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The facility market is traditionally slow to adopt new technology. But when it comes to building automation, the pace of change is accelerating, says Jim Bland, Tridium’s new president and general manager.
“The building automation market is moving much more rapidly than it has in the past,” Bland says. “Both the hype and the reality of the Internet of Things are reaching the buildings space.”
One reason for the gains is the availability of powerful analytics tools for improving building performance. But complexity has been an impediment to wider use of analytics
“Early adopters will grab anything when it’s really cool,” Bland says. Early versions of advanced technology may be complex to implement, particularly when the technology requires customization. Some users prefer analytics libraries — templates that make it easy for them to get started and learn about the capabilities of analytics.
Tridium is relaunching its analytics offering with libraries of templates. “We’re trying to make it easier for later adopters who want something prepackaged that still tells them a lot about their building and allows them to manage it better,” Bland says.
Bland believes that analytics is key to the next step for facility management: managing the productivity and overall experience of building occupants.
“I think we’re quickly going to get to a point – quicker than most people thing – of what I call everything all the time,” Bland says. That will happen as sensors are installed to provide data about nearly every inch of a building. That data has the potential to give the sophisticated building owner a comprehensive view of both the building and its occupants. “It’s not just about temperature of the room,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity to maximize experience beyond environmental controls. You will want to facilitate the way workers interact.”
Analytics can help make that vision a reality. “As you start to pull in more data, and want to see the interactions of the different data sets, analytics become increasingly important,” Bland says.
For more about Tridium, visit www.tridium.com.
