You might have been flabbergasted taking a look at the height of Freedom Tower, Empire State, and Burj Khalifa; however, have you ever wondered what it takes to maintain a skyscraper? Let’s take the example of Burj Khalifa. The tallest building in the world has 24,830 windows. When Burj Khalifa was cleaned first time in 2012, it required more than 17,000 hours to clean it with a team of 36 workers equipped with all modern machinery working tirelessly for 3 months.
Dubai stands at the pinnacle in the world in terms of the highest number of skyscrapers above 300 meters of height with 27 skyscrapers, followed by Shenzhen in China and New York City in the US with 14 skyscrapers each. It is certainly not a cakewalk to operate these skyscrapers. As the height of the building increases, more equipment, technology, and manpower is needed to maintain it.
Complex Maintenance Process:
The maintenance of a skyscraper is indeed a hard nut to crack. It is indeed a very bulky and time-consuming process. For example: the maintenance process at Burj Khalifa involves a long list of activities such as: painting, plastering, lighting, flooring and tiling repairs, gardening, plumbing, HVAC system maintenance, windows and doors repairs, fire detectors, alarms and sensors maintenance, infrastructure maintenance, cleaning, and decorating.
Timely maintenance of the building holds an upper edge in ensuring its structural stability, performance optimization, and identifying the causes of defects. It is pivotal to continuously strategize on exploring novel ways to keep the performance of the building optimum and operational cost minimal.
Designing a Marginal Crossing Plan:
While operating a skyscraper, it is important to calculate the effort each point consumes from working hours to labourers and its impact on the average accuracy at the end. Once the calculations are made, it’s time to draft a marginal crossing plan for all types of maintenance to be performed followed by a well-thought execution plan which clearly outlines everyone’s responsibilities.
Types of Maintenance:
Maintenance is not a one time job. It should be carried out at regular intervals to curtail the possibilities of any risks or snags. According to designing buildings UK, there are seven types of maintenance to be considered in construction.
The first one is Planned maintenance which includes servicing of boilers on a regular basis. The second one is Preventive maintenance, which is undertaken to keep things up and running or extend its life, such as replacing cracked roofing tiles before inclement weather. After that it’s Corrective maintenance, which involves repairing anything damaged such as the window or guttering. Then comes Front-line maintenance which involves repainting and decorating an occupied building and maintaining those assets which are in use. Proactive maintenance must be performed to avoid failures and to identify potential causes which can lead to failure. Reliability-centered maintenance is performed to ensure a physical asset continues to function correctly. And at last, Scheduled maintenance is performed as preventive maintenance according to the predetermined intervals, number of operations, and hours run, etc.
The type of maintenance to be performed varies as per the situation. Technology can play an integral role here in minimizing defects and unexpected errors to ensure better coordination, control & efficiency.
Minimizing the Operating Cost of Skyscraper:
The glittering skyscrapers of the UAE are also responsible for the region’s increased energy consumption. At present, sheikdoms have some of the highest electricity and water consumption per capita in the world. According to Index Mundi, UAE stands at 10th spot globally in terms of electricity consumption. A report by Mordor Intelligence reveals that UAE has witnessed strong growth in electricity consumption at an annual rate of 5.5% over the past five years which is primarily driven by a surge in economic activity, rising population, infrastructure development, and industrialization.
As far as consumption of water is concerned, the story is not different. On average, the national water consumption rate including personal, residential, commercial, and agriculture, stands at 550 liters per day per capita in the UAE as compared to the global average of between 170 to 300 litres per day per capita. This colossal surge in water consumption is leading to several challenges such as: limited reuse of water, an increase in the cost of producing drinking water, high salinity levels in the present groundwater, and lack of wastewater treatment outside of urban areas. The sheikhdoms are in dire need to seek alternatives to cut down their energy consumption.
Without a shadow of a doubt, the UAE must explore novel and newfangled ways to cut the operating cost of its skyscrapers to minimize its energy consumption requirements.
Here are the top four ways to minimize the operating cost of a Skyscraper:
- Solar Architecture:
Solar architecture has worked wonders in minimizing the energy consumption for most of the UAEs skyscrapers. The key feature of solar architecture is passive solar heating which is implemented during the building\’s initial construction; to minimize need for maintenance or attention.
