Charly had a look at the BIM World in Munich last week with great expectations, since his visit to the GEFMA Future Lab was rather disappointing.
His expectations were not met after seeing only a few ‘innovations‘. Also BIM projects with direct connection to CAFM/IWMS – systems were rarely represented. If this is the general technology status, you will be very surprised to see our input regarding these subjects at our next Technology Days this year…! Personal invitations have already been sent out.
So why was the Future Lab disappointing for Charly? Unfortunately, many things that were praised as cutting-edge future technologies seemed to be rather standard technology than anything else. In particular regarding the interaction between sensors and CAFM/IWMS – systems.
Sure, three sensors can be linked to each other and evaluated room-by-room or maintenance procedures can be triggered through sensor values. However, these technologies have been standard for many years in ‘real’ Energy Data Management and diverse control systems.
It seems that these topics have been reinvented by the CAFM/IWMS developers and sold under the label of IoT (Internet of Things). The therefrom accompanied risks and problems appear to be completely unknown – which probably is linked to the limited practical experience.
Gaining this practical experience live in a customer project is, unarguably, not beneficial.
There is no other way to interpret the presented evaluations, workflows, etc. – especially when one gets the idea of integrating all sensors into the existing WiFi network. The IT and the rest of the business will express their ‘thanks’. Security, data volume, data protection and privacy – just to name some vital keywords regarding this subject. (Three sensors in one-second intervals may seem reasonable, but what happens with multiple sensors linked to multiple rooms / installations?)
Also controlling possibilities in regard to the data had to be put into a question by the audience. The speaker considered this as not relevant claiming that ‘batteries in the used sensors have a durability of 5 years.’
It is nice to see that we are, once again, maintaining a technological lead.
We will present this lead with a public appeal in our forthcoming Technology Days event in March 2018.
And – as we also pursue research and development aside of our customer projects – we have created Charlys Lab.
Starting from January 2018 we will post regular updates and progress regarding this subject here.
Furthermore we invite all interested parties to actively take part in work shops, to get involved in projects and to shape the future together with us in a collective effort.