Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Rudin Management is one of the largest real estate companies in New York City and has just launched a commercial real estate technology start-up called Prescriptive Data. Over the past few months this new company has spent time constructing a cloud-based smart building platform and control panel. This platform, called Nantum, is to form the brain of a building.
According to the article in CRE Tech, Nantum can integrate existing sensor data from different building systems to provide an overall view of how a building is operating. It is then able to recommend real-time systems adjustments, can target preventative maintenance and can identify operational inefficiencies. The aim is to help reduce expenses while enhancing tenant experience.
A team of 55 developers took 18 months to design an early version of this product, using Microsoft SQL server and Oracle database. Unfortunately this required costly on-premises servers and the version took 15 minutes to run processes and was not helpful for building engineers. Instead a team of 16 developers at Prescriptive Data were able to use Amazon Web Services and MongoDB 3.2 Enterprise Advanced to create a brand-new platform in less than four months. Now the system is able to operate in real-time and new features are being added onto the platform, including automating services. The company hopes that Nantum will become the next generation operating system for managing Class A commercial properties.
Nantum is able to learn from past data and can predict daily energy usage. It can generate recommendations on how to optimize the way a building is run. The system is able to manage energy demand by analyzing various factors that include the weather, electric demand and building occupancy and will automatically adjust indoor temperatures to optimal levels. This helps to increase tenant comfort while lowering energy costs and reducing the load on the energy grid. Additionally, the system enables building operators to respond more quickly to any problems or alerts.
At the moment Rudin Management has installed Nantum in 15 commercial buildings in New York City as well as two residential towers. This equates to approximately 10,000,000 ft.² and apparently the system is providing energy savings of between 10% and 13%, depending on the operating hours of the building. The plan is for Prescriptive Data to charge users between seven and eight cents per square foot for integrating the technology in their facility.
