Hosepipe ban missing a major culprit: the commercial property sector
Monday, 19th October 2022
The climate currently paints a bleak picture. Rivers are drying up around the world and droughts are being declared across much of the world. This scarcity is making it abundantly clear that we all need to do our bit to save water. In the UK, we’ve seen responses such as hosepipe bans dotted around the country and tips on limiting water usage at home such as reusing ‘greywater’ to water our plants, with varying guidance spanning across the world. While in the US, water restrictions in certain states and cities are put in place to limit residents’ outdoor water usage in an effort to protect drinking water supplies.
The idea being that we must all adapt, and all do our bit to save the planet and conserve water. However, are we not missing the bigger picture here? Why is the onus on consumers to save water? Are they really the ones who should be taking ownership and making sacrifices?
Of course such initiatives help, in fact, it is estimated that hosepipe bans save about 10% of wasted water in the UK, so it’s not a case of absolving consumers of all responsibility. But we are missing a major culprit here - the commercial property sector. Keeping plants alive may be out, but needlessly running millions of litres of water down the drain from our commercial buildings is fine? It’s time for the commercial real estate sector to step up and address the sheer scale at which it wastes water every day from dripping taps and leaky pipes, to unnecessary water usage when complying – inefficiently – with regulation.
To put this into perspective, a single dripping tap can waste over 5,000 litres a year - so what about if you multiply that by 1,000 in an office building or hospital? Let’s fix this wastage issue first before plants become collateral.
Let’s face it, as a sector real estate has been sluggish to innovate. While other industries have been swept up in the tide of digital transformation, the majority of commercial buildings are still living in the dark ages. Most building data is gathered by humans visiting sites; manually checking equipment and taking notes on a clipboard. Such processes are not only wildly inefficient, but they actually waste even more water.
Take legionella compliance, for example, engineers are routinely checking and running taps, needlessly flushing excess water down the drain just for the minimum act of compliance. On top of this, we need to consider hidden leaks in pipe networks. If an engineer is only coming in for routine monthly checks or only once water damage is spotted, that’s a whole host of water already wasted before it’s even assessed and documented as a problem.
In short, the real estate sector needs to change for the better, and embracing digitisation principles that have served other industries so well already is the answer.
Data is the first building block here. You cannot make a building more efficient or less wasteful unless you can understand and track what’s going on in it first. To fix the data black hole we need to start collecting data through IoT sensors, and then using analytics and AI to give a full picture of buildings in real-time. This helps provide key actionable insights, automate processes and in time, even predict outcomes - all in the name of water preservation, and efficiency gains. By automating compliance and regulation tasks, building managers are able to respond to leaks as soon as they arise and are able to continuously remote monitor for legionella compliance without needlessly running taps with on-site checks. One of the key ways to minimise the risk of legionella is by running water, which happens naturally in inhabited spaces, so if you have the data to prove such activity is in fact occurring you won’t need engineers to routinely flush the taps where it isn’t necessary. Data has the ability to empower building managers and help them reduce costs, while simultaneously keeping on top of compliance without wasting water. Remote monitoring also helps to save other critical resources such as CO2 emissions from reduced car journeys to site.
The results speak for themselves for those that have taken the plunge and invested in technology for their building estate for the sake of a more sustainable future. For example, a leading UK bank now saves 8.1 million litres of water a year across 550 sites due to remote monitoring, automation and advanced AI. Real estate company JLL has also reported saving 600 litres of water per tap annually by automating legionella compliance processes through Infogrid’s technologies. If all commercial properties take action, we could save a lot more water than a standard hose pipe pan.
With this much at stake, it’s high time the real estate sector around the world steps into the 21st century, exploring how digitisation can help protect the planet and save water. There’s no time to wait, it's time to act.
Ross Sheil, Senior Vice President Global Revenue, Infogrid