Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06Q—INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY [ICT] SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES; SYSTEMS OR METHODS SPECIALLY ADAPTED FOR ADMINISTRATIVE, COMMERCIAL, FINANCIAL, MANAGERIAL OR SUPERVISORY PURPOSES, NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
  • G06Q10/00—Administration; Management
  • G06Q10/10—Office automation; Time management

Definitions

• TITLE Building management system, and system for intelligently cleaning a building
• the present invention relates in general to a management system for managing a building or building complex, comprising a plurality of spaces available to people for staying for a longer or shorter period of time.
• the present invention does not relate to residential houses or apartment buildings, or other types of buildings where there is a fixed relationship between persons and rooms.
• the present invention relates to a situation where a building (or plurality of buildings) has a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like available to users, where an individual user is in principle free to use any room of his choice.
• an office building is mentioned. Conventionally, an individual person would have a fixed working space including a desk, chair, cabinet, etc, so he would have his own dedicated office room or would share such room with a group of predetermined colleagues.
• a problem in such case is that the office capacity, in terms of people, corresponds (putting it simply) to the number of desks in the office while it is a statistical fact that not everybody is always in the office so there are empty desks and the
• occupancy ratio is less than one. It has already been proposed to have flexible work places, meaning that an office worker entering the office building does not have a fixed working place dedicated to him but he is free to select any of the available working places to be his working place for that day. As a result, it " is possible to accommodate more workers in the same building with less empty desks.
• conference facilities in the sense of rooms that can be rent for a day to arrange a conference meeting.
• a similar example would be a school having class rooms available for a group of persons to have classical teachings or courses.
• a comparable example would be a study centre having study cabins for individuals to do individual activities like writing, reading, studying, etc.
• Another example relates to the toilet facilities.
• toilet facilities There are many examples of buildings where there are a plurality of toilets available to a plurality of persons, such as offices, schools, restaurants, theatres, airports, etc. Whenever a person wishes to go to the toilet, he just selects any one toilet that is free at that moment.
• the lights in a room or cabin or the like are automatically switched on or off depending on whether the room concerned is occupied or not. It is already known to use presence detectors, but the known detectors are typically infrared motion detectors, having the disadvantage that the light in the room is switched off if the occupant is sitting still for some time.
• the present invention proposes that each individual is equipped with an RFID tag and that each entrance of a room is equipped with an RFID reader, enabling a room management system to keep track of the number of occupants.
• the rooms or cabins or toilets or the like have doors that can be remotely locked by a central computer or the like.
• each door is provided with signal means signalling whether or not the door is open or locked.
• each door is provided with an illumination device that can produce red light to indicate that the door is locked or green light to indicate that the door is open.
• the management computer unlocks a number of doors and turns the corresponding signal lamp to green, to indicate that the room concerned is
• the management computer keeps track of the number of times each individual toilet cabin has been used. When a certain cabin reaches a certain limit, the management computer locks the door of this cabin and the corresponding indicator light is turned to RED for
• the signal means may be .identical to the signal means that warn an approaching potential user that this cabin is currently occupied by another user. Thus, for a user, there is not difference between being prohibited from entering a cabin because it . is occupied on the one hand or because the system has taken this cabin out of service.
• the present invention also provides an intelligent system for cleaning buildings. For cleaning buildings in a
• a cleaning company typically employs a staff of .cleaning personnel. It is normally desirable that individual cleaning personnel is allocated to specific
• cleaning buildings involves a wide range of cleaning tasks, which tasks however normally do not necessarily have the same service interval: some tasks need to be performed on a daily basis, and some tasks need to be done only once per week ' or once per month. So, it may be difficult for a cleaning person to know precisely what to do when.
• This difficulty may be increased if, according to the specific concept of the present invention, some tasks need only be done "when needed”: for instance, if a toilet cabin has not been used today, the cleaning person may skip this toilet cabin; likewise, it may be possible to skip a desk or an ashtray, or to skip vacuuming, etc, if a work station or an office room has not been used., "
• the cleaning person may determine what to do
• the management system and/or the cleaning company of communicating to the cleaning person what he/she is expected to do.
• the present invention also provides a solution to this problem.
• the cleaning person receives computer-generated cleaning instructions.
• the cleaning person receives computer-generated cleaning instructions.
• these instructions may be more or less detailed, and it may even be possible for the cleaning person to set the level of detail . For instance, a more experienced worker may just need the instructions "go
• figure 1 schematically shows a floor plan of a building
• figure 2 schematically shows a block diagram of a building management system of the building of figure 1;
• figure 3 schematically shows a ventilation system.
• FIG. 1 schematically shows a floor plan of a building 1 having one or more wings 10 (the figure illustratively showing four wings) .
• Each wing 10 has one or more corridors 11 (the figure illustratively showing one corridor per wing) with one or more rooms or cabins 12; all in all, the building 1 has a plurality of rooms or cabins 12.
• Each room 12 has at least one entrance door 13, giving access to the corresponding room 12 from the corresponding corridor 11.
• the building 1 is provided with a building management system 1000, which comprises, for each door 13, a remotely controllable lock 14 and an
• Availability indicator 15 controlled by a central control system 100, for instance implemented as a computer or
• controller as schematically illustrated in figure 2; this central control system is also indicated as management
• each room 12 is provided with controllable facilities such as light 30 and/or heating and/or internet access, and is provided with an RFID receiver or reader 21.
• Figure 2 schematically shows an RFID tag 20, which will be carried by a person authorized to enter a room 12. When at least one such authorized person enters a certain room 12, the corresponding RFID receiver or reader 21 will read the RFID code from the person's tag 20 and will communicate this to the central control system 100, which responds by releasing the room's facilities, i.e. turning on the light 30. When the central control system 100 receives RFID information that the last person has left the room, it will deactivate the room's facilities.
• the central control system 100 controls the room locks 14 and availability indicators 15, 16 such as to reduce maintenance costs, based on occupancy demand.
• the room locks 14 and availability indicators 15, 16 such as to reduce maintenance costs, based on occupancy demand.
• there is no central control and all rooms 12 are open and accessible to any interested person. This would mean that cleaning personnel would have to check each and every room in the entire building 1 to see whether cleaning would be necessary.
• this is signalled to the cleaning personnel so that cleaning is done much more efficiently.
• the central control system 100 may release a first group of rooms 12, for instance six (or any other number of) rooms at the beginning of corridor 11A of wing 10A, or all rooms at the lefthand side of corridor 11A of wing 10A.
• group is indicated as starting group.
• the central control system 100 controls the corresponding locks 14 to be open, controls the corresponding availability indicators 15 to indicate that the corresponding rooms are available (for instance green light), controls the availability indicator 16A to indicate that the corresponding corridor 11A contains available rooms, and controls all other indicators to indicate that the corresponding corridors and/or rooms are not available (for instance red light) .
• a user will enter the building 1 through entrance 2 to enter central lobby 3, and will note that only availability indicator 16A
• the building has one or more flights of stairs with access doors to such floors, and has one or more
• the central control system 100 may start by releasing one floor only, so that an availability indicator associated with one access door from a flight of stairs is green while the others are red. The same applies to availability indicators in the control panel of the elevator. It may even be that the central control system 100 influences the control of the elevators so that an elevator can only stop at an available floor.
• the central control system 100 uses the RFID information to know when a person enters a specific room 12 (i) . It may be that a room can be used by a group of persons for a meeting of any kind, such as teaching. In that case, there should preferably be some kind of indication as to which group is assembling in which room, but anyway, in that case, such room is still indicated to be available if one or more persons have already entered, unless, perhaps, a signal is given to the central control system 100 that the group is complete. It may also be that a single room is to be used by a single person; this would for instance apply to study cabins, toilet cabins, telephone booths. In that case, as soon as the central control system 100 detects one person entering a specific room 12 (i), it controls the corresponding availability indicator 15 (i) to indicate that this room is no longer available. Also, the central control system 100 may switch the availability
• a person may leave the room 12 (i) .
• This is detected by the central control system 100, which in response controls the corresponding availability indicator 15 (i) to indicate that the room is again available (green light) .
• the central control system 100 keeps a log of the use that is made of. the individual rooms. This log may contain information relating to time- of day and duration per visit, but in any case it contains information relating to the number of visits.
• the log is contained in a memory 101 of the central control system 100.
• the central control system 100 may have limitation information, for instance indicating a maximum number of visits.
