The first time we encountered the smartphone, few of us could have envisaged how much change it would bring to our daily lives. As we move from smart design to operation at 100 Liverpool Street, we are set to launch BL:Connect, our smart platform. I am excited about how this will transform the way we operate buildings and improve the daily lives of people who work in them.
For decades, commercial buildings have operated on strict time schedules. Everything – from air conditioning and cooling to heating and lighting – tends to come on and go off at specific times. Cleaning, reception, security and maintenance teams work on fixed rotas. Kit is serviced and replaced according to rigid timetables. People spend their days working in buildings ruled by time schedules. Those days are about to end – thanks to our smart building strategy.
A new era in building management
At 100 Liverpool Street, Broadgate, we are moving into the occupancy-based era of building management. Our Storey Club and landlord spaces are providing the testbed for BL:Connect, which I think of as the building’s brain.
Some 9,000 assets – including lightbulbs, lifts, fan coil units, escalators, sensors and valves – are feeding valuable data into BL:Connect on how spaces are being used and what conditions are like. This is giving us insights to enhance the environment for customers and improve efficiency for our sustainable future.
Over time, we are looking to partner with occupiers to expand opportunities into their areas for a seamless experience. And, as our data and understanding grow, we will gradually program the building to respond automatically to optimise conditions. Noting though that humans are still the best sensors you can get, we’ll always depend on our valuable site teams and act on customer feedback!
Early wins
Bringing data from multiple assets together for the first time and considering a range of variables – such as energy use, occupancy levels, air quality, natural daylight and outdoor temperatures – we are gaining eye opening new insights. Digital placemaking is core to achieving our environmental and social goals.
Some of the biggest efficiency wins are in unoccupied meeting spaces. BL:Connect highlighted rooms running heating and cooling plant (HVAC) at full capacity even when there were no bookings for the day. Fan speeds now reduce in rooms that aren’t booked or occupied, and automatically reactivate as soon as someone comes in or when conditions fall outside agreed parameters. Lighting levels also reduce by 50% in unoccupied spaces and night mode is triggered based on occupancy rather than time schedules.
On the flip side, when occupancy data and meeting room bookings show lots of people using spaces, we are looking to increase services for customers. This includes extra cleaning for busy meeting rooms and washrooms, and bringing in additional reception team members when a flurry of visitors is expected. For those in the sector, this approach is known as condition-based service or maintenance – moving away from a reactive approach.
Always at its best
BL:Connect is allowing us to find and fix faults quicker too, often even before customers are affected, so they consistently enjoy optimal conditions. On a hot day, we noticed two rooms reaching 30ºC. Through BL:Connect, we pinpointed this to a single faulty valve causing heating to activate. We promptly replaced the valve and resolved the issue.
Ultimately, BL:Connect will enable us to fix problems before they even happen. Using historic performance data, we’ll start applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict when devices are likely to need servicing or replacing, which should mean fewer failures and less down time. Live alerts also flag potential issues and recommend actions, e.g. if floor one is using a lot more water than usual, it’s time to check for leaks. Predictive and proactive maintenance will improve building performance for customers.
Big challenge
With over 9,000 smart assets, identifying and locating devices to build a digital twin of the building is currently a big challenge. This is made harder by inconsistent naming strategies across different systems – for example, lift names in the security system not aligning to those in the lift operating system. Going forward, all our projects will adopt a unified naming system across design, development and commissioning.
Looking forward
Building on our success at 100 Liverpool Street, we are now applying our BL:Connect platform to all our new developments, starting with 1 Broadgate and including Canada Water. We are also rolling out our campus app, giving customers contactless access to some spaces, Storey Club bookings, helpdesk services, campus news, exclusive deals and more. Later this year, we will retrofit BL:Connect into a traditional building, looking at what we can achieve in existing assets. The future of buildings is smart.