Following BuildingIQ’s 5i journey toward greater efficiency and more!

Four years ago, we had the opportunity to visit with the facilities staff at the St. John of God Hospital in Murdoch, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. My colleague and I were meeting with the heads of the Facilities and Engineering teams. They wanted to talk about an energy efficiency program for the hospital. We explained how the BuildingIQ 5i Platform works, layered on top of the BMS to collect data that can later guide and optimize the building, to deliver the most effective and efficient operational profile.

If you have read our case study, you know then that we have been working with St. John of God for a while now. For our initial agreement, we committed to deliver a 5% energy reduction for the hospital even though we did not really have complete knowledge of what we would be working with. We trusted that our technology and the expertise of our Network Operations Center (NOC) team would be able to deliver on the commitment.

The project got underway, but not without encountering several challenges. At the end of the first 45 days, we met with the hospital team again in person to review the initial results. By then, the hospital staff had a more complete picture of how we worked and how we were going to make a difference for them and their buildings. We had implemented a rhythm of regular account management and team meetings that we typically have with our clients. It’s worth noting that the technology aspect of what BuildingIQ offers, while fundamental, is only a part of the complete offering. We layer on a team of experts on top of our technology —our Network Operations Center and subject matter experts— who ensure that we deliver upon, and in most cases, exceed our customers’ expectations.

At St. John of God, we reached the requested 5% energy savings in the first six months despite the fact that we were optimizing only half of the two buildings.

Fast forward to today —two and a half years after we started working with this hospital— and we have delivered not only kilowatt-hour savings but also a KVA Demand drop of 3%. Because of these results, the scope of the project is now expanding to implement our 5i services across the entire, nationwide property portfolio of St. John of God —16 buildings, totaling approximately 313,000 square meters (about 3.2 million square feet)— across Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney.

We’re excited about the work ahead. St. John of God is further proof that a single, flexible, cloud-based platform approach is the key to enabling an energy and operational optimization journey. Not every building is the same at St. John of God; and while I can’t release the details in public, anyone who’s been in the industry for any length of time knows the complexity one faces when managing the property portfolio of an entity like St. John of God. Our technology-enabled services approach is flexible, so a few of the buildings will only receive Visualization and Energy Forecasting services, others are already in the process of installing more capable site appliances that connect to the existing building management system. And of course, should the need or desire arise, there’s nothing stopping St. John of God form adding solar and storage inverters, and IoT devices to the mix as we travel further along our journey.

While the peak of the summer season is yet to come to Australia, we plan to start monitoring within weeks and guiding the newly added buildings by early next year to deliver operational efficiency to St. John of God. We hope to have an updated case study to share with you all how we’re doing. So, stay tuned!

Roy Arindam is Vice President & Managing Director – Construction Services across Asia-Pacific at BuildingIQ. In addition, he’s leading the operations and business expansion team spanning delivery of automation solutions to the greenfield sector and analytics services to the existing buildings segment. Roy has more than fifteen years of combined entrepreneurial experience working for companies like Alerton Australia, Wormald Fire Service, Siemens, and of course BuildingIQ and Buildingsense. He has been instrumental in the implementation of automation technologies in 200+ buildings and the introduction of Artificial Intelligence using FDD in over 100 buildings across Australia and parts of Asia-Pacific.