If you’re retrofitting a commercial building, you might want to consider adding OPM to your plans. Why? Because OPM is a powerful way to get superior results from your retrofit.
What is OPM?
If you read our blog post called What is OPM and How is it Transforming Buildings?, you would have seen that...
Operations performance management (OPM) is the process of making your building’s lines of business function optimally and in-synch in order to meet business goals.
OPM, which is generally accomplished through the use of sophisticated software, is all about:
- Providing better information and analytics;
- Enabling processes to self-tune or adjust;
- Eliminating the need for people to oversee time-consuming tasks; and
- Putting the power in people’s hands -- letting them take action.
What is Retrofitting?
Essentially, retrofitting involves making changes to existing commercial buildings with the intention of decreasing energy usage or improving energy efficiency. In many cases, it can be cheaper to retrofit an existing building than build a new one.
Retrofitting a building not only leads to reduced operating costs, but it can also increase asset value, benefit the environment, and create a more pleasant experience for people working inside the building. This last point is because retrofitting can improve indoor air quality and reduce mold, leading to fewer tenant complaints and increased productivity.
When a property owner is undertaking a retrofit, they will also often upgrade other aspects like building security and accessibility. Together, this makes for a more resilient, robust, and happier office environment.
How OPM Can Maximize Your Retrofit
A retrofit provides the perfect opportunity to incorporate OPM software into your building. Using OPM software, along with data, sensor, and/or IoT devices, you can bring together information in a whole new way -- enabling property managers, tenants, and the building systems themselves to work together in harmony.
As an example, let’s take a look at the two OPM software applications that ThoughtWire offers to accomplish this…
PrecisionHub lets building and facility managers optimize operations and workplace experiences in real-time. It does so by providing energy management and optimization, as well as KPI dashboards, floorplan visualizations, occupancy analytics, root cause analysis, fault detection and alerting, automated provisioning, and security and safety management.
When it comes to retrofitting, PrecisionHub maximizes the impact of retrofits by smartly optimizing processes, workflows, and conditions that affect energy usage and efficiency. This allows for hidden gaps to be uncovered and closed, and for decisions to be made based on real-time information and powerful cognitive-reasoning algorithms. For instance, if employees typically work from home on Mondays, sensors in the building will automatically recognize these patterns quickly and will self-adjust to decrease energy usage on those days.
2. @WorkApp
ThoughtWire’s @WorkApp is an app that can be downloaded by tenants to their phones, allowing them to have greater control over their work environment. It allows people to manage their lighting and temperature to maximize comfort, as well as enabling building access control, emergency wayfinding, access to community management and building announcements, and meeting and flexible space booking.
The @WorkApp can supercharge retrofitting efforts because it encourages tenants to reduce their energy consumption and empowers them to feel ownership over their building. For instance, the app allows teams to compare their energy usage with other teams the building, and to take energy-saving measures like decreasing the brightness of their overhead lights when the sun is shining on their side of the building. After hours, smart sensors detect where employees are located and smartly adjust lighting and heating to keep those employees safe and comfortable while maximizing energy savings in other parts of the building.
@WorkApp also uncovers insight around tenant behaviour, allowing property managers and building systems themselves to automatically self-adjust to provide optimal working conditions and energy efficiency.
In Summary…
If you’re about to undergo a retrofit of your commercial real estate building, adding OPM to the mix will get you superior results. Don’t miss out on opportunities to maximize your building's energy efficiency and safeguard its overall asset value for the future.
