Transforming local government operations with smarter buildings

As a local government body, you have an important role to play in providing support and stability for your communities. This remit extends beyond the services you provide to the wider community, to include the physical spaces from which you operate. Town halls, libraries, local services and public spaces can all benefit from robust infrastructure to support the needs of operational employees and residents alike. However, the funding gap means your use of budgets to effectively meet the needs of your community, including sustainability, data security and safety objectives, is under scrutiny. 

The good news is smart building technology can help you overcome these challenges in ways that sit outside of the traditional “computing” remit of your IT team. The result? A more efficient working environment including cost savings, increased performance, improved employee well-being, reduced environmental impact and better security.

Experience cost savings 

Three-quarters of councils are using outdated systems to run their operations. These systems are expensive to maintain, often requiring manual interventions and costly replacements. Investing in new technology will help you reduce your costs in the future.

Take connectivity—maintaining wired infrastructure is expensive and time-consuming. Smart buildings include a combination of wired and wireless connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, helping you reduce downtime, increase security and scalability and more efficiently serve your community.

And as for maintenance, smart buildings are equipped with integrated sensors that monitor the health and effectiveness of every system so you can fix any issues before they arise, saving you money and time. 

Increase your performance

The public sector, including local governments, is missing out on £45 billion in productivity savings due to outdated technology. 

Smart buildings are designed to be – well – smart. So alongside cost savings, they will also increase your productivity. With unified system integration features, sensors and IoT devices you can extract insights to influence your strategic decision-making. 

Real-time insight into staff working patterns and peak times will enable you to align your opening hours and shifts to reduce under and over-staffing. And you can reduce operational inefficiency by identifying tasks that can be automated or combined, freeing up time for your staff to work on higher priority and more complex tasks.

Informed decision-making

Smart buildings and connected devices create lots of useful data; analysis of which provides actionable insight into working patterns, peak periods of demand and more. Armed with this intelligence, IT and facilities management professionals can make better informed decisions and ensure quality of service is maintained throughout the working day.

With a better understanding of the demand for bandwidth, power and lighting, it is possible to scale services proactively to meet periods of high and low demand, eliminating bottle necks and over-servicing when it occurs.

Improve employee wellbeing

All these changes will result in an improvement in employee wellbeing, with more efficient scheduling and task allocation reducing stress and burnout. 

Automated temperature control, lighting adjustments and personalised workspace features enable your employees to create an environment tailored to their needs. These technologies will enhance your employee’s comfort and wellbeing, ultimately boosting productivity. 

Reduce environmental impact 

The UK has committed to a 68% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Thanks to sensors that can measure various environmental parameters such as temperature, humidity, light intensity, air quality and occupancy, smart buildings can help you meet this goal.

Smart lighting is a perfect example. With energy prices on the rise, simply “keeping the lights on” can have a detrimental impact on costs and the environment. As local government has embraced remote working, occupancy levels in some facilities are lower than usual. Lighting an unoccupied room is unnecessary, so lighting sensors can be used to turn lights on when a room is occupied and turn them of again when they are empty.

Similarly, instead of creating complicated—and easily forgettable—internal processes for deciding when to use the heating, you can match energy usage to demand. 

Essentially, you can programme your building to meet your needs, increasing your energy efficiency and reducing costs. 

Strengthen your security

Of all public sector entities, local governments are the most vulnerable to ransomware attacks, accounting for 60% of incidents. However, 73% percent of councils appear to have made little or no progress on updating their cybersecurity. 

The implications of a systems breach are wide ranging, and not simply limited to service disruption. The financial impact of a breach can be significant (remediation costs for the Gloucester City Council incident in 2021 exceeded £1m), with knock-on effects impacting policy, regulatory compliance and reputation.

As a public-facing body, it’s vital that your community can trust you, particularly as you support many vulnerable people who rely on your services. Smart building technology will strengthen your defences. Real-time monitoring and access control systems ensure that any bad actors are quickly spotted and removed. 

But it’s not just online safety that matters, the physical safety of your staff and visitors is also vitally important. Smart buildings can help here, too. Integrated systems such as panic alarms, intercoms and mass notification systems will enable you to monitor your premises and promptly detect and respond to any threats.  

Better serve your community 

Smart building technologies will create the working environment your employees need to ensure their wellbeing and increase their productivity. As a result, they’ll be better able to serve the community as they won’t be limited by an inefficient and uncomfortable workspace. 

By implementing these cost-effective and energy efficient technologies you’ll be better positioned to meet sustainability targets and ensure the longevity of your local government entity.

To find out more about our Smart Buildings solutions call us on 0344 863 3000 or email us at enquiries@wavenet.co.uk