Mindtree's Gladius Connected Buildings to was used to integrate the clients existing systems on an IoT platform to digitally transform their facility management systems
One of UAE’s largest real estate company is known for its focus on tenant happiness. It has a wide variety of buildings, ranging from high end malls, offices, villas and residential complexes. It wanted to leap-frog from a system that was reactive and hinged on a day-to-day management or incident-based firefighting to a more dynamic building management system that was predictive and responsive.
Understanding the customers needs by studying the current infrastructure
The three buildings chosen for the project, one was commercial complex, the second was a high-end mall and the third a residential complex. Each building had multiple heterogeneous systems made by different manufacturers, and were operating as individual islands with little automation, no centralization, or analytics.
Energy Efficiency and Resource Efficiency
Energy Efficiency: Each of the buildings had a number of chillers, FAHU and pumps which that formed a large component of
facility management bills. There was no methodology to understand the causes fluctuating energy bills. Water management: Water consumption analysis and leakage detection was an area they wanted to improve.
Asset Management and Maintenance
The company followed a fixed schedule and reactive asset management causing costly downtime and lowering user comforts.
Manual interventions
Human Interventions were necessary for asset operations making process slow and prone to human errors
Information Islands without Analytics
Real time data and insights were restricted to control rooms. The senior staff could not access data on a real time basis and
depended on the ground staff to report problems and provide data.
Customer Need Redefined - Envisioning Dynamic Smart Building Management Goals
The customer and Mindtree wanted building management goals to be dynamic and capable of constant improvement. The platform was implemented to enable:
- Make informed decisions and take timely action through centralization, automation and analytics.
- Drive energy efficiency by automation and monitor device health and equipment level energy consumption.
- Proactive asset management through intelligent and automated systems.
- Process automation that integrated OT and IT systems. Raising tickets and ticket management using client’s enterprise systems.
- Provide tenant comfort and well-being by innovation of services.
Mindtree Approach - Gladius Connected Building- A Smart Layer For Your Existing Infrastructure within Buildings and across Buildings
Mindtree studied the existing infrastructure in its entirety and several initiatives were planned. The journey of digital transformation began by integrating OT, IT and IoT systems. We installed energy meters at the asset level to understand the energy consumption.
Subsequently, we set intelligent rules based on ambient conditions and occupancy level on assets like chillers and AHU to help us deliver energy efficiency. As a part of Digital transformation, facilities are equipped with video analytics and IoT enabled analytics that helps you enhance user comfort and safety. Ticket generation is automatic and depending on the nature of the alert, can be accessible on multiple hand held devices or digital console.
Delivering a world of benefits using GCB
Implementation highlights
Centralization and Integration: GCB centralized and integrated the entire system of IT, OT and IoT systems, within buildings and across buildings into one single console. Now, the senior management can get access to real time and are able to take data driven decisions.
Enhanced energy efficiency: A combination of energy saving strategies (such as consistent monitoring) , automation coupled with intelligent HVAC controls increased the energy efficiency by as much as 18% month-on-month.
Enhanced Asset life and operational efficiency: Set point management, auto alerts when in manual mode of operation, automatic ticket generation through mobile apps or email have made facility management more proactive. The customer, has now over 265 rules configured across 4500 sensors. These rules are executed over 2500 times a day, and on an average, perform over 300 actuations to impact operational efficiency and enhance asset life.
Innovation using video analytics and IoT analytics: Apart from analytics on trends based on historical records, GCB has provided the ability to carry out video and IoT-based analytics on video surveillance feeds now has several innovative features to drive tenant safety and comfort, such as life guard missing alerts in swimming pools, detection of garbage or parking violation.
Results
GCB enhanced the existing infrastructure of to impact the below building management goals