• the- central control system 100 may decide to keep this specific room 12 (i) unavailable (red light and lock 1 (i) locked) until the room 12 (i) has been serviced; this will specifically apply in the case of toilet cabins, and can also be applied to individual urinals in a washroom, except for the lock.
• the service personnel is directed in an efficient manner to only service cabins when needed, in stead of the expensive method of service personnel having to constantly monitor or regularly check the condition of the cabins.
• the central control system 100 When the service personnel arrives on site, they may communicate this to the central control system 100, which in turn releases the locks 14 of the cabins 12.
• the central control system100 is automatically aware of the presence of the service personnel through the RFID readers 21. It is also possible that the service personnel have a key to open the locks 14. After a cabin has been serviced, the central control system 100 switches the corresponding availability indicator to
• the number of persons in the building may vary, and thus the number of rooms/cabins occupied at any time will typically have varied. In many instances, the building will not have been occupied to 100% of its capacity.
• the system proposed by the present invention preventing users to select any room of their liking, assures that use has been restricted to a limited number of rooms, and that there may be individual rooms and/or corridors, wings, floors etc that have not been visited at all. Consequently, at the end of the day, service personnel does not necessarily have to visit and check each and every room: it is possible to restrict servicing to only those rooms that have been used, or even to only those rooms of which the number of visits is higher than a certain threshold number. This results in a saving of servicing costs.
• servicing personnel is already directed to clean certain rooms during the day. Further, "for instance in case of toilet cabins in an airport, it may be that users are expected to potentially use the cabins 24 hours. In that case, it may be unavoidable that users meet service personnel at work.
• the starting groups may be different, i.e. belong to different corridors, floors-, etc, so that it may be assumed that over a longer time period all rooms have been used and cleaned.
• the central control system 100 decides that nevertheless all rooms of such group are to be cleaned, including those which have not been used, such as desired by a building manager.
• the central control system 100 is capable of operating in a servicing mode. In this mode, the central control system 100 again controls locks 14 and indicators 15, 16 to be in either one of two conditions. In one condition, a lock 14 is open and the corresponding indicators 15, 16 indicate "open" (for instance: green light); in a second condition, a lock 14 is closed and the corresponding indicators 15, 16 indicate
• FIG. 3 schematically shows a ventilation system 300, comprising a main ventilation duct 301 with a ventilator or the like 302. Rooms 12 are connected to the main ventilation duct 301 through corresponding ventilation
• Each ventilation branch 303 is provided with a controllable valve 304, remotely controlled by the central control system 100 (see figure 2) .
• the central control system 100 detects that a room is empty, it may close the corresponding valve 304 (partly or completely) , so that suction of air from this room (or blowing of air into this room) is reduced or even stopped.
• the central control system 100 detects that a user enters a room, it may open the corresponding valve 304, wherein it is preferred that the valve 304 is opened further in proportion to the number of users in the room, so that suction of air from this room (or blowing of air into this room) is controlled in proportion to demand (i.e. number of persons) .
• Figure 4 schematically illustrates an exemplary
• the central control system 100 of the building management system 1000 is equipped with wireless transmission means 400, and a cleaning person (not shown) is equipped with a headset or earphone 450 equipped with or connected to wireless receiving means 460.
• the wireless transmission means 400 may be located centrally, i.e. one strong transmitter servicing all
• the transmission means 400 comprise multiple transmitters distributed over the building, perhaps even one transmitter per room.
• transmission technology is preferably RF, but other suitable technology can also be used.
• a receiving device being implemented as a headset or earphone 450, it is also possible that the receiving device is implemented as a
• a headset or earphone has an advantage of allowing to be continuously monitored by the user, i.e. the cleaning person, whithout needing his hands.
• the central control system 100 sends instructions to the receiving device 450, and hence to the cleaning person.
• the instructions are in the form of spoken text, taken from a text database 410. Alternatively, depending on the nature of the receiving device, written text may be used .
• the central control system 100 is designed to calculate a task list for the cleaning person.
• the task list includes the individual tasks to be performed, the order in which to perform them, the time duration allocated per task, and
• the task list may be supplemented by guidance information, giving the cleaning person directions on how to- reach the next location to be cleaned, where to find certain items, etc.
• the task list is calculated on the basis of, on the one hand, information given by the building
• the building manager may determine that the windows should be cleaned once per month, vacuuming should be
