Our Vision for a More Sustainable World, By Transforming Building Service Processes

As we look forward to 2017, I want to share our vision for a more sustainable future for buildings. I read this week where Bill Gates is contributing $1 billion of his own money to solving the GHG/energy problem, but its not something that can be solved with money alone. We believe that buildings can be made more sustainable, with better processes in buildings, simply by transforming building operations and maintenance. Process transformation can be applied to millions of buildings, of any size or age, with, or without, building automation, and can save substantially more money than from energy efficiency alone.

While owners, investors and even government have billions of dollars to invest in making buildings more financially profitable and more energy efficient when it makes financial sense, they know little about the spaces, equipment and systems in each building. It’s the fans, pumps, motors, boilers and refrigeration systems that’s consume energy.

Building operators or service providers may understand the equipment but not fully understand the costs of operating and maintaining that equipment. Financial asset managers may understand high level financial performance of individual buildings but lack the operational knowledge and detail required to assess and change buildings. We simply need to get all this information together in one place; merging operational and financial information and measuring operational and energy performance in real-time.

Better information and better processes lie at the core of the sustainability problem, and BuiltSpace believes that this is a solvable problem. We first need to digitize the assets within buildings. That means working with the service providers that maintain this equipment, to help them improve their operating processes.

Then, we need to collect accurate costs associated with operating and maintaining this equipment, digitizing the inspections and work orders associated with this maintenance. This includes energy data, also to systems or equipment levels.

Finally, we need to bring this information together in a platform where financial and operational stakeholders can identify opportunities to improve, and act on those opportunities, measuring the outcome against management plans.

Call it business process transformation, the Internet of Things, or Smart Buildings, the results are already obvious. By creating building-centric collaboration and business processes, operational efficiencies are evident with every service intervention. Better information means service technicians arrive on site with the correct parts, knows where to find the equipment and what work has already been completed, even if it’s the first time the technician has ever been to the building.

As we look forward to 2017, BuiltSpace is already transforming business processes to manage equipment assets across 10,000 plus buildings. This past year we partnered with Schneider Electric in order to integrate energy into our operational management platform. Our vision is taking shape. Join us to make our world more sustainable in 2017.

To see how BuiltSpace can help you transform your service processes visit BuiltSpace.com.   You can get started building asset registries and connecting with your service providers, at no cost.

rick@builtspace.com