Automated buildings and digitized intelligent systems: Ensuring safety during a pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic brought about severe socio-economic disruption and plunged industries everywhere into financial straits. As more and more businesses now reopen for on-premises operations, ensuring a safe and healthy work environment for employees is paramount. Workforce optimization through rotational shifts, social distancing on office premises, remote asset management and efficient energy usage will all become high-priority areas. Smart and automated building systems that automatically adjust air quality, temperature and ventilation will play a key role in maintaining a comfortable environment within the building while using energy smartly and keeping the air clean.
Importance of smart HVAC systems
HVAC systems consist of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning, and are present in most commercial spaces to control the temperature and quality of air throughout the premises. These central air-conditioning systems, if not carefully monitored, can be breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses, including Coronavirus. In a confined air-conditioned space, the droplets released when someone sneezes can travel much further and faster, putting other occupants of the space at higher risk of picking up infections. This calls for smart and efficient ventilation systems that can process and filter large volumes of air on a regular basis to always keep the air inside the premises fresh. Ventilation and temperature control are also essential for maintaining an environment conducive to focused work, which is important since many employees are returning to office after a long gap.
How digitised intelligent systems make buildings safe, sustainable, and cost-effective:
Boosting sustainability
As climate change continues to accelerate, sustainable practises are being adopted across industries and building management is no different. An intelligent building system can analyse how energy is currently being used, identify inefficiencies across different components, run numbers for optimal energy requirement across each floor and allow remote monitoring of intelligent sensors that adjust temperature and oxygen levels depending on the number of occupants present. This will ensure that energy is being distributed efficiently and used in optimal amounts.
Reducing costs
The use of intelligent building solutions not only saves energy by allowing systems to run at minimum capacity when the building is empty, but also helps spot any glitches or machine breakdowns early on. It allows repairs to happen promptly and at a lower cost. Intelligent systems are also easy and inexpensive to integrate with the existing equipment. Given that most businesses have faced significant financial setbacks, operating efficiently will be of utmost importance and smart building systems can help with this. Moreover, the building can start saving energy from day one, which means that returns on investment will rack up quickly.
Ensuring employee safety
A smart building monitoring system can help maintain social distancing among occupants. The remote system can send out alerts about people’s movement patterns, thus giving managers an idea of how to position desks and seating areas so that everyone can maintain a safe distance from each other. As in-person work slowly opens, employees need to be reassured that their safety is guaranteed at their place of employment. Regular temperature checks, sanitisation points, socially distanced seating and compulsory masking are the minimum, but a system that is consistently learning and automating based on occupant behaviour will help to implement safety measures in real-time.
Enhancing productivity
The quality of air and the temperature inside an office can play a key role in ensuring employee productivity. Too humid, too hot or too cold a room can be uncomfortable and can impair the ability to concentrate. Through wireless sensors, equipment controllers and cloud-based software, a smart building system can self-regulate internal stats - to the extent of knowing when it is cool enough outside to take advantage of fresh air or when the sun is bright enough to merit turning off the electric lights. Plus, managers can access the system from any smart device on the go, without having to schedule maintenance visits.
Conclusion
Intelligent building solutions are smart, easy and cost-effective to install, and can be extremely useful to companies looking to implement sustainable practices while keeping their employees safe in a post-pandemic world. As office buildings once again open their doors, investing in an intelligent system today can make for a healthy, happy, and environment-friendly workplace tomorrow.
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