Category: Digital Transformation

Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) plays an important role in ensuring smooth and uninterrupted operation of a commercial building. FDD has emerged as a powerful tool for O&M teams to proactively identify “blind spots” in maintenance and contextualize the operating patterns of building assets to detect faults. It’s time to explore the evaluation criteria of an ideal FDD solution for your facility.    

Through this article, we will try to answer two major questions that come to mind while considering FDD for a facility

1)  How one can evaluate the performance of an FDD algorithm/ application?

2) How to select an Ideal FDD package that aligns with your facility’s needs?

One of them focuses on the capabilities and accuracy of the FDD tool while the other helps you construct a decision-making framework from the available options in the market.

The Importance of Evaluation Criteria

Till now most of the efforts from the individual startups and research organizations have been spent on developing FDD algorithms and methodologies rather than developing a performance assessment framework. Evidently, there are no such standards available to evaluate FDD algorithms. However, we are sharing a mostly followed systematic approach published in NREL’s whitepaper for evaluating the performance of FDD algorithms that leverages and unifies prior work in FDD evaluation. 

How to define a Fault?

A commercial Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) tool categorizes three different types of faults: condition-based, behavior-based, or outcome-based fault. 

A condition-based fault is the presence of an improper or undesired physical condition in a system or piece of equipment. These can be called physical faults. The behavior-based fault is the presence of improper or undesired behavior during the operation of a system. Behaviors that break certain rules or operational logic. While the quantifiable outcome of the process deviates from the ideal or reference value then it can be categorized as an outcome-based fault.   

It is ideal to have an Fault Detection and Diagnostics software that incorporates all three categories of fault detections. 

Input Data Requirements for Fault Detection and Diagnostics

What type of data is required for an FDD to process and produce the outcome is also an important criterion of evaluation. Broadly there are 2 different types of input data samples are used 

1. A single instant of time: A single set of simultaneous measurements of the system variables, representing a snapshot of system parameters under a certain condition.
2. A regular slice of time: a continuous set of system variables and parameters under a certain condition. 

Based on the data frequency one can determine the accuracy and processing infrastructure required for the FDD.

Performance metrics for FDD algorithms

Fault Detection and Diagnostics performance metrics are divided into two categories temporal and static. By definition, temporal metrics quantify an FDD algorithm’s evolving response to a time-varying fault signal, while static metrics quantify an FDD algorithm’s performance with respect to a collection of samples independent of their ordering in time.

Temporal metrics evaluate the time series component of the FDD while static metrics describe the time-independent performance of an FDD algorithm. Based on how the FDD output is reviewed one can depend on temporal or static metrics for the evaluation.

Once the FM technical team has enough idea on how they are going to utilize the FDD and what metrics they are going to evaluate it, they can move to available delivery mechanisms for their facility. In some cases, both questions can be simultaneously evaluated to reach a conclusion. Let’s examine them one by one.

1. Cloud-based or On-premises:

Just like any other FM application, there are multiple possibilities and limitations with each option, hence the decision has to be aligned with the facility’s available tech stack and future roadmap. 

Cloud application comes with multiple advantages such as scalability, security, speed and most of all SaaS modeling, making it a highly affordable option. There are a couple of On-premise applications available in the market which caters the institutional customers who prefer local data hosting for technical and policy reasons.    

2. Integration Capabilities:

Users should have a clear understanding of how the new FDD application/Platform will interact with existing data sources and applications. The use of Data communication protocols, Software connectors and Application Programming Interfaces (API) have to be clearly defined before selecting a service provider or an application. 

3. Data Ownership: 

Ownership of the data comes as an important criterion to select an FDD application or services. While you choose the FDD application or service from the 3rd party technical team you have to be clear on who owns the raw data as well as the insights. Will you have the freedom to cross-validate the FDD data with other parameters and what are other ways your FM team can use it further optimize the performance.

Besides these three main deciding factors there are other elements your FM team should consider, such as flexibility to switch from exiting application to a new one, capability building and training required for technicians and operators to get familiar with the FDD application, etc.

