4 IoT smart office applications to implement right now

Do we need more or less space? Is the air conditioning fine-tuned? Which meeting rooms are free? Is cleaning required? Do we need to refill sanitizers? Has this room been cleaned? How many times has the water been flushed? Is our water healthy? Is the room temperature optimized? Are the lights off when the meeting room is empty?

All these and more questions are a facility managements’ challenge. This guest blog from our partner Disruptive Technologies, answers those questions by identifying 4 IoT smart office applications.

IoT technologies are becoming increasingly accessible to workplaces of all sizes. What was once considered exclusive and expensive to deploy, is now easy to implement thanks to advancements in sensor and platform technology.

The pandemic has also accelerated the rate of IoT adoption. Pioneering companies like Verizon and Spaces are now embracing and promoting smart technology as enhancers of workplace health and well-being.

But you don’t need the budget or resources of big companies to try out these new technologies. Here are 4 easy IoT applications you can get going with right now.

1. Occupancy monitoring

Office occupancy patterns are now a lot more dynamic and unpredictable than three years ago. Conventional 9-5 schedules and the regular use of meeting rooms are a distant reality. IoT solves this problem by providing 24/7 non-invasive monitoring of office occupancy.

IoT sensors and subsequent analytics can detect, analyze and understand office occupancy patterns. This means that by installing temperature sensors, motion sensors, or lighting sensors you can get an overview of how your employees use the office space.

Once you have access to this information, you can fine-tune office conditions, including ventilation, air conditioning, and heating. The more you learn and optimize, the healthier, more comfortable your environment will be.

2. Smart cleaning

IoT technology can also help with scheduling and managing cleaning and hygiene practices. Leveraging insights from occupancy monitoring, you can understand the actual cleaning needs in your office and schedule staff & resources accordingly.

You can place sensors in washrooms to receive real-time alerts about when cleaning processes (e.g. disinfection, refilling of sanitizers) take place or are needed. Similarly, sensors help document cleaning actions (e.g. who, when, which space has been cleaned), to facilitate compliance with regulations. This also helps evaluate the performance of third-party cleaning services, like cleaning frequency and agreed-on SLAs.

3. Legionella compliance

Legionella compliance is one more IoT use case that boosts a safe and healthy workplace. It refers to the reduction of legionella outbreaks using sensors and sensor information analysis.

Sensors are applied in water sources like inlets, midpoints, and endpoints, as well as in “dead legs” i.e., sections of process piping that become isolated. They are used to eliminate manual monitoring and help to ensure water safety.

Whenever some temperature deviation is detected, facilities teams can be promptly alerted to prevent Legionella outbreaks. This way, you can have peace of mind that the people in your office are using and drinking safe water.

4. Energy efficiency & sustainability

IoT plays an instrumental role in both the digital and the green transformation of modern facilities. The rapid development of sustainable smart cities is a great example. Deploying sensors in key use areas helps you monitor building activities. Empowered with data, you can make data-driven decisions regarding your energy use.

HVAC optimization, for example, boosts the sustainability of air-conditioning by saving energy and boosting the development of a healthy environment. At the same time, pipe monitoring boosts carbon savings and environmental performance.

Using IoT sensors can also assist in waste management processes like the optimal scheduling of a facility’s waste collection.

Benefit from the best of both: integration between Disruptive Technologies and akenza

Thanks to the integration between the Disruptive Technologies cloud and akenza, users can connect and manage their Disruptive Technologies devices on a unified Asset Inventory on akenza. Output Connectors, e.g. Azure IoT Hub, Google Cloud Pub/Sub, InfluxDB, Apache Kafka, or AWS Kinesis, serve as data entry points to build monitoring, analytics, or predictive service applications further in any cloud environment. For the aim of building notification services, akenza provides multiple notification connectors such as SMS, email, Microsoft Teams, or Slack to inform users or entire teams about the condition of your IoT project. All this can be set within minutes and without coding skills.

Interested in more sustainable use cases? Disruptive Technologies has published a Sustainability Handbook for a deep dive into how to make buildings smart and sustainable with sensor technology.

• Find out more about how to connect your Disruptive Technologies cloud to akenza, check out this tutorial: https://docs.akenza.io/tutorials/add-devices/how-to-integrate-disruptive-technologies-on-akenza

• Find out more about all available sensors from Disruptive Technologies in the akenza Device Type Library: https://akenza.io/device-type-library