technology
Over 1B Connected things will be deployed
in smart commercial buildings by 2018
~Source: Gartner, 2015
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What is a Smart Building?
A smart building is any structure that uses automated processes monitor and control services such as heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, security, water and other resources, ensuring the building operates at maximum levels of efficiency and removing wasted energy usage and associated costs. The optimal level of efficiency is achieved by continuously maintaining the correct balance between operating requirements, external and internal environmental conditions, and energy usage. It incorporates IoT solutions combined with matching software and hardware. A smart building saves energy up to 30%!
A smart building saves energy up to 30%!
CEOs are facing ever-increasing and difficult-to-predict energy costs, in turn constantly facing challenges in virtually every type and size of building. Coupled with global and regional economic issues, building management decision makers need innovative solutions to scale down energy costs, improve efficiency, meet corporate sustainability goals, and enhance building value while maintaining a productive and comfortable environment for occupants. Research indicates more and more employees want high quality IAQ
Large enterprise building managers need a system to optimize energy consumption, facing growing challenges, maintain healthy and productive environments, and update aging facilities with anytime, anywhere access to information. They need a comprehensive smart building solutions that breaks down existing silos to optimize energy consumption.
Fundamentally, the value of smart building solutions comes from their ability to offer greater insight and control. With these capabilities, building stakeholders can uncover problems faster, perform maintenance proactively instead of reactively, improve processes, save resources, use space more effectively, and adapt to changing needs.
uncover problems faster
proactive maintenance
improve processes
use space more effectively
adapt to changing needs
save resources
When is it best time to change ?
Its time…To….
- Go beyond traditional building management systems
- Modernize and prepare your building for the future with innovative technology and features.
- Integration across multiple building systems; embedded power management option.
- Predictive services and proactive maintenance plans for the life cycle of your building.
- Convenient mobile applications and engineering efficiencies.
- Wireless system and room-to-cloud solution.
What are tangible benefits ?
More efficient
operations
Can help eliminate unknowns and provide end-to-end, real-time visibility
Optimized resource
management
Proactively drive their own resource efficiency initiatives through automation and machine learning.
Better space
utilization
Building owners are better-equipped to cope with the new standards and drive improvements in space usage
Greater occupancy and
productivity
Offer both personalized comfort and personal assistance
Owners
Better visibility into building health
Greater Property Value
Higher occupancy rates
Operators
Reduce resource consumption
More efficient process
Proactive & Predictive maintenance
Occupants
Engaging Spaces
Exceptional Comfort and Convenience
More Productive experiences
Setting up a smart building solution anywhere
Explore our Innovative Smart Buildings Solutions
Explore SolutionsFrequently Asked Questions
Most of our customers experience a 15 to 20 percent energy savings within the first few months.
The IoT refers to the ever-growing network of physical objects that feature an IP address for internet connectivity, and the communication that occurs between these objects and other Internet-enabled devices and systems.
The IoT is revolutionizing facilities management, elevating the value of smart building solutions to an enterprise-wide tool set for capturing cost savings and driving profitability. Many energy and facilities management technologies, are expanding capabilities to provide a comprehensive connected enterprise.
Effe provides facilities executives managing multi-site commercial businesses the ability to collect, store and analyse data across every single location through a single platform streamlining critical data, proving one lens with deep visibility into the business for better corporate decision making.
Effe 360° monitors your HVAC equipment every 60 seconds, we can detect malfunctions and maintenance issues before they turn into a full-fledged facility crisis. By promptly replacing defective parts and performing preventive maintenance, HVAC units perform better and last longer.
Our cloud-based energy management system is very secure. Plus, the system can be further secured locally or remotely with a custom passcode.
Effe sends emergency alerts to notify you of equipment malfunctions. The Effe team will trouble shoot issues prior to any third-party intervention, in many cases, dramatically reducing truck rolls and maintenance costs. When issues require a technician, Effe integrates seamlessly with your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to submit tickets and dispatch technicians.