If you are already using an FDD application then share us your experience of evaluating your FDD application. If you think there is something one should also consider besides the points mentioned in this article then let us know. 

Every abled facility manager has to go through one of the most daunting tasks of the digital age. It’s not just a one-time affair, he is supposed to perform it daily and emerge successfully to grow in his career and the firm he works for.

When we all strive to collect more and more data from the facilities, we create more options for us to draw inferences. We create numerous ways for all sorts of building management solutions to fit into our expectations. Thus, ultimately land into a selector’s dilemma – a paradox of choice.     

It might sound counter-intuitive but the facility management applications and systems that we look out for to make the FM team’s life easier and help them make the right decisions are often hard and confusing to zeroth down. Considering the new challenges and expectations today’s facility managers are facing this job becomes even more difficult. 

Hence, to simplify those options and help you decide the ideal facility management application for your team, we have come up with this three-point framework to reduce the intelligent guesswork and make it real data & evidence-backed decision. 

Key points to consider while investing in a Facility Management Application

Enable remote management:

Around a decade ago when CAFM / CMMS applications started coming in the form of mobile apps, everyone wanted to grab that opportunity to try that out first. Although the apps were not compatible enough for data entry and reporting features, they did provide an option to check the status of your work order or critical assets anywhere in the facility. We saw the same level of excitement when existing CAFM applications started adopting cloud-based delivery mechanisms.

This pandemic has introduced an old term in new packaging and in a much larger scale – Remote working. Yes, in the last 1 year if anything that is more prominent in nature in the office environment then it has to be the concept of hybrid work. Although it is meant for the employees and tenants of the facility it has direct connections with the staff and facility management teams. 

Facility management isn’t a desk job anymore. Choose solutions and devices that don’t require you to be in a dedicated location (right from the data collection, processing to the final reporting tools) go for the internet-connected smart sensors, temperature controls and other devices that connect to the cloud, and mobile FM apps that allow you to submit, access, and complete work orders from anywhere.  

Digital or operational twins whichever is feasible to your needs, just explore it. At least start a couple of trials at multiple sites with the Facility Management application. Anything that helps your team to move from physical inspection of the assets will be beneficial to your team in the long run.

Data with no boundaries

There is no point in purchasing a Facility management application that only shares raw data or insights with selected mediums. (often with proprietary applications) again it becomes an apple vs android comparison. Both the ecosystems have their own advantages but when it comes to scalability and building analytics, open data protocols always triumph over closed ones.

Data is the key component of every successful FM team. The best way to make the right decisions for your property is to be able to see the big picture of all departments of your property at the same time. This is possible when every part of the solution communicates freely with each other (integration-friendly) When choosing an asset performance management solution, make sure that it integrates information from all aspects of your property or properties.  

Look for a Technology partner, not a vendor 

In one of our previous articles, we have discussed the build vs buy argument in detail. In this hyper-competitive age of business, one can not depend on price as a differentiator, at least not for the solutions that are higher in the insights hierarchy (as explained in Gartner’s Pace-Layered Strategy), FM applications that required continuous up-gradation or customization according to the client’s needs can not be soured from the 3rd party vendor. It may create strategic as well as logistical issues.  

When considering new technologies, you must consider the company that envisions your expectation from the product. Partner with you not just for the support but also for the co-development of the new features. Create something unique and exclusive for your (yes exclusivity has to be there in the product offering).  

Even for medium to large scale FM firms, it makes sense to partner with a startup that has deep expertise in both the asset management domain and data analytics to help them with:

• Assess FM’s current technology status
• Suggest ways to achieve the targets.
• Create data and business intelligence roadmaps

We hope that these three aspects can guide you to select the right Facility Management application for your O&M teams. If you need any help on making successful trials of new Facility Management application then please reach out to us at [email protected]    

HVAC system is responsible for the highest energy consumption in buildings. On an average, it use more than 35% of a building’s energy. We all know, HVAC system is made up of one of the most complex interconnected networks (mechanically and structurally) in a building environment. Yet, when it comes to optimizing or analyzing its data there are very few solutions that do more than scratching a surface. 

