Achieving carbon neutrality with analytics

Analytics and preventative maintenance help the University of Melbourne achieve carbon neutrality goals.

With more than two hundred buildings across five campuses and an overall footprint in excess of eight million square feet (740,000 square meters), the University of Melbourne has a strong focus on continued improvements across their buildings and facilities. In recent years, The University has expanded its energy management and conservation goals.

Challenge

As part of its energy management and conservation goals, In 2016, the University required comprehensive analytics to assist in monitoring and reducing carbon dioxide use. Beyond energy management, it also sought a solution that lowered preventive maintenance costs, improved stakeholder comfort, and provided insights to evaluate service contractor performance. 

What Buildings IOT did

Following extensive research, the University of Melbourne's Australian-based master systems integrator Controltech, identified Buildings IOT's smart building management platform, onPoint. Controltech proposed onPoint for its full suite of analytical capabilities. Leveraging Buildings IOT's integration platform, IOT Jetstream which connects and establishes relationships between disparate systems' data, onPoint would help the University of Melbourne access, use, and report on the myriad of data produced from its numerous building systems so that it could monitor and reduce its carbon footprint. onPoint's machine learning capabilities would also help the University of Melbourne improve its maintenance program beyond traditional fault detection and diagnostics to predictive maintenance that uncovered nuanced anomalies that can lead to excessive energy consumption and waste.

Results

Through the initial two pilot deployments of onPoint, Controltech assisted the University of Melbourne in identifying and resolving a number of issues across the University's Building Management System (BMS). These issues would not have been uncovered without the intelligence of IOT Jetstream and onPoint's machine learning capabilities. This information has assisted Controltech in determining where to direct maintenance efforts by only inspecting devices that show faults. 

Out of five campuses, two ar enow complete with onPoint analytics. As a result, these upgrades have improved efficiency and provided the university's management teams with the ability to work towards their goal of continually upgrading their building systems.

The powerful brains of onPoint, IOT Jetstream, enables historical data to be captured, streamlining the data flow for future projects. 

Curious about the details? Read the full case study to get more information!