After the pandemic, awareness and demand have grown for elevators that can be operated ‘touchlessly’. The focus is on the quality of indoor air and the control of air-conditioning has also increased. There is an increased focus on wellness in addition to LEED Platinum precertification. Residential complexes as well as homeowners have been seen adopting high-tech security solutions which allow remote surveillance or two-way communication. The story explores the new face of smart buildings and identifies barriers to the adoption of technologies.
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Is demand for smart buildings trending?
This was one of the central questions of the Construction World Virtual Round Table Conference on Smart Buildings, held on March 18.
“If by smart you mean a building equipped with sensor-based equipment that automatically turns on/off as needed to make life more convenient, such as sensor-based lighting, then, yes, a lot of people are opting for smart homes and offices,” says Amit Khanna, Design Principal, Amit Khanna Design Associates. “Some basic automation used to be aspirational but now it is quite mainstream.”
For instance, opening a bathroom door and having a light and exhaust switch on or having water flow automatically when you place your hands under a sensor tap.
Shreerang Athalye, Group President, Aurum Ventures, narrates the experience of his company, a real-estate developer big on planning and improving user experience. Some investments to upgrade quality and improve user experience are simple, such as much higher floor heights (4.2 m) and even lift cabins (2.8 m); ensuring sunlight penetrates most office spaces and using Internet of Things (IoT) with every electrical and HVAC panel instead of only the main panels. In residential projects, these measures include designing homes where every room has cross-ventilation, a rarity in apartments. Although simple, these efforts have reaped big dividends for the company, measured both in user satisfaction and commercial success.
“While only a fifth of our tenants are using IoT, those who are using it are overjoyed to get detailed information,” he adds. Consequently, the company has developed a mobile app to make the information available to property managers. “By concentrating on wellness in addition to LEED Platinum precertification, elevating an office building to hospitality levels, we have been able to attract extremely premium tenants like foreign banks, who really appreciate these kinds of features,” says Athalye. “Our residential buildings in Phase 1 were sold out at a time when demand was dipping.”
If smart is all good, why are so few smart buildings being developed?
A LEED Platinum building would need a further investment of less than 5 per cent to be smartened up because most investment already goes into making the building, estimates Athalye.
That isn’t a lot of money, certainly not enough to hold back the development of smart buildings.
However, total building automation, spanning conditioning, lighting, drapes, audio video, facade, security, etc, is a different story.
“It’s a huge jump because no singular entity can deliver a solution that brings together all these components,” says Khanna. “A Mitsubishi [machine] doesn’t talk to Godrej very well. And Mitsubishi and Daikin don’t talk to Schneider, and Toshiba doesn’t talk to Lutron.”
The lack of standardisation impedes the synchronisation of different subsystems in the building. “Most building subsystems don’t talk to each other because they operate in silos through proprietary protocols,” observes Puranam Ramakrishna, Senior General Manager - Smart and Connected Business, Wipro Lighting.
System integrators install converters to translate one system’s language into a different language that is understood by the other side, and to configure and programme the overall system to specify how it has to react to different events. For instance, when somebody switches on the air-conditioner, the window blinds needs to be closed.
The lack of standardisation and consequent system integration issues are felt most when implementing larger infrastructure projects, opines Antony Parokaran, CEO, Eros Elevators.
Still, system integration is always an additional cost and hassle, of which the latter is the bigger issue.
“It isn’t really the cost; it’s the inconvenience of automation that normally puts off developers,” says Khanna. “The thought - what if it doesn’t work? Despite investing in cutting-edge technology today, what if three years down the line, we need to incur a replacement cost?”
“Essentially, developers want to deliver value but don’t want to take the risk of something failing and nobody being able to fix it because it’s behind some closed wall, and you have to rip out a whole shaft,” he continues. “Developers want low-maintenance designs.”
What accentuates the hassle is the absence of system integrators that work with every kind of vendor, the fact that system integrators need to cater to every customer's demands and to that end, there is no such thing as standard integration for a residence or office.
Also, system integrators have their own limitations. Khanna points out that, sometimes, all the original functions aren’t preserved. For instance, if Mitsubishi offers 20 variations on control, covering fan speed, temperature, etc, the system integrator may offer only five.
Today, such integration works independently, he says. “The absence of standard operating guidance for intelligent interoperability of various systems in a building leads to heavy integration costs and less than expected outcome for clients. What is required is a holistic approach to using data to integrate every device so that systems operate intelligently without compromising on quality and comfort but while reducing energy consumption.”
Streamlined base technology, which brings together all sorts of manufacturers, whether for drapes, air-conditioning or lighting, would further the smart building cause. Right now, any provider can come in and provide a solution; it’s very ad hoc.
Parokaran advocates the industry coming together to set some standardisation. Some pressure from real-estate developers and end-users might aid this process.
Or as Ramakrishna predicts, we might see forces from outside the existing industry disrupting how things work. He points out that the pandemic has accelerated adoption of Cloud and IoT, and has spurred the usage of, say, Microsoft Azure, Amazon’s AWS or Google Cloud to host IoT sensors, which are interoperable with various other devices and systems in the building like lights, air-conditioners and elevators.
