What is a Building Management System?
A building management system is a computer-based system that helps property teams monitor air conditioning, physical access control, heating, electricity, gas, water, elevators, ventilation and fire safety. This article explores the components and benefits of using smart technology with your building management system.
Components of a Building Management System
Two important aspects related to a building management system are submetering and HVAC.
Submeter Billing
Property teams are responsible for keeping track of the tenants’ utility consumption and generating accurate bills at the end of the month. Since manual submeter reading and billing are subject to human error, property teams can benefit from installing submeters and submeter billing software that streamlines the process.
Submetering is a vital component for the following reasons:
- It streamlines utility billing and eliminates the need for manual record-keeping.
- It helps property teams generate accurate invoices for tenants. This significantly enhances the relationship between property teams and tenants.
- It helps property teams track the energy consumption data accurately and identify potential leakages.
After-hours HVAC
Handling On-Demand HVAC requests is an important responsibility for property management teams as well. Without having an appropriate system in place, property teams struggle to track the On-Demand HVAC requests, which results in wasted energy and lost revenue.
The BMS communicates with On-Demand HVAC systems to automate the entire process of receiving and fulfilling On-Demand HVAC requests.
Top Benefits of a Building Management System
Commercial real estate teams benefit from building management systems in many ways.
Lower Operational Costs
Building management systems reduce property operational costs in the following three ways:
- Cut down on human resource costs: In absence of tools such as submeter billing and On-Demand HVAC, the property manager would recruit an additional workforce to manually track and fulfill HVAC requests, read submeters, record data in spreadsheets and send invoices to each tenant. This results in high human resource costs. Since these tools communicate with the BMS to automate the building maintenance operational processes to a large extent, the building will no longer need the additional workforce.
- Energy optimization savings: Since the building maintenance tools accurately identify potential leakages in the energy, the property manager can take the energy optimization initiatives that reduce the energy wastage, thereby reducing the operational costs.
- Increased staff productivity: Employees waste 40% of their time on repetitive tasks such as entering data into spreadsheets, managing invoices, sending emails and compiling reports. Since building management tools automate most of the repetitive tasks in property management, employees will get an opportunity to focus on productive tasks that could add value to the company and generate revenues.
Increase Property Values
BMS systems help to ensure that properties are well-managed. A well-managed property quickly gains the attention of real estate investors, business owners and potential tenants. This often translates into increased demand for the property in the market. The demand and property values go hand in hand; when the demand increases, the property value will also increase.
Improve the Tenant Experience
Building management tools enhance the tenant experience by enabling property teams to quickly respond to tenant requests, streamline the provision of building services and generate accurate invoices for monthly bills.
- Accurate and on-time invoices: Genea Submeter Billing generates invoices automatically and sends them directly to the mobile phones of tenants. This helps tenants keep up to date with their utility bill payments and track the energy usage spikes when they happen.
- On-Demand HVAC requests: On-Demand HVAC enables tenants to request HVAC service whenever they need it on the mobile app. They can even schedule after-hours HVAC services by selecting the date, start time and duration on the app.
Automate with Genea
The best building management systems should help you reduce operational costs, improve building security and enhance tenant experience. The main benefits of incorporating Genea with your building management software are:
- No costly installations: Genea’s Submeter Billing works with your existing networked and non-networked meters to avoid costly installations at your property.
- Itemized tenant billing: Genea’s On-Demand HVAC solution can handle a wide variety of fulfillment requests and generate itemized billing for each scenario.
- Customer support: Genea’s customer support is available 24/7/365 for ongoing system upgrades and resolving connectivity issues with energy management technologies.
- Meets compliance: Genea’s property technologies meet the compliance standards such as ASHRAE 90.1, CA Title 24, New York Local Law 88 and Seattle Energy Code.
Learn how Genea can help your team drive efficiency and automate your building processes today.
