Show Notes
Unlocking the Power of Remote Site Connections in BMS
In this episode of Product Snacks, Melissa and Michael from learnd are joined by James Aspinall, one of learnd’s experienced BMS engineers and a remote site connections expert. They discuss:
- the evolution and importance of remote site connections in enhancing Building Management Systems (BMS)
- The benefits of remote connections, such as improved operational efficiency, energy management, and team collaboration
- The challenges preventing wider adoption, particularly related to cybersecurity and outdated hardware
- Practical insights on overcoming these challenges and the long-term advantages of implementing remote connections
Remote site connections give BMS users the ability to gain more visibility over their data to better optimise their systems and see long term benefits.
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
01:40 Understanding Remote Connections
02:55 Customer Motivations and Benefits
03:52 Energy Management and Operational Insights
07:01 Challenges and Cybersecurity Concerns
09:07 Legacy Systems and Budget Constraints
14:19 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Transcript
Product Snacks – Ep.4
[00:00:00] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think , if you go back 10 years, we were looking at turning things on and off and that was the energy saving. Now
[00:00:06] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: that we’ve got more established remote connections and tools at the end of that remote connection, what we’re creating is we’re creating, visibility that you might not see on the BMS.
[00:00:16] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: When you look at the graphic, you’re actually seeing it in a different form, which gives you more information of where there could be improvements or what
[00:00:23] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: is causing it not to be efficient. but the visibility definitely brought through the remote connection, which brings all the teams together.
[00:00:30] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Welcome back to product snacks, everyone. I am your host, Melissa, head of marketing here at learnd.
[00:00:42] Michael Bironneau – CTO: I’m Michael and CTO here at learnd.
[00:00:44] Melissa – Head of Marketing: And today on Product Snacks, we want to address a topic that is quite relevant in the BMS industry today, which is remote site connections and connecting your site to the cloud, the internet, in order to get better visibility over your BMS data.
[00:00:59] Michael Bironneau – CTO: And [00:01:00] connecting the building isn’t just good for the building. It’s also good for the environment in a lot of ways. So we’ll talk about that too. today we have a very special person here with us. James Aspinall, who’s one of our most experienced engineers and also remote connections expert. Hi James.
[00:01:16] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Hi, Michael. Hi, Melissa. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:19] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Thanks for coming on the podcast. We’re excited to chat to you. You definitely have the most experience in the business when it comes to connecting customer sites and you’ve really seen what benefit that can provide for them. So I think it’ll be really interesting for, everyone who watches this to kind of learn a little bit more about that today.
[00:01:38] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Hope so.
[00:01:39] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Amazing. Would you be able to tell us a little bit about what remote connections mean for our customers and why anyone would want to connect to their building remotely? Like what did they actually get out of it?
[00:01:50] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: So remote connections. The importance that I’ve always found that the client gets is the ability to support immediate [00:02:00] operational type changes. So scheduling set points. You tend to get the client forgets that they’ve got to do it. And they’re leaving the office and they’re like, hold on, I’ve got remote support.
[00:02:09] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: I’ll get them to do it for me and it’s done and it’s completed. But the other side of it is when we’ve got that remote connection in place, there’s services that we sort of provide like the alarm management side of things or the data collection.
[00:02:22] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: And when about historical data. I don’t just mean like metering and stuff like that. I mean like literally looking at all the points on the BMS sometimes using like smart tools like algorithms or engineered tools that we’ve got to produce, report or even implement changes on the site, that have immediate effect. And the good thing about the remote connection is if it isn’t going to impact in a good way, you can pick it up straight away. And you can make the amendments. remote connections definitely a fundamental part of, the facilities management team or , the BMS manager
[00:02:55] Michael Bironneau – CTO: and so would it be fair to say then, James, the motivation from the customer’s point of view, is [00:03:00] it cost reduction? Is it comfort? What’s the primary motivation then to put one of these in?
[00:03:05] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: So the primary historically has been data capture. It’s always been like, can we get the metering data? Can we get the alarm management? But as moved forward you find that you’re talking with a wider team. So like it might be the lead engineer of a team of engineers.
[00:03:24] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: He starts using you more for his maintenance. So he, he says, can you dial in, tell me what’s happening while I do this? you can collaborate together, create a report that gives a, a better maintenance report for both our clients at the end of the day. I think what driven it initially was data, and now it’s definitely operational and makes sure that the plant is running efficiently and when it’s meant to be on its on,
[00:03:47] Michael Bironneau – CTO: So it’s visibility over the building as well, kind of making sure that it’s running. I mean, is it, is it also fair to say that energy management is a concern on customers minds and that without a remote connection, it becomes a lot [00:04:00] harder.
