Machine2Enterprise

Building Interoperability

According to the National Institute of Standards (NIST) , more than $16B is wasted each year in the US because the software used to design, build and operate buildings is not well integrated.  This lack of interoperability results in expensive changes in the construction process, and poor maintenance in the operation phase.  I suspect they have just scratched the surface in terms of cost.

NIST really is just aiming at maintenance and support.  In parallel to NIST's thinking, I believe there is a similar cost in energy.  Many buildings do not have the real time systems in place that can correlate building design intent, real energy costs, and the condition of equipment over time.  Based on the retro commission market, it may be fair to say that poor building system interoperability might account for 20% of the energy cost in a facility.  I looked it up, a 20% improvement in facility energy cost would reduce the nations energy bill by more than $20B .

This means lack of interoperability might account for a waste in excess of $36 B per year.  That is a big number to me.

Smart Buildings?

I keep hearing about Smart Buildings.  The notion being that a building can be smart enough to fix itself, manage its own energy, or somehow optimize itself.  Why don't we talk about smart people? 

The reality in life is that people are smart, buildings are dumb.  Buildings will always be dumb (sorry to the coalition of under achieving buildings).  In the late 90's corporations realized that computers were not going to make companies more competitive.  Competition and efficiency comes from smart people using computers to make better decisions.  And the people running buildings are smart!

So what is missing?  Why do we still talk about building inefficiency?  Why do we talk about the notion of a smart building? Because......

We are not effectively addressing the need to deliver information (rather than data) to our smart facilities folks.  Rather than leading our team, building a business case, or developing a strategy for change, we buy the latest control system believing somehow that it will make up for our lack of leadership.  We outsource performance improvement to an ESCO.  We suffer proprietary solutions because somehow we think a magic bullet will make our building smart.

Does your team have the tools that let them understand the enterprise objectives and determine how the facility operations help deliver a better product or reduce cost?  We think about square feet in terms of rent, energy on maintenance.  Do we think about the fact that for every 200sq feet in our facility there is a person, who is helping make money for the firm, defend the country, or educate our children.  What we do every day running our facility also impacts how that person performs.  An what that person does every day effects how our facility performs.

So I ask again, does your team have the tools that let them understand the enterprise objectives and determine how the facility operations help deliver a better product or reduce cost?

What is a facility manager to do?

How is the world of facilities changing?  What role does a facility manager play in total operations?  What do you do when the CEO starts calling you to his office and starts to talk about IT, the CIO, cost, compliance, etc?  You know what is wrong in operations but there never seems to be the right amount of money.  Why all this attention now?

The role of the facility is changing, whether you are at a university, a large enterprise, or a government facility.  Energy is becoming a pressing cost that is out of control.  Buildings are aging faster than they should.  Activists are talking about green and sustainability.

In the 90's a major transformation occurred in information technology.  The Gartner Group started to educate the market to think about IT in the context of Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).  TCO changed the nature of IT from being a cost center to being a strategic weapon in a competitive world.  Energy, maintenance, supply chain management, compliance, and homeland security introduce a new market pressure on facilities that requires the facility manager to start thinking about their role as 1) a cost center or 2) a strategic weapon on reducing operation costs and improving operational quality.

It is now time for the concept of TCO to be applied to the facility.