Requirements for Modern Buildings – The Cloud Platform Becomes a Standard Trade in Technical Building Equipment

Requirements for Modern Buildings

Based on numerous conversations, participation in conferences, observation of articles in journals, and review of social media posts, the requirements for the future building stock can be outlined:

On the one hand, property owners want to get closer to users and be informed about the quality of their properties. They want to know about the actual use and performance of their buildings. On the other hand, buildings need to be optimized, and operational efficiency must be increased. Properties should become more sustainable since they play an important role in the energy system of the future. In summary: The future viability of properties is crucial. Only in this way can property owners react flexibly to future requirements from users and tenants. All this serves the long-term safeguarding of value stability, the natural interest of every asset owner.

The Requirements in Detail

Due to current developments in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressure to use space as efficiently as possible is increasing. Whether through optimized leasing or alternative usage forms—information about the actual use and behavior of users enables optimizations for better utilization of spaces.

In this process, the quality of the provided space has a direct influence on achievable net rents. Certain aspects, such as healthy indoor air and comfort, are becoming increasingly important. But at the same time, the costs and energy expenditure for this should be kept as low as possible. Therefore, it is important to know what effort achieves what quality. The operational efficiency of buildings is a metric to be determined and subsequently improved.

Efficiency always stands in the tension between benefit and effort. One approach is to increase the yield from properties. Value propositions of properties include comfort, good indoor air quality, hygienically impeccable (hot) water, and other energy services like process heat or cooling (for example, for sterilization in hospitals or cooling of food). Another approach is to reduce the effort required to achieve the benefit. This particularly includes energy consumption as well as personnel and material for operating the property.

When it comes to reducing resources, facility management plays a key role during operation. The process chain needs to be optimized with digital methods: predictive maintenance, digital order processing and awarding, standardization of service specifications, digital checklists as aids during order processing and as later proof, etc.

In addition to optimized FM processes, there is a need for the operational optimization of energy systems in buildings. Scalable analyses should automatically identify optimization potential and help to exploit it. Advanced control algorithms—including weather and usage forecasts, simulation calculations, and mathematical optimization—could make the continuous operation of buildings more efficient.

The reduction of the holistically calculated primary energy expenditure in property operation (including the processes around a property) has a direct impact on sustainability. This is significant, on the one hand, against the background of CO₂ pricing with prospectively rising CO₂ prices. On the other hand, penalty payments for portfolio holders with too much CO₂-emitting portfolios are no longer an unlikely scenario. At this point, I was inspired by reading an article that calls for Manage-to-Green instead of Manage-to-Core. Accordingly, Manage-to-Green could represent an investment strategy in itself; see “The New Manage-to-Core is Called Manage-to-Green” by Jens Böhnlein, Global Head of Asset Management at Commerz Real (as of 30.09.2020).

Furthermore, it can be assumed that user requirements for spaces and their operability will increase, as the digital affinity of future generations steadily grows. Recently completed flagship projects, also in German-speaking countries, reinforce the smart building trend. The future viability of properties is therefore partly determined by their connectivity and the existence of necessary interfaces. In this context, there is increasing talk of Digital Readiness or Smart Building Readiness.

As an overarching requirement, the value stability or value growth of portfolios should be mentioned. We are convinced that this can only be promoted through a holistic consideration of the above-mentioned aspects.

Movements in the Market

In the market, there are numerous isolated solutions—offered by established companies, corporate spin-offs, proven PropTechs, and young startups. Accordingly, all the mentioned challenges can be tackled with methods already available. To illustrate this, I list some examples without claiming completeness:

• Space utilization analysis with corresponding heat mapping is found in the service offerings of modern lighting manufacturers as well as retrofit offerings from sensor manufacturers with their platforms.
• Software solutions support the performance assessment of buildings—by modeling the target state and comparing it with the actual state.
• Classical building automation systems, using their respective building management systems, make it possible to observe operational behavior and draw conclusions about thermal comfort and coziness.
• The upheavals in facility management can be well understood through podcasts that illuminate the innovative edge of the industry. There are now offerings like Cleaning on Demand or condition-based maintenance of ventilation systems. Retrofit sensors for elevators make their maintenance significantly more efficient.
• Planners of technical building automation, contractors, and other actors offer services for energy optimization of buildings that improve the energy operation of the property, sometimes in an energy-saving contracting model.
• Providers of weather forecast-based controls and self-learning algorithms (keyword: Artificial Intelligence) can sustainably improve the continuous operation of properties.
• Regarding the Environmental, Social, and Governance goals (ESG goals), extensive consulting services from established actors can be acquired, some of which are moving towards the associated challenges with their own products.
• The range of smart building and smart district apps with various services—including access, lockers, people finder, room and workplace booking, incident management, community applications—is becoming larger.

Asset owners thus face an almost unmanageable range of offerings. In addition, the technical topology is by no means standardized. The individual solutions promise remedies for individual or multiple requirements. Moreover, a smart building is nowadays designed on a case-by-case basis, but ultimately the resulting systems are again a single solution. Those who want to keep their portfolios holistically value-stable should consider not only new construction but also the existing stock—after all, it's about making all buildings fit for the future and more sustainable.