[00:04:00] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: yeah. So energy management always important to the building managers so most buildings will have an energy team that’s like a satellite type team. They don’t tend to be on site but the operations is getting more involved with the energy side, because we looked at like set points, we look at how things are controlled in the field. We’re not managing that correctly. It impacts the energy, so the two talking together with the visibility and the data, that remote connection can bring those two teams together and we can work almost at the same time, collaboratively instead of like month or week on week.
[00:04:36] Melissa – Head of Marketing: You mentioned the operational side versus the energy side of the business. Would it be safe to assume that that operational side is probably going to have like quite high knowledge of the BMS, they’re dealing with it in and out, but what about the energy side?
[00:04:48] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Is that something where they might not really understand the system as much? And that is that remote connection a way for them to get a better understanding of what’s happening in the systems in the buildings?
[00:04:59] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: [00:05:00] The visibility to the energy manager is going to provide them a concept of why there is high energy. that particular piece of plant, it’s still always reliant as well though on the engineering team, they might be working with this plant and it’s really old, it’s You know, it’s being maintained to the best it can be. The energy manager can’t see that. He might be trying to say, it to do this. I want it to be able to, um, control at this temperature. I want this humidity level. And the plant’s not capable of it. It might’ve been capable, uh, years, but the maintenance side and the way that the plants sort of deteriorated, they just can’t maintain the same conditions.
[00:05:42] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: So there is always a point of where the visibility and the data will always need to come together in some form. So there’s an understanding of why that plant is running at a higher consumption.
[00:05:52] Melissa – Head of Marketing: So like getting that understanding kind of helps with that collaboration and teams working more closely together. It’s not that, we [00:06:00] can’t make it happen. And that frustration that could happen back and forth, trying to get it to one thing, but then them saying it, it can’t go there, right.
[00:06:07] Melissa – Head of Marketing: They can then use the data to justify we’ve done all of these things and you can see it’s still not there. So it can maybe alleviate some of that conflict that could happen between different departments.
[00:06:18] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think if you go back 10 years, we were looking at turning things on and off and that was the energy saving.
[00:06:24] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Now that we’ve got more established remote connections and tools at the end of that remote connection, what we’re creating is we’re creating, visibility that you might not see on the BMS.
[00:06:34] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: When you look at the graphic, you’re actually seeing it in a different form, which gives you more information of where there could be improvements or what is causing it not to. Be efficient or inefficient, so to speak, but the visibility definitely brought through the remote connection, which brings all the teams together.
[00:06:52] Michael Bironneau – CTO: so if there’s a lot of benefit to remote connections, I mean, you talk about visibility, you talk about bringing teams together, bringing data back, energy management, like [00:07:00] lots of great things. how come only 15 percent of buildings in Europe are securely centrally connected? What’s holding customers back from adopting these solutions?
[00:07:09] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: I think there’s two ways of looking at this . There’s been a static remote connections that have due to the fact that they’ve been restricted by data or the technology that’s been installed isn’t fit for purpose because of the high quality of the graphics or the data that’s being transmitted.
[00:07:26] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: And they just, they seem to fall over the knock. Not supported anymore, the main, remote connections that we could talk about right now, where we’re putting in, the right sort of technology is the restriction seem to come from the process and the company’s I.T. policies, proving that whatever you’re going to connect on that site isn’t going to impact the rest of that site, especially from a cyber security point of view. The main difficulty is the communication and the proving that the cyber security is in place and there’s not going to be any impact on any other persons or companies network.
[00:08:01] Michael Bironneau – CTO: Yeah, and cybersecurity is a massive issue. It’s just getting bigger, right? I mean, on the one hand, you’ve got companies that are forced with a big compliance burden. So they have to meet these really strict standards that then providers like us have to adhere to. And then on the other side, this really old kit on site.
[00:08:16] Michael Bironneau – CTO: That’s 30 years old. Like, how, how can that possibly hope to meet modern standards? And so you have to make the two meet somewhere. That’s that’s the big challenge. Right?
[00:08:23] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, it’s definitely, if you, I mean, if we look at the BMS in the UK, we’ve still got a lot of, um, control systems that are not even IP based. They’re still sitting on like a, a wired LAN. And as much as we’ve created gateways or routers or devices that will bring it into a web environment or an IP environment, still a cost to do that. And on the, the hardware that sits underneath that gateway, you might be limited on what you can do. And the client wants to have a remote connection to benefit and improve his site. [00:09:00] And it falls over when the, the firmware of the soft, or the software, In the controller, it’s just not fit for the remote connection.
[00:09:07] Melissa – Head of Marketing: How have you seen clients in the past in terms of, if they’re falling down a little bit, we want this remote connection, but our systems are obsolete, or they can’t support it.
[00:09:18] Melissa – Head of Marketing: My supervisor, whoever is saying, we don’t have the budget. Is there a way that you’ve seen clients work around that? Whether it’s understanding just how much it’s going to impact looking at payback periods, anything like that, that customers can do to troubleshoot or get around that objection to budget.
