Smart buildings have long been associated with connected technology, sensors, automated lighting and systems that promise to make buildings more efficient.
A recent analysis from MarketScale suggests that investment in smart buildings is shifting away from simply adding more “smart” features and towards solving more immediate operational challenges, particularly heat resilience and cyber security.
The value of a smart building is not necessarily in how many connected devices it has, but in whether those systems help an organisation run a building that is comfortable, resilient, secure and efficient.
The UK's experience of increasingly extreme temperatures is making overheating much harder for building owners and facilities teams to treat as an occasional problem.
In June, the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management warned that sustained high temperatures were a reminder that extreme heat is becoming a recurring operational factor for workplaces. IWFM has also published guidance specifically helping workplace and facilities managers understand and respond to climate risks, including overheating, flooding and disruption to operations.
Overheating can affect productivity and wellbeing, place additional pressure on building systems and increase energy consumption as organisations turn to mechanical cooling. UKGBC has warned that overheating can increase operating costs and accelerate wear on heat-sensitive building materials, while poorly adapted buildings could become increasingly difficult and expensive to operate.
Building management systems, sensors and environmental data can help identify where buildings are becoming too hot and allow teams to respond earlier. But technology is only part of the answer. Building design, shading, ventilation, maintenance and longer-term retrofit decisions all have a role to play.
The other side of increasingly connected buildings is that there are more systems that need to be secured.
Building management systems, building automation, energy management systems and IoT devices can all create additional points of connection within an estate.
The UK Government's facilities management standard already states that building management systems should be managed by FM teams and that organisations should have processes to operate, maintain and secure them against cyber threats.
The National Cyber Security Centre similarly highlights the need to consider cyber security across connected infrastructure, including building management and automation systems. Its guidance emphasises resilience, monitoring, supply-chain management and incident response as part of managing connected environments.
That means cyber security can no longer sit entirely within the IT department when the technology being protected is controlling the physical environment.
This is perhaps the most interesting part of the shift.
The next stage of smart buildings is unlikely to be about adding technology for technology's sake. It is about asking what the building actually needs to do.
Can it respond to rising temperatures?
Can FM teams identify problems before they become expensive failures?
Can systems work together securely?
Can building data support better decisions?
And can all of this happen without creating another layer of complexity for the people responsible for running the building?
For workplace and facilities professionals, this brings the focus back to something fairly simple: technology should make buildings work better for the people using and managing them.
As climate risks increase and connected building systems become more widespread, heat resilience and cyber assurance are likely to become less of a specialist technology conversation and more of a fundamental part of facilities management.
The smart building of the future won't just be connected.
It will need to be resilient, secure and fit for the people who rely on it.
Be part of the conversation LIVE at our UK event next April: The Workplace Event
Subscribe to Workplace Unplugged for monthly updates!