Traditional building issues solved by IoT and smart buildings

IoT and smart building solutions can help solve many of the issues facing building owners and operators today. While the building industry has been traditionally slow to adopt technology solutions, recent worldwide health events and the explosion of IoT sensors and devices are helping speed up adoption.

The new normal in a post-pandemic world will require permanent changes to create healthy buildings. Hands-free access and devices, IAQ monitoring, occupancy sensing, space cleaning, UV lighting, and space management IoT smart building solutions will remain in place for many years, if not forever. Smart, healthy buildings will be a requirement with IoT sensors and smart applications helping owners and operators to visualize mitigation efforts in real time.

Multiple vendor solutions using proprietary, disconnected systems that create vendor lock-in are now being connected with IoT and IP solutions, allowing buildings to use best-in-class products and solutions together at a much lower cost. New non-proprietary IoT network solutions easily connect directly to a building’s communication protocol (that is, BACnet) or become the communications protocol in lower-class buildings that do not have a communications protocol today. These IoT and smart building solutions are creating differentiation between buildings and increasing the value of assets in a competitive environment.

Workflow management and work order IoT solutions solve the need to constantly dispatch expensive engineers to perform occupant-requested tasks that they can now perform with their smartphones. IoT sensors and monitors allow building operators to monitor, manage, and control multiple buildings at once from a remote Virtual Network Operations Center (VNOC). Smart predictive IoT solutions allow for multiple maintenance tasks to be scheduled together to prevent system failures and outages.

Government and tenant pressure to optimize buildings for financial and environmental reasons are being eased with IoT solutions in energy management, operational efficiencies, and occupant-facing solutions. IoT solutions can be used to validate that government-funded facilities are up to standards and are properly maintained.

Buildings are being virtualized with consolidated seamless control systems using SaaS-based technologies to solve these problems as building systems move to the cloud/virtualization.