Smart Building concept leads the way in smart building technology

The use of smart and innovative building technology is a hot topic. The challenge is to produce genuine added value for property owners and users from the fragmented data accumulated during a building’s design, construction and use.

The Smart Building concept adopted by YIT is a response to this challenge. It is based on a standardised approach to the processing and use of data at every stage of the property life cycle.

Granlund has helped us prepare Smart Building design guidelines to enable the effective practical implementation of this groundbreaking concept. The guidelines include technical and functional specifications and operating instructions.

“The design guidelines ensure that, right from the outset, construction projects follow guidelines on how technical systems must be designed and built in order for the building to meet the Smart Building requirements,” says Jukka Karhu, Director, Building Automation and Smart Buildings at Granlund.

“The implementation of the life cycle services produced by YIT and its partners becomes easier when their requirements are taken into account in the building’s design stage,” Karhu points out.

The importance of standardised data

The Smart Building concept aims to improve the comfort, productivity and eco-friendliness of buildings by consolidating the data from all of the building’s technical systems on a single platform.

Granlund’s Business Development Director Ville Reinikainen underscores the importance of standardised data. The Smart Building concept achieves this by means of the global Real Estate CORE standard implemented on the Microsoft Azure Digital Twin platform.

“The design guidelines specify in detail how the various project parties comply with the standard and, for example, encode the technical data in a consistent manner, whether it concerns ventilation equipment, rooms or building automation control systems.”

“This ensures the effective exchange of data during the building life cycle in accordance with the needs of the various parties and services involved,” Reinikainen adds.

Anders Stenbäck, VP, Offering and Services at YIT, is satisfied with the outcome. He recognises that Granlund has understood the customer orientation of the Smart Building concept and successfully brought its wide-ranging expertise to the development effort.

“The Smart Building design guidelines enable us to make tremendous progress with regard to the flow of Building Information Models and open data throughout the value chain and across the property life cycle. We can deliver standardised smart building benefits to each property’s end users and maintenance partners. This saves money and makes things even more customer-oriented,” Stenbäck explains.

Smart offices provide new services

The Smart Building concept will be implemented in YIT’s new business premises projects. The Workery+ office that was recently opened in Helsinki’s Vallila district serves as a pilot project.

At Workery+ Vallila, various sensors collect data not only on energy consumption and the indoor conditions of the property but also people’s movement, the routes they take within the office property and the use of the meeting rooms.

The property management of the smart building is based on the Granlund Manager software, which provides an overall view of the energy efficiency and maintenance of the property.

The users of the premises can use the Workery+ application to reserve workstations and meeting rooms as well as indicate when they are in the building. The reservation data is used, for example, in optimising the building’s ventilation and the number of meals prepared by the building’s restaurant operator.

Read more:

YIT in the forefront of developing Smart Building standards

Workery+ Vallila awarded the first Platinum Smart Building Certification in Finland

YIT’s Workery+ Vallila has won the Smartest Building Award 2021