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Now, we focus solely on being innovative, designing systems
and researching.
Realcomm: Darrell, when we interviewed you last year, you
told us about the 500 million data transactions you were col-
lecting each day. How are you using that data? Have there
been any issues or setbacks that have kept you from moving
forward with the Energy-Smart Building project?
Darrell: The way I would characterize it is be careful what you
wish for because you may just get it! Before you have the
ability to get at the data you don’t always know the extent of
the problem(s). As we began to pull it, normalize it, and lever-
age it, I suddenly could see everything that was broken on
campus and it scared me. My problem then became, how do
we prioritize the repairs and put principles against our time?
Having all this data at your fingertips is great—it’s providing a
wealth of information—but it can also be overwhelming. We’re
learning to prioritize our responses in two ways: one is cost; we
know the cost of the repair and the cost in wasted energy. The
other is value; to Microsoft, the employee experience is super
important, so we want to make sure employees are productive
and comfortable. Each space is assigned a value that is built
right into the system so those alerts that impact the employee
experience get immediate attention.
Realcomm: Mike, tell us about Forest City’s technology journey. Realcomm: Tell us how your technology strategy has evolved in
How has your role changed in the last five years? What was the last 12 months. Have events transpired that caused you
the genesis for the creation of your smart buildings infra- to adjust your focus?
structure group?
Mike: In the past, we’ve spent most of our efforts convincing
Mike: I guess the journey dates back to 2003, when Jim Young ourselves (internally) that there was a need for smart buildings.
met with our management team and told us we really should We were consistently selling the idea to our stakeholders and
create an internal group that understood both the IT side as explaining the new technology trends. In the past 12 months
well as the development and operations side of the business. it seems everyone’s bought into the idea of creating smart
This would ensure we were designing the infrastructure for buildings. The biggest question now is what system or systems
our buildings correctly from the ground up. So we formed do we install? As you’ll see at this year’s IBcon conference,
our Building Technology Services group, which I am currently there are more than 70 solutions in play that can make your
running. Initially, we focused strictly on structure and wiring as buildings ‘smarter’.
it related to voice, data and video services, but that quickly ex-
panded into security and sustainability, and now also includes Darrell: Now that the building integration has been completed,
parking and Wi-Fi systems throughout the buildings. Last year, we’re looking to next integrate gas, water and irrigation—ev-
my group was rolled up under the IDS umbrella and that’s erything that has a meter on it. Another area I thought we’d be
really been beneficial for us. In the past, we had day-to-day at by now, but we haven’t because we’ve had so much success
operational responsibilities, what I call blocking and tackling, on the mechanical side, is the employee behavior. Eventually,
which means putting out fires for the 200 sites we manage. we’d like to present the data we collect to the employees and
get them involved in better sustainability practices.
Realcomm: What’s on the horizon in the next year or two? What
plans for improvements are currently in place?
Darrell: On the immediate horizon, we’re streamlining the
integration system. Today, when a fault occurs for an asset we
push a button and send an alert to the work order system.
What we’re working on next is having the asset actually create
its own work order. The exciting thing about that is it takes the
‘people glue’ out of the situation, freeing up my resources for
other things—like getting ready to do smart building deploy-
ment in China and India. Today, we’re the Redmond Operating
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