To attain optimum utilization of energy, the building must leverage passive solar architecture with low water engineering solutions along with sustainable materials to minimize the impact on resource reserve. The design provisions must consist of low water engineering solutions, photovoltaic panels, integrated renewables, and photovoltaic panels. It is of paramount importance to make sure that the areas designed to gain solar heat are not shaded by growth of landscaping or other obstructions during the maintenance process.
- Building Automation Systems:
HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems have been identified as the biggest culprit in shooting up energy usage and bills. The research conducted by the US Department of Energy suggests that HVAC systems account for 35% of energy consumption, lighting consumes 11% of energy, major appliances such as freezers, dryers, water heating, etc. account for 18% of energy consumption and electronics items consume 36% of energy.
Implementing the building automation systems such as 75F will assist the building maintenance team in controlling and regulating the lighting based on the tenant’s preferences and the environment.
75 F is an intelligent, cost-friendly solution to improve the energy efficiency of commercial buildings. It is instrumental in controlling several components within the building’s structure such as HVAC. 75 F has been designed with a core objective of curtailing cost, increasing safety, and galvanizing efficiency.
The role of temperature and humidity sensors is significant in optimizing the cooling and heating systems. The deployment of motion and occupancy sensors further optimizes the security, thermostats, and lighting. Building automation systems also enable the facility managers to closely monitor the total usage of energy in a specified time period and compare it with the same month usage of the previous year and taking corrective actions.
The implementation of Building automation systems curtails the overall maintenance and operational cost of the building and improves employee productivity. It also facilitates property management firms in designing an effective and predictable maintenance plan. Furthermore, Building automation systems allow the facility managers to remotely control the air quality, cooling, heating, and ventilation of the building through timely notifications and alerts.
The role of building automation systems is also crucial in improving the operational efficiency of the property. They ensure optimum utilization of every equipment, resource, as well as employees. Building management systems are also backed by advanced analytics technology to identify gaps in equipment performance. The analytics system alerts the facility management to take corrective actions before it erupts.
- Designing a Preventive Maintenance Plan (PMP):
A well-designed Preventive Maintenance Plan (PMP) is the key in improving efficiency, reducing maintenance cost, minimizing the instances of system failure, increasing the service life of parts, and improving the operator’s safety.
If the percentage of planned maintenance is below 85%, it means that technicians are spending at least 15% of their time on reactive maintenance. In other words, the maintenance technicians spend 15% of their time fixing faults that could have been prevented.
Preventive Maintenance Plan also cut down the downtime for repairs which leads to a reduction in the overall operational cost of the building.
- Leveraging the Power of Predictive Analytics:
Predictive analytics platforms facilitate the building maintenance team in closely monitoring and inspecting the data of the HVAC system to improve the overall efficiency of ventilation, heating, cooling, and air conditioning throughout the building. Predictive testing also enables just-in-time maintenance of the building and equipment and also makes the maintenance team aware of the factors which can disrupt the operations.
- Follow the Basics:
- The usage of LED lights will minimize the electricity consumption of the building.
- Regulating the room temperature at 24-degree Celsius can save a significant amount of energy
- Install water-saving devices wherever possible to minimize water consumption
- Higher efficiency of the building equipment will result in a decline in the number of HVAC equipment. It will also lead to the elimination of traditional equipment used in the building which consumes a large proportion of energy. This will result in a significant decline in the operational cost of the building.
- Leveraging cloud-based applications and software that operates wirelessly will eliminate the huge costs incurred in installing technology hardware, workstations, and software. Wireless systems are almost 5 X faster to install and are more intuitive. Furthermore, they also save costs by eliminating the need for specialist custom programming.
- Leveraging innovative technologies such as – web monitoring and mobile monitoring and adjustments will allow the building management team to manage multiple sites at a time. This will reduce the overall cost of managing the building and will minimize team disruption.
- Making the best use of data insights through real-time data feeds and software will facilitate the building management to gain additional efficiency. Data insights will allow the team to identify the patterns to better understand the occupant experience, the load on the building, equipment performance, and the internal environment of the building.
