By Greentech Lead America: IBM has won a contract to
develop and install advanced smart building technology at 50 of the federal
government’s highest energy-consuming buildings. GSA awarded this contract as
part of GSA’s larger smart building strategy.
The initiative will connect building management systems
to a central cloud based platform to improve efficiency and save up to $15
million in taxpayer dollars annually.
Commercial buildings account for nearly 40 percent of the
United State’s primary energy use and GSA owns nearly 182 million square feet
of office space nationwide. GSA’s plan to meet the requirements of President
Obama’s Executive Order 13514 includes a goal of reducing energy consumption in
federal buildings by 30 percent by 2015.
“This program connects existing building
technologies in new ways to improve building efficiency in over 32 million
square feet of real estate. Awarding this contract benefits taxpayers, as
it will reduce maintenance and operating costs of the federal building
portfolio – saving taxpayers an estimated $15 million annually,”
said Linda Chero, acting public buildings commissioner, GSA.
For this initiative IBM will
develop a system to monitor building performance nationwide and stream data to
a central facility, allowing faster analysis and more informed decision-making.
This project will utilize a new building management
technology, linking major building controls in real-time to make federal
buildings more energy efficient. GSA will use newly available data and
analytics to save energy and reduce building operating costs in GSA’s entire
owned inventory.
The system enables tenants to view the performance of
their buildings on dashboards with real time metrics on energy savings and
recommendations on how to further increase efficiencies.
At the initial stage of the project, 50 buildings will be
integrated on this building management system. As additional federal buildings
are constructed and other facilities are upgraded, those buildings will also be
managed with this platform.
“We are at a tipping point in terms of advancing the
greening of our buildings and making them smarter,” said Dave Bartlett,
IBM vice president of Industry Solutions.
U.S. Air Force selects IBM smarter buildings software to help
civil engineers maximize energy efficiency
Recently, The U.S. Air Force (USAF) selected IBM
smarter buildings software to help its civil engineers maximize energy
efficiency. The software enables USAF to automate the management of physical
infrastructure portfolio from buildings, vehicles, runways and other
infrastructure across 170 locations worldwide.