CASE STUDIES

Entelligently in the real world.

Entelligently has been developed through real-world use, combining people's experience of buildings with environmental and operational information to understand what is happening and where better-informed action may be possible.

BDP ARCHITECTS · MANCHESTER

Learning from the Bright Building

Pencil-style architectural illustration of the Bright Building in Manchester.

The Bright Building is a BREEAM Excellent workplace at Manchester Science Park. Completed in 2017, the approximately 55,000 sq ft building provides flexible office and low-level laboratory accommodation across four floors around a central atrium, alongside meeting, conferencing and networking spaces.

For Entelligently, it provided a real-world setting in which to explore a different question: how can the way people actually experience a building be understood alongside the environmental and building information available to those managing it?

The challenge

Building systems can describe temperature, humidity, CO₂ and other conditions, but that does not necessarily explain whether the people occupying a space are comfortable or why they respond differently to the same environment.

The Bright Building trial explored whether occupant feedback could add that missing human context.

What Entelligently did

Entelligently collected occupant comfort feedback and considered it alongside environmental and building information. The report explores differences between zones and individual users, develops predictive models and examines Smart Nudges, or Snudges, used to encourage feedback and suggest actions.

What we learned

lower electricity consumption

Observed during the trial: first-floor electricity consumption was 2,878 kWh in September compared with 2,998 kWh in August.

Comfort became more visible

In one zone, comfortable responses increased from 34% to 47% month-on-month. Combining feedback with environmental information exposed differences between zones and individual users that sensor measurements alone could not explain.

Smart Nudges provoke action!

In all three instances examined, Snudges were followed by increased engagement the next day. More comfortable responses were also recorded in the week when Snudges recommended actions than in the comparison week when they simply requested feedback.

Anonymised September 2017 trial report

Download the Bright Building trial report

SUPPORTING MATERIAL