BSEE
Now that smart home technology is becoming mainstream, social housing landlords are beginning to explore how it can provide a return on investment by reducing maintenance costs for their properties. Stuart Hough, Managing Director for Travis Perkins Managed Services takes a closer look.
FOCUS: DOMESTIC & RESIDENTIAL LIVING Smart Ways to Reduce Maintenance Costs
here is now a smart device able to monitor and manage almost every aspect of a building’s environment. With the costs of such devices coming down it is becoming an attractive investment for social housing landlords who want to cut their maintenance costs while also improving tenant comfort and wellbeing.
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As major consumer based organisations like Google Nest and Hive get involved, such devices are becoming more intuitive to use for the tenant and can provide data to the landlord so that they can better manage the building’s environment. It means that both parties should benefit.
Comfort and savings
Take a smart thermostat; it is more intuitive to use than a traditional thermostat and can even learn a tenant’s habits to manage their heating at a lower price. If the landlord can access data about the tenant’s heating profile, more on data privacy later, then they can potentially spot issues like fuel poverty and help.
This may involve better insulation for the property, and again using data from the thermostat landlords can assess different options by conducting A B testing across identical properties.
Better yet these devices can monitor the efficiency of the heating system and the boiler. In fact, some will soon be able to conduct a prewinter boiler check to avoid emergency call outs when the first snap of cold weather bites. Heating is just one area where smart devices can make a difference. Several manufacturers, such as Hive, also provide water leak detectors to spot minor problems and remedy it before it turns into a major refurbishment cost. Similarly, humidity detectors spot moisture build-up, which in time could lead to mould. Often damp is simple to rectify through better heating control and ventilation, but you need to know about it first. Safety is another area where technology can come to the landlord’s aid. Smart smoke and carbon monoxide alarms such as those from NEST not only detect a hazard but warn the tenant by voice, which is proven to be more effective than a tonal alarm.
Fire Safety
On a bigger stage technology can help with fire safety in blocks of flats. Maintenance contractors Oakleaf Commercial Services are exploring several options. For prevention these include devices for monitoring electrical circuits and the installation of sniffer heads to detect illegally smuggled gas canisters used for heating.
Another good example are sensors on fire doors to detect if they are working. If they are not working, then the landlord can act to either educate tenants about the danger of blocking them or if they are faulty then they can arrange planned maintenance. This improves safety and saves money by negating the need for a daily walk round to check them.
If a fire does break out then modern fire alarm systems can warn tenants, contact the emergency services and, if necessary, assist evacuation.
28 BUILDING SERVICES & ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEER JULY 2020
Potential future developments include how face recognition technology could help emergency services identify who may be left in a building.
And this is just scratching the surface of what smart technology can do. It can also help with assisted living, security and many other areas within social housing.
Data privacy
Of course, there are problems, but they are not insurmountable. To make such an investment economically viable, landlords need actionable data, so how does this fit with GDPR?
In putting together our whitepaper “The role of Smart Home Technology in Social Housing” we asked manufacturers and a social housing organisation for their thoughts. All agreed that as an absolute minimum the tenant must provide consent for the landlord to gather information about the property. In addition, the landlord should check with their legal department on what is permissible on a case by case basis. This should not be as much of a barrier as you may think. If you can have a constructive conversation with the tenant to point out the benefits that they will get and reassure them that you are monitoring the property and its services, not them, then most will readily agree. They do after all want to live in a well maintained and comfortable property.
Actionable data of course is at the heart of all of this and herein lies another potential barrier. There is probably a smart device to monitor any aspect of a building’s local environment and services. Manufacturers will provide apps to make control and monitoring easier for the user, but if there are too many devices from different manufacturers, then the number of Apps can soon become unwieldy. For the landlord monitoring multiple devices across several different properties this problem is multiplied.
What they need is an information hub that will highlight issues that need maintenance or action. While some manufacturers will build such information hubs it is still early days, but where there is a market need someone will come up with a solution.
Internet access for devices that rely on IoT for functionality is another issue, but again there are practical solutions. One is to establish a distributed network for a block of flats or even a group of houses, which can be part funded by selling internet access to tenants at a cheaper rate than mainstream providers.
Social housing is just beginning to wake up to the possibilities of how smart technology can help them become more efficient, save money and help the tenant. While there are potential problems, they are not insurmountable. It is certainly worth exploring.
This article is based on a whitepaper produced by Travis Perkins Managed Services called “The Role of Smart Home Technology in Social Housing” following detailed discussions with major smart home technology providers and Oakleaf Commercial Services.
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