Editor’s note: FM Perspectives are industry op-eds. The views expressed are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect those of Facilities Management Advisor.
The smart buildings industry has made significant investments in sensors, dashboards, Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI). By 2030, this investment is projected to exceed $200 billion.
Over 70% of new commercial building constructions worldwide incorporate at least one smart building platform. Though historically this was required by code, such as building management systems (BMS), these systems have taken on greater purpose and meaning over the last 20 years as analytics have entered the picture. Some 58% of enterprise facility operators are now integrating cloud-based building analytics to improve their operational efficiency. Last year, global connected building deployments surpassed 1.3 billion installed IoT devices and supported software-driven automation functions. These software-driven automation functions, often merged with AI in many cases, have given purpose and true value to the data previously locked in building systems. This has been exceptionally apparent in energy management systems, as intelligent software helps reduce electricity consumption by up to 25% in monitored facilities.
With nearly 6 million commercial buildings operating, the U.S. remains one of the largest smart buildings software markets, driven by extensive adoption of connected infrastructure and advanced facilities management systems, which boost demand for software-driven automation. And AI’s widespread integration has fundamentally changed reliance on IoT data and analytics.
However, while all these advanced technologies are integrated into smart buildings, most facilities operators continue to assume that once an alarm is triggered or an insight is generated, the appropriate action will automatically be taken. This is far from true.
Though execution and remediation of problems rely on real-time data to manage and monitor tasks, the question of who is responsible for ensuring tasks are performed accurately as they occur remains complex. It is even harder to verify the accuracy of remediation or repair after they are completed.
Framing the Execution Gap
The execution gap remains the missing component across most smart building frameworks. When the construction of a smart building ends and daily operations begin, most often data from a multitude of systems, devices, and environments remains siloed into systems, devices, and multiple software dashboards.
The significant gap between a smart facility’s technological potential and its actual operational performance can either lead to missed opportunities or transform costly IoT, AI, and digital twin investments into tangible energy savings and improved efficiency. However, there is an alarming disconnect between a smart building’s advanced digital capabilities (data, sensors, AI, IoT) and the daily operations or system maintenance. If the disconnect is not identified and addressed on time, it can lead to failures, delays, or ineffective implementations of initiatives within the critical infrastructure of smart buildings.
While teams now have data, operational teams lack the essential tools to help drive reliable and repeatable solutions from this mass of data. When data flows into siloes, smart systems are not used to their potential, leaving operations teams operating with blinders on, and without real-time, deep data insight into their facilities’ health.
Bridging the Execution Governance
While standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training programs are critical for closing the execution gap, a centralized dashboard that enables real-time data aggregation and actionable insights is, and should be considered, an invaluable asset. But that is only the starting point. With countless systems functioning across smart buildings and generating large data lakes, a lack of proper IT infrastructure that can cohesively extract data from silos, unify, make sense, and provide a holistic view of the entire facility can leave operators data-rich and insight-poor.
The next step from this point of “understanding” is a process of resolution where SOPs are the next logical flow from understanding to operational action.
Integrating digital job plans can provide step-by-step procedures and transform SOPs into enforced digital workflows and a proof-of-execution layer at every step. Providing data structure during execution can enable a clear task audit trail that highlights the essential role of a governance layer. It can bridge systems of record for the frontline teams and, more importantly, transform SOPs into enforceable, real-time digital workflows.
By closing the execution gap and reducing human error, especially in repeatable SOPs, smart building operators can transform complex operational procedures into enforced, real-time workflows. This can also help guide and validate each execution task for quality management and operational excellence.
Actionable Execution Procedures: Closing the Execution Gap
While SOPs and checklists are necessary, eliminating the reliance on manual execution processes and allowing automation for verification and implementation reduces downtime and lowers human error that can lead to costly incident risks. It can also prevent outages and foster preventative maintenance before problems occur, considering that average downtime costs manufacturing facilities $260,000 per hour, $300,000 to $540,00 for data centers, and nearly $600,000 for healthcare facilities.
Designing an effective execution procedure and an auditable resolution process flow is paramount to capturing structured data as work is conducted and completed. The comprehensive audit trail for every task and action taken significantly minimizes human error in repetitive operational tasks and helps staff validate task execution for quality management and operational excellence, reducing dependence on memory or checklists. Essentially, tasks become less tied to one person’s knowledge and more repeatable long-term. This results in a measurable decrease in downtime while mitigating costly incident risks and enhancing the management of all Error Elimination Procedures (EEPs).
Although often overlooked, there are other benefits in closing this execution gap:
- Integrating a unifying operational platform that breaks siloed dashboards to provide facility operators with one source of real-time, aggregated data.
- Transforming static procedures into enforced, logic-driven workflows that will help validate inputs, lock in sequencing, and prevent deviations while tasks are executed.
- Recording execution timestamps at the worksite inputs as tasks are performed and completed can provide engineers with verifiable processes and ensure compliance, while enabling more comprehensive asset management.
- Creating documented procedural workflows can prevent teams from moving to the next steps before completing previous steps—it can also prevent operational teams from working on out-of-sequence tasks, preventing deviations from reaching risks.
- Unifying execution with a context layer of all assets across the facilities portfolio to prevent false data that can alter workflows downstream.
To meet the distinct needs of smart buildings’ technological modernization, operators with access to auditable data can enable work management at the point of execution in a controlled, repeatable, and auditable manner. This significantly reduces human error in high-stakes environments and transforms SOPs into enforceable digital workflows that can accurately capture structured data during task execution, provide a comprehensive audit trail for every job, and help close the execution gap.
Michael Skurla is a senior advisor at Radix IoT, with 25+ years of expertise in connected product design and commercialization, focused on critical infrastructure sectors’ control automation and building technology product design with Fortune 500 companies.