User Manual

PROPERTY FUNDS WORLD Special Report Nov 2016 www.propertyfundsworld.com | 9
SIEMENS MARKET INSIGHT
brings to the table with its Navigator-enabled
services. In short, the process is to connect,
collect, and then analyse building data to
derive improvement measures with the
best ROI.
The power of Big Data
Collecting data to turn into information
enhances transparency in the portfolio
is a good foundation but it is essentially
an investment before an institutional real
estate investor can start the process of
optimisation.
To connect buildings and foster smart
buildings, in February 2016 the Siemens
Buildings Technologies Division partnered
with IBM to maximise the potential of
connected buildings and the data they
create to empower real estate owners and
operators to drive business results and meet
building-related KPI’s.
As a result, Siemens develops integral
solutions with IBM’s software suites Maximo
(asset management) and Tririga (workplace
management) and envisages use cases
to apply Watson IoT analytics. A cognitive
building can anticipate, respond, and adapt.
“We at Siemens Building Performance
& Sustainability see ourselves as part of
an open ecosystem. This includes IBM
platforms, but also SAP Hana for the jointly
Demonstrating that buildings comply
with industry benchmarks such as ENERGY
STAR is a positive message to convey to
institutional investors, but it requires accurate
and comparable performance data.
That is what Navigator provides, in varying
degrees of granularity, which clients can
use to benchmark the performance of their
portfolios, and fulfil non-financial reporting
requirements.
“We work with the customer internally
to see where buildings in the portfolio are
positioned relative to each other, and also
externally to market benchmarks,” says Fluri.
“We ask customers to provide us with 12 or
24 months of energy consumption data, as
well as static data on the infrastructure of
the building, and from this we can decide
whether or not it’s worth our engineers
doing an onsite visit. Within days, we
prepare a report and come up with a
preliminary proposal with the client based on
the measures we think should be taken.”
Visibility on real estate assets at your
fingertips
Huber believes that the next evolution will
be “the digitalisation of real estate: Real
Estate 4.0”. The world is increasingly moving
towards internet-working of physical devices,
vehicles and buildings – commonly referred
to as the “Internet of Things”. People and
assets in building create an enormous
amount of unstructured data. In the past,
proprietary systems that control building
functions such as HVAC or lighting have
been operated standalone, often separated
from mainstream IT systems. And energy
data management, on its own, is not
leveraging sufficient data from other sources.
“Cloud-based platforms allow various data
streams to be combined for analytics and
cognitive intelligence, to gain information for
strategic decisions and operational actions.”
But as Huber observes: “You have so many
disruptive digital technologies in other
industries but real estate remains slightly
behind the curve. What’s not yet covered is
the holistic view on asset performance of
buildings in relation to sustainability, energy
efficiency, but also tenant satisfaction and
space utilisation.”
That ability to drive insights into the actual
performance of buildings is what Siemens
Caption?