Commercial Building Leaders Discuss Their Perspectives in Recent Webinar
Regional operations manager Dave Pergola recently joined fellow leaders in the field for the webinar Commercial Building Engineers: Addressing the Challenges of the Moment. Dave shared his perspective on a range of issues related to data and technology, today and in the future.
Hosted by BuildingEngines, the discussion captured UG2’s unique approach to partnering with our teams and customers to deliver solutions that work in an evolving climate.
Dave touched on a host of challenges and successes for today’s engineers. Here are some highlights:
Using data in a meaningful way is a priority and a challenge.
Our data is only as good as how we use it. With customers, the data needs to be set with service level agreements. A data-informed approach is essential to ensuring that we’re being safe and fiscally responsible as we work to continuously improve the quality of our service.
We rely on data not only to help guide the customer, but also to be able to pivot operations so we are making the right changes at the right time.
Our engineering team’s approach to technology is multi-layered.
At UG2, we start every new account with a dedicated transition manager who facilitates the implementation and training around our processes and programs. We also have a VP of strategy and innovation who is laser-focused on identifying new tools that add value through quality or financial outcomes.
We take innovation very seriously, and, when you treat your engineers like family like we do at UG2, you create an environment where everyone buys into the program and feels like they’re a part of it.
Lack of understanding in service level agreements and job scopes can lead to confusion and bottlenecks.
While technology can help bring clarity, confusion around roles and responsibilities can slow response time and completion times requests. Communication, training, published scorecards and reporting that keeps everyone informed allows our teams to pivot their focus and better perform.
Since the pandemic, UG2 has leveraged the expertise gleaned from our work with data centers and life science facilities to benefit customers across all vertical sectors.
The last year and a half pushed us to adopt more stringent controls around KPIs. We’ve introduced technology like near field communication tags, armed ourselves with new apps for tracking filter changes and disinfection, and implemented health checks for our employees.
Moving forward, we’ll need to prioritize how we communicate with customers about data.
Data is important not only in how we use it but how we facilitate conversations about it between engineers and tenants or property managers and stakeholders. The data tells a story and it’s up to everybody involved to help articulate and decide on how that data is going to be used to achieve successful results.
As the subject matter experts, we must recognize that customers in different industries may not have the same level of expertise in-house. It’s our role to guide them onto how to use data correctly to make good, informed decisions, operationally and financially.
In the future, buildings will tell us what they need.
As data and tech become more integrated with building management systems, we’ll see buildings become smarter.
Data analytics is driving everything, not just in preventative or corrective maintenance but also predictive maintenance. Artificial Intelligence is already allowing our engineers to create and manage more stable and efficient operations, and that will only improve down the road.