[00:09:34] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, there’s, there’s been circumstances that I’ve been involved in where not been able to get that remote connection due to the, fact that the hardware is struggling, the the cost to get it implemented seemed high. The difficulty is if you’ve got old legacy hardware, the chances are you’re struggling for budget to maintain that hardware [00:10:00] anyway, do we work with the client and try and establish a remote connection and show them immediate improvements to how we can improve the cost related to maintaining their plant by stopping call outs, by having nuisance alarms, by, Being able to report on what is failing immediately and possibly predicting, because we can look at it year on year on how it’s performed and how long it tends to run for before it does of break down. Once they get that information. understand that the remote connection becomes fundamental to their service, and they tend to be able to save money and put that money somewhere else.
[00:10:40] Melissa – Head of Marketing: You’re mentioning people with Legacy equipment, people who aren’t connected as Michael mentioned earlier, Only 15 percent of buildings in Europe are connected, which means 85 percent currently aren’t. And, what is sort of the alternative?
[00:10:54] Melissa – Head of Marketing: If they’re not connected, is it just people accepting poor outcomes or are they trying to [00:11:00] fix it? what do they do if they won’t or don’t have the capability to connect their site?
[00:11:05] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: The teams do manual collections, do manual reports. Now, it has an impact on the fact that if the engineer that’s going to site to service the equipment and to tell you what’s happening with your plans and how it’s operating is spending time collecting this data reviewing the alarms, he’s not doing what he needs to do in the field.
[00:11:26] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: . He’s been taken away from the servicing of the plant and as much as he’s on site and he’s being paid for the service, what that does is it reduces the maintenance on the plant, which then causes higher costs. It also , more outcomes of the fact that there’ll be a call out because he’s not picked up on something on the AHU or the boilers that he might have picked up while he was servicing it. So by not doing the remote connection and having this data that you want collected manually, so you can oversee what’s happening with your estate, [00:12:00] you’re actually impacting. The, the plants itself, which then takes the budget that you might be able to put into a remote connection and remote service into fail plant maintenance. we’ve had lots of sites where they’ve thought, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing. not until they established a remote connection that they realized that they can actually put monies into different parts of improving the BMS still have the remote connection.
[00:12:26] Michael Bironneau – CTO: So, would you say it’s typical in your experience, James, when somebody does put in a remote connection, they tend, because you’re saying they have more money available for plant, then do you tend to see a better managed building as a result?
[00:12:37] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, definitely. They see the improvements and and they can, they can pick up on the fact that when this age you fail last time it took them four days to get it back up and running to the stage that it failed and it was rectified within a couple of hours.
[00:12:50] Melissa – Head of Marketing: It kind of sounds like, right, when you talked about some of those obstacles, there’s that communication barrier, there’s that cyber security worry, but, [00:13:00] I mean, could it also be that people just understanding that this really is going to be that short term cost, but really an investment in the longer term, because you might be spending some more on this remote connection up front.
[00:13:14] Melissa – Head of Marketing: But then as soon as you get it in, you start seeing those improvements tenfold. You’re actually almost getting money back. Plus you’ve got you’ve got an expert on the end of the phone, which maybe you didn’t have before because there was nobody there who could see that. So it’s almost like even adding another team on top of it, along with that.
[00:13:32] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Ability to minimize that downtime or get your plant up and running faster.
[00:13:36] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: Yeah, I mean, the main thing as well, if you look at like a project engineers, when they used to go to site to complete a project, they spend more time on site involved in things that they could do quickly from home using the tools that we can provide with the remote connection., when I was commissioning, I used to just work alone.
[00:13:56] James Aspinall – Remote Connections Expert: I had no one to really speak to. I was just talking to the clients [00:14:00] and were witnessing what I was doing. I was checking, signing off. Now you create an environment where commissioning team are actually dealing with the remote service team, which creates an environment that we can all support each other. It’s definitely better for the industry, the remote connection and what it brings , to all of the BMS users.
[00:14:19] Melissa – Head of Marketing: Well, thank you very much, James, for the really insightful conversation into remote site connections. It’s clear that it’s something that can make a huge impact for our customers in terms of their visibility, their ability to invest more into their BMS in more impactful areas, and even some of that knowledge and collaboration when it comes to actually working across the organizations and getting the energy reduction or cost reduction goals met within different businesses.
[00:14:50] Michael Bironneau – CTO: Thanks a lot for coming on , James. , we’ll be back on soon with more product snacks. Meanwhile, if you want to get connected, please get in touch at [00:15:00] sales@learnd.co.Uk.
[00:15:00] Melissa – Head of Marketing: or if you have any questions about, uh, any of the remote connections or want to learn more, or if there’s any other topics that you want to hear on Product Snacks, let us know.
