Schneider Electric is introducing its Buildings of the Future framework to leverage the all-digital, all electric world for more sustainable, resilient, hyper-efficient and people-centric buildings.

The initiative aims to help the industry meet environmental and business requirements, as well as occupant expectations.

“There are both old and new necessities that are changing the way the world thinks about buildings,” said Laurent Bataille, executive vice president at Schneider Electric. “With the right design approach and the deployment of new digital technologies, we can meet the needs of the planet, investors, developers and building occupants without making trade-offs. Buildings play a crucial role in both our economic and environmental health, and there’s a critical need to adapt industry practices for existing and new buildings.”

Environmental and business challenges are forcing the building industry to examine the role buildings play in carbon emissions and costly waste. Buildings consume about 30% of the world’s energy according to the IEA, via their construction and operations, and account for almost 40% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions. But there are technologies that can begin to reverse these statistics.

For example, there are over 30 million units of medium-voltage (MV) switchgear installed worldwide using sulphur hexafluoride (SF6), a potent greenhouse gas. Under the Green Premium programme, Schneider Electric has developed MV switchgear that uses pure air instead of SF6 gas to provide buildings with a boost in sustainability and safety. New technologies and the all-digital and all electric Buildings of the Future framework aims to help the world win the fight against climate change.

The need for resilient buildings has never been greater. Building owners and facility managers in critical facilities and commercial buildings are tasked with keeping operations running smoothly and delivering a better occupant experience. In a Covid-19 environment, the bigger challenge is to adapt continuously to new obstacles during times of crisis that can impact the continuity of operations, quickly change business priorities, alter staffing levels and lower operating budgets.

New capabilities can greatly enhance the resilience of buildings. For example, Schneider’s EcoStruxure Power digitises the electrical infrastructure to deliver reliability, increase uptime and stabilise networks with harmonics control, uninterruptible power supplies and mitigation. The Connected Room offering modernises and future-proofs the building’s infrastructure by repurposing space and scaling up or down throughout a building’s lifecycle. Both improve resilience and a building’s ability to adapt, grow and evolve.

Buildings need to be hyper-efficient from the design and build process to the operations and maintenance phases of their lifecycle. It can start in the early stages with the firm’s RIB Software. Project stakeholders are empowered with real-time, cloud-based collaboration for enterprise wide projects throughout the construction lifecycle from design, QTO and estimation, scheduling, bidding and tendering, and modular construction, to finance control integrated with corporate ERP.

Once a building is operational, all systems within, including the electrical distribution and HVAC systems, will need to be flexible enough to react to complex sets of conditions and enable analysis between opportunities and risks. This risk-reward calculation can only happen if the building operator has enough data and granular levels of control to rebalance and optimise continually the way the building operates in response to those conditions.

The EcoStruxure Building open innovation platform offers ways to integrate power distribution and management, building automation, and IT systems to capture and analyse data for better informed decisions and higher levels of efficiency.

People around the world spend most of their time indoors. In fact, it is estimated that humans will spend close to 90% of their lives inside. With this, buildings are at the epicentre for the air being breathed and the people with which everyone interacts.

Expectations for building services, driven by purpose and culture, continue to rise among employees, patients, students and guests. For these reasons, people-centricity, and subsequently health and wellness, are becoming the differentiator for building owners, operators and tenants.

Schneider Electric provides differentiators such as EcoStruxure Workplace Advisor and the Engage Enterprise app, both of which create digital building environments that improve comfort and optimise space. EcoStruxure Building Advisor, a suite of analytic monitoring services, can help monitor HVAC systems and help ensure air is flowing properly.

Dar Group, a privately-owned professional services group offering planning, design, engineering and project management services, is collaborating with Schneider Electric in the drive for more sustainable and people-centric buildings to help meet changing business demands.

“We’re currently developing a new regional headquarters in London to bring together our growing brands under one roof for the first time globally,” said Andrew Loudon, UK&I managing director at the Dar Group. “Partnering with Schneider Electric, we are able to move the needle on sustainable development and design while delivering an environment that fosters collaboration and the exchange of ideas.”