This, in turn, has shown manufacturers that legacy systems need to be re-examined and repurposed to keep pace with evolving customer needs. To this end, Wipro Lighting has always stayed ahead of the curve, as Ramakrishna tells us. It offers ‘Smart and Connected Lighting’ and intelligent sensors, and has partnered with technology leaders like Cisco on digital buildings.
In this context, Ramakrishna highlights occupant wellness. He believes that beyond LEED green building certification, wellness certification will emerge as a major focus area, and will necessitate providers to focus on what users want in different environments, whether it is an office space, warehousing or smart city.
“A famous equation in the building industry is 3:30:300, where 3 is the money you spend per square foot on your energy and utilities, 30 is the money you spend per square foot on running, maintaining and managing real estate, and 300 is the money you spend on your employees,” he explains Ramakrishna. “Business wisdom says the focus should be on the 300, in terms of enhancing employee experience, because optimising the other two areas will yield limited returns compared to the returns from enhancing employee experiences and guest experiences. The 3 and 30 will automatically get answered and aligned when you focus on the 300.”
The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) of CII, India’s premier certification agency since 2001, has developed 28 different IGBC green rating programmes to suit every building typology and built environment. One of these is the IGBC Health & Well-Being Certification, which covers every aspect of building design and operation—and the pandemic is helping to highlight this.
“Building orientation, the effective usage of ‘green’ building materials, the use of energy and water-efficient equipment, the use of green interior and finishing products such as paints, adhesives, sealants, furniture, furnishings, housekeeping chemicals and so on…because if you think of it, whatever goes into my lungs first comes in contact with all these components,” explains M Anand, Principal Counsellor, IGBC. “At IGBC, irrespective of whether the building is residential or commercial, in a metro or in a Tier 2 or 3 town or city, the focus of design has always been creating a space in harmony with nature and built around the environment using energy and environment-friendly technology, which is also people-friendly.”
To ensure buildings perform as conceived by the design team and sustain their tangible and intangible benefits, IGBC certification must be revalidated every three years.
“Property maintenance, including updating certifications, is extremely relevant,” says Athalye. “New tenants often come in through word-of-mouth publicity and so, especially for commercial buildings that are leased out, it matters a lot that buildings are functioning properly.”
If the five elements of nature are worked into design, it would ensure a positive impact on the five senses of people, which is fundamental to the IGBC Health & Well-Being Certification programme. As an example, Anand points out that the IGBC office, India’s first Platinum-certified office building built in 2003 with various green features, which is also flooded with sunlight and enhanced treated fresh air to make it a ‘Better Place For People’, has been open for business for many months despite COVID-19, with all rules being adhered to—employee sickness has been minimal.
What could be smarter than that?
We know that microorganisms survive in indoor air-conditioned areas and also that germs spread from one person to other, explains Dipu Manuel, Product Group Head – VRF, Living Environment Division, Mitsubishi Electric India. “So far, the safest option to restrict the spread of germs is to compartmentalise the office air as per area. Just as access to an office for delivery personnel is limited to the reception but air from the reception may get recirculated to the entire office. Technically, the best option is centralised air-conditioning but with individual aircon units catering to individual needs, VRF systems are best suited to such systems.”
The continuous monitoring of air quality with good filtration and ventilation can help ensure that indoor areas are safe for occupants.
In a built environment, sunlight and fresh air are the best sanitation measures we can aim for. Many commercial buildings, especially highly populated ones, have a provision for fresh air to maintain indoor air quality but, in the past, to cut down on air-conditioning running costs in summer, fresh air intake was reduced by users. Now, the focus is once again on forced ventilation with proper filtration, adds Manuel.
With fewer people in a building, the need to control lighting and air-conditioning becomes more important. So, essentially, with attendance depleting, the need for smart buildings to accurately manage air-conditioners without wasting energy is more acute than ever, he adds.
“After the pandemic, awareness and demand have grown for elevators that can be operated ‘touchlessly’, larger elevators that ensure social distancing, faster elevators that reduce travel time, destination control elevators that group together those who need to travel to the same floor to serve them faster and the sanitisation of cabins,” says Antony Parokaran, CEO, Eros Elevators.
Eros Elevators has responded to these needs by bringing out a touchless feature, which operates in two modes. One mode necessitates users to bring their finger within 4-6 mm of the call button for a sensor to detect and trigger the call; another enables smartphones to scan a bar code and act as the car operating panel. It is now working on remote monitoring to trigger alerts to maintenance staff with information about breakdowns and the causes. To serve customers better and improve customer experiences, it has given its field staff smart devices that have the complete history of the equipment and allow seamless ordering of spare parts and quick response times.
As for the impact of touchless technology, “residential complexes as well as homeowners have been seen adopting high-tech security solutions such as CCTV cameras, which allow remote surveillance or two-way communication; alarm systems, which use sensors to detect activity on the premise and alerts the authority in time; and video door phones that facilitate communication between the homeowner and visitor without actually opening the door.”
Pithawalla calls this shift the “cocoon effect on home and health security”. Research by Godrej Security Solutions shows that 47 per cent of Indians have shifted towards investing in home and health security gadgets as opposed to investing in aspirational items like jewellery, homes and technology gadgets.
“Another revolution underway in modern residences is the installation of automated robotic lockers,” he adds. “This involves fitting the locker in a vault, with the system serving as an ATM and getting the locker to the owner on demand."
- Written by Charu Bahri
