Surbana Jurong given top recognition for IoT in SBR Technology Excellence Awards

It won the Building Services and Facilities category.

Surbana Jurong’s digital solutions team, Surbana Technologies Pte Ltd, continues to help innovate the industry by introducing sensors in brownfield workspaces to increase operational efficiencies in the assets they manage.

The group’s collaboration hub at its Singapore office was the focus of the project. The office is a brownfield site, chosen to improve productivity and enhance integrated facilities management capability. The project aims to demonstrate that sensors connected to an enterprise 24K platform would yield cost-efficiencies in the operation of the hub.

The company installed over 31 sensors that scan over 112 data points in a 400 m2 space of the collaboration hub. The data from the sensors are channelled to SJ Group’s common data environment called 24K, where machine learning, visualisation and data analysis are carried out. 

Gaps were identified by analysing utility and usage trends from the collected data to increase operational efficiency, conduct predictive maintenance, enhance workspace wellness, and carry out sustainability benchmarking. This resulted in 5% savings on electricity bills, which also reduces the carbon footprint of the workspace. Behaviours were also shaped as users would consciously turn off lights and the air-conditioning after use, including putting back the furniture and cleaning the whiteboards, as the platform would be able to monitor occupancy movements. All of these contributed to lower electricity usage and a cleaner workspace.

The Workspace Management System comprises an array of battery-operated motion sensors that were placed at various hotdesking locations to track the number of desks available in the hub, allowing users to book rooms remotely through an app. Users can control lights and air-conditioning remotely through the app. When the sensors detect inactivity in a room for a period, the lights and air-conditioning will turn off automatically. Automatic alerts and notifications are used to provide an updated system where staff can view the availability of spaces. The system generates enough data on usage trends that will help the project team to better design collaboration spaces at SJ’s new Campus.

This also captures the flow of occupants in the various places of Collaboration Hub for space planning and management. As the number of occupants is monitored, staff would be inclined to conduct bookings only according to their group size. This prevents overbooking or booking spaces that are too large to accommodate small group size. 

Next is the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Monitoring System where indoor air quality sensors are installed to monitor carbon dioxide, lighting brightness, energy meters, temperature, humidity, and volatile organic compounds (VOC) to detect harmful pollutants were put in place. This system detects abnormalities and informs the facility management team. Through the usage of trend analysis, users can make informed decisions to improve the IAQ of the workspace.

The other types of systems include the Pest Monitoring System, which provides periodic alerts of rodent movements, the Utility Monitoring System which monitors power consumption and demand, the CCTV-based Facial Recognition and People Counting which detect intrusions, and the Circadian Smart Lighting which enables adjustable lighting.

For this, the company was given the IoT - Building Services & Facilities award in the SBR Technology Excellence Awards, hosted by Singapore Business Review.

The annual awards programme highlights technological innovations, recognising exceptional companies in Singapore that are riding the digital disruption wave and leading the technological revolution and digital journeys of their respective industries.

The SBR Technology Excellence Awards is part of the regional Asian Technology Excellence Awards now running in 50 countries.

In giving this award, the judging panel considered three major achievements attained by the company: sustainability, the two-month completion of the project, and the conversion of a brownfield site to a smart workspace.

The Surbana Jurong team worked with six different vendors, and clear explanations about their visions and goals of the building were communicated to achieve project success. Surbana Jurong now has a set of hardware, tools, systems, the 24K platform and applications that forms the basis for future IoT and analytics projects with these vendors and new ones that may be onboarded.

Watch the interview below to know more about their winning project: