New CrowdSense tool reveals hidden building performance issues

Through simple occupant reporting on comfort and maintenance issues, CrowdSense can uncover larger building inefficiencies that are undetectable by computerized systems.

Boston, MA: A local startup, CrowdComfort, built an interactive visualization of 200+ smartphone reports sourced from one anonymous enterprise customer. In just a three month sample, CrowdSense shows two previously unknown HVAC problems that the BMS (BuildingManagement System) was unable to find.

“No facility has enough guys to cover every square foot. But with CrowdComfort’s technology in the hands of our students, it’s like having two thousand sets of eyes and ears out in the field.” says Howie LaRosse, the Executive Director of Facilities Planning at the Massachusetts College of Art &Design. LaRosse is describing CrowdComfort’s end-user app.

Smartphones users (students, office employees, etc.) submit reports that go straight to facility, property, or real-estate managers. The managers also use the app to address concerns and reports in real-time. These reports are also geolocated, the same technology seen in popularapps like Instagram.

CrowdSense offers a way to understand the data that CrowdComfort’s “two-thousand sets of eyes and ears” provide. Facility Managers can view specific details of a maintenance report and thermal report including time submitted, photo included and location down to the nearest square foot. It gets as granular as a specific floor’s coffee maker overheating. These detailed reports are highly actionable: we were able to identify two HVAC issues that were causingemployee discomfort in 2 separate parts of the building.

CrowdSense users can also:
• Analyze entire floors to see problem areas and time of day reporting averages
• Filter report data by maintenance issues or thermal discomfort concerns
• View general report categories as well as unique, outlier issues

Currently, CrowdSense is viewable (http://www.crowdcomfort.com/crowdsense/) as a demo and requires no external software as it is web-hosted.

About CrowdComfort: CrowdComfort (http://crowdcomfort.com/) is a three year old startup based out of Boston, MA. They use the “Human Sensor Network” to deliver personal, actionable data from building occupants to the people who mange the building. Currently, CrowdComforthas a customer base of 17, which propels their mission to make buildings better.

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