Building the Blueprint for Smarter Facilities: Ep 25

Jennifer Heath 0:15
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Hybrid Hangout Podcast. I’m Jennifer Heath, Director of Product Marketing for FM:Systems.

Brian Haines 0:24
And I am Brian Haines, Head of Strategy.

Jennifer Heath 0:29
And Brian, the last time you and I were together, last time we were together is the Hybrid Hangout. We were not on our usual virtual experience. We were on a stage in Scottsdale at the Building Insights User Conference, which was absolutely a fantastic experience. And while we were there, there was an important announcement that I realized as I was introducing myself, we are now OpenBlue. The FM:Systems name is going to be retired in time, and we’re bringing together the Johnson Controls digital solutions under the OpenBlue brand. And it was really an exciting conference. It was exciting to see the potential of bringing all these solutions together. So exciting to talk to our clients. What were your thoughts on Scottsdale?

Brian Haines 1:15
Yeah, it was exciting and fun to be in front of a, you know, a real live audience with lots of people out there. It was, it was really great, incredibly well attended, and such great feedback that we received. One of the things that’s really interesting is now that we’ve sort of more embraced the OpenBlue, Digital Solutions division of Johnson Controls, now that we’re really part of that, it really sort of opens up the possibilities of the kinds of conversations that we’re having. Johnson Controls owns hundreds of brands that are in every single building, building hardware. It could be, you know, access control. It could be safety and security. It could be cameras. It could be building automation systems. It could be edge of devices to secure HVAC systems. I mean, it’s just, it’s amazing what it’s done to the kinds of conversations that we’re having in our ability to really, Jen, start talking about smarter buildings. And we called it the, you know, the Building Insights, Smart Buildings onference, and that’s something I’m really excited about, because as we continue to progress down this route, it’s just going to get bigger and our conversations are going to get bigger. And it was really a lot of fun.

Jennifer Heath 2:30
Absolutely. And for those of you listening, if you’ve never attended the Building Insights conference, it really is a great experience. We’re already planning for next year, we will be in New Orleans in April, one of my favorite cities, so I’m definitely looking forward to that. So one of the conversations that I think was really a theme at the conference that I would love to dig into with you today. One of the most common questions is, how do we know where to get started? There’s so much technology out there. There’s so many different business problems you can solve, there’s so many different goals you can advance. But how do you know where to start? You can’t do everything at the same time, sometimes it feels a little bit like boiling the ocean. So I know this is something you’ve given a lot of thought to tell me a little bit about what you see as sort of the journey towards a smart building.

Brian Haines 3:21
Yeah, Jen, you obviously know my shtick. I like to walk in and just say, and look around and say, this is a really dumb building. Whichever building you’re in, it seems to be the case because there’s such opportunity to use technology, IoT based technologies, etc, you know, upgrading your building control system, all that stuff, is really an opportunity to make, seriously, any building on the planet smarter. When we look at sort of the line and progression of building capabilities over time, you know, 99% or more of the building stock in the planet is really kind of dumb buildings. And what I mean is, they’re just buildings sitting there using energy. They’re providing a service. They’re giving us a space, but they’re not they’re not telling us anything to help us operate them better. They’re not partnering with us, as I like to say. So, you know, I think the opportunity is absolutely massive here. And you know, we talk a lot about the technologies and the enabling technologies. If you just turn the dial back, maybe a decade ago, it wasn’t nearly as easy as it is. Now we’ve got better connectivity, better battery life, better, you know, just better integration of all of this data and what like into our insights platform, for instance, that really starts to bring it all together, collate it in a way that makes sense, so that you can start to look at really complex problems like connecting utilization to energy use or maintenance cost. Cost and all of those things. So what we get asked all the time, Jen is, we tell the story and people see the value of immense opportunity to save energy and to operate our facilities more efficiently, is, you know, really, how do you get started? How do you get started? And I always start with the idea that you really, first of all, you need to know what you’re trying to solve first so just making a building smarter for the fun of making it smarter, maybe great for your house. Like I do that all the time by installing all kinds of crazy things. I can see energies and all those kind of stuff. And I just do it. I do it often because I want to know, but also just because it’s fun, right? But when you’re looking at, you know, corporate responsibility and where you’re going to invest your facilities dollars, I think it’s always best to say, if I’m going to make my building smarter, or if that’s the answer, I need to make my building smarter, because I’m trying to achieve something, it’s always best to understand, you know, what you’re trying to achieve before you get started, so that you can pick the solution that best fits the problem,

Jennifer Heath 6:05
Definitely, and there are so many benefits to smart building technology that you do have to kind of narrow down your focus. You can implement smart building technology to advance your sustainability goals. You can make your building smarter so that your equipment lasts longer. There’s so many different avenues that will lead you to a positive business outcome. And so you do have to kind of hone in, again, you can’t do everything at the same time, but a lot of the solutions are complimentary. You know, if you’re tracking utilization, it is going to give you better insight to your energy, while also giving you insight into employee preferences. So a lot of these technologies are going to give you multiple benefits.

Brian Haines 6:49
Yeah, and there’s also the component of, you know, what’s the what’s the sort of culture and strategy of the organization that you’re providing your facilities to? You know, if it’s to provide superior patient care in a healthcare setting, improving patient well being and productivity, or their health through things like better energy usage, better filtration, better indoor air quality, better amenities, delivering a more inviting experience. You know, when you go into a healthcare setting, especially if you’re a patient, it can be varied, it can be a little scary, right? And so to create, create a better environment or experience, may be one of the goals of the organization that you belong to, or it may be something like having a corporate goal around sustainability. Maybe you’re you’ve got a mandate where, you know, you may have a multinational portfolio, and ESG is something that’s really important, identifying and addressing energy waste, reducing carbon footprint, all of those things could drive the decisions as well. So it’s not just up to the facilities team to pick and choose which you know where to get started, but some of this may be driven by the institution or organizational culture and priorities itself.

Jennifer Heath 8:12
Yeah, some of those broader organizational goals, I think, especially around sustainability, that can be a huge driver for facilities teams to do things differently. And I think to your point about considering workplace strategy, it becomes very important to HR when you think about retention and employee satisfaction and recruiting. You know, bringing in the best talent, you have to have a facility and amenities that are going to live up to the experience that employees want to have. I think there’s been a real elevation in those expectations in recent years.

Brian Haines 8:48
Yeah, also productivity as well, and it’s something that you and I have talked about before, truthfully, if you’ve got a healthier, better environment, an environment that’s more inviting, a better indoor air quality, and it’s not just what we breathe, but it’s the sunlight that we have access to, the noise that’s around us. All of those kinds of things can be measured. And you can look at those measurements with technology, with smart building technologies, and understand how you can make those things or those components better. And reiterate, in other words, I may have a problem with one of those factors. You know, it could be access to light. Could be it’s too noisy, could be CO2 concentrations are too high. We see this happen often when a lot of people, you know, kind of get stuffed into a conference room that’s got inadequate conditioning of that space. You can measure all of those things, and you can make adjustments, which makes it a better environment for everyone who is operating there. You know, like I said, it could be, it could be employees, it could be visitors, it could be faculty, staff, students at higher education. It could be patients and healthcare, it’s everyone who uses our facilities. And so that, that leads me to sort of like, what are the, what are the sort of secondary benefits? And secondary doesn’t mean that they’re less important, but it maybe is a little bit more specific to the operation of the facilities, and what I mean by that is just operating the building more efficiently, right? So as the facilities team looks at things like reducing costs, maximizing utilization, optimizing how that building operates depend on, depending on what time of day people are there, shutting the building down when people aren’t. All of that is really kind of something that you can do through the benefits of smart building strategy as well. And frankly, Jen, nobody is, you know, when I talk to many of our clients in the market, I go to shows, facilities teams aren’t hiring like a lot of people right now. They’re not getting extra resources. They’re spending longer hours, you know, trying to keep these facilities operating at a very high level, especially with return to office initiatives. And you know that the usage of our buildings is going up drastically, so the ability to be able to operate those buildings more efficiently with either the same or fewer resources is another reason to start leaning on technology to start doing things like reducing waste and scheduling things better and frankly, creating a better work life balance for those who are operating our facilities.

Jennifer Heath 11:34
Definitely, I think, a lot about just the time that people spend on manual processes and the time they spend on what ends up being unnecessary work. So if you have a preventative maintenance routine that is just calendar based, and you’re going around and checking certain pieces of equipment because it’s been a month since the last time you checked it, that can be a productive use of time if all of those pieces of equipment have been in use consistently for the last month. But if you don’t have any data that supports that, you’re just blindly going around and going through the motions and potentially wasting a lot of time. Technology gives you that data to understand, what was the usage of this particular piece of equipment, what was the overall utilization in this space? What should our cleaning strategy be? What does our staffing strategy need to be? Based on this data? And I think there’s so much underlying waste, if it’s time, if it’s resources, if it’s money, if you’re doing things purely on a manual calendar based sort of a rote routine, instead of having informed strategies that are pulling on objective data.

Brian Haines 12:50
Yeah, I love that you’ve introduced data, because it’s a great segue into my next point in terms of the smart building journey. So we started with understanding what you’re trying to achieve. Then we went to identifying the primary and secondary drivers for adopting a smart building strategy. The third one, I think, is formalizing a clear vision for what success looks like, and that really is kind of heavily relies on data, and that data could be data coming from the building and the smart building technologies. It could be interviewing or surveying the occupants to find out how they feel about the facilities that they’re you know that they’re occupying on a daily basis. All of those items, I think, are really important. So now you start to get to the data. And data, frankly, for facilities organizations, facilities professionals, is power. The ability to be able to not only get better information about how you’re operating, but information that helps you to make better informed decisions. And then we’ve got new capabilities, which we won’t talk about too much today, because we talk about it a lot, like AI based capabilities. AI needs data to help you get better insights and to get clear recommendations about how you can improve operations. So all of those things, I think really, really revolve around a significant amount of data. And one of the one of the things I’ve noticed Jen, is that I’ve been challenging audiences, especially when I speak, to start thinking about, is there building talking and you’re not listening, right? So are there already systems in your buildings that are telling you things? You may have a smart lighting system, you may have you’ve got your badging system, you’ve got a lot of data probably already being generated that gives you some kind of insights into your operations, but you’ve got to be listening or it’s just data that’s just there and not being utilized.

Jennifer Heath 14:47
And I think it’s important, and I know we talk about this a lot the. And the simple fact that AI is driven by data, I think we hear so much about AI, and there’s all this potential and problems you can solve and crazy things you can do if there’s data backing it, it’s only going to be as good as the data that goes in. And I think a lot of people maybe feel a little pressured right now to be implementing, you know AI into different strategies and figuring out different ways to use it. But if you don’t have reliable to power whatever it is you’re trying to solve for you’re kind of putting the cart before the horse. You have to have these data sets to then enable these different AI strategies.

Brian Haines 15:29
Yeah, that’s great, and it really that’s kind of a really great place to start, right? Once you’ve identified what you’re trying to achieve is gather and audit the data that you have. So when we start doing things like analytics, you know, using tools to sort of measure how things are going, there’s a couple of things that I think are necessary elements that people aren’t really thinking about that helps you to be more successful. First of all, when you gather and audit the data, it’s really about making sure that it’s complete and making sure that it’s accurate. You know, turning loose and you know, an analytics based solution, or AI based solution on data that’s bad is just going to simply give you bad results. If you’ve got that good baseline data that helps you to understand, you know, what you’ve got, you can then sort of baseline your operations. In other words, measure where you are. And this is something that really requires, I think, kind of an honest look at your operations. It’s not about fudging the data, but it’s about baselining and saying this is really where we are. Our utilization is far too low, our energy usage for that utilization is far too high, our maintenance costs are far too high, being able to baseline. And then I think the last missing component that I don’t see a lot of people doing, which I think is really important, is to use benchmarks so that you can understand if it’s good or if it’s bad when you get the resulting data. And you can benchmark in a number of different ways. You can use organizations like IFMA and IFMA has a research arm, and they produce benchmarks around maintenance costs and space all the time. Organizations like JLL produce space benchmarks. There are benchmarks out there for you to be able to look at by building type by space type, so that you can understand how well you’re doing against those benchmarks. The other one is, and this one’s a little bit more difficult, but benchmarking yourself against your peers, what I find and especially in facilities management, is it’s something that’s not a lot of people do, and is important. And sort of the third component, hitting your own benchmarks. Like, what are we trying to do? Are we trying to hit 50% utilization, and we’re at 33 like, is that? That’s a benchmark that you could set. Are we trying to get our square foot costs down when it comes to things like maintenance and operations? We can set those, you know, those values and see if we can measure ourselves against that. I think it’s really important to understand, because that’s going to tell you whether or not you’re successful.

Jennifer Heath 18:05
So, I think you touched on an important point there too, when you mentioned coordinating or leveraging resources like the IFMA research branch and leveraging partners like JLL, I think a really important part of that overall smart building journey is understanding who your partners are, looking outside your own department, looking to you know, within your organization, looking to other supporting departments like IT, like HR, how can you bring them in and be collaborative? But how do you leverage some of those third party partners as well, if it’s, you know, leveraging their information, if it’s collaborating directly with them. There are a lot of resources for folks to use, and they don’t have to figure this out on their own. This is definitely a collaborative effort that every organization has to have a handle on. How do we leverage this technology to optimize our businesses?

Brian Haines 19:01
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Don’t go it alone, no matter how smart you are. And I’d like to think that I’m pretty smart sometimes. I am not the first person to come up with these ideas, right? So don’t go it alone. Someone else has already been on this journey. Somebody has already probably had failures and successes, and you know, they’ve probably learned through the school of hard knocks that it’s best to read stories about how other organizations have addressed this problem. Go to conferences and watch presentations about how, you know, organizations have solved the problems. And also, it’s not just about external it’s about internal as well. You know you’ve got all of these internal resources, whether it be part of your facilities organization, but also reach out to other parts of your organization, like your IT organization. First of all, IT, often these people who are in it are excited about technology. They know that you’re going to be invoking technology to help make buildings better. But there’s all these questions that you may not be able to answer as a facilities professional, such as, what level of scalability do I need in this solution? You know, is the system proprietary, based on open standards? As I start to pick technologies, am I picking kind of an edge technology that’s not well adopted, maybe a little bit behind or maybe a little bit ahead? Is it going to be difficult to integrate into our corporate IT infrastructure? Is it secure? That’s a huge one right now. And really there’s partners that you can ask, there’s your IT partners, there’s the industry partners who’ve done the implementations. You know, just keep in mind, don’t go it alone. There’s someone out there who’s willing to help you, and I think the best results will be when you vet this against what you’re thinking with other professionals who can, who can help you out.

Jennifer Heath 21:00
So the next kind of topic, as we think about, you know, moving towards these smart buildings is actually pulling the trigger and deploying some new technology. What do you think are the important tips when you’re really getting ready to kick off something new?

Brian Haines 21:19
Well, first of all, whenever you’ve picked this and you’re getting ready to deploy it, are there going to be infrastructure challenges in your deployment? If you’re in a building that’s extremely old, maybe a heavy concrete infrastructure, maybe lots of walls, not a lot of open areas, and you want it to all be Wi Fi, prepare for Wi Fi challenges. You know you’ve got to be able to overcome. And there’s new technologies that are emerging, like LoRaWAN, that are making it a little bit easier to connect some of these things to a backbone. But think about what those challenges are going to be. If you’ve got to mount some of these devices and you’ve got to drill through the wall, you better be talking to other people before you do these kinds of things, and have you included your IT colleagues in your plans? Like I said earlier, because the quickest way to get an unfriendly visit to your office is to stick something in your network that’s a device that’s insecure because someone’s monitoring and they’re going to come and they’re not going to be happy, so make sure you treat those people as your as your colleagues. And then the other one, which Jen, you had mentioned earlier, and we didn’t go into, but I think this is, this is a really great moment. So before you go too far, are there institutional or human resources policies in place that need to be considered? You know, people hate thinking they’re being monitored or watched. If you’ve got technology, you know, there’s a lot of these flow counter technologies that go and they just count the people coming in and out. All of those technologies, well, the most of those technologies keep that data on board the device. It never goes anywhere. So there’s no concerns around things like facial recognition and stuff like that. Most organizations are employing this kind of technology and deploying this technology to simply understand how their buildings are being used. It’s not to understand that Brian’s here or Jennifer’s here. It’s about understanding that two people came in, right? So I think those kinds of things in your HR policies need to be strongly considered, because those HR policies, as well as working with your HR partners, are going to allow you to be able to create communications that lets everyone know what’s coming. So as things start showing up, little devices on the ceiling, little devices under the desk, things on the wall. Having a good explanation for those things is going to give everyone a better sense of well being and safety and security. They’re not going to feel like they’re being monitored. They’re going to understand what you’re trying to do. Listen, we’re going to we’re trying to optimize the use of our buildings, and we’re trying to make a better environment for all of you occupants. So I think communicating those things and getting ready to communicate as part of the deployment process is really, really super important.

Jennifer Heath 24:04
Absolutely. I think the communication part of deploying any new technology is one of the most important considerations, because up until this point, you know, we’ve evaluated within our organization, what are we trying to accomplish? What are the physical challenges, the technical challenges, but then your workforce, your employee population, is really at the heart of everything you’re trying to do, because ultimately, all of these initiatives and goals are about improving productivity, improving the employee experience, driving cost savings that you can then reinvest that money back into your business and create new opportunities. If your employees are effectively communicated to and with and it’s open to ask questions they understand the benefit to them in these different technologies, the adoption and the experience is going to be just leaps and bounds beyond what it would be without, because, like you said, people don’t like to think that they’re being monitored. And there is so much now within our technology concerns about data privacy. People have legitimate concerns about this kind of stuff, and so the more you can be proactive and clear and communicate why this is good for them, you’re going to have such a better experience and have better outcomes in the long run.

Brian Haines 25:33
Yeah, think about some of those, right? So we’re talking about, like communicating the benefits as we do this, communicate how the change is going to be implemented, the timeline, how the change might disrupt their normal workflow, and for how long, you know, you may have to take some spaces offline as we install some technology and things like that. But I’ll tell you, the value will be apparent when you come into a building every day. Let’s say it’s, you know, it’s pretty much open seating, or hybrid seating, or neighborhood seating, you know, it could be. It can it can induce a little anxiety, like, where am I going to be sitting today? Am I going to be sitting close to my team? Or, you know, whatever that may be. If you come in to the building and there’s a giant display of a floor plan, that’s an active floor plan that shows you, frankly, what’s available and what’s not, and also a lot of other information you can see, things like, is it noisy where I want to sit? Is it quiet? Is there sunlight? You know, what’s the indoor air quality? All of those things can be combined into a live view. And then as I come off the elevator, maybe I’m going to a specific floor once again. Boom, just that floor specifically, and maybe I can pick the space that I want to sit at, and it automatically reserves it for me just by touching the screen. Those are benefits that really need to be communicated and understood. I think, you know, a picture is worth 1000 words, but also being able to experience the technology is worth it as well. And maybe part of the process of getting everyone excited is to do presentations, show them what the technology is, why we’re using it. Just go ahead and do that. Also survey what, what are they? How are they feeling about it? Are they anxious? Are they excited? Make them part of the project. I think, is part of the, what I call the all aboard process, right? Like everybody’s rowing the ship in the same direction we’re all excited about. It’s a very cool IT technology. It’s a very cool facilities technology, and we get the benefit of that. So that’s what I call the all aboard.

Jennifer Heath 27:34
Yep, all right. We are coming up on our time here. So to kind of summarize, what would you say are a few best practices for our listeners to go back and start thinking about how they want to do this within their organizations.

Brian Haines 27:48
Yeah, I always like to use the term fail fast forward, right? Like so you measure your success based upon what you’re trying to achieve, and you make changes, and the journey is not one way. It’s iterative. In other words, you can continually improve how smart your buildings are and how well they’re operating, as well as what kind of data they’re providing to you and insights by just iterating. Don’t do it once and hit the button and forget. This is about continual improvement. So, you know, I guess my best practices are kind of going back to the beginning, understanding what you’re trying to achieve. Make sure everyone’s on board with the benefits. And then, once the journey begins and everyone’s on board, measure your success and take that data and go back to step one. You know, keep doing this until we get better, maybe adding greater capabilities. Make your building smarter and smarter. Next thing you know, you’re going to have the best buildings on the planet, and you’re going to be the superhero that you are. So that’s my recommendations, Jen.

Jennifer Heath 28:50
I think another important point, and we heard this from one of our clients at the User Conference, is the importance of staging pilots and doing small deployments to get some initial feedback. Again, you don’t have to boil the ocean or go all in on any particular technology or strategy. You can take baby steps. Do some pilots. Test some different locations. See how different you know parts of the country or parts of the world. Respond to different types of technology or different types of strategies. So it’s okay to take baby steps.

Brian Haines 29:25
Agreed, and don’t be afraid to fail fast forward like I was saying. Just go for it, try it. Put some technology in, see how it benefits you, and scale it when you see the benefits.

Jennifer Heath 29:38
I remember at the very beginning of the pandemic, one of the clients we were working with, because they were starting, you know, early, ahead of time, to bring people back in. And he said that they had made it to sort of their mantra that there is no failure. You just learn and then you try something different. There is no failure. That was their really, their mantra for their whole project. And I think that’s a great one to adopt. All right, Brian, it’s always great to sit and talk about these things with you. Thank you everyone for joining us today, and we will see you next time.

Brian Haines 30:10
Thank you, everyone.