HVAC network, a jackpot of numerous data points (if recorded correctly) that can give sleepless nights to an operator or an entire maintenance team if they do not figure out how to optimize it. And yes it is way more than setpoint correction or chiller sequencing.  

Facility management teams are struggling with two primary hurdles to be able to fully optimize HVAC systems A) Inadequate sensors and data capturing infrastructure B) Deep insights from applications and tools that can interpret operational patterns. 

How would an ideal HVAC analytics application look?

Ideally, a sophisticated HVAC analytics applications should be able to provide the following features:

• Visualization of key operating parameters of AHU, chiller, etc
• Data trending and pattern analysis
• Fault detection, forecasting
• Alerts and Notification 

How does HVAC analytics works?

HVAC analytics look into individual asset/component-level data and overall operational output to identify trends, it also analyzes the impact of certain changes that are made on the asset level and their effect on the entire system. It collects historical data for basic comparisons such as inlet/outlet temperature, humidity, or temperate variations. Detect anomalous behavior of the asset based on the asset’s maintenance history and contextual data and provide alerts to maintenance personnel .

HVAC analytics can come as a part of the asset performance management software or standalone application. It collects data from the Building management system, Building automation system on a real-time basis and process it on cloud-based applications. 

Types of HVAC analytics packages

In general, there are two types of HVAC analytics packages available in the market. One that comes with default hardware such as sensing and data transmitting devices and another one that comes as an analytics solution only which depends on the existing data infrastructure and communication protocols.

There are solutions like 75F that provide entire building automation systems along with analytics applications. One of the key benefits of these type of solutions is that they close the feedback loop that means from insights to automated controlling can be handled by the application. They can also extend a great level of comfort to the visitors and tenants as every minute aspect of the HVAC network can be controllable. Of course, these solutions do not come cheap since they built entire data infrastructure sound existing assets they tend to cost more for that added level of comfort and controllability.

On the other hand companies like sensewave have built their platform around predictive maintenance and energy management capabilities. Their platform Adaptix provides insights on chillers, heaters & pumps. They claim to deliver true alerts on anomalies along with the detailed root cause analysis. With as minimum as 2 months of historian data, Adaptix can start functioning. 

Although HVAC analytics comes in a variety of product offerings each solution focus on different use cases such as automation, energy optimization, control or visualization. Accordingly, they provide insights, alerts on a different depth. For example, some applications may not provide detailed audit history of particular AHUs while providing a great level of control.  

It is the Facility management team’s responsibility to understand their needs first also the requirements from clients as well and ensure the product delivers what they committed to and before finalizing on analytics tool. The smarter move would be to look for an asset performance management software that includes HVAC analytics.

Hope now you have a clear understanding of what HVAC analytics can do and why it’s the crown jewel of asset performance management applications.   

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that in the past couple of years, asset or process-specific data mining and analysis has delivered hockey stick growth across numerous sectors, whether it’s manufacturing or service. According to Fortune Business Insight, Big Data Analytics Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.5% during the forecast period (from 2023 to 2030). As the commercial facilities management space moves toward a data-driven business model, the importance of a well-trained operations and maintenance team grows.

In the recent few years, the growth of digital transformation applications has accelerated. It has evolved to the point that the essential ecosystem of end-users or key stakeholders hasn’t had the opportunity to reciprocate. The resulting gap has caused severe issues for decision-makers in streamlining their teams for continual transformation.

In the history of O&M, a lot has changed, and technology has been at the center of it all. The move to a data-first environment is on the rise, sooner or later, it will be the default setting for smarter buildings, therefore it’s vital for operations and maintenance teams to be a part of this plan for personal and organizational success.

Digital transformation is opening doors to solving the imminent problems like energy efficiency, sustainability etc. There is no denial that Facility management and sustainability goes hand-in-hand.

In this article, we’ll look at three ways that leadership may enable their O&M team to prepare for and thrive in a data-first environment.

