Technology
Technology tests system selection, integration, data quality, and operational technology security in the facility context.
The system landscape
A CMMS holds assets, work orders, preventive schedules, and inventory. CAFM covers space, occupancy, and moves; an IWMS integrates portfolio, lease, space, and maintenance. A building automation system controls and monitors HVAC, lighting, and metering. IoT sensors supply occupancy, temperature, and air-quality data. BIM supports design and construction and increasingly operations as a digital twin.
Selection and value
Define requirements before evaluating vendors. Total cost includes licences, implementation, integration, data migration, training, and ongoing support. The value case rests on labour hours saved, energy saved, downtime avoided, and compliance risk reduced.
Worked example
Occupancy sensors on 500 desks cost $60 each, or $30,000, plus $10,000 installation, for $40,000 total. Measured peak utilisation of 35% supports shedding 100 desks at $6,000 per desk per year in occupancy cost, or $600,000 of annual avoided cost. Payback is effectively immediate in avoided lease cost, but only if the data is trusted: a full quarter of readings, reported by floor rather than as a building average, is the condition that makes the decision defensible.
Data governance and security
One asset identifier, a naming convention, a named data owner, and an audit cadence. Poor data inside a good system produces confident wrong answers. Operational technology networks should be segmented from corporate IT, patched on a controlled schedule, and reached remotely only through approved gateways, with a documented manual fallback for every critical system.
Traps
- Buying technology before defining the requirement.
- Averaging utilisation across a whole portfolio.
- Running a CMMS as a work-order queue with no asset register discipline.
- Leaving building automation remote access open.