One of the biggest reasons, for rise of smart buildings with time has been the changing needs of building owners, who have always been looking for possibilities & potentials to increase the building’s value and marketability.
Parallelly the building occupiers have also been looking for added advantages of new technologies applied to their work place for their safety, comfort and improvement in life styles. As technological capabilities for building management continued to grow, building owners started transforming their buildings so that their occupants can experience a more customized work space.
Thus What initially started with simple standalone office technologies like access control system, work stations, photocopiers, fax machines, desktop computers and their basic integration, became more complex with emergence & integration of data and voice over IP Phones, rise of networked PCs and later internet, making highly complex integrations of facilities, operations & their controls. At the same time many offices were also expanding from single location to multi location operations and needed technologies to monitor and control their operations using these emerging technologies.
With advancement, over the time various office services and equipment & their controls were so seamlessly integrated that now in a smart building, system could tell you what time & with whom you have an appointment; on which floor of building the conference room is vacant & ready for your set meeting, it would adjust your zone temperature based on your personal data, collected from your body mounted devices, and will guide you to the elevator or space to use.
With such level of automation, a building proposition becomes very attractive to prospective tenants or businesses looking to rent out the business spaces. Since for businesses, employees’ costs are a number one operational expense. Losing one employee is the equivalent of losing 1.5x their cost because of the lag times associated with hiring and training. Because of this, many businesses emphasize employee retention, engagement, and satisfaction as most critical factor of doing business. A smart building that offers customized and personalized decision making at the fingertips of its occupants, is a building that is more likely to attract and retain its tenants or businesses.