BUILDING AUTOMATION AND MANAGING THE CORPORATE FACILITY

Today’s facility and IT managers are facing multiple challenges in managing corporate facilities. The corporate facility includes various areas such as the commercial building, manufacturing floor, warehouse, remote sites, and data center. All of these corporate facilities require different attention from the managers to meet the corporate sustainability goals set forth by the executive team. Goals that mainly revolve around reducing CapEx and OpEx costs by performing energy reduction, capacity planning, equipment life-cycle-management, and provide a productive and collaborative work environment that the manager has to deal with on a continuous basis.

These top-of-mind issues require accurate data collection, and are converted into useable information to enable smart decision-making. At the same time, the manager is asked to perform all of his or her daily activities with less staff to reduce overhead cost. This “do more with less” phenomena requires the manager to utilize the latest Information Technology to gain insights into areas that need improvement through the use of Building Automation Systems and benchmarking against industry metrics. A good Building Automation System empowers organizations to reduce operational and capital expenses, improve visibility of key operational data, and enable sustainable, energy efficient facilities.

Building Automation System describes the system of controls that has the advanced functionality to monitor, manage and control building equipment.  Types of equipment include water, gas, electricity metering, heating, ventilation, air conditioning equipment, lighting, surveillance, access control, digital signage, and fire life safety monitoring. In most cases, each system operates in silo with little or no communication to each other. Each of the systems gathers data individually and stores the data with its own format, thus requires the facility manager to compile all the data manually from several locations to gain visibility to the condition and usage of the facility. This introduces many problems with facility management in wasted resource and time, questionable accuracy of energy accounting, and inconsistency in the reporting metrics.

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Commercial And Retail Buildings To Be The Fastest Adopters Of Remote Monitoring Services In Intelligent Buildings

London — Commercial and retail end users will drive the growth of remote monitoring services in intelligent buildings, accounting for more than 80 percent of the $400 million market in 2016, according to a new study by IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).

Remote monitoring in intelligent buildings is a service offered by third-party companies that audit and report on the operational performance of a building. The services have two key selling points. First, auditors can make recommendations to save energy costs by determining, for instance, a more efficient schedule for the building automation system. Second, the building owner can reduce internal staffing costs for the facility by using a third-party service provider.

The figure below presents the forecast growth for remote monitoring services used in commercial and retail buildings from 2012 to 2016, with a snapshot of what the market will look like by 2021.

“Remote monitoring services are gaining increased traction as building owners find significant savings to be made, in terms of both decreasing energy bills and reducing staffing costs,” said Sam Grinter, market analyst for building technologies at IHS.  “The drive to reduce overheads has been reinforced over the last five years by tough economic conditions.”

“Commercial and retail end users have been the fastest to take advantage of remote monitoring services in intelligent buildings”, Grinter noted, “Because the slashing of operational expenses has been a higher priority for them than for government or institutional end users”.

Remote monitoring service providers have found success with commercial and retail end users by demonstrating the effectiveness of the systems in trial deployments. Then, once the return on investment is demonstrated, services are rolled out throughout the wider building portfolio. The services in intelligent buildings are looked upon as a competitive advantage, which explains why adoption has spread relatively quickly.

As the market develops further, other end-user industries such as education, government, data centers and hospitality will increasingly take advantage of the services, IHS believes. The systems are expected to not only improve building efficiency but also reduce internal staffing costs for monitoring and maintaining buildings.

Read more: http://www.facilitiesnet.com/

Intelligent Building Management Emerges As Big Opportunity

IT partners have identified IBMS as a big opportunity because of a strong trend to integrate once-separate systems like access control, fire safety, video surveillance, rodent control and incident response.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the Indian intelligent building management system (IBMS) market is expected to reach $1,891 million by 2016 at a CAGR of 25 percent from $621 million in 2011.

Many IT partners have identified IBMS solutions as a big opportunity because of a strong trend to integrate once-separate systems such as access control, fire safety, video surveillance, rodent control and incident response.

Says Manoj Bisht, CEO of the Delhi-based MK Infosystems, “Many corporate hubs in metro cities are going in for IBMS solutions. We are also seeing demand from segments like PSUs, hospitality and real-estate.” 

Partners who have ventured into IBMS says it’s a natural progression and is very profitable compared to the IT business. “While the IT systems integration business offers about 15 percent margins, IBMS solutions provide 25 percent margins or more,” reveals Moin Shaikh, Director of the Surat-based Innovative Telecom & Softwares.

He says that partners can leverage their systems integration skills to target existing large customers demanding centralized control to enter the IBMS space. “Partners need to gain skills to develop software interfaces to integrate various components of IBMS. It’s essential to add skills around electrical systems, instrumentation and process control. Also, it’s better to target customers before they execute their building plans.”

During the last fiscal, Innovative implemented eight IBMS projects which contributed about 20 percent to its Rs 115 crore revenue in FY2012-13. While most customers were from the gems & jewelry vertical, some were from manufacturing and infrastructure companies. “In the last two years large gems & jewelry exporters have been compelled to deploy IBMS solutions for Kimberley Process compliance,” explains Shaikh.

For MK Infosystems, the IBMS business is expected to grow manifold. “Our IBMS business has grown 100 percent YoY in the last fiscal. This fiscal too we expect 100 percent growth,” says Bisht.

MK Infosystems executed four large IBMS projects in the last fiscal including one for C-DOT and another for ONGC. “We have partnered with a large SI to do the installation and integration work for their IBMS projects,” informs Bisht. “We are also doing projects for our own customers. In the current fiscal we are working with the SI partner on a large IBMS and data center project for UIDAI in Bengaluru where the installation services revenue is Rs 2.5 crore. We are also implementing IBMS for Duet Hotels and a large real-estate player.”

 By: Amit Singh

 

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Commercial And Retail Buildings To Be The Fastest Adopters Of Remote Monitoring Services In Intelligent Buildings

London — Commercial and retail end users will drive the growth of remote monitoring services in intelligent buildings, accounting for more than 80 percent of the $400 million market in 2016, according to a new study by IMS Research, now part of IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS).

Remote monitoring in intelligent buildings is a service offered by third-party companies that audit and report on the operational performance of a building. The services have two key selling points. First, auditors can make recommendations to save energy costs by determining, for instance, a more efficient schedule for the building automation system. Second, the building owner can reduce internal staffing costs for the facility by using a third-party service provider.

The figure below presents the forecast growth for remote monitoring services used in commercial and retail buildings from 2012 to 2016, with a snapshot of what the market will look like by 2021.

“Remote monitoring services are gaining increased traction as building owners find significant savings to be made, in terms of both decreasing energy bills and reducing staffing costs,” said Sam Grinter, market analyst for building technologies at IHS.  “The drive to reduce overheads has been reinforced over the last five years by tough economic conditions.”

“Commercial and retail end users have been the fastest to take advantage of remote monitoring services in intelligent buildings”, Grinter noted, “Because the slashing of operational expenses has been a higher priority for them than for government or institutional end users”.

Remote monitoring service providers have found success with commercial and retail end users by demonstrating the effectiveness of the systems in trial deployments. Then, once the return on investment is demonstrated, services are rolled out throughout the wider building portfolio. The services in intelligent buildings are looked upon as a competitive advantage, which explains why adoption has spread relatively quickly.

As the market develops further, other end-user industries such as education, government, data centers and hospitality will increasingly take advantage of the services, IHS believes. The systems are expected to not only improve building efficiency but also reduce internal staffing costs for monitoring and maintaining buildings.