By: Sivapreeta J, Smart Building and Sustainability Leader, iNXT, LTIMindtree

In today’s world, the focus on sustainability and operational efficiency is a top priority. But have you ever pondered the depth of innovation required to strike this balance effectively? As organizations globally embrace the imperative of eco-conscious practices, it’s clear that innovative solutions are crucial for reducing environmental impact and optimizing operational efficiency.

At the forefront of this movement lies the concept of smart spaces: digital ecosystems that seamlessly integrate humans, connected devices, and software systems to facilitate the free flow of information within facilities, buildings, and the enterprise. This interconnected environment operates as a cohesive, intelligent ecosystem, contributing to the creation of smart spaces.

The market for smart building technology is projected to soar to a value of US 96 billion by 2024-25, with an extraordinary, anticipated growth rate of 22.8% from 2024 to 2034, reaching an estimated value of US $408 billion by the end of the forecast period⁽¹⁾.

LTIMindtree’s approach to facility management transformation

In the pursuit of facility management transformation, LTIMindtree has embarked on a transformative journey aimed at enhancing operational efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint across our facilities in India. The Smart Spaces initiative is a collaboration between our iNXT team, Corporate Services – Facility and Administration (F&A), and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) teams. iNXT Practice pioneers in industry X.0, IoT, digital transformation, enabling an ecosystem of smart, sustainable solutions, enhancing efficiency and experiences.

So, what is Smart Spaces exactly?

Smart Spaces technology enables intelligent, connected building spaces, ensuring optimal efficiency and reliability, and delivering the best user experience. It is a suite of solutions that leads and accelerates smart building transformation, unifies data intelligence across multiple sites at enterprise scale, and creates a sustainable value chain. In essence, Smart Spaces technology shapes the future of facility management. So, how are these initiatives transforming the way we manage facilities? What specific challenges are we tackling, and what innovative solutions are we implementing? Let’s delve into how LTIMindtree is addressing these challenges head-on and reshaping the landscape of facility management.

Implementation of Smart Spaces at key campuses

Embarking on our Smart Spaces journey, we initiated the implementation of this ingenious solutiont our Whitefield campus in 2022. This included comprehensive facility audits, the adoption of energy-saving measures, and the establishment of a centralized digital monitoring system to track utility performance.

Using smart building technology, we improved monitoring, automation, and performance, ensuring smooth and sustainable campus infrastructure operations. Building on this success, similar transformations are now planned for other key campuses across India, including the S2 Hebbal campus in Bangalore, T1-T2 Innovation campus in Chennai, and Mensa campus in Mumbai. Additionally, 23 other facilities have been manually integrated with the Smart Spaces platform over the past year, with plans for eventual digital integration.

The comprehensive solution

As we implemented the Smart Spaces initiative, it became clear that tailored solutions were needed to overcome various obstacles.

• Smart Spaces provided a unified view of building data, enabling informed decisions.
• It offered a suite of tools and technologies for efficient operations and smart maintenance tasks.
• Furthermore, it aided in empowering leadership with the business intelligence necessary for navigating complex, real-time decisions.
• In addressing challenges related to improving building performance and achieving sustainability goals, Smart Spaces leveraged its sustainability monitoring dimension. This dimension tracked key metrics such as sustainability scores, energy efficiency, and carbon footprint reduction, aligning efforts with organizational goals and global sustainability targets.

By providing real-time insights and analytics, Smart Spaces enabled proactive decision-making to drive sustainable outcomes across all connected buildings.

Navigating challenges towards sustainability

The Facilities and Sustainability teams faced significant challenges as they needed to channelize environmental sensors and assets data into sustainability reporting, from field to boardroom. Further, managing individual campuses and connected operations of multiple buildings were also complex. Glimpses of the challenges were:

• The need for a centralized platform to manage single and multiple buildings and their assets remotely
• The requirement for a facility-level central system for ground teams to handle operations and smart maintenance
• Enabling leadership with business intelligence
• Improving building performance, enabling sustainable operations, and achieving energy efficiency and savings
• Addressing global climate change, international building compliance codes, and sustainable development goals (SDGs)

The comprehensive solution

As we implemented the Smart Spaces initiative, it became clear that tailored solutions were needed to overcome various obstacles.

•  Smart Spaces provided a unified view of building data, enabling informed decisions.
•  It offered a suite of tools and technologies for efficient operations and smart maintenance tasks.
•  Furthermore, it aided in empowering leadership with the business intelligence necessary for navigating complex, real-time decisions.
•  In addressing challenges related to improving building performance and achieving sustainability goals, Smart Spaces leveraged its sustainability monitoring dimension. This dimension tracked key metrics such as sustainability scores, energy efficiency, and carbon footprint reduction, aligning efforts with organizational goals and global sustainability targets.
•  By providing real-time insights and analytics, Smart Spaces enabled proactive decision-making to drive sustainable outcomes across all connected buildings.

Benefits of Smart Spaces

Smart Spaces aimed to create fully autonomous, transformed, and sustainable smart buildings. Acting as a digital twin of the physical environment, it fused data from various devices and systems to provide a centralized view. This solution rendered the ecosystem more agile and adept at addressing real-time changes, including:

• Optimizing heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, generators, uninterruptible power supply (UPS), and transformers through AI-powered smart maintenance, ensuring reliability and stable operating expenses.
• Providing global insights to empower leaders with sustainability scores, ESG reporting, energy efficiency, operating cost savings, trends, and forecasts.
• Improving workspace productivity with better indoor environmental quality and dynamic occupant management while ensuring data privacy.
• Achieving compliance with Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting (BRSR), health, safety and security (HSS), International Organization of Standardization (ISO), building codes, decarbonization, and water positivity.

Value and impact of Smart Spaces

The impact of Smart Spaces was undeniable, delivering significant value such as:

• Achieved facility-wide energy and operating cost savings of 30-50%
  Ensured compliance management with national and global standards like GRI, CSRD, and BRSR
• Enhanced energy efficiency and cost savings through the optimization of HVAC systems and lighting
• Promoted decarbonization by 20-30%
• Improved waste management by enhancing recycling by 10-20%
• Increased water positivity by 10-15%
• Reduced downtime, repair costs, and occupant discomfort through smart maintenance
• Utilized predictive analytics for energy leakages and recommendations for energy-saving measures
• Increased reliability and stabilized operating expenses
• Improved indoor environmental quality and occupant care
• Achieved environmental compliance and sustainable operations
  

Conclusion

Smart Spaces stands at the intersection of sustainability and digital transformation, offering indispensable solutions across various industry verticals. It provides a comprehensive platform for enterprise sustainability, enabling LTIMindtree to manage energy, emissions, water, and waste efficiently. By leveraging advanced technology, Smart Spaces optimizes HVAC, lighting, generators, UPS, and transformers, ensuring reliability and reducing operating expenses.

The initiative improved workspace productivity and indoor environmental quality and also ensured conformity with national and international standards.

Beyond enhancing LTIMindtree’s facilities, Smart Spaces extends its benefits to customers, saving millions of tons of emissions and promoting water positivity. It represents the future of facility management, delivering tangible results while saving valuable time and effort.

Citation:

Future market insights, Smart Space Market: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/smart-spaces-market#:~:text=Smart%20Space%20Market%20Overview%202024,with%20a%20CAGR%20of%2016.2%25.