PCL Construction will develop new smart building solutions backed by Microsoft’s Azure services
Microsoft and PCL Construction have signed a partnership to boost the development of smart building implementations.
PCL is a group of independent construction companies that carries out work across Canada, the United States, the Caribbean and Australia.
The partners said that the combination of PCL’s engineering and industry expertise and Microsoft’s engineering and R&D teams, PCL will leverage advanced Azure capabilities to develop next-generation solutions for the smart building segment.
“Smart building solutions are important to our clients, enabling building operators to gain valuable insights, and it’s an exciting area to be involved in. PCL Construction is delighted to be partnered with Microsoft to enable leading marketplace solutions,” said PCL’s CIO, Mark Bryant.
The smart building solutions will be supported by the full range of Azure services, including Power BI, Azure IoT, and Microsoft’s advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
Specifically, PCL, backed by Microsoft Azure, will be developing solutions to address the following use cases:
-Tracking workers, inventory, and environmental conditions during building construction to increase efficiency, improve safety, and provide advanced insight into the construction process.
-Reducing management, maintenance, and utility costs by learning, from the data collected, to create improvements and efficiencies, such as by automatically turning off the heat in an unused room.
-Personalizing and automating building features—lighting, heating and cooling as well as room utilization.
-Connecting usage information from disparate systems and integrating it into a central view for better visibility of inefficiencies and issues, and to achieve peak optimization.
-Driving environmental efficiencies and achieving higher returns by optimizing the use of resources for heating and cooling systems, electricity, water, and other utilities, to reduce energy consumption and costs.