How is data visualization streamlining workforce behavior, facilities management, and workflows to enhance operational efficiency?
LW: A single building has tens of thousands of data points. Data visualization provides the best management tool for people who manage buildings. Different parties including the CEO, CFO, facility management staff and marketing people can easily customize and analyze data relevant to their respective functions at no cost.
You can simplify this further by using a platform designed as a no-code environment with drag-and-drop widgets. As such, it can be used by many people as no programming expertise is needed. Various building stakeholders including building managers and company leaders like the CFO, CEO or sales head seek specific information. Quick and cost-effective dashboard customizations enable them to access the required data more effectively.
Is a smart workplace necessarily a healthy workplace? In what ways?
LW: A smart workplace can contribute to a healthy work environment. This can be achieved through more efficient and cleaner cooling or heating systems as well as intelligent sensors for air quality. However, it needs to be orchestrated for these smart systems to work with each other to realize a smart workplace.
Other features such as intelligent lighting control, visitor registration, effective wayfinding and space reservation systems significantly enhance user convenience and comfort.
Meanwhile, occupancy sensors, touchless lighting controls, temperature and air quality monitoring systems take personalization and efficient energy use to new heights, contributing positively to overall well-being and higher morale.
What about the push towards sustainability – how do smart workplaces contribute to ESG goals?
LW: In the last two years, the importance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations has greatly increased for one simple reason – funding. ESG is now an integral part of financing evaluations, and investors will no longer put money into properties that do not meet increasingly stringent ESG goals. On top of this, employees also do not want to go to work in buildings with poor air quality.
Smart workplaces are therefore now essential to help buildings meet these ESG goals and user demands, and only smart facility management can enable such workplaces.
Smart facility management helps:
- Building owners, operators and tenants to lower costs and increase their profitability
- Increase the valuations and yields of properties by doing the above
- Facilitate ESG reporting to investors
How should we address the shortage of skilled talent in an ‘old’ industry to address the transition into a digital net zero economy?
LW: Unfortunately, facilities management is seen as an unenterprising career choice and like many other professions, suffers from a shortage of young talent keen to join the sector. This is also a contributing factor in the sector lagging behind others in terms of adopting newer technologies.
One way forward is to leverage no-code technologies as these require no programming knowhow, which means anyone can assemble and customize applications. As an example, iviva’s unified no-code platform brings together smart buildings, facilities management, IoT, and business processes into a single, easy-to-use tool to make all workplaces smart and sustainable.
While AI may augment the way people work, instead of displacing their jobs, does it mean job opportunities will be limited to a niche group of people?
LW: We’re witnessing AI and human capabilities starting to complement each other, so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Supplemented by AI, one person can be more productive and do the jobs of a few people – helping alleviate the manpower crunch in the facility management profession.
For example, a 40-storey-high Grade A building in Singapore now needs up to 30 people physically on the ground to operate it on a daily basis. With smart facilities management and smart workplaces supplemented by AI, fewer people will be needed to operate such a building. These people can then be deployed to do higher value-added jobs.
iviva has developed its entire ecosystem to leverage AI and a no-code/low-code platform to simplify the complex IT and engineering systems in facilities management – to provide the tools to operate buildings in a much easier manner. No-code/low-code technology helps accelerate digital transformation as citizen developers with limited or no programming expertise can easily meet their own development needs.
