FMJ.CO.UK BUILDING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOCUS
The role of the BMS in monitoring
heating, ventilation and air
conditioning systems is a key factor in
operational performance, but it isn’t an easy
task. There is a level of complexity behind the
scenes of modern building services with
hundreds or even thousands of individual
consumers that together represent the
vast energy demand of
REFERENCE NOTES
(i) www.cretech.com/event/reimagining-realestate
global-summit-on-demand/
(ii) www.gov.uk/government/publications/
low-carbon-buildings-best-practices-and-whatto
avoid
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2021 41
numerous studies such as the analysed
data from Innovate UK’s £8 million Building
Performance Evaluation Programme(ii)
identifies poor building performance as
a major contributor to greenhouse gas
emissions and the performance gap.
The role of the BMS in monitoring heating,
ventilation and air conditioning systems
is a key factor in operational performance,
but it isn’t an easy task. There is a level of
complexity behind the scenes of modern
building services with hundreds or even
thousands of individual consumers that
together represent the vast energy demand
of buildings.
Monitoring these consumers are tens or
hundreds of thousands of data points; these
may be temperature sensors or even valves
that regulate the flow of water through the
systems. The interaction of all these systems
is key to operating and optimising the overall
BMS performance.
However, this is too o en overlooked and
we regularly see issues such as these:
Commissioning is condensed and there’s not
enough time for installers to ensure systems
are working optimally.
Witnessing via spot-checks can represent a
point in time rather than ongoing analysis
and usually only a sample of the systems.
Maintenance is manual with teams visiting
each asset on a routine or reactive basis, but
they are either too early because there are
no problems yet, or too late when systems
have been underperforming for some time.
Skilled operators are rare and quick fix
reactions to complaints can often compound
operational problems making things worse.
With manual override of control strategies
commonplace.
Due to an extremely competitive market, FM
margins are poor, providing little flexibility
to provide additional support without extra
costs.
Maintenance contracts are often badly
structured, based on outdated principles,
with contractors being paid extra to
respond to complaints and therefore not
incentivised to proactively improve building
performance. KPIs and SLAs are structured
to deliver against Planned/Reactive tasks –
rather than overall building performance.
But for us, the key is that performance is
opaque – with few, if any, having the ability to
monitor and truly analyse the performance
of a building.
UNLOCKING THE POWER OF DATA
With this bewildering array of systems
and consumers, how do you know if
the building services are operating
appropriately? Surely, BMS is telling us
this? If it’s anything like the majority of
building management systems, once you
find it, o en in the basement, you have
to go through an array of pages. You may
have various BMS screens to get through,
each page telling you what is happening to
a specific piece of the plant right now, but
not about last night or further back in time.
To see that you have to click back further,
assuming logs have been set up, and then
use your experience and expertise to judge
whether the operation was optimal or not.
With many BMS, a lot of the information is
logged behind a huge menu. This means
you need to know where you’re going
before you start because there is nothing
on the system guiding you to issues.
So, how can you prioritise your time?
How can you make better sense of your
data? That’s what we set out to do. Each
building has an array of plant hidden
from view. This includes chillers,
terminal units, boilers, pumps
and air handlers – all
massive energy consumers
– and all controlled by
a complex network of
embedded devices.
The first challenge
was to access the data,
the tens, if not hundreds
of thousands of points
of reference generally
unstored and unanalysed.
To do this we developed a
small device that we put in the
building called a data acquisition
device or DAD. Once set up the device
polls all the data within the network which
are securely uploaded to the cloud where
storage is unlimited. Our ISO27001 system
then models the data automatically,
enabling our team of technical account
managers and building analysts to analyse
it and provide insight on a web based
interactive, collaborative platform.
By unravelling this bewildering array
of data streams and providing data-led
insight, this system enables a reduction
in operational and energy waste reducing
carbon emissions whilst increasing
e iciency in maintenance activities.
It allows FM teams to focus on internal
environmental quality to improve occupant
wellbeing and productivity and facilitates
proactive maintenance, which reduces
unanticipated breakdowns and operational
expenditure. This approach is redefining
the KPIs of property performance, saving
our customers up to 30 per cent in energy
costs, reducing temperature complaints by
over 50 per cent and improving maintenance
e iciency and first-time fixes.
HOW DO YOUR BUILDINGS RANK?
Using the myriad of data feeds, the Building
Operational Performance (BOP) Score can
model and score each building against the
performance of Demand Logic’s pool of
properties and provide a proxy for industry
level of performance. Millions of data points
are analysed and aggregated to provide
a single BOP Score. This score can rank
buildings against their peers, highlights
improved or deteriorating property and
facilitates drill down to poorly performing
spaces to help building managers and FMs to
rectify problems.
We’re opening this process up to industry
parties and professionals to galvanise the
best brains in the industry and strive for
continuous improvement of the scoring
metrics so that all buildings can be
compared fairly and e ectively.
The Building Operational
Performance Score does
the data analysis for you,
with a rating system
that allows users
to instantly see
which buildings
are performing
well from the
perspectives of
energy e iciency,
occupier comfort
and mechanical
performance.
Property professionals
are already using
the system to improve
property performance and drive
engagement.
How do you think your buildings rank?
And if you can answer that one, how do
you know? Is it through subjective KPIs or
maintenance reports? Both of these metrics
are relying on someone’s opinion, o en
self-auditing. Is it based on actual data? And
if so against what benchmark and how do
you know how productive the space is? Is it
through complaints? Or simply gut feeling?
Whatever the answer it’s time to look
at how e ectively you’re optimising your
BMS data and in turn the properties’
performance.
buildings.”
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