‘The use of IoT in integrating existing BMS to sensors for FM is growing’

Dubai, UAE, 28 October 2018: “Today, the use of IoT in integrating existing Building Management Systems (BMS) to sensors for Facilities Management (FM) is growing considerably,” said Prabhu Ramachandran, CEO, Facilio, while elaborating on how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and IoT are shaping the HVAC and FM sectors. HVAC systems, he said, are a major part of FM and, today, many buildings are managed and maintained in silos, by following blind schedules. “Today, we see a lot of manual maintenance,” said Ramachandran, adding that technicians, today, are not equipped with proper tools and manual management is often insufficient.

Prabhu Ramachandran, CEO, Facilio

Ramachandran highlighted Facilio’s FM Software, which helps FM managers and building operators manage their portfolio of buildings from a single place. He said, “At Facilio, what we do is, we understand the usage of the building and calibrate the software to predict error codes, while applying machine learning.” For instance, he explained, if a chiller’s performance goes down over a period of time, the software will detect it and alert you. The software uses AI, which can be applied in two areas, one in asset performance management and the second, to calculate energy performance, where energy consumption patterns can be studied, he said. “In the same weather conditions, if there is excess energy consumption, it will show up on the system,” he explained. Using this, he added, the person handling the system will be able to address the problem at its source. With the help of the software, we enable customers to manage their entire portfolio of buildings and the advantage is benchmarking, he said. “Using the software, building operators will be able to benchmark their building and assess the level of energy consumption in their building,” he said, adding that this will help make data available for future steps in energy efficiency.