From a sixth-floor office in Jurong, building managers and engineers can predict if an air-conditioning unit is about to break down or send out an alert if there is a trespasser in multiple properties.
Statutory board JTC is spending about $15 million on a cloud-based building optimisation system to monitor 39 of its more complex buildings by the first half of this year. Twenty have come on board so far.
The investment became necessary, the JTC said, as it sought to manage a growing and ageing portfolio of buildings amid rising operating and energy costs, manpower constraints and ever-increasing expectations of service levels.
The systems are housed in the J-Ops Command Centre, which was commissioned yesterday by Second Minister for National Development Desmond Lee as part of the Real Estate Industry Transformation Map launch.
Mr Lee noted that "more efficient systems mean lower lifetime costs", some of which can rocket to four times the cost of the building itself.
The JTC command centre has been successful so far. In a pilot of three buildings that ran from 2015 to 2016, the agency saw about 15 per cent productivity savings, and shaved about $400,000 off a $2.5 million utility bill.
JTC's group director for facilities and estate management Mark Koh said investing in systems to keep utility bills low and encourage productivity is the agency's way of trying its best to counter the year-on-year 6 per cent increase in costs based on wages and inflation alone.
The JTC has moved from being trade-specific, equipment-focused in the way it manages estates, to consolidating its contracts with service providers, so that they can take advantage of economies of scale. It uses video analytics and an automated workflow system to reduce manpower inefficiencies. The work has also become more preventive, rather than reactive, Mr Koh said.
The agency is testing out new facilities management technologies, such as a lift monitoring system at Fusionopolis One in one-north and a mobile app that allows users to control the temperature of their workspace.
Rachel Au-Yong
