Overcoming Override Overload in Santa Clara

Introduction

Facility managers and executives at a major software company's California headquarters had inklings their four buildings in Santa Clara were not as efficient as they could be. There had been recurring comfort calls and a few energy audits that suggested it was time to look deeper into building equipment.

The buildings team also knew they had different systems collecting data throughout their campus and no ability to access it in any clear or unified way. If they could bring all the data into one repository, they could analyze that data from a single user interface and keep on top of energy usage and maintenance with a more streamlined process.

The company partnered with Buildings IOT to integrate the different data streams into a single repository, upgrade and customize the SkySpark instance and serve that data through a graphical user interface. 

In close collaboration with company staff, these efforts would improve occupant comfort, enable strategies for addressing deferred maintenance and encourage proactive monitoring of all building systems. 

Throughout the course of the project, Buildings IOT integrated more than 35,000 points from all four buildings and established automatic trend data collection. Once integration was complete, Buildings IOT installed and enhanced the SkySpark platform with nearly 30 general, comfort and energy related rules designed to identify operational deficiencies.

Challenges

• This was an on-premise installation where all analytics and building data was processed through on-site company servers. These servers manage and maintain systems for the whole campus, so software updates could cause outages on the building analytics side that needed to be tracked down with help and support from internal IT teams.
• The site had an existing SkySpark installation that needed several upgrades before it could be utilized as the basis of the new analytics system.
• Data quality proved a challenge as much of the campus was without dedicated metering.

Successes

• Buildings IOT delivered a fully customized solution that included executive and operational level reports, weekly to-do lists for technicians, weekly override reports for engineering teams and custom charts to visualize comfort and override data.
• Buildings IOT helped the software company reduce the total number of points in override by more than 60%.
• Buildings IOT integrated all systems, which were mostly Niagara but also included at least two others with separate data sources. Upon completion of the data integration, Buildings IOT trained 10 different users who all have unique access to the new system.
• Additional custom integrations were completed to connect SkySpark with the company's existing LDAP user management system, and to bring Solar City solar generation data from the cloud into the analytics engine.