As owners and users of commercial real estate are developing strategies to reduce these emissions, many are turning to their building management system (BMS) for the data they need, either by directly engaging their BMS provider or using third-party analytics platforms that pick up and repurpose BMS data. Unfortunately, the BMS isn’t built for this purpose, which can often lead to a dissatisfying experience without good return on investment.
The problem (and the solution!) is data volume and accuracy
A BMS tracks a finite number of data points from a finite number of systems for a specific purpose: to provide a safe and comfortable working environment. Where the objective is to drive environmental performance and energy costs savings, most property owners will be better placed also investing in an integrated systems platform (ISP). Leading ISPs, such as Avani, have no limits on the number of building systems they connect to, the number of points they manage, nor the number of applications that can access the data now as well as into the future.
Every point should be available for real-time access and recorded for life, at a frequency that suits the type of data point. ISPs are designed to manage these large datasets and standardise everything, so that every point from every connected system looks and feels the same to any application that needs to use it. For example, a BMS will store energy consumption data from an electrical meter for a set period, simply by polling a meter value every 15 minutes. An ISP is type sensitive and uses the context of the data point itself to enable adaptive recording, life storage and contain built-in strategies to ensure the quality of the data is at its highest, all while providing a layer of protection to the meter against high data volumes and requests. This is an ISP’s primary function. As a result, the data is of the highest quality and can be trusted.
The result can be seen by looking at the energy data from one of Avani’s client’s property portfolios. The narrow band that clusters around the daily average of 987kWh is driven from sites using Avani’s data acquisition and management specifications. These readings have been validated to the sensor and provide an insight to the daily energy use for our client. The widely variable readings, going as high as 74,000kWh in one day, are derived from a more traditional BMS system.
In this instance, although the BMS data is of a sufficient quality to ensure safe environments to work in, when it comes to using the energy data to drive both energy use and carbon emissions down, the data quality is not sufficient.
Systems need to be fit for purpose
There is no denying the importance of a BMS for most commercial buildings. The BMS monitors and controls electrical and mechanical services, ensuring a safe and healthy environment for occupants to work in. Although they have some ability to link into other systems – notably security, lighting and vertical transport – their purpose is building comfort.
High-quality ISPs will separate the data acquisition, management, and user applications (displays), allowing for a more scalable, efficient, and secure way of managing every required function. If you’re trying to repurpose an existing system, such as your BMS, to provide the functionality of an ISP then you know this is not an independent, dedicated, fit-for-purpose data acquisition and management solution. This path will not manage the volume of data, protection layers, data integrity and scaling required to securely service any number of applications that require access now and into the future.
To drive environmental improvements, we need the ability to integrate multiple complex systems and sensors, and have the data management strategies to provide a high degree of accuracy. Many of these systems live outside the building. Asset management, finance, events, ticketing, IoT data, and more are included in the integration to significantly increase the value and available options. This volume of data management and sharing requires dedicated caching layers and pre-processed data to maximise data transfer speeds. This type of functionality only exists in a purpose-built ISP.
Contact Avani today to discuss how we can make sure you’re getting the data you need to deliver a strong ROI for your environmental improvement project.