MONTH IN FM
APRIL 2019 45
FMJ.CO.UK
OVERCOMING BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Is your organisation facing rising property
and facilities management costs or falling
productivity? How about a need for improved
building security, greater infrastructure
asset resilience, or a demand for meaningful
workplace wellbeing o erings that will drive
talent attraction and retention? If so, you’re not
alone.
The industry sector your organisation belongs to
will typically determine the greatest challenge you
SMART DESK OCCUPANCY SENSOR LAUNCHED TO
HELP BUSINESSES MONITOR WORKSPACE USE
Pressac Communications, a UK
manufacturer of smart sensor
technology, has launched a wireless,
low-energy, under-desk sensor to detect
occupancy and help companies use
o ice space more e iciently. This new
solution allows facilities managers to
see live desk availability and collect
usage data quickly and easily.
The under-desk passive infrared (PIR)
sensor is a small, unobtrusive box that
sticks to the underside of a desk and
detects the presence of people. The
sensors are wireless and use very little
energy, making them easy to install and
maintain. They can be used to support
space optimisation planning, smart desk
and meeting room booking and smart-building
management based on occupancy monitoring.
Jamie Burbidge, Digital Solutions Product
Manager at Pressac, says: “We’ve developed the
sensor based on extensive customer feedback. We
quickly learnt no two use-cases were the same
and many alternative sensor options were too
power hungry. With this in mind, we designed our
under-desk sensor to be highly configurable using
our remote commissioning tool and highly energy
e
icient so batteries should only need replacing
every 5-10 years.
“As well as identifying underused or
high-usage areas, enabling customers to
manage people and space more e
iciently,
data collected from the sensors can also be
used to reduce costs and improve energy
e
iciency with automated lighting, heating,
ventilation and air conditioning based on
occupancy.”
Sensor data is encrypted using AES-128
encryption and sent wirelessly to Pressac’s
gateway. From there, live data can be made
available using industry-standard formats
such as MQTT, or published directly to cloud
services such as IBM Watson IoT and Azure
IoT Hub. Occupancy data can also feed
directly into existing building management
systems with protocols such as Modbus.
With a high-adhesive sticker to fix it in place
and highly energy e
icient batteries, the sensor is
designed to be quick to install and extremely low
maintenance. If preferred, users can choose an
optional screw-mounting kit and a rechargeable
USB-powered variant.
www.pressac.com
wish to address. Manufacturing
companies, for example, are
exploring ways to reduce the
downtime of infrastructure
assets that will a
ect their
bottom line, while financial
services companies
are more focused on
greater security. Retail
businesses want to
lean in to technology
to reduce inventory
losses, whereas
healthcare providers
want more
transparency of
their estates to help identify e
iciencies and
reduce costs.
Yet when faced with finding solutions to
these diverse challenges - o en while being
simultaneously asked to achieve more with
less - organisations across all sectors are
understandably looking to digital transformation
for the answers.
Winning the digital revolution
The reason is clear. Data, and the internet of
things, have long been held up as the solution to
almost every workplace challenge. Yet, it’s not the
organisations with the greatest amount of data
that will be the winners of the digital revolution,
but rather those with the intelligence and tools to
interpret and draw out actionable insights from
that data.
At Mitie, we believe that better buildings result
in better working lives. And that by embracing our
market-leading, technology-enabled integrated
facilities management services we help our
customers to create exceptional, high-performance
working environments, that empower and inspire
their people to achieve the exceptional, every day.
This includes capturing those data-driven
insights we mentioned before, thanks to the
introduction of our Connected Workspace service.
But what is the Connected Workspace? Why not
explore www.connectedworkspace.com and see
how Mitie can ensure your organisation is at the
forefront of the digital transformation of facilities
management?
www.connectedworkspace.com info@mitie.com 0330 678 0710
/www.pressac.com
/www.connectedworkspace.com
/www.connectedworkspace.com
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