• the toilet cabins should be done once per day, etc.
• the task list will show tasks with a periodic pattern of a month, a week, a day, etc. Yet, such task list is already of advantage for cleaning persons who are not familiar with this specific building: even without prepration and guidance, such cleaning persons can immediately work in "new" buildings. Nevertheless, the great advantage of the present invention is seen if the central control system 100 calculates the task list on the other hand on the basis of information relating to the use history.
• one or more tasks of the standard task list may be skipped if a room or toilet cabin has not been used this day; on the other hand, if it appears that a room or toilet cabin has been used quite excessively, or if a complaint is received regarding the cleaning status of some objects, the central control system 100 may decide, or may be instructed by a remote supervisor, to add one or more tasks to the task list even before such task would have been due according to normal schedule.
• the communication system may be bidirectional: the central control system 100 tells the cleaning person what to do, and is then silent until it receives ' a message back from the cleaning person indicating that the task has been
• the cleaning instructions are given in real time, and a one-directional communication system suffices.
• the cleaning instructions may tell the cleaning person to vacuum a certain room for 10 minutes, and after 10 minutes (in the mean time, the headset 450 may present music) the cleaning instructions may tell the cleaning person to vacuum another room, skipping a room in between.
• the cleaning person does not have to check whether the room in between needs servicing or not, he is simply told (explicitly or implicitly) to skip this room.
• the cleaning person does not waste time by investigating whether such task needs to be performed or by performing the task without need, but he just executes the tasks communicated to him and obviously does not do the tasks not mentioned. It is the central control system 100 that decides that a task can be skipped, on the basis of the information relating to the use of the room/corridor/wing etc.
• the system may be self-correcting and/or self-learning . If complaints are received regarding the cleaning result, the system has apparently been set too "economic", and the list of cleaning instructions can be corrected by adding tasks and/or increasing the time per task in order to improve cleaning quality.
• the system comprises a central control system 100 for generating
• the transfer means include a wireless transmission system, and the messages are basically communicated to the cleaning person immediately after being generated and transmitted by the central control system 100, while the central control system 100 generates the messages in real time. It is also possible that the central control system 100 generates the messages in advance, and that the user.
• the device comprises a storage device for storing and playing the messages in real time, or that the central control system 100 stores the messages on an information carrier (such as for instance an optical disc or a solid state memory) and that the user device comprises a player device for receiving such information carrier and playing the messages from the carrier in real time.
• an information carrier such as for instance an optical disc or a solid state memory
• the instructions transmitted to the user device 450 include, for each task, a set of identical instruction in different languages, and that the user device 450 comprises a language selection feature
• the present invention provides a building management system 1000 for a building 1 that comprises a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like, accessible to persons, the management system comprising for each room an availability indicator 15, and the management system
• the management system further comprises a
• controllable lock 14 controlled by the central control system for locking or releasing a door 13 of the room concerned.
• the control system only releases a limited number of rooms, depending on demand, and directs service personnel to only clean those rooms that have actually been used.
• communication from RFID sensors 21 to the central control system 100 may be done via wires or wirelessly.
• communication from the central control system 100 to the locks 14 and/or availability may be done via wires or wirelessly.
• indicators 15, 16 may be done via wires or wirelessly. In a particular embodiment, control takes place via internet.

Landscapes

• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Business, Economics & Management (AREA)
• Strategic Management (AREA)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation (AREA)
• Human Resources & Organizations (AREA)
• Operations Research (AREA)
• Economics (AREA)
• Marketing (AREA)
• Data Mining & Analysis (AREA)
• Quality & Reliability (AREA)
• Tourism & Hospitality (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Business, Economics & Management (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Management, Administration, Business Operations System, And Electronic Commerce (AREA)

Applications Claiming Priority (3)

Publications (1)

Family

ID=42938528

Family Applications (1)

Country Status (3)

Families Citing this family (1)

Family Cites Families (6)

• 2010
  • 2010-04-26 NL NL1037916A patent/NL1037916B1/en not_active IP Right Cessation
  • 2010-09-08 WO PCT/NL2010/000128 patent/WO2011031135A2/en not_active Ceased
  • 2010-09-08 EP EP10757292A patent/EP2476084A2/de not_active Withdrawn

Non-Patent Citations (1)

Also Published As

Similar Documents

Legal Events