From a technical perspective, implementing the above-mentioned value propositions requires a holistic solution that covers various terms: building middleware, building operation system (an extension to the building management system—the classical building management technology), digital backbone, digitization platform, brain, smart building platform, or digital twin.

But what does this required system that brings things together consist of? How is it technically designed? Is it part of the technical building equipment (TGA)? And can it be connected to the building from the outside?

The Cloud Platform as a Standard Component of TGA

In our conviction, this integrating system can be described as a cloud platform for buildings. This must become the standard component of technical building equipment and thus part of every building—in new construction as well as in existing stock.

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The basic functions it must fulfill include initially the data collection and storage in the form of a data lake. This contains all technical operating data, traffic data, and movement data generated by the technical building equipment. Additionally, all important master and metadata about the property should be available here. Furthermore, it must be possible to receive relevant documents, such as revision, manufacturer, and maintenance documents as well as contracts, and make them available to the respective interested stakeholders.

Moreover, a digital twin of a property and the entire portfolio is needed. This can be based on a semantic structuring of all data in the data lake. It can be composed of various components of physical or procedural origin and thus digitally map reality. Accordingly, for example, components of the technical building equipment and maintenance processes can be modeled in the digital twin.

Another important basic function of the cloud platform for buildings is to give all stakeholders targeted access to selected data. Data protection and data security must be fully guaranteed. Extended services of the standard component defined here can include analysis algorithms, control algorithms, or process engines. Open interfaces are an essential component of the cloud platform so that relevant stakeholders can integrate them independently.

As already mentioned, the data of all technical building equipment is part of the cloud platform for a building. The HOAI with cost group 400 can be used as an existing standard. This groups the technical building equipment into various trades; even the aforementioned novel components can be summarized under it.

How Are the Data of the Individual Trades Integrated Into the Cloud Platform?

Here, the classical trade of building automation (cost group 480) plays a special role: Depending on the building's equipment level, especially regarding building automation, the technical systems are more or less integrated and automated. Building automation is thus the first point of contact for data collection. However, in reality, I am not aware of any case where building automation fully integrates all relevant trades comprehensively. Accordingly, further trades must be locally integrated. This can be done via IP-based integration using so-called edge devices. For this, an industrial PC is integrated into the building and connected to the technical network of the property. If a property does not have such technical possibilities, the existing technology can be upgraded using gateways. If the existing technology is too old, application-oriented additional retrofit sensor technology can be introduced—a rapidly developing market. In any case, it is nowadays possible to quickly and cost-effectively collect all data of the technical building equipment in a cloud platform.

How Is Added Value Generated From the Data?

The data serves as a basis. All the application cases exemplarily outlined above need this data to varying degrees. Data is considered the oil of the 21st century, which needs to be refined to generate corresponding added value. This happens on the one hand through platform-internal functions, on the other hand through services of other providers who can access the data via the available interfaces.

Cloud or Local Data Storage? And: Cloud-to-Cloud Topology

In Germany, the topic of cloud is relatively burdened. However, since asset owners, operators, or FM rarely observe only one property, it quickly becomes clear that the data must be held at a higher level. With proper execution regarding data protection and data security, there is, in my conviction, no apparent reason for so-called local deployments. Therefore, the right place for the data and interface functions is the cloud. This is reinforced by the aspect that data refinement must be done by the best algorithms to generate maximum added value. In the process, a single platform will probably never host all algorithms optimal for the respective application case. Therefore, I am convinced that the future belongs to a cloud-to-cloud or platform-of-platforms topology. In our graphical representation, this is explained by the point "Platforms and Digital Services of Third Parties."

By Whom and How Is the Cloud Platform Used?

The cloud platform can be used by almost all relevant stakeholders in the lifecycle of a property. A direct use can occur via user interfaces (Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) or User Interfaces (UI), such as web frontends or apps). User-side business intelligence solutions can directly access the data and functions of the platform via the interfaces. Moreover, use can occur indirectly via platforms and digital services of third parties, which access the cloud platform via the interfaces and in turn offer their own APIs and user interfaces.

Conclusion

Properties need a cloud platform to address the above-mentioned challenges in a contemporary manner. Given the large number of existing buildings in new construction and existing stock, standardization is urgently needed—also so that the offerings of various providers can be compared at all.

Cloud platforms for buildings are available on the market and should be increasingly used in the real estate industry.

The Role of aedifion

aedifion GmbH offers with its cloud platform for buildings this new component as a manufacturer-independent and cross-manufacturer solution. We act in an advisory capacity regarding the digitization of portfolios as well as the implementation of smart buildings and smart districts. In various research projects, we address diverse challenges, including integrating the existing building stock into the energy system of the future, defining comprehensive digital twins and data models, simulating technical systems, and the future of building automation. We are happy to assist you with any questions on these topics.