Building performance diagnostics
Using data to turn the dial on building performance
Our building performance diagnostics specialists help clients interrogate the growing volume of raw data provided by today’s building management systems empowering them to make informed decisions and develop appropriate building strategies.
Building performance diagnostics utilises the vast amount of data generated by our connected modern buildings, leveraging value from data by helping building owners and asset managers to identify and quantify optimisation measures.
It uses a combination of the latest software, digital processes and sector expertise to forensically diagnose a building’s overall performance from the raw data available through a range of building management systems
Buro Happold’s building performance diagnostics specialists are able to interrogate the growing amount of raw data provided by today’s building management systems to generate appropriate strategies for individual buildings’ performance.
By collecting building data and leveraging new techniques in data management, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), we can autonomously optimise energy, comfort, and facilities management.
A managed building diagnostics solution can achieve a 5-15% reduction in energy cost for new buildings, or 15%-40% in existing buildings, with a return on investment in the first 12-24 months. Growing evidence suggests a 10-25% reduction in heating, ventilation and air conditioning maintenance costs, a 15-25% reduction in occupant complaints, as well as value in greater operational intelligence.
Building data holds the greatest untapped potential in our built environment to turn the dial on building performance, in this context it is more valuable than the installed asset. A sensor may cost a few pounds, but a sensor which is reading erroneously could cost hundreds of pounds, possibly even thousands, in annual energy losses
Energy Information Management Systems that use advanced metering to monitor the end use in buildings save 3% on average, while diagnostics can save an average of 9% in energy use
World Economic Forum Report
Strategic interventions
In our work for clients such as the British Museum, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and Portsmouth University, our interventions to upgrade the existing control hardware included many future proofing features such as embedding semantic tagging standards and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity to enable a diagnostic solution to be deployed.
This approach is enabling our clients to move against a wider strategy of estate upgrades and net zero carbon pathways.
A forensic approach to diagnosing building performance issues
Building construction and commissioning programmes can sometimes be chaotic in nature. This environment and other commercial pressures can often materialise in subtle defects which are often not visible during the witnessing of systems – typically limited to only 10% and at a point in time when the building is not fully occupied.
Digital witnessing coupled with a diagnostic solution provides a forensic level of verification that the contractor has installed and commissioned the systems in a way that responds to the dynamic characteristics of operation.
World class service
Our building performance reach spans globally, with expertise across the practice in Design for Performance (DfP), stakeholder engagement, building diagnostics, Soft Landings, digital witnessing, and measurement and verification. Operating at all scales we can support clients to maximise the performance of individual buildings, as well as services across entire organisations and portfolios.
Our building performance diagnostics consultancy services include
- Our advisory services will guide you simply through the process of procuring and implementing a diagnostic approach to optimise your building and operations.
- Our design services include auditing what you have and developing a scope of work to deliver a diagnostic platform to optimise your building and operations.
- We can host the diagnostic software and help you with the ongoing operation of the software and integrated workflows.
- We are also able to provide a digital witnessing service for your new project – to forensically identity performance defects within the first year of contractors’ liability, ensuring your building is optimised for its unique operational characteristics.
expertise At every stage
Planning
Our advisory services can be layered onto a single project or estate and include a survey of the vendor landscape and an explanation of the product/solution suitable to your project.
Our experts can offer peer review of vendor proposals, cost and benefit analysis to give you a grounded view of the return on investment, as well as critical onboarding advice
Design and implementation
Our design services for new buildings include future proofing specifications to ease the ongoing deployment of measures. For existing buildings, our teams can provide a scope of works to onboard diagnostics.
Our experts can also arrange strategic IoT sensor deployment and edge gateway installation, as well as setting up and configuring the diagnostics software solutions, including defining the KPIs for the individual building.
Run, operate and review
We are able to host diagnostic software for your projects, while our teams can offer ongoing technical expertise to analyse outputs from an existing or new diagnostics solution.
Our experts will be able to develop bespoke workflows, which will turn technical diagnostic outputs into action that will make a real difference to the operating costs and efficiencies of your portfolio.
Project highlights
Northwestern Mutual HQ
Milwaukee, USA
Our work with Northwestern Mutual campus sought to identify the ceiling of optimisation through a forensic look at the Building Management System (BMS) control programming.
We harvested more than 1.8 billion time series data points and analysed them through both common and bespoke programming. The analysis identified optimisation measures totalling a reduction in carbon of 1,069tons/yr and annual utility cost reductions of $85,756/yr.
Our outputs were presented in a C-Suite dashboard, and a more granulated interactive dashboard to aid the facilities management team in their workflows to implement the measures.
The City of London Academy Shoreditch Park
London, UK
Our diagnostics study will analyse over 3,000 data points from the Academy’s Building Management System collected by our 4G data acquisition device. To further supplement this data, we are collecting timetabling information and providing IoT sensors to measure the opening status of the windows.
All of this data, together with our diagnostic engine, will provide a forensic evaluation of energy, carbon and cost performance. It will also offer a deeper understanding of how behavioural factors concerning the opening of windows influence the classroom environment and, ultimately, students’ cognitive performance.
Whitworth Art Gallery
Manchester, UK
The award-winning Whitworth Art Gallery delivered a highly innovative approach to environmental control for the conservation of art. Our diagnostic approach assisted the project team in resolving some defects at post-completion and defects in operation that would have otherwise been hidden.
The diagnostics study included 1.5 million time series points in the analysis, and we created a dashboard to support the gallery in demonstrating the environmental performance and help secure the loan of an exhibit from the Tate museum.
