Smart Washroom Technology for Operations Cost Optimization

Case Study: QuadReal — IoT / LPWAN Deployment

The Customer

Headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, QuadReal Property Group is a global real estate investment, operating and development company. QuadReal manages the real estate and mortgage programs of British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), one of Canada’s largest asset managers with a $171.3 billion portfolio. Today QuadReal also manages real estate on behalf of RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM). QuadReal manages a $44.2 billion portfolio spanning 23 Global Cities across 17 countries.

The Challenge

At the QuadReal Commerce Court campus, the Operations Management Team was spending nearly $1,000,000 annually on consumables such as paper towels, toiletries, and soap. Commerce Court is a large Downtown Toronto multi-building campus with 50+ story office towers that receives over 7,000 visitors a day. QuadReal Executives historically used KPIs for janitorial services that measured quality of service from their partner providers based on tenants’ feedback when/where consumables had run out or washroom cleanliness was unsatisfactory. QuadReal observed that changes to resource deployment by the Janitorial Services vendors were implemented and tenant satisfaction levels were restored, consumption of toiletries and supplies increased while visitor traffic to these locations remained in a steady state. QuadReal Executives sought out a solution that would provide their OM Team with metrics, monitoring, and analytics of washroom traffic and consumables with the goals to:

• Measure and manage operational expenses for consumables and toiletries against quantitative data collected on foot traffic through those facilities
• Monitor and improve human resource allocation and management of janitorial services
• More effectively dispatch human resources in a targeted manner when janitorial services are required
• Provide their operations team, tenants, and guests with confidence in the quality of service being delivered by janitorial services team members at Commerce Court

The Solution

QuadReal Executives observed that their janitorial service providers had increased cleaning schedule frequency in order to maintain tenant satisfaction levels, and hypothesized that consumable refills may be turned over before supplies were exhausted to meet tenant service expectations. Equally as important, QuadReal believed human resources were being deployed and cleaning cycles completed whether or not those facilities actually required service. QuadReal, WaveCastle, and Andorix completed a market analysis process to identify possible solutions available at market that would deliver a full-stack metrics, monitoring, and management platform including supply sensing capabilities for tracking consumables, presence detection, as well as human resources tracking.

QuadReal identified the Commerce Court West tower as an ideal site inside their commercial portfolio to pilot innovation initiatives. Andorix Inc. and WaveCastle were engaged to replace legacy Cisco active ethernet infrastructure used for base building management with fibre optic-based PON Converged Network Services that effectively future-proof commercial properties for Smart Building, IoT, and 5G deployment initiatives.

Working in partnership with WaveCastle, BehrTech, Mero and Andorix, QuadReal designed a pilot project to test the use case for leveraging IoT based sensors for supply sensing and human resource deployment inside the Commerce Court West tower. The ultimate goal of the project was to understand whether or not technology could effectively manage consumables and human resource deployment more efficiently than the present operating model.

QuadReal and their pilot partner team deployed base building, wireless last-mile, and IoT sensor technology to provide network service coverage throughout the building to supply sensing, presence detection, and human resource tracking sensors that were used in public washroom areas and by janitorial service team members servicing the property. The deployment methodology was as follows:

Converge Network Service for Base Building Network & Standard WiFi

• Andorix Inc. deployed PON Converged Network Service infrastructure inside all telecom riser rooms, within the main telecom room, and last-mile physical network drops needed for wireless base station deployment

LPWAN IoT Wireless Network Service

• BehrTech and Andorix deployed MyThings (MIoTy) LPWAN base stations inside Commerce Court West in order to deliver low-powered wireless connectivity service to IoT connected washroom fixtures, presence detection sensors, and human resource tracking key fobs that would be used inside Commerce Court West

Supply Sensing IoT Sensors & Human Resource Location Tracking Devices

• Mero and QuadReal replaced standard bathroom fixtures with IoT enabled smart fixtures like Paper Towel and Soap dispensers, non-invasive presence detection sensors, and human resource location awareness key fobs for use by janitorial service team members

The Outcome

The pilot project was run on four floors at Commerce Court West for a period of six months. The QuadReal and Mero teams worked with the janitorial service vendors to segregate tracking and HR scheduling for the pilot floors (CC, 19, 44, 49) in order to measure consumption and labour metrics of those locations independently from the remaining floors in the building. Over the course of the pilot, QuadReal and Mero observed a supply waste reduction of twenty-seven percent (-27%) on the pilot floors, as well as a reduction of labour for services of 115.5 hours per month compared to the rest of the building. QuadReal concluded that this technology if implemented throughout the rest of the building, could create a savings of $100K+ in supply consumption and $30K+ in human resource costs.

