Capgemini promotes the transformation and upgrading of smart buildings by using LoRa technology

As a leading global technology services provider with approximately 400 buildings in use around the world, Capgemini knew the only way to ensure maximum employee productivity in its many offices while meeting its stringent corporate sustainability goals was to implement a smart building system based on proven Internet of Things (IoT) technology, Semtech’s LoRa® devices, and the LoRaWAN® open protocol. The initial investment represented 2% of Capgemini’s total budget for facilities; the company expects to save more than 10% annually by increasing occupancy rates in most offices to more than 75%.

The project has proven so successful that Capgemini now offers its own LoRa-based smart office system, SmartOffice, to external clients. A company with a 300 million euro facility budget could potentially save 45 million euros per year with a one-time investment of 6 million euros in the SmartOffice solution.

The expanding smart building and commercial real estate market

Countries around the world are developing increasingly advanced smart cities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and generally make life easier for residents and business owners. A key element in the development of any smart city is the ability to inject a high level of intelligence into its buildings, especially in commercial real estate. Navigant Research predicts that the global market for smart building IoT technology will grow from $8.5 billion in 2020 to more than $22 billion in just six years.

For Capgemini, it has become clear that a company that provides implementation solutions for the smart building market must work not only with software experts, but also with property managers or facility management operators, as they have very different concepts and expectations of smart buildings. Capgemini has found that IoT infrastructure has its own characteristics and the cost units in smart buildings are also very different. Real estate customers are affected by the price per square meter, rather than operating in an information technology (IT) driven world that charges by speed and traffic. For this purpose, sustainability is considered an important factor, as the reduction in square meters directly leads to a reduction in carbon footprint.

Capgemini found in its research that many companies active in the smart building market claim to be selling solutions when they are actually selling a product or combination of products that can be imagined to be combined into an end-to-end solution. In the entire IoT field, sensors must be part of a complete data management ecosystem.

This task involves not only transmitting sensor data to the backend of a smart building, but also maintaining and monitoring the sensor network and its physical assets, as well as tracking changes in the office environment, interpreting trend analysis, taking appropriate actions, and using data to fine-tune the building's management system. Capgemini is well aware that for a company committed to deploying IoT in the smart building sector, it involves more than simply selecting off-the-shelf technology.

Benefits of Building Smart Buildings

Driving costs down isn’t necessarily the primary benefit of building smart buildings. Capgemini renews real estate contracts every five years and regularly negotiates contracts around the world. Based on the insights its SmartOffice solution can provide, the company now has visible and actionable data to make these negotiations much easier.

For Capgemini, there is also a strong business case for maximizing office utilization. With an initial investment of 2% of the total office/facilities budget, the company has been able to save more than 10% per year on office space costs by increasing utilization in most offices to more than 75%.

Additionally, the company wanted to address the 30% of meeting rooms that were “unused,” which happens when people schedule meetings and book a conference room, but the space is not used despite the booking still being there.

Meanwhile, Capgemini’s average office occupancy rate is 65% – that is, 65 desks/seats are occupied for every 100 desks. The goal is to increase this to over 75%, but to achieve this, extremely accurate data is needed. Accuracy is critical because local managers tend to determine occupancy rates based on peak periods, so they need to be convinced by real data.

Another key benefit is the ability to check meeting room availability, which is part of Capgemini’s larger goal of continually working to achieve better utilization of buildings. It is important for employees to be able to find available meeting rooms so that they can plan their interactions and schedules more efficiently and accurately, helping to minimize travel costs. Capturing accurate, real-time data and delivering it to employees throughout the building is critical to Capgemini.

With these factors in mind, Capgemini developed a sensor solution based on Semtech’s LoRa devices that includes:

  Occupancy sensors – these are used in meeting rooms to get real-time occupancy which is displayed on the floor plan in the mobile app

 Desk Sensors – These are used in desks and meeting room tables to monitor actual occupancy. This information is used to size layouts correctly and can also show the location of available seats in real time

Comfort sensors – these are used to measure CO2, noise, temperature, humidity and light to provide this information to office occupants (and signal terminals)

Capgemini’s Corporate Real Estate Services (CRES) has deployed sensors based on Semtech’s SX1276 long-range, low-power transceiver in its smart buildings at approximately 25 locations around the world, located in the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, the US, France, India, Italy and Spain. The truly global coverage of LoRaWAN has enabled Capgemini to deploy approximately 5,000 meeting room sensors in the first phase of the smart building development, and more than 75,000 meeting room and desk sensors in the second phase. Although the company operates in 40 countries, sensors will only be deployed in buildings where it makes sense, depending on the size of the building and the number of employees working there. By the end of 2020, the global deployment will cover approximately 85,000 sensors (including meeting, comfort and desk sensors).

Companies like Capgemini spend hundreds of millions of dollars on office space and facility costs. Increasing office utilization from 65% to 75% can save 15%. For a company with €400 million in annual costs, this means a one-time investment of €8 million and a potential annual savings of €60 million.

Capgemini has been able to demonstrate the key benefits that Semtech’s RF-based technology can provide, including monitoring employee comfort issues and cost savings. With data provided by LoRa devices, facility managers can access the most accurate and timely data on restroom cleanliness, temperature, humidity, CO2, and meeting room noise levels.

 “When adopting IoT technologies, the focus has to be on the people, not the technology. You have to engage with everyone involved, which is very different from working in a pure IT environment because to be successful in the IoT space you have to work very closely together. This is one of the key lessons we learned from working with Semtech.” Hans Scholten, Vice President Corporate Real Estate and Product Owner for Smart Office Solutions at Capgemini.

Deploy SmartOffice in Capgemin

For Capgemini, it is extremely important that its smart buildings are based on a solution that is truly scalable across offices, which means that wired sensors are replaced because they are very labor-intensive to install and maintain. Without the flexibility provided by Semtech's LoRa devices, it would be difficult for Capgemini to promote its global transformation across multiple offices so quickly and effectively, and it would be even more difficult for Capgemini to provide other multinational companies with the experience and consulting services required to successfully implement smart buildings.

Initially, Capgemini did not choose LoRa devices or develop sensor solutions, as its intention was to provide its own commercial products; developing hardware-based sensors and selling products was not a good fit for it, as this was not the core business of a software developer. However, once the company gained experience and realized the success that the LoRa platform could bring, it realized that this was a major opportunity to provide the market with a better solution than anything currently available. Because Capgemini is able to provide a commercial product, the company's customers will be able to improve their core decision-making capabilities through better access to data. At the same time, this development will enable Capgemini to sell other core services, such as solving IT problems at customer locations and creating applications that can provide businesses with the deep insights they need.

Capgemini found Semtech’s RF technology to be the obvious choice in developing its range of IoT solutions, including its intelligent SmartOffice sensor devices, as it meets key requirements such as range, sensitivity, reliability and ease of installation, while most importantly enabling significantly longer battery life for the sensors (up to 10 years).

LoRaWAN was chosen as the network standard for Capgemini's SmartOffice solution for many reasons, the most important of which is its ease of installation. This is crucial for 400 offices scattered across more than 40 countries, as local non-technical personnel can install gateways and sensors, and only LoRaWAN makes this possible. Another reason for choosing LoRaWAN is its longer-range coverage.

The gateways used by Capgemini are sensors that can cover a distance of more than 50 meters, which means that one gateway can cover an area of ​​more than 10,000 square meters; by using LoRaWAN, Capgemini was able to minimize the number of gateways in the office, thus greatly saving installation costs. Finally, LoRaWAN offers an excellent price-performance ratio. The company was able to develop a cost-effective solution that is much cheaper than any type of product currently on the market.