The smart building market will grow to $92.5bn (€83bn) globally, by 2025, according to research by Rethink Technology Research, up from around $4.2bn in 2019, with the primary driver being the desire to improve the productivity of the workers that are housed within those buildings’ walls.
The report says that 'In most instances, no matter how you slice it, when you look at the costs of occupying a building in terms of square-meters, human capital is almost always the largest single component. To this end, if you want to use smart building technologies to save costs or increase margins, the main use case you should be targeting is human productivity. While the technologies can certainly help manage operating costs, such as energy bills, or provide improved services such as secure access or usage analytics, on a per-dollar basis, these should not be the priority targets for new installations.'
'This is something of a surprise for many in the technology markets. We are accustomed to IoT technologies being used for process or resource optimization, such as smart metering providing better purchasing information for energy providers, or predictive maintenance helping to reduce operational costs and unplanned downtime.
'This line of thinking is not typically extended to human workers however, but when you evaluate how buildings are used, it becomes clear that getting more out of your workforce is a better use of your budget. To this end, the IoT technologies needed to better understand and optimize a building’s internal processes and the patterns of its workers are vital, and will account for a large number of the devices installed in the smart building sector.'