The Highlights

• QuadReal projects that annual savings of $100K+ in supplies such as paper products and toiletries could be realized
• Janitorial services labour costs could be reduced by $30K or more annually
• Labour reduction represented a savings of up to 10%
• Environmental waste and supply savings start immediately, providing 1.5x pilot ROI, and a projected waste reduction of 27% or more
• QuadReal and tenants would have peace of mind supplies and consumables remained stocked and washrooms cleaned effectively and efficiently

POC Technology Observations & Lessons

The pilot project technology teams provided post-mortem feedback on a real-world product, service, and platform performance after the six-month pilot term concluded. The following observations were key learnings from the pilot project:

• Building materials used inside public spaces including washrooms differ greatly from those used in tenant fit-out construction and require adjustments in technology deployment methodologies to realize equivalent performance compared to tenant-occupied spaces
• Wireless technologies required for IoT sensor deployment that leverage license-free radio spectrum are competing with other technologies using that same spectrum
• Additional testing and planning is required when operating wireless technologies using license-free spectrum in public spaces or concourses where the real estate operator or a single tenant will not have control of all technologies deployed in those areas
• Traditional wireless services like 2.5Ghz and 5Ghz WiFi was not a practical or cost-effective solution to deliver wireless coverage throughout the building in order to scale the service rollout from pilot to production or for future IoT use cases where broad network coverage would be required
• Traditional base building network technologies from Cisco, Juniper, and Arista, while technically capable were not cost-effective or practical solutions to deliver base building network services as QuadReal looked to scale the pilot out to the remaining properties in the Commerce Court campus

WaveCastle, Andorix, and QuadReal piloted LPWAN wireless technologies from different vendors in order to compare the real-world performance of LoRaWAN and MIoTy wireless standards when deployed common areas and concourses

• Due to time constraints for the pilot design phase, single-sourced vendors were selected for LoRaWAN and MIoTy design testing purposes
• The LoRaWAN technology tested during the pilot design phase was sensitive to RF interference and the interference mitigation protocol reduced the effective coverage area of the LoRaWAN base station as a means of avoiding collisions and dropped packets
• The LoRaWAN base stations tested during the pilot design phase were susceptible to self-interference from other base stations deployed in close proximity as a means of increasing coverage when the base stations radio signal was decreased by one of more decibels to combat RF interference from foreign devices
• Similarly, the MIoTy base stations tested during the pilot design phase required adjustments to the standard deployment methodology compared to a deployment test completed in tenant fit-out space occupied by the Andorix Inc R&D lab team
• QuadReal and Andorix observed that the MIoTy base stations which use Telegram Splitting, where the same data packet was broadcasted on multiple fluctuating frequencies, provided a reliable quality of service for wireless sensor data transmission
• Building materials used in the Commerce Court West concourse and public spaces, as well as foreign base stations or end-user device RF interference, required adjustments including radio densification even for MIoTy
• Both MIoTy and LoRaWAN regardless of performance caveats in the concourse and public areas delivered significant capital / operational cost efficiencies compared to traditional wireless (WiFi) (including base station infrastructure, IoT sensor devices, and battery life of remote sensor equipment)

About the Case Study Team

WaveCastle Consulting Inc.

Founded in 2020, WaveCastle Consulting Inc. is a telecommunications and digital infrastructure professional services firm based in Toronto, ON. We specialize in advancing investment initiatives on behalf of real estate operators across diverse asset class portfolios as well as supporting technology partners serving the real estate community. We have a wealth of experience with fibre optic networks, wireless, and IoT service delivery inside multi-use buildings, as well as inside and outside plant telecommunications infrastructure deployments.

Andorix Inc.

Andorix Inc. provides a suite of managed IT services to mid-size enterprises in Ontario, including point-to-point private fibre connectivity, in-building network solutions, specialized cloud platforms and digital services. We are the enablers of digital services for our customers, with the sole mission and responsibility to help them create value.

Andorix was formed from a merger of two partner-led market-leading organizations with a combined 36 years’ experience in providing managed IT solutions. Our expertise in Managed as-a Service, Backup and Disaster Recovery, Application Management, Network, IoT, and Smart Building allows us to provide our customers with the platform to leverage cloud technologies for continued innovation.

BEHRTECH

BehrTech offers a disruptive wireless connectivity software platform that is purpose-built for massive-scale IoT networks. At the core of the platform is MIOTY, a new communication technology standardized by ETSI that provides reliable, robust, and scalable connectivity unlike any other technology on the market. With its approach to interoperability, BehrTech makes it easy for end users to retrofit its MYTHINGS platform in any environment and enables partners, system integrators, and VARs to deliver fully-integrated IIoT solutions that enable data-driven decisions to be made.

Mero

Mero is providing an analytics platform for commercial properties already saving millions of dollars on commercial cleaning and supply costs. Deployed in commercial buildings around the world, the IoT platform allows buildings to minimize their environmental impact, control costs and help the world return safely to public spaces. The product provides sensing on critical supplies like soaps, sanitizers, and paper products, and routes cleaning staff to areas over 30% more efficiently.