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March 2018 \ BUILDING DIALOGUE \ 31 Civil Engineering Surveying Water Resources Management GIS Mapping Construction Management LEED Support Centennial | 303.708.0500 Lakewood | 303.233.3265 Manhard.com ELEMENTS Internet of Things small to medium users, and the whole of the inventory of existing office buildings. There are 5.6 million commercial buildings in the U.S., according to the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. It is not yet known on a large scale how much or how little IoT tech is able to monetize energy savings, for example, but that piece of the tech- nology is imminent. Consider for a moment that the bulk of metro Denver office buildings were built during the 1980s, and that inventory is still largely intact. Metro-area building owners have been increasing both HVAC and common area improvements for years in order to compete with other existing properties and, certainly, new ones. Building amenities have taken center stage for at least the last five years as lobbies, lounges, outdoor spaces and other work-play zones have become bigger, bolder and more millennial-friendly. All these spaces will eventually be connected via IoT as the platform continues to unfold. This presents a serious dilemma for owners: Where will the most value exist? Sexy and highly visible dual-pur- pose spaces, or nuts-and-bolts back-end HVAC systems? Most own- ers just can’t do it all at once without pricing their buildings out of the market. “Obviously it’s extremely costly for older buildings to retrofit new tech, and the payback just hasn’t been proven yet,” said Heather Farley, senior real estate manager with Denver’s DPC Development Co., a Colorado-based owner and developer of commercial proper- ties. Farley notes that DPC is already utilizing IoT technology in its buildings, but only in a limited capacity. “It’s entirely possible right now to control temperature all the way down to the thermostat level, but that’s just not prudent,” she says. “Yes, the technology is there, and portions of it are working well across the market. But in other instances, even new tech on the HVAC side is projecting out a 100-year payback. Who can do that?” That same question obviously applies to the tenant side, as busi- ness owners evaluate what is necessary for the office and what isn’t at this stage of the tech ramp-up. Tenant-side temperature controls and IoT-powered light and oc- cupancy sensors shut down the heating, cooling and lighting of vacant suites or portions of suites. Wireless printers and monitors have been around for a while, and security is always an ongoing issue. New redundant features in smart locks can complement live video streaming apps when human security is not always reliable. And, of course, there is firing up the coffee machines, switching on lights and displays and whatever else a tenant might deem essential to be controlled automatically and monitored remotely. A key for individual tenants will always be how IoT tech will mesh with the office culture, and how flexible and scalable those systems will be. One of the great ironies with IoT development is that, like Thorpe and Ashton, it is relatively unknown. Go ahead, ask around. May- be that’s because the home market for IoT products came first. Or maybe most people simply confuse IoT with the “smart” revolution. Clearly, IoT goes way beyond smart, and it may go way beyond what most of us can imagine. As one high-spirited tech columnist would write in 2015, “IoT has become prodigious yet ephemeral, as difficult to grasp and explain as the Holy Spirit.” Let’s hope he’s only half right.. \\ kwinter@kieding.com