The Smart Building Ideation and Specification Process – Cinch IoT

Where to Start
Your leadership team has decided that your organization’s next project needs to be a smart building. I assume you’re here because you’re wondering where to start. You’ll start by forming a construction team comprised of project managers, facilities leaders, business unit representatives, HR, and more.
The team’s task is to ideate and specify what needs to be built. The work starts with Ideation. According to the Interaction Design Foundation:

"Ideation is the process where you generate ideas and solutions through sessions such as Sketching, Prototyping, Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Worst Possible Idea, and a wealth of other ideation techniques. Ideation is also the third stage in the Design Thinking process. Although many people might have experienced a “brainstorming” session before, it is not easy to facilitate a truly fruitful ideation session. In this article, we’ll teach you some processes and guidelines which will help you facilitate and prepare for productive, effective, innovative and fun ideation sessions." (1)

Most organizations gather a team into a room with a large white board and they begin to list their construction goals. The goals are captured in notes and eventually documented into a specification.
Ideation workshops are often led by architects, but this isn’t necessary to start. It’s often a good idea to have an ideation workshop before hiring an architect because the exercise output will help the team distill some overarching requirements into a list of must-haves. From this list you can decide what type of architectural firm to hire.

Function before Form
Start by defining the purpose of the building. Define its function. Is it an office? Care-home? Hospital? College Dorm? What are its primary uses? What are its secondary uses? How do building users interact with each other in the space? What business goals must be achieved? Is the space part of a brand strategy? Is it a grand showcase with vaulted ceilings and soaring girders? Or an energy efficient earth covered data center?

As the team drills deeper into the design requirements, one of the early and overarching drivers may include a goal to comply with a high-performance building specification. These include LEED, WELL and Reset. While these voluntary standards have significant overlap, they each have a slightly different focus. All share a goal to help builders and customers create efficient, sustainable buildings that enable a more healthy, productive and safe work environment for building tenants and visitors.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)
LEED is probably the best-known high-performance building rating system. It was created by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) to help building operators evaluate the overall environmental impact of a building. There are four levels of rating: Platinum, Gold, Silver and Certified. The higher the rating the more points needed. Categories include: Energy use, water use, indoor air quality and sustainable sites. The current version (v4) is more flexible than earlier standards and has many performance-based criteria. The spec focuses more on the physical structure than occupant health.

WELL Certification
The WELL Building Standard generally evaluates a structure’s contribution/interaction with occupant well-being, health and comfort. The spec has three levels: Platinum, Gold, Silver. The higher the rating indicates the number of points toward user well-being. The spec measures air and water quality, volume of natural light, sound, and other soft attributes that affect occupant health such as healthy eating areas, rest areas and encouraging exercise. WELL performance is validated after occupancy by third-party auditors.

RESET Certification
The RESET certification emphasizes building occupant health and comfort by actively measuring and monitoring indoor air quality. There are two levels: Certified and High Performance.

Unlike the LEED and WELL certifications, RESET does not dictate specific solutions or methods to achieve results. This enables the applicant to use a variety of technologies to meet performance targets.

RESET’s objective is to evaluate building performance over time. It differs from LEED and WELL in that performance is constantly monitored over the first three months of occupancy. By exposing real-time air quality data to occupants, they can adjust activity with real-time feedback.

Regardless of the quality standard selected, it’s a good idea to actively measure and monitor energy, water and indoor air quality.

As the Function is Defined, Attention Moves to Form and Smart Building Use Cases
Once you have a sense of the building shape, form and function, it’s time to explore and define use cases. When we talk about smart building use cases, these tend to focus on applications that are enabled by technology and systems embedded within the building. For instance, do you need circadian rhythm playlists to operate overhead lighting at different color temperatures throughout the day? These have a positive impact on employee well-being—they don’t add much cost but they require early planning and technology to execute.

What’s important to you? Define your specifications. Many customers have goals that cover the following topics and requirements. The building and systems should be

Efficient: Low capex; low opex; low energy
Long-Lasting: Reliable for decades
Simple to design/install/maintain
Feature-Extensible: Support new applications
Safe, comfortable and healthy

Use-Cases
The Following use case categories are meant to elicit thinking. They are not an exhaustive list of what’s possible with a smart building control plane.

User Comfort Use-Cases

Wall switches should support color tuning, dimming, scene control
Room temperature controls
Color light way-finding; color light beaconing
AV Scene control
Shade control

Sustainability Use-Cases

Measure and monitor air quality: Temp, Humidity, CO2, VOCs, Particulates (PM 1-10)
Energy dashboards, space use information, and more!
Dashboards can report energy, CO, CO2, Particulates, VOCs, Temperature, Humidity, Light level, Space Use, etc.
Compliant with local law 97 (NYC), CA title 24, & Open ADR and smart grid (and intelligent load shedding)
Support for micro-grid power source (support DC natively)
LEED, WELL, RESET compliant

Operations and Management Planning Use-Cases

Provide a secure, scalable system
Role based access and logging
Automated system health reporting
Automated pre-scheduled Emergency Egress Lighting tests (monthly/annually)
Provide native BACnet connectivity, IP, Modbus/TCP, SNMP, MQTT, & more
Standards based API for third party systems
Provide an easy way to adjust sequence of operations
Measure, monitor and control plug loads and circuits
Monitor any power circuit or subsystem
Provide space utilization visualization and floor plan heat maps.
Remote monitoring and alerts maximize uptime and building performance
No AC ballasts to replace—reduced maintenance
Monitor bathrooms for cleaning frequency: Toilets use, Toilet paper and towel fill levels, vape detection etc.
Customizable Sequence of Operations (SOO) with pre-set playlists
Simple set up and adds-moves-changes
Support for smart exterior lighting
Support for any light as an emergency egress light
Supports any LED including decorative pendants and sconces
Easy to use software; auto discovery
Distributed robust architecture-reliable
Centralized Emergency Lighting
Gun shot detection
People counting
Asset tracking
Power desks
USB charging stations
DC fans, bathroom fans

Once you’ve documented the use cases required in the building, begin to examine systems designed to deliver them. Ensure you have the right team. Do you have the right Architect, MEP, Consultant, IT, Facilities, HR, Workplace Resources, Sustainability, CXO, GC, EC, and Low volt installer? Do you have the right team to write the specification and evaluate suppliers?