Effe provides a flexible and scalable deployment model based on the needs of each site the technology is implemented, allowing customers to integrate with their existing technology and legacy systems, for immediate speed to market. Customers can select the Effe footprint that best suits their needs for immediate return on investment.
If your staff consists of dozens of engineers and technicians maintaining a large campus, you need to consider the capabilities of the system and all the tools and programs you'll need to support it. If your "staff" consists of one person who performs several functions at once, you may want to hire a vendor to provide the support and just focus on how your operator will use the system. Ask to see a demonstration of a system in a facility like yours. A system that works great for a large university may not be the best choice for an elementary school.
Building managers spend much of their time scheduling occupancy, adjusting setpoints, troubleshooting complaints, and responding to alarms. These functions should be as easy and intuitive as possible, whether you're fine-tuning a single room or shutting down the entire building for a weather emergency. It should also be easy to check the system to see what schedules are in place, what setpoints are being used, and what points are "locked." Human nature being what it is, it's all too easy to make a quick change to meet an emergency condition and then forget to undo that change later. Make certain it's easy to find and adjust key settings. One of the fundamental rules of any BAS: If it's hard to do, it won't get done.
Years ago, you needed a dedicated computer terminal to access a BAS. Now it's possible to access some systems from virtually anywhere using a browser, PDA, or cell phone. It's important to note, however, that "possible" doesn't mean it's free or that the interface will meet your needs. Make certain you can perform the activities you need through the interface you're buying.
Managing energy is fast becoming one of the most important functions of a BAS. Most systems have access to a great deal of energy data, but getting the data is only a small part of the challenge. Summarizing data in a concise, easy-to-understand manner and providing meaningful comparisons is critical. It's also important to be able to measure how effectively the energy is being used. In other words, is the energy you're using providing a healthful, comfortable, and productive indoor environment? We learned in the '70s that it was easy to save energy if you turned off lights and air-conditioning, and let people sweat in the dark. We also learned that this strategy wasted far more money in lost productivity than it saved in energy, destroyed morale, and simply didn't work in the long run. Look for a BAS that makes it easy to see, at a glance, how well the system performs and how much energy it uses.
Ultimately, the return on investment you’ll realize is directly correlated to the energy and maintenance costs of the systems your building automation is designed to control.
Not at all. Once building automation systems are installed, they essentially run themselves. However, when changes need to be made, a simple user interface makes the changes incredibly easy to make.
- The sunrises on a new morning, smart blinds automatically retract to allow the sunlight to illuminate and heat the office to optimum temperature. Forecasting suggests a warm day, so would it be better to just keep the blinds down to reduce the energy needed for cooling? Should we cool or use natural ventilation, and what if someone wants to open a window when it’s warm later, how do we prepare for that?
- By 10am half the office has called in sick, did we need to cool the whole building and what difference will the reduced body heat make to the cooling process? And how can we prepare for a cloud that may or may not linger over the building? Things are getting complex. Should the building just react to changes as they happen or can we do more?
- A custom designed smart building promises to account for all these dynamic variables while optimizing energy consumption, but this is new ground for the building controls sector. We seem to think that feeding all the information into a machine learning system will give us the most efficient result, but what if the data we have chosen to gather holds biases in one way or another? And considering the complexity of those data streams and the relationships between them, how long will it take to learn, and can this be faster?
- As we push on into a smart building future, we need to continue asking this basic question to ensure we are on the right track.
Most of our buildings were built more than a decade ago and they represent the bulk of unnecessary energy loss from total building stock. A standard investment grade audit (IGA) can take months of data collection and that data requires hundreds of hours of modelling and calibration. Are we really tackling the building efficiency problem unless we can streamline the smart retrofitting process? Then consider that all that time-consuming energy modelling is unlikely to influence a building owner’s decision to go smart as much as; the initial cost of installation, changing building regulation, availability of financing, tax considerations, incentives and rebates. Could our retrofit assessment process be adapted to minimize detailed energy information gathering until these other factors are better assessed? Would a basic initial energy assessment suffice, to speed the process and get more buildings online?
