headquarters in San Antonio.
Using the IoT platform, facilities managers at Rackspace collect and analyze data feeds from disparate sources all over the building, including heating, air conditioning, lighting, maintenance and security. The solution also includes predictive fault-detection capabilities, which automatically flag any energy usage inefficiencies in near real-time.
By giving facilities managers more insight into their buildings’ performance, the Synchronoss technology is expected to produce cost savings of between 12% and 20% at each Rackspace building where it is deployed.
“The overall reductions in energy use and resulting costs are truly staggering,” says Allan Nelson, Director of Global Facilities at Rackspace. “We expect to be deploying the solution across all our global facilities in the very near future.”