1. Inclusive Processes

It is important to set up a pathway for their growth. Individual engineers and technicians may have varied definitions of growth. However, they would like to advance in their work in a better and resistance-free environment. Grasping this aspect while deploying a new application would benefit transition managers greatly.

FM Leaders can consider highlighting the implications of new technologies for the O&M team’s existing work. For example, factors such as work efficiency, elimination of redundant work, improved time planning, and so on and so forth. This not only provide an easier way to fulfill the Facility manager’s KRA but also reduce a lot of headaches for technician or engineering teams. These well-defined benefits for a technician can push them to implement change because it will ultimately help them grow professionally.

2. Upskilling and capacity building

Repositioning the existing workforce has also been a challenge for many facility management firms and there couldn’t be a right time to address that. If prepared properly, up-skilling and cross-skilling can be two impressive approaches. We don’t expect a technician to become a data analyst, but he or she should have a basic understanding of mobile and desktop applications. Using various tools to ensure that they are obtaining the correct data from the systems and that key indicators are being monitored.

Capacity-building exercises can be planned in a phased manner by identifying overheads from contracts. Such additional workforce can be categorized further for cross-skilling or upskilling based on expected future demands. This will help them nurture the candidates from the existing talent pool without paying for new hires.

Mitie has launched an apprenticeship program under the ‘Mitie Technical Services Academy’, it is a noteworthy initiative to offer learning and development opportunities for employees at every stage of their career. Programs like these can also boost the morale of existing employees by creating a sense of belonging.  

3. Purpose-built applications

Facility Management is known as a people’s organization, any changes in the work process that would be made by undermining the blue-collar workforce will face friction during deployment and commissioning. Therefore, building a technological roadmap keeping a bottom-up approval helps them cope with expectations will always be advantageous for all. 

For example, if a technician is made to monitor certain parameters either by physical inspection or by a mobile application that prompts him to spend more time catering data or calculating final findings rather than acting on insights. That application will eventually eat up a lot of his time. Instead, an application that delivers clear actionable insights to the proper user (different for technician and manager) based on his time constraints, analysis capabilities, and decision-making skills would be an immediate success and experience a significant rate of adoption within a few days of deployment.

Hence, ideally, every facility management leadership team should strive to create a strong culture around O&M teams that can adapt, nurture and maintain inclusive growth for the company and the end client. 

How does your company manage O&M teams across multiple facilities? 

Are they up for the challenge of achieving the digital transformation goals that your leadership team has set for them? Is there any other method to get the data ready? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

What is your FM’s favorite growth matrix? Or what is your north pole where your corporate team spends most of their efforts and time to stabilize it or rather strengthen it further?  

Is it the 

-Number of active clients you are serving (YoY growth)
-Annual revenue or profit (YoY growth)
-The area under management (likely for Commercial clients)
-Diverse solution portfolio (A to z of FM)
 
Before you would like to answer it I want to share something interesting with you. 

We all have seen how pandemic has exploded growth opportunities to many industries. E-commerce, EduTech, Entertainment (OTT), ITeS and Direct to consumer (D2C) brands have seen double-digit growth in just 6-8 months. Amazon’s net income grew by 3X to $8.1 billion in the first three months of 2021 while small-scale Brands like sugar, Upakarma, Super smelly are now making incumbent players HUL, ITC run for their money.

There are a couple of reasons why some sectors enjoyed the changing business landscape but within the same sector, very few were able to show a hockey stick graph while their competitors were struggling to deliver single-digit revenue growth. Wonder what leaders did differently than the laggers? 

Realizing the Opportunity Acting upon the Opportunity at the right time.  

More than anything else agile decision-making has made the difference. While everyone tried to anticipate the after-effects of lockdown, few of them actually started devising a plan to mitigate the situation and emerge victoriously. It is the quick decision-making and implementation mechanisms that differentiated them from the rest. We aspire to facilitate our readers with market insights and success stories to keep them on the edge of their game all the time.

We are initiating this series of quarterly updates on respective areas that are critical to FM’s growth. It will be a list of top pick stories and blogs post around the world of FM.   

