Into a new digital era – David Pepper

The rapidly falling cost of digital components is driving the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution and the explosion in the use of devices with on-board intelligence able to connect to the web and Cloud computing.

The so-called ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) is growing at 31 per cent a year and will consist of 50bn connected devices by 2020 with a total market worth of more than $14 trillion, according to the industry’s research body BSRIA.

However, the building engineering sector is taking a bit of time to catch up with all of this. The big trick is how to harness this incredible technical potential and ensure it helps us deliver a new generation of equipment and system designs to improve the long-term performance of buildings.

At the moment, only around 25 per cent of British buildings have anything that could be described as a control system or integrated ‘smart’ IT infrastructure that could be used to provide properly connected services. The people inhabiting buildings are connected like never before with their 24/7 wireless links to the web using mobile phones, tablets and rapidly emerging ‘wearable’ technologies.

Yet, the people operating the 75 per cent of ‘disconnected’ buildings are still on the outside of this tech revolution looking in and are still reliant on traditional, old fashioned management, maintenance and repair regimes.

In truth, many of the 25 per cent of buildings with more sophisticated networks are also failing to make the best use of their connectivity for building services purposes, but the potential for preventative maintenance, energy efficiency, security, access systems and so on is enormous.

To read the full article see the latest September edition of EiBI.