SJ Group’s smart facilities management team partners real estate owners to drive digital transformation

Early gains in productivity and cost efficiencies with the right tech.

Rising cost pressures prompting smarter operations

Occupants, regulators, and investors are demanding more from real estate owners today. Occupants are seeking safe environments that promote wellness and enhance quality of life. Regulators are enforcing greener, stricter sustainability standards and compliance. Meanwhile, financial markets are making environmental performance a key investment criterion.

At the same time, the total cost of building, constructing and managing buildings continues to rise. In the third quarter of last year, SJ Group (SJ), formerly known as Surbana Jurong, had projected a 20 per cent rise in mechanical and electrical cost in construction by the end of 2024. Post construction, the cost of operating a building weighs heavily on bottom lines. Energy or air conditioning utility costs make up 60 per cent of the total tally.  

Integration key to optimising resources

A city, township, or precinct is only as smart as the productivity gains, cost savings and labour efficiencies technology that can be gained from the technology it deploys. That is, it’s not tech for tech’s sake.

The key to smart city management is to integrate multiple data streams from various building operating systems seamlessly into agnostic common data environment platforms that are easily retrievable and accessible by FM operators to make critical decisions to meet safety and sustainability goals, on budget, on time.

SJ is a global urban, infrastructure and managed services firm, with over 70 years of successful project delivery. The company’s facilities management solution combines facility management advisory consulting premised on decades of on-ground domain facility and operations management expertise and best-in-class digital tech solutions spanning AI and machine learning, geospatial, data science, digital twin technology, UI, and UX to help clients navigate the complexities of smart city management.

SJ’s proprietary 24K common data environment integrated platform is the digital backbone that synergises multiple M&E systems, including plumbing, lighting, utilities, air quality controls, occupancy sensors, security cameras, and other humanoid devices to monitor and track facility operations to drive sustainability goals, patrol multiple sites of various typologies, with an optimal number of site personnel that deliver facility management capabilities within budget, and can scale in tandem with budgets and changing demands.

Enabling total life cycle costing in older buildings

The 24K integrated platform is particularly useful to identify and track aged assets in brownfield buildings including heating, ventilation, air-conditioning (HVAC) systems, old foundations, deteriorating facades, and damage from the elements before they get too expensive to repair or replace.​

With sensors, smart devices, utility data, and building utilisation analyses, operators can make cost-effective upgrades and plan the most environmentally beneficial asset enhancements to help asset owners decide on the scale of these enhancements, whether to tear down, rejuvenate or opt for a hybrid option of re-use and rejuvenate.

Integrated operations at a top higher learning institute 

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is one of Asia’s leading institutes of higher learning, with a sprawling campus of 170 hectares comprising a variety of facilities including university residences for students and academia, sports, F&B, retail, and faculty buildings.

Its Integrated Operations Centre (IOC) integrates security, facility operations, fire, and M&E systems to increase situational awareness to respond swiftly to incidents, track utility usage and diagnose operations early to mitigate downtime disruptions.

Real-time analytics allows the operator to anticipate issues before they escalate into crises. The automated workflows also reduce the manual work, allowing facility managers to focus on high-priority tasks and strategic decisions.

The infrastructure on which SJ’s 24K common data environment platform sits is agnostic and facilitates the seamless integration of new data points and system interfaces seamlessly, enabling NUS to scale their IOC operations in future.