Blog No 1: Transforming Facilities Management Digitally

Blog post by Stephen Bruce, Executive Director & Head Real Estate Management Services Colliers, Singapore. The author talks about how innovation and technologies like Drones, IoT, Big data, and AI are shaping the facility management industry

Blog No 2: Digital Divide in FM: How Facility management teams can fill up the Gap?

Published on Facility management times, The Author highlights the digital skill gap in the daily operations of the FM teams and ways to fulfill it. The author has depicted the problem to solution journey with the help of the ‘Jobs to be done framework.’

Blog No 3: Is the Path to the Digital Twin Future of Buildings Paved By APIs?

Article published on Memoori, that argues the importance of open Application Programming Interface (APIs) for bringing digital twins on the mainstream. The article has also mentioned Microsoft’s Digital Twins Definition Language (DTDL) concept and google’s digital building an open-source project.   

(Add On) Digital twin: from a virtual model to real benefits

Ebook by Arup, Global advisory firm. It is extensive coverage on digital twins technology for smart buildings, it also reviews the opportunities, challenges and builds a case study for successful implementation. 

Blog No 4: Facility Management leaders in UAE reveal their strategy to invest in technology

Published on Facility management times, The Article explores the key driving factors that are responsible for the growth of regional FM plates in the MENA region. It has also described the innovative projects that are happening around data assessment, workflow management, energy, and Air Quality in the leading FMs in UAE. 

Blog No 5: Evaluating FDD: Finding an ideal match for your facility

Published on Facility management times, the article tries to answer two key questions – 1) How to evaluate the performance of an FDD algorithm/ application 2) How to select an Ideal FDD package. 

Blog No 6: The Pathway to Autonomous buildings

Blog by William Ruh, CEO at Lendlease Digital. The author beautifully explains the relevance of autonomous building and benchmarking efforts to track the progress towards a truly autonomous building in five fundamental steps – Baseline, Connected, Smart, Partially autonomous, fully Autonomous. 

Have we missed something to add? Drop us a mail with your suggestions on the series at [email protected]    

Honest confession! If I have to choose one product launch event that I would do anything to attend every year for the rest of my life then it must be Tesla’s product launch. After following all of their previous launches one thing I can confidently say that Elon knows how to keep you on the edge of your seat and make you Impatiently anticipate his favorite line ‘and there is more’ 

Besides his unconventional presentation and communications skills, there is something else that makes people fall in love with these events. I believe it is the combination of his humanitarian vision, path-breaking ideas, and quirky features that he manages to get into his cars. He gave the world Bioweapon defense mode, Ludicrous mode, and the one that has been followed widely across the automobile industry – The autopilot mode.

Although Elon wasn’t the first one to march toward vehicle autonomy, he accelerated the growth and created enough room for regulators and consumers to consider the possibility of autonomous vehicles in the future.     

How is it related to buildings and proptech in general?

Let’s think about it, how the smart building ecosystem has been evolving in the last couple of years. The entire building management value chain from sensors to data processing, storage to analytics has expanded vertically and horizontally. Tenants and occupiers and even investors are expecting far more from today’s buildings than they used to get 10-15 years ago and there is more pressure to have smart building technology solutions.

What do we expect from our buildings: 

• Tenant/occupiers: Higher work Productivity, Pleasant and safer environment, Better connectivity with teams.
• Facility Management: Uninterrupted operations, Quick troubleshooting (Asset Uptime), Energy & Operational efficiency.  
• Property owner: Tenant retention rate, Maximum ROI on real estate portfolio, Achieve sustainability goals.

Now there are the desired outcomes we want from any investments in buildings. Any piece of technology that helps the specific persona to take one step up the ladder of his expectations can be considered for evaluation. 

But, one has to consider the fundamental rule of any tech investment: that, technology is a means to an end and not the end itself. When you build upon multiple use cases based on different or stand-alone technologies it creates anarchy of meshed networks and interdependencies shoots up.

This is where autonomous buildings as a principle approach come into the picture.

What is an Autonomous building?

