Posted Sep 29, 2022, 6:30 PM
Adjust the heating temperature, lower the blinds, reserve a meeting room… Thanks to a simple smartphone application. All these gestures are already possible in most office buildings built in recent years. But at the new head office of CNP Assurances, this so-called “smart building” logic has been taken a little further.
The insurance company will move to Issy-les-Moulineaux, in the new Issy Coeur de Ville district. From next December, its 3,000 employees, hitherto split between Paris Montparnasse and Arcueil, will be grouped together in a single 25,000 m2 building, owned by CNP Assurances.
A giant operating system
For its new head office, CNP wanted a smart building. It called on the Kardham group, a specialist in space design, engineering and digital solutions, and the start-up Sinalcom. The latter develops “building operating systems” (translation of “building operation system”, or BOS).
They are comparable to the operating systems present in our smartphones or our computers, but are deployed on a much larger scale. “BOS collects all building data ranging from heating and lighting, water and electricity meters to access controls. It crosses them and makes the whole thing work,” explains José Antonio Cuba Segura, Smart building director at Kardham.
This works thanks to a “digital twin” of the building, a sort of 3D digital model of the building which represents its geography and all its equipment and allows data to be collected. The purchase and installation of this type of software cost between 10 and 15 euros per m2.
Optimize building operation and reduce energy costs
“One of the concrete applications is the adjustment of the ventilation. Before, it worked with CO2 sensors, which triggered the ventilation when the air became less good in the room”, illustrates José Antonio Cuba Segura. Today, the BOS can cross-reference the data from the presence sensors with that of the ventilation to trigger it automatically before the air quality begins to decline.
This operating system will also prove to be very useful this winter, to very precisely adapt the heating or the lighting according to the occupation of the rooms. Enough to enable CNP Assurances to respect its commitment to reduce the electricity consumption of its premises in France by 30% between 2022 and 2023.
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