Entelligently v2. Seeing the Whole Building
We’ve launched a new generation of Entelligently, with a completely modernised user experience, spatial digital-twin capabilities, AI-assisted analysis and a much wider ability to work with the diverse systems and data found across real building estates. Now we’re looking for a small number of Entelligently v2 deployment partners to help us build the next set of real-world reference points.
Earlier this month we launched Entelligently v2. For us at KnowNow Information, it is an important milestone.
Entelligently started with a relatively simple idea: if we want to understand how well a building is working for people, perhaps we should start by asking the people inside it. We subsequently deployed Entelligently into numerous real buildings, giving us occupant responses, environmental data and experience of how people reacted to simple, timely interventions – our Smart Nudges, or Snudges.
Those deployments also reinforced something that has shaped v2: the relationship between people and buildings is complicated. Someone can feel cold when the temperature says they shouldn’t; two people in the same space can experience the same conditions differently; and a meeting room can repeatedly make people uncomfortable without generating a fault or alarm.
The original Entelligently helped us connect those experiences with information about the environment around the person. v2 takes that idea considerably further.
We’ve written about the development of v2 in more detail on the Entelligently website. Here, we want to talk about what happens next.
The new platform is ready. Now we want to put it into more buildings, preferably some interesting ones.
What’s changed in Entelligently v2?
Quite a lot. v2 isn’t simply an update to the original platform; we’ve rebuilt the experience around what we learnt from earlier deployments and what is now possible with modern building technologies.
The most visible change is a completely modernised interface. We’ve kept the occupant interaction deliberately simple, while giving those responsible for the building a much richer environment in which to understand what is happening.
Behind that interface are two particularly significant additions: a spatial digital twin and a much broader ability to connect to, and make sense of, building systems and data.
A spatial view of the building
Floor plans can now provide the spatial framework for Entelligently, allowing rooms and zones to be represented and information to be associated with the places where it actually occurs.
An occupant response is no longer simply another record in a database. We can understand where it happened, where a sensor reading came from, which part of the building a piece of equipment serves, and whether several people experiencing the same problem are sitting in the same room or zone.
That changes the questions we can ask. Instead of simply, “Is somebody uncomfortable?”, we can begin asking, “Why does this part of the building repeatedly create this experience?”
Making sense of real building data
The other major development in v2 is connectivity. But simply adding more connections isn’t really the interesting part.
One of the realities of the built environment is how little standardisation there has been over the lifetime of the buildings we still use. A large organisation might have a new building with an excellent BMS, extensive sensing and good connectivity sitting alongside buildings from a different technological era, with proprietary controls, ageing equipment or very little connectivity at all.
Even when data is accessible, its structure and terminology can vary enormously between manufacturers, systems and generations of technology. We’ve even encountered buildings where cameras have been pointed at thermometers to capture readings digitally. It may not be anybody’s vision of the perfect smart building, but it illustrates the reality rather well.
Entelligently v2 is designed for that reality, rather than assuming it away.
Depending on the building and the access available, v2 can potentially bring together information from environmental sensors, BMS and HVAC systems, meters, IoT devices and other connected sources. Integration technologies can also provide routes into a much wider ecosystem of existing devices and systems.
Crucially, V2 can use AI to help interpret what the underlying data represents and what it is telling us. Rather than requiring every source to be forced into a single prescribed data structure before it becomes useful, we can focus on understanding its meaning and context.
A modern BMS may expose a temperature value through a well-documented interface. An older system might represent the same information quite differently, while another building may obtain it from a standalone sensor, or even that camera looking at a thermometer.
The important question isn’t whether all those sources look the same. It’s whether Entelligently can understand what they are telling us about the building.
Bringing people and building data together
For all the additional technology in v2, the person remains the starting point. Buildings already produce increasing quantities of data; we don’t think the answer is simply another dashboard containing more of it.
Imagine that people repeatedly report that a meeting room is stuffy. Occupant feedback gives us the starting point, environmental sensing may show what is happening to CO₂, temperature and humidity, and the digital twin tells us where the problem is occurring. Building-system information can then add context about what the ventilation system was doing at the time.
