Maintenance activity in the construction industry, generally takes place at two levels:
(1) When the building/property is under-construction or is partially built; and
(2) After the building/property is leased out
Both these maintenance activities are cumbersome and time-consuming, but needs to be performed well to ensure smooth operation. However, with the expectations and demands of the customers increasing in almost every sector, the corporate real estate (CRE) is nit left behind. The role of the facility managers is becoming more and more crucial these days. On one hand, the tenants want immediate answer in case of any malfunction or dysfunction; on the other hand, the owners of the building expect the facility mangers to collaborate and contribute towards the growth of the business.
Under such a scenario, the role of facility management has moved much beyond its traditional space and resource optimization. Today, facility management is also concerned with enhancing the experience of the tenants. This has led to the requirement of an aid which can help facility mangers to keep a 360° monitoring of facilities and properties. However, thanks to AI for ease of such maintenance processes in a hassle-free manner.
Here's six ways how AI can ease Facility and Property maintenance:
1. Preventive Maintenance
AI can act as a very useful tool for fault detection in any facility or property. Having the capacity to learn the relationship between input and output variables, merely from the data, without any mathematical models; AI can be used as an effective tool in preventive maintenance and fault detection. By gathering and analyzing the data obtained from various IoT devices like IP cameras, AI can effectively pinpoint any inconsistencies or anomalies within a building. On the basis of this analysis, AI can further analyze and target the symptoms and expound the rectification process. With advance cloud facility incorporated with AI, automatic alarms and correction instructions can also be delivered to the facility managers, repairs technicians, and other stakeholders for generating actionable insights on the inconsistencies and anomalies.
2. Safety & Security Monitoring
The commercial buildings are seen to spend lumps of money on the indoor safety. Although using CCTV cameras have become a common parlance globally, yet it has been generally seen that these cameras are only looked into after a particular incident has taken place or when any potential threat is pre-known. Moreover, interpretation can be intimidating since massive data obtained cannot be utilized to their fullest extent in the traditional systems. However, AI can provide a more real-time, intrusive and smart monitoring and prevent any unwanted event from taking place. Being able to precisely recognize the event, object, face or person from their physical characteristics like height, posture and activity patterns, even with low resolution cameras; AI can be used as a smart tool to ensure safety and security in the building. There are a range of AI applications relating to safety and security; much of which are yet at a nascent stage. As for instance, instead of using key card for accessing control, buildings can make use of AI-enabled facial recognition system, to ensure more safety and security indoor.
3. Space Planning
Facilities such as offices, these days are opting open plan designs and more flexible arrangements. This has resulted in shortage of space. Offering too much of space is not a problem for the occupants, but this costs high to the owners and operators. Reducing too much of space or increasing occupancy may not just increase these costs, but may also result in a poor working environment. However, using space sensors and AI can be a potential solution to this. Indoor space sensors, makes it possible to predict demand, both when planning a new open office and for day-to-day management. Using the data from the space sensors, AI can help provide estimates of occupancy, along with the necessary information that can help resolve the potential issues related to space management.
4. Facility Equipment Fault Prediction
Data given out from the complex machines found in the buildings, like chillers, lifts etc. can be very intimidating for the facility managers. But these data streams when trained to an AI solution, can show certain trends. These trends may indicate the probability of failure of any equipment in the near future, on the basis of the condition of the equipment and the reasonable estimates about its uses, like expected operating times. AI enabled smart insights can help the facility management team to plan and prepare for the upcoming maintenance, in turn reducing the chances of unexpected equipment failure. This also adds predictability to budget and keeps the tenants comfortable, all at once.
5. Remote Maintenance Operations
Remote operations have been gaining popularity over the past few years, and the pandemic situation has further augmented its popularity world over. There are numerous tools that facilitate remote operations; but amongst all, that field which has helped advances remote operations the most is Artificial Intelligence or AI. Using AI for remote operations can help eliminate the need of site visits, provides round-the-clock monitoring of the site through computer vision, provides better insight into the devices' functioning and at the same time increases the assets' up-time by providing instant alert through cloud system.
6. Energy Demand Management
The facility mangers need to ensure grid reliability in order to manage energy demand. It is also necessary for the utilities to be aware of how much power they need to supply, so that they can avoid excess generation. Moreover, the facility mangers would want to avoid charges on high demand due to the use of too much energy at wrong times. Thus, training the AI with more data on energy consumption with respect to factors that lead such consumption, like occupancy and whether helps in predicting the grid behavior in a far better way. This AI enabled energy management system can help reduce the energy demands, save lumps of cash and increase grid reliability.
Thus, Artificial intelligence has far reached power in enabling facility and property maintenance in terms of various aspects thereby easing the task of facility mangers by keeping a remote surveillance to track upcoming maintenance tasks.
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