A small, covert team of engineers at Microsoft cast aside suggestions
that the company spend US$60 million to turn its 500-acre headquarters
into a smart campus to achieve energy savings and other efficiency
gains. Instead, applying an “Internet of Things meets Big Data”
approach, the team invented a data-driven software solution that is
slashing the cost of operating the campus’ 125 buildings. The software,
which is saving Microsoft millions of dollars, has been so successful
that the company and its partners are now helping building managers
across the world deploy the same solution. And with commercial buildings
consuming an estimated 40 percent of the world’s total energy, the
potential is huge.
1: The Visionary
"Give me a little data and I’ll tell you a little. Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world."
- Darrell Smith , Director of Facilities and Energy
“This is my office,” says the sticker on Darrell Smith’s laptop, and it is.
With
his “office” tucked under his arm, Microsoft’s director of facilities
and energy is constantly shuttling between meetings all over the
company’s 500-acre, wooded campus in Redmond, Washington.
But Smith always returns to one unique place.
The
Redmond Operations Center (often called “the ROC”) is located in a
drab, nondescript office park. Inside is something unique – a new
state-of-the-art “brain” that is transforming Microsoft’s 125-building,
41,664-employee headquarters into one of the smartest corporate campuses
in the world.
Smith
and his team have been working for more than three years to unify an
incongruent network of sensors from different eras (think several
decades of different sensor technology and dozens of manufacturers). The
software that he and his team built strings together thousands of
building sensors that track things like heaters, air conditioners, fans,
and lights – harvesting billions of data points per week. That data has
given the team deep insights, enabled better diagnostics, and has
allowed for far more intelligent decision making. A test run of the
program in 13 Microsoft buildings has provided staggering results – not
only has Microsoft saved energy and millions in maintenance and utility
costs, but the company now is hyper-aware of the way its buildings
perform.
It’s no small thing – whether a
damper is stuck in Building 75 or a valve is leaky in Studio H – that
engineers can now detect (and often fix with a few clicks) even the
tiniest issues from their high-tech dashboard at their desks in the ROC
rather than having to jump into a truck to go find and fix the problem
in person.
If the facility management world
were Saturday morning cartoons, Smith and his team have effectively
flipped the channel from “The Flintstones” to “The Jetsons.” Instead of
using stone-age rocks and hammers to keep out the cold, Smith’s team
invented a solution that relies on data to find and fix problems
instantly and remotely.
SLIDESHOW: Building the Microsoft Campus
“Give me a little data and I’ll tell you a little,” he says. “Give me a lot of data and I’ll save the world.”
Smith
joined Microsoft in December of 2008. His previous work managing data
centers for Cisco had given him big ideas about how buildings could be
smarter and more efficient, but until he came to Microsoft he lacked the
technical resources to bring them to life. What he found at Microsoft
was support for these ideas on all sides – from his boss to a handful of
savvy facilities engineers. They all knew buildings could be smarter,
and together they were going to find a way to make it so.
Smith
has a finger-tapping restlessness that prevents him from sitting
through an entire movie. His intensity comes paired with the
enthusiastic, genial demeanor of a favorite bartender or a softball
buddy (and indeed, he does play first base for a company softball team,
the Microsoft Misfits).
Ever punctual and an
early riser, Smith lives near Microsoft headquarters and has taken to
spending a few quiet hours at his desk on Sundays.
“I call it my den because I live a mile away. I come here, I make coffee, I have the building to myself,” Smith says.
His
family and the people who know him best understand. Smart buildings are
his passion, and everything in his life has been moving toward finding
ways for companies the world over to get smarter about managing their
buildings (which will help them save money and reduce their energy use).
“Smart buildings will become smart cities,” Smith says. “And smart cities will change everything.”
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