In today’s era of smart cities with exemplary IoT edifices like The Edge in Amsterdam and other multistorey structures, there still exist old infrastructures that lack basic air conditioning thermostats and building automation systems. While certain buildings exhibit some level of intelligence in the form of lighting and fire safety, operations staff and building managers in such properties have no real-time visibility into critical building systems. This makes it arduous for them to not only keep everything up and running, but also manage the space in a way that ensures businesses are operating productively. Addressing this specific issue, Urban.io, an emerging information and technology services startup headquartered in Australia, designs and develops industrial grade IoT devices purpose-built to get actionable and meaningful data from buildings, assets, and spaces into business systems at the lowest cost possible. Rob Cumming, founder and CEO of the company, notes, “The CIO working in conjunction with the Head of Property just needs visibility of around 20 key system endpoints in a building to know it is functioning optimally. Sounds simple, however, the real challenge is that they need to see that same small data set on a single application screen gathered from hundreds or even potentially thousands of locations within their portfolio that is scattered all over the country or the world.” He goes on to explain that the cost and effort to go out to your building locations and retrofit standard building automation technology and then connect it to a central monitoring platform is prohibitive, so many buildings have little or no connected technology to assist in operations.

Correspondingly, Urban.io’s Industrial rated, retrofit ready IoT devices are designed to fill that void and help business owners identify key building issues, decrease maintenance processes and operational costs, provide better visibility of critical asset health, reduce the frequency of planned maintenance tasks, and optimize utility consumption and space usage. Cumming continues, “Remember the long tail of commercial/industrial real estate, the branch office, the retail outlet, factory, warehouse, shed, pumping station, and all those remote sites in emerging markets. All of those problem locations that often house really important things for the business are now in reach.”

While devising the company’s product strategy, Cumming and his team focused on cost to be the prime factor behind certain buildings still lacking an apt building management system. “We targeted each driver of cost; purchase price, installation time, system commissioning, internet connectivity, enterprise integration and realized that we can provide a turnkey solution capable of identifying around 80 percent of the common problems faced by building owners, occupants, and maintenance personnel, and do it for around one-tenth of the price,” explains Cumming.