The traditional Building Management System (BMS) is one of the most powerful engines in your building. It controls when and where energy is consumed, as well as the quality of indoor air and comfort levels in your spaces.
But sadly, this powerful engine is often under-utilized and poorly maintained. BMS maintenance companies are not often to blame for this. The lack of understanding in finance departments, and the constant drive from landlords to lower operational costs often leads to false economies.
It’s hard for the BMS maintenance team to quantify the savings that can be made by having two or three more PPM visits a year on the BMS. It’s even harder for them to build a business case for significant upgrades to the BMS – yet with energy prices rising, those business cases become more compelling by the day!
There is a perception that the BMS is a highly complex system, for highly technical people; many in the building trade even refer to the BMS industry as “The Dark Arts”. There is some truth in this – certainly the user interface tends to be aimed at HVAC engineers (and rightly so). These days, the BMS industry is far more open than it was 20 or 30 years ago, but this complex perception still lingers on.
So, “dark arts”? Maybe not, but I’d certainly agree that a business would struggle to gain any great insight into the running costs of their estate by looking at a typical BMS installation, despite the fact it contains a lot of the data they require. BMS systems have never been specified to fulfill that function, but that requirement is very real. This is one area where IoT platforms can really help.
There is, of course, great value in a business seeing exactly how energy is used in their estate. There’s huge value in a finance department seeing maintenance costs and routines, and there’s even bigger value in a finance team seeing where savings could be made by investing in improvements to the BMS and better maintenance of their HVAC systems as a whole.
It’s very easy to say: ‘let's not replace that $10 sensor, as it costs $500 for the BMS team to turn up and fix the issue’, when you only see the value of the sensor as $10. However, when you can see that faulty sensor increases the running cost of your Air Handling Unit by 10%, the $500 replacement cost is suddenly snapped into focus. It’s a bargain!
The ability to visualize inefficiencies, build business cases for improvement and to make data-driven decisions about the running of the estate has wins for all involved:
Metrikus is the engine that surfaces data from connected systems in a user-focused way. Metrikus is how the C-Suite sees their estate costs and gets insights into the best way to make savings. Metrikus also helps the Facilities team build simple business cases to justify greater investment in their departments and services.
Being able to visualize occupancy levels, energy usage and comfort levels in one pane of glass makes identifying opportunities for saving easy. If you can easily see that you use the same energy when 10 people are in the office as when 100 people are in, you can far more easily create a compelling business case for energy reduction or reconfiguring your space.
So, if you want to find out how to get more out of your BMS, take a look at our use cases and chat with our team to get started.