Those sources may have been created by different manufacturers, installed years apart and never intended to work together. Entelligently’s opportunity is to understand them in context and connect them to the question that matters:
How is this place actually working for the people using it?
We are interested in the awkward problems
We don’t necessarily need the newest building, the smartest building or the one with the most sensors. What we need are interesting questions.
Perhaps there is a meeting room that everyone finds stuffy, an office where people complain about being cold despite apparently reasonable temperatures, or a floor where the BMS says everything is normal but the people using it disagree. Perhaps you already have plenty of building data but still struggle to understand what it means for the people inside.
Or perhaps the challenge is the estate itself: several generations of technology, varying levels of connectivity and no straightforward way to bring the information together.
Those are exactly the kinds of problems we would like to explore.
Start with what you have
A V2 deployment doesn’t require a sophisticated smart building. Some partners may have extensive BMS infrastructure, environmental sensing and connected systems; others may have considerably less.
We describe Entelligently’s progressively additive capabilities as Listen → Sense → Connect → Locate: listen to the people using the building, add environmental sensing where it provides useful context, connect to existing systems where appropriate, and locate that information within the physical building.
It isn’t a checklist, and every deployment doesn’t need to look the same.
Start with what you have. Add what you need.
That makes mixed estates particularly interesting. We want to understand not only what V2 can do in a highly connected modern building, but how useful intelligence can be derived from the buildings organisations actually have.
Building the v2 reference points
We already know from previous deployments that combining occupant experience with environmental information can reveal patterns worth investigating. The next question is what the new capabilities of v2 add.
Does spatial context reveal patterns that would otherwise be missed? Which connections to existing systems prove most useful? Can AI help make heterogeneous building information useful without an extensive exercise to make every system look the same? And, when something changes, can subsequent occupant experience help us understand whether the intervention worked?
These are the reference points we now want to build.
We’re therefore looking for a small number of organisations interested in becoming early v2 deployment partners. That could be a building owner or occupier, an estates or facilities team with a difficult recurring problem, or a university or research group interested in buildings, environmental conditions and human experience.
It doesn’t need to involve an entire building. A floor, a group of offices or teaching spaces, some meeting rooms, a particular environmental zone or a well-defined problem could provide an excellent starting point.
What we’re offering
For a small number of selected v2 deployment partners, KnowNow Information will provide the Entelligently software at no charge for an agreed deployment period.
We’ll work with each partner to define what we’re trying to understand, configure the deployment and identify which existing sources of building information could usefully contribute. Where appropriate, we’ll connect to relevant building systems and use v2’s spatial capabilities to build a richer picture of the environment.
If additional sensors, hardware, installation work or bespoke integration are required, we would identify and agree those requirements separately. We’re deliberately keeping the number of deployments small so that we can work closely with each partner and properly understand what each deployment tells us.
In return, we’re looking for engagement: occupants willing to participate, appropriate access to agreed building information and the people who understand the relevant systems. We also want partners prepared to look critically at what we discover and, where both parties agree, potentially capture a successful deployment as a reference case study.
What could v2 tell us about your building?
We aren’t starting again with Entelligently. We’re building on years of development, previous real-building deployments and what they taught us about people, comfort and building performance.
V2 adds a completely modernised user experience, a spatial digital twin, AI-assisted understanding and a much broader ability to work with the diverse systems and data found across real buildings. Together, those capabilities give us a richer opportunity to understand the relationship between what people are experiencing, what the building is doing, and where it is happening.
So if you own, operate, manage or study a building with an interesting problem — whether it has a sophisticated modern BMS, a patchwork of older systems or very little connectivity at all, we’d like to hear from you.
You don’t need a perfect smart building or hundreds of sensors, and you don’t need to know the answer.
You need a building, some people, and something worth understanding.
Let’s see what Entelligently v2 can tell us.
Buildings already tell us an enormous amount about how they are performing, and the people inside them can tell us what that performance actually feels like. Entelligently v2 brings those two perspectives together, with the added context of where it is all happening.
For me, that is where building intelligence starts to become genuinely useful.
David Patterson, Managing Director, KnowNow Information