Energy bill and carbon footprint are becoming increasingly important topics for commercial buildings. This trend started with large buildings but nowadays also small and medium size buildings occupants and owners are eager to reduce their energy bill and carbon footprint… and to show it to all their stakeholders.

Devices and solutions providers are developing new features and new offers to enable that efficient management of the various energies, so that facility managers both for new and existing buildings can contribute to a sustainable development: meters, wireless communication systems, etc.

But the most dramatic change will come from the way the occupant and facility manager interact with that energy management systems to make it an actual tool for them to make things happen, in his specific situation.

In other words, standard energy dashboards and reports implemented once and for all don’t meet the ever changing energy efficiency requirements!

That’s where the new IT technologies come into play and where consumer technologies join business technologies: iGoogle, smart phones and tablets such as iPAD.

Tomorrow the more advanced energy management systems will leverage those technologies and thus allow the occupant and the facility manager to tailor himself the energy dashboards to his very specific need:

he will have access to an application store where he will be able to download the specific application widget, but only when he needs it: cost allocation, energy bill analysis…..

in a few mouse clicks he will be able to set a new energy dashboard: display a specific usage meter because some specific issue triggers that need now

he will easily select the energy dashboards he wants to display for exemple in his iGoogle page, along with his other key widgets

each individual user will be able to have his specific energy dashboards: no need to navigate in a complex hierarchy designed to cover all users needs

But technology is nothing if the user is not proactive. Their challenge is to take the ownership of those possibilities and to adapt their energy dashboards to the changes in their organization, in the regulations, in their building processes, ….

Are buildings occupants and facility managers ready for that change?

Laurent Bloch