A building that adapts its behavior to the preferences of tenants and occupiers. A Building that encourages a collaborative work environment, while safeguarding people from external impurities. A Building that provides a 360-degree operational view to every stakeholder from tenant to O&M team to the property owner.

In simpler words a building that is not just smart but adoptive and empathetic towards the occupants.

According to Michael Zamora, principal analyst at Ecosystm, “Buildings have moved from being a static physical space to smart, dynamic, complex, digital structures.” factors like comfort, scalability of digital solutions and building resilience have made us think upon an entirely new set of buildings. Buildings that will make occupant’s life easier by bringing in transparency in every interaction with the built environment and add a smile to the facility management teams by helping them identifying real-time asset issues and recommending corrective measures.

You can think of an automated building as a superset of 

1. Buildings management applications such as BMS, EMS 
2. Workplace management tools
3. Resource & logistic management applications such as ERP, CAFM
4. Asset Maintenance & Planning (advance analytics, Digital twins)     

Why autonomous buildings are getting traction?

All the aspects that can make an autonomous building a feasible reality are getting inlined now.

Market demand: Verdantix report suggests that Overall smart building software market expenditure will grow at A 7% CAGR to reach $8.5 Billion by 2025. Also, the type of data sources and granularity will increase o capture every small detail of the building interactions. And to respond to the growing demand players like Honeywell has already started to expand their service portfolios

IoT and Sensors: The facility manager has unprecedented access to building data collected through IoT devices. Facilities can now take advantage of machine learning technologies to transform the way they operate their buildings. Market veteran likes Oracle believes that with the technologies like Machine learning autonomous buildings are close to reality now.

Sustainability: People are far more conscious about their carbon footprints now. They do not want to spoil the environment with their habits and actions. For buildings, that’s an indicator of sustainable design, local material sourcing, and being operationally neutral – negative to carbon emission.

Internet of behavior: An interesting case and the term coined by Gartner top strategic technology trends 2021 came to the picture during the covid times, an application with a computer vision was determining whether employees were complying with mask protocol, and speakers were used to warn people of protocol violations. Later this behavioral data was collected and analyzed by the organization to influence their workers.

“By combining digital technology, data, and expert domain knowledge, autonomous buildings will unlock the previously untapped value of the built world.” _ Michael Zamora

What is the Path to autonomous buildings?

For a building to transform into an ‘autonomous building’ would require a lot of work based on its current system and data maturity levels. Similar to SAE’s 6 levels of driving automation for self-driving cars there can be few stages to measure progress towards Autonomous buildings. While autonomous buildings should be an end goal for a newly developed commercial building every step towards it should be well planned and executed to remove the redundancies. 

The final stage is where buildings automatically adapt their behavior to the preferences of each occupant and stakeholder, with that in mind Landlease has suggested 5 different steps one has to propagate towards complete autonomy.

1. Creating a baseline: To perform the diagnostic assessments on existing data, processes, people and to set up expected outcomes
2. Connect data assets: Identify all the critical sensors, process data, develop connectors and bring it to a central location.  
3. Smart technologies: Plan and implement different pieces of technologies across the building to improve the performance of assets eg. HVAC, utilities, elevators, etc
4. Semi-autonomous – Phase where the facility is partially operating without human intervention (some part of  the operations like workflow management, helpdesk, etc.)
5. Fully Autonomous – final stage where the entire expected facility anticipates and adapts on its own to all the changes.

With these steps, we can self-evaluate where do our current buildings stand on the evolution of autonomous buildings. Currently, there are only a couple of buildings that have attend partial or fully autonomy. However, the building analytics market is getting ready to add another milestone toward a better, sustainable and prosperous future. 

In our previous article, we tried to explore key driving factors that are responsible for the growth of regional facility management firms in the MENA region. We have seen how the agile approach, customer centricity, and extreme focus on upskilling of the blue-collar workforce have helped those firms to stand out and perhaps defeat global players.   

After publishing that article, we received a couple of feedback from our readers, they wanted to know more about the activities, vision, and perspective of those regional facility firms towards technology. After all most of the firms share a different set of difficulties and challenges while trying to find out ways to differentiate themselves and provide value to their clients.

Hence, in this article, we thought of sharing more details on those aspects. We followed the same principle of research as we did in the previous article and gathered the publicly available information and data to come up with our findings.

Due to the unsettling economical conditions, It is evident that organizations of all sizes are refocusing on their budgets to become more competitive and resilient in nature. For FM service providers, business continuity and operational efficiency have become even more critical. Hence, FM leaders are depending on a diverse set of digital tools to boost efficiency and ensure that clients receive the services they require, when and where they need them.

Leveraging the data

Imdaad facility management services focus on analyzing the data accumulated from their BMS over a long period. With deeper data analysis capabilities their systems can fx more than 90% of the faults remotely without human interventions helping them to drive greater efficiency and reduce costs for clients, as well as overcome the challenges of social distancing. 

Mahmood Rasheed, COO of Imdaad believes that “Companies that embrace advances in areas such as IoT and automation are set to reap the benefits in the long-term” and he makes sure to follow the same when it comes to investing in early-stage technologies for at Imdaad 

Ejadah, a leading FM firm now focusing on moving from the traditional planned and preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance and reliability-based maintenance (RBM) which is a step-by-step instructional tool on how to analyze system’s failure modes and define how to prevent or detect those failures early. They are confident that RBM will ensure greater safety and environmental integrity improved operating performance and greater maintenance cost-effectiveness. 

Workflow management & CAFM 

Imdaad has recently adopted a smartphone-based solution that provides real-time tracking of operational data. When a work order is generated, the system automatically searches for the nearest technician and assigns the job, enabling the FM team to allocate resources more efficiently and ensure rapid responses to clients. 

On the other hand, Gopalakrishnan, Director of Operations at Emrill suggested that Over the last twelve months they have adapted and evolved their existing services rather than launching new services. 

Emrill’s existing efficiency-enhancing app for the blue-collar workforce enables them to log faults, upload photographs and raise queries, so they can work through a checklist of actions to be resolved and completed. With the addition of new mobile application, technicians can also access all asset-related information, including manuals, references, contact information for special, approved services providers and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) diagrams. 

Emrill has expanded the capabilities of its CAFM platform, FSI Go to ensure optimum usage of the CAFM mobile apps. Now technicians can access FSI Go on their mobile devices and can log, update and close jobs without leaving the site. This has helped them reduced the dependency on paper-based logbooks and also improved accuracy and increased efficiency by approximately 10-20%.

Energy Management:

Farnek facility management firm emphasis implementing  IoT and AI to ensure efficient energy management services. Nadia Ibrahim, head of a consultancy, Farnek recommends the three key principles for conserving energy efficiency in a building.

A. Measure, monitor, and control energy consumption, 

B. Automation of equipment/system controls, 

C. Benchmarking energy performance of buildings

Following those principles, Farnek has been carrying out successful energy management for iconic landmarks including Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall. Over the last four years, Farnek was able to reduce total energy consumption for those facilities by 17%, which is 31,000 tonnes of CO2, representing AED22m in cost savings. 

Nadia Ibrahim, Farnek believes that “Having a good energy management system not only reduces utility consumption but also potentially provides huge savings.”

Last year Farnek introduced and conducted the first-ever virtual energy audit at one of their facilities, since this does not require onsite visits, these audits can be conducted relatively quickly and cost-effectively, compared to physical audits.

Indoor Air Quality

After CDC’s new report on Covid-19 as an airborne virus, the air quality has become the main concern among all commercial real estate stakeholders.

Tarek Nizameddin, senior executive director at Ejadah, said “The pandemic has opened the eyes of facility managers on the issue of ‘Sick Building Syndrome’ (SBS) which was not a priority in the region prior to 2020”

The causes of SBS are frequently attributed to pathogens including viruses, bacteria or fungus or ventilation, humidity and temperature-related issues. But fortunately, The industry has now learned the importance of disinfection and monitoring of the facilities. Leaders are focusing on ventilation, humidity and temperature controls, and ensuring that all are properly functioning where the system maintenance schedules are precisely followed and recorded. Most notably, facility managers are now more involved with the requirements to notify regarding any unusual individual symptoms or environmental concerns.

There are many other innovative practices these regional facility management firms are implementing and delivering added value to the end customers. Out of all the success stories of technology adoption, one thing becomes clear that facility management services can no longer be differentiated based on the cost of the service. You have to create that competitive edge by delivering what clients might need tomorrow.   

Asian commercial real estate market has always been looked at as a testing ground for many Proptech products. Whether it is AI/VR technology, Asset management, big data & Analytics, or property listing application. Wherever it stands on the value chain, whoever supposed to be the end-user – Property owner, facilitator or tenants it is usually tried and tested in the Asian market first and then scaled on global markets like North America and Europe.

I believe there are two reasons why Asian markets are being test-labs for the innovation and growth

1) Scope for development: 

While most of the developed countries have limited or relatively low construction and development rates, china and India are outpacing them all.

“Asia is urbanizing at a much faster rate than the rest of the world. We have a much higher level of construction across all of our markets, which means there’s new development – and new developments all have a greater focus on innovation. In Asia, if we don’t have a technology, we simply leapfrog to the next level.” Jonathan Hannam, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Taronga Ventures

2) Demography: 

Asian markets being one of the highest population of millennials and increasing disposable per capita income, people are expecting better infrastructures & technology to make life easier. 

Evidently, when other developed markets are looking for consolidation, there are numerous proptech companies that are entering Asian markets to test their tech stack.

Although there are growth and innovation, it is still facing its own set of challenges. It is still in the transition phase and would need some radical changes in terms of behavioral and operational practices.

Mingtiandi, an independent Asia-centric real estate intelligence provider and Yardi, a software company came up with the survey report on technology adoption in the Asian real estate industry. Report unravel some of the unexpected trends and barriers and forecast on how the future will look like.

Here are our top picks from the report:

• No more lagging

Asian real estate companies are closing the gap between the western market’s proptech development and its own. While there is a difference of opinion among HK, Singapore and Chinese respondents, 30% of the respondents think that Asia is leading the way in penetration of technologies as compared to western counterparts.

However, being the conventional industry 77% of respondents still think that the real estate industry invests far less in innovation than the automobile, aviation, or other industries.  

• Barriers to Tech adoption

Behavioral change is the biggest hurdle CRE companies face when commissioning the new technology or application. 35% of the respondents suggested it takes a lot of resources and development to invest in technology while 19% of them point towards the cost associate with the applications as a bigger barrier.  

Not surprisingly most real estate professionals still prefer Excel as the go-to tool for sales, planning, reporting and analytics. 

Although Excel is a great tool for number crunching but the trend highlight the underlying fact that most facility management teams haven’t reached the scale or sophistication required for an automated process.  

• COVID has accelerated the tech adoption

As seen all over the world, covid has played a catalytic role in tech penetration in the Asian market too. People are planning or making a serious investment in a collaborative system. 41% of the respondents suggested that they are planning to go paperless online operations. 

Crises has changed the way people interest in office space, as most of the employees prefer to work from home till everything settles down, companies are investing in video conferencing systems for meeting and enabling sales, etc. 

• Way Forward

As the uncertainty in the market is fading out and businesses and industries are showing the sign of getting back on track, companies are strategizing on long term digital transformation roadmap. Technologies that were in the nascent stage a couple of years back now at a peak of adoption. 

55% of the respondents think that big data analytics will have a significant impact on the real estate industry in the coming years, while 32% suggested that Business process automation and the Internet of things will see similar growth in the next five years.

Property management systems and investment platforms remain on the top priority for the real estate industry followed by fintech and online market places.

However, one trend that will predominantly remain on the top at least for the next couple of years is customer-centric technology. Whether it is a touchless room booking device or space management application it has to be designed in a way to address the safety and hygiene concern of the tenant or occupant.   

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Occupant is the biggest driver for the change now and any strategic investment around the technology has to be taken considering his experience in mind.