Will Never Go Back to Traditional Operations

– Going back to traditional operating models is completely out of the question, says managing director of Angarde, Bente Haugsdal.  

Surprisingly good results

The property company she leads was an early adopter of new property technology. The journey began when the company’s building at Krokatjønnveien 11C stood empty after a large single tenant had moved out. They wondered what they should do with the building and sought help from a consulting engineering firm. Their answer was a comprehensive refurbishment to the tidy sum of 220 million kroner.  

– We thought that was rather expensive. It was almost enough to build a new building, says Haugsdal.  They therefore contacted Energy Control and Tommy Hagenes, who suggested a slightly different approach.  

– He suggested that the first thing we should do was find out how the building was actually doing. We therefore began by installing sensors from Airthings that collected data on the indoor climate in the premises. The result was that things were surprisingly good, says Haugsdal.  

Packed with sensors

The 220-million-kroner refurbishment was shelved and the technology ball was set in motion. The building at Krokatjønnveien 11C is today the most Airthings-sensored building in the country. 500 sensors continuously measure indoor climate quality, air volumes, temperature, CO2 levels, radon, and presence.  

– The sensors have also gone from monitoring, as we started with, to automatically controlling the building. This means that when there are no people in a space, the ventilation system is automatically turned down to save energy, says Haugsdal.  But it doesn’t stop there. Angarde has in addition implemented a number of measures relating to the efficiency of building operations. They have, among other things, installed Disruptive sensors on all toilets. These measure toilet usage, which is actively linked to cleaning.  

– It turns out that some toilets are used significantly more than others. So instead of cleaning all of them equally, we now clean those that are used most at any given time. Cleaning on demand, in other words, says Haugsdal, adding that they do exactly the same for the building’s offices and meeting rooms.  In addition, they have keyless access in all buildings, which has significantly reduced key administration.  

– Previously, key management took a lot of time. Now individual tenants largely handle this themselves, while we can, for example, grant time-limited access via an app for service personnel who need to enter one of our buildings. The time our operations staff have freed up is used for other and more important tasks, says Haugsdal.  

Saving significant amounts of energy

Using sensors is not only about better indoor climate and easier operations – it is of course also about energy. Angarde therefore uses Energy Control for energy management as well. All the company’s buildings are today equipped with sensors, so that they have ongoing control over energy use in each individual building.  

– In practice it works so that the sensors collect data from the buildings, which is then gathered in EC Dashboard. Here we read the data and see what is using energy and how the building is performing, says Tommy Hagenes.  Based on the data from the sensors, he proposes various improvement measures. One of the first things they did was to install dampers on the ventilation ducts so that they could more closely control ventilation based on demand.  

– Angarde’s energy journey began just over two years ago, and during that time we have achieved an energy reduction of around 50 percent in some of the company’s buildings. We have implemented a number of measures, many of them small and inexpensive, while others cost a bit more. This year, the measures have resulted in the buildings saving more than 500 MWh compared to last year. Those are fantastic results, says Hagenes.  

Get off the fence In a broader perspective, Angarde’s journey is about something much more. It is about the fact that existing buildings have a right to exist, often without being stripped to the bone and then rebuilt.  

– That is not sustainable. We must use the buildings we have and bring them into 2022. With new technology, this is possible without it costing a fortune. That is sustainability in practice, says Hagenes.  The consulting engineers proposed a complete renovation of Krokatjønnveien 11C at a cost of 220 million kroner. So far, Angarde has spent well under 10 percent of this. The building has been refurbished, it is one of the smartest in the city and, not least, it has been given a new lease of life in the form of a number of new tenants.  

– To everyone who is still sitting on the fence wondering whether sensors and new property technology are worthwhile – get off the fence and get started. Buy a simple sensor and start testing. You will quickly discover that it works, says Haugsdal.