Johnson Controls launches S$50 million Innovation Center in Singapore

Johnson Controls, the global provider of smart and sustainable buildings, has opened a S$50 million OpenBlue Innovation Center to create a future-ready built environment for Singapore and the region. OpenBlue is a technology suite that combines Johnson Controls’ 135 years of building expertise with cutting-edge digital technology.

Source: Johