A recent report shows that smart building automation software and systems will reach $20.5 billion in North America by 2027. As urbanization leads to increasingly smarter cities, buildings are an integral part of a city's ecosystem. Intelligent buildings lead to improved economic outcomes for both owners and users as well as improved satisfaction, safety, and wellbeing of occupants, the Research and Markets report points out.
The use of interdependent technologies improve operational efficiency and enable a safer and more productive environment. Because of this increase in the use of smart building software, leading companies within the commercial real estate sector are realizing tangible benefits, as owners are able to charge higher fees for technology-enabled intelligent buildings. Accordingly, over 78% of new construction will involve at least one facet of IoT and/or related smart buildings market-related technologies over the course of the next five years.
An important factor driving investment in smart buildings remains the fact that commercial real estate owners are able to charge higher lease fees for intelligent buildings for a variety of reasons, including lower operational costs and improved safety, comfort, security, and productivity for workers. The most efficient and effective smart buildings are those that include an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS). An IWMS solution supports a more integrated building control system and optimizes the workplace.
This is a major factor in certain urban environments such as Seattle, Washington, where rapid growth is occurring due to high-tech company growth from the likes of Amazon, which desires the most efficient facilities possible.
The report also suggests that the economic environment of the next five years will be characterized as asset deflation and commodity inflation: it is estimated that urbanization will cause up to 51% of global resources to be consumed by commercial buildings by 2027. Of this amount, over 68% of global energy (mostly electricity, but also natural gas and fuel oil) will be used by enterprise and industrial facilities along with over 32% of the overall global water consumed. This will put a substantial drain on increasingly more expensive and scarce resources as well as the bottom line of corporations.
The key to success in the smart building market is to intelligently integrate data, systems, processes, and assets for enterprise and industrial operations in order to create an economically optimal market, as highlighted by IBM’s initiative to change the smart building landscape through a multi-dimensional approach to investment ROI. “For real estate and facilities management professionals, data is key,” IBM says.
WRI is another organization pushing for a zero-carbon building sector, with its Zero Carbon Building Accelerator.
As the world’s population increases, smart building growth is essential, as IWMS solutions are able to optimize asset utilization, energy consumption, technology deployment, building, and infrastructure efficiency, and overall workplace productivity, leading to substantial savings as well as reducing concerns about energy consumption.
