Ready for Retrofit Rollout

Already in my previous blogs Digitization - Who pays for it? Who earns? and Why a property must become a Turing machine I explained the quantifiable benefits of digitalization initiatives for the various portfolio holders. As a reminder:

• Corporate real estate managers (CREMs) benefit from better utilization of space and resources as well as greater employee efficiency and comfort.

• Real estate developersmake the building available to portfolio holders in digitalized form, thereby increasing its sales value.

• Asset managers ensure the sustainable operation of their buildings, can provide better and even preventive maintenance and make their properties attractive to their tenants through 'digital readiness'.

• Facilities managers can offer services more cheaply, at a higher quality or offer some services for the first time.

We had also seen that one person's investment helps another - and can therefore be monetized several times over.

However, all of them must be able to demonstrate the cost/benefit ratio and justify investments. For CREMs, AMs and FMs, the question for portfolio holders is: How do I digitize them? And in such a way that I can leverage the economies of scale of a digital retrofit plan across the entire portfolio without having to proceed specifically for each property.

On the software side, it's simple: a building management system such as MazeMap Workplace only needs the relevant BIM data for each property—and the first step for many digitization functions such as room, workplace, and parking space booking or indoor/outdoor wayfinding is complete. Wait a minute! We rarely have BIM data for existing buildings, do we? No problem: thanks to artificial intelligence, essential BIM data can be easily extracted from floor plans—even if they are faded and smudged—and digitally reworked where necessary.

The main retrofitting costs arise on the hardware side—i.e., the integration of modern sensors and actuators for the various scenarios and the need to connect them to the power supply and data network.

Existing building (control) technology

Many existing buildings, even older ones, have a lot of building technology. In fact, the trend is to design primary systems for new buildings to be rather lean. However, building technology is, of course, digital. Computers and digital measurement, control, and regulation technology have been around longer than the internet and smartphones. Even if some of the protocols used are a little 'dusty', the whole zoo of DALI, m-bus, modbus, KNX, etc. can usually be homogenized with simple adapters to the incumbent BACnet – or this has long since been done. Transferring the corresponding data streams to the cloud, perhaps to mobile phones, and back again is no rocket science.

New lighting technology

A somewhat larger retrofit project - but exciting in many respects - is the replacement of the lighting. People want LEDs as an energy-saving measure anyway and the increase in comfort through human-centric lighting makes the initiative even more attractive. As the LEDs can be operated with low voltage and low power consumption, and because they are to be intelligently controlled anyway, it makes sense to supply them via data cables with Power over Ethernet (PoE) or similar approaches. As data is already flowing anyway and because there is usually a good place for it 'above', i.e. in the ceiling, manufacturers such as Signify or wtec also supply sensors that can be connected to the power supply and data exchange via the Ethernet cable.

And because there is already power in the ceiling, the lights contain not only sensors but also Bluetooth beacons, which are often mistakenly referred to as sensors. , which do nothing more than send out identifiers similar to those from a GPS satellite, enabling the positioning of people (more precisely, their mobile devices) in the building or the marking of so-called points of interest ("This dishwasher is operated as follows"). This doesn't work quite as well as GPS positioning, but operating system manufacturers Apple and Google are meticulously supporting this technology, and the positioning modules in apps such as MazeMap Workplace have now achieved very good accuracy. So-called Bluetooth meshes can also be used to track objects in the building such as projectors, tools, or hospital beds.

Incidentally, light can also be used for positioning: manufacturers such as Signify support the modulation of data onto visible light with their Visual Light Communication (VLC) technology. This allows a cell phone to determine its position with an accuracy of up to 30 cm. The disadvantage is that the camera must be on and the app must be in the foreground, which may be acceptable for many applications in office and retail environments.

The IoT jungle and the radio cadastre

However, a large proportion of modern sensor technology in particular cannot be wired so easily and cheaply in terms of power and data. You may not have any LED/PoE ambitions at the moment, or the cable to the room control unit, desk, soap dispenser, or trash can may simply not be feasible. In this case, wireless protocols such as EnOcean, LoRa, Zigbee and Bluetooth – or even proprietary approaches such as Disruptive Technologies . The crux of the matter is that power supply via radio waves – something that even the brilliant Nikola Tesla attempted with his Wardenclyffe Tower – is not practical. So power cables cannot be eliminated so easily.

EnOcean takes a very elegant approach here: the energy required to operate the actuators and sensors is obtained from ambient energy sources: from sunlight or office lighting, from the heat of a heater, or even piezoelectrically from the mechanical energy generated when a light switch is operated. EnOcean has established this technology in a large ecosystem of sensor manufacturers, so that sensors or actuators are available for almost everything imaginable. And if they don't exist yet, electronics are now developed almost as quickly as software.

Tackle the retrofit bacon

As can be seen, connecting existing building technology, wireless technology such as EnOcean, and upgrading lighting technology with LED/PoE provide powerful approaches that can be easily rolled out across existing buildings at moderate cost—regardless of who the property owner is. Property owners do not have to plan and organize such rollout measures themselves: companies such as e-shelter security, GMS or even the industry giant BOSCH offer such rollouts for MazeMap Workplace as general contractors. Digital retrofitting may therefore be implemented more efficiently than some vaccination strategies ...