Derek Johnson, VP of Operations
December 26, 2013

At BuildingIQ, for every sale we make we have to overcome the concern from the client that implementation of our technology platform is going to be difficult and take a long time. We have to work hard to convince building owners and operators that we are truly different than the other solutions that they have seen in the market. Why? Because we simply have grown our technology based on basic grade school principles mixed with the benefits of recent technology advances. Here are the principles that make the deployment of BuildingIQ’s technology platform smooth and successful:

Make the Most Of What You Have – Existing building automation systems that our technical teams find out in the field are robust and effective, successfully driving the building year over year. We don’t want to go out and replace what they are already doing well, or spend lots of money over-sensoring spaces. Instead, at BuildingIQ our approach is to take the existing infrastructure and drive it differently leveraging advanced high computational algorithms run on processing power in the cloud. We don’t replace the BMS, we make it smarter.

Take What You Need – Most advanced building automation and analytics technology companies come into a building and want to gain access to every data and control point available at extreme polling frequencies. This approach not only results in high installation costs, but has brought many a BMS to its knees sending the building reeling out of control. At BuildingIQ, we only take the vital few points that are essential to our algorithms and control. This means that our installations are fast and cost-effective (hence why we don’t charge upfront for installation when the customer agrees to a multi-year contract), and that the BMS hardly “feels” our presence outside of the set points that we write.

Play Well With Others – One major fallacy that I have witnessed in the advanced building automation space over the years is that you can sprinkle a little software in the building and it will be “Optimized.” Building optimization is a team sport right from the word go, one that my Deployment team respects and plays across the globe. We need the local System Integrator to help us gain access to the building automation system, and ensure the system is working now and on into the future (we do high-level advanced automation, not low-level control and hardware). We need the local building engineer to provide feedback on how the BuildingIQ control system is performing so we can tune it to meet the nuances within their building, and for them to keep the HVAC system in good repair. Without the active participation of these players, the chances for successful optimization of the building are extremely limited to say the least. One of the biggest lifts we have at BuildingIQ when we deploy our technology platform is to bring this team together, but with time, love and a lot of communicating we are able to make it happen.

Work Remote – One of the keys to BuildingIQ’s success is to keep both the cost of our installation low and the impact on the client’s operations to an absolute minimum. To accomplish this we leverage the capabilities of secure remote system access to do the vast majority of our technology system deployment remotely out of our offices in Secaucus, NJ and Sydney, NSW. Typically we only spend about a half-day on location to install our hardware and meet with the local engineering team to explain what we are doing and how we get’r done per the “Play Well With Others” section above ☺.

Using the principles defined above my team at BuildingIQ has successfully completed over thirty deployments of our technology platform in our short history, and work hard to get better with each one. We look forward to working with your team to drive energy efficiency in to even more buildings in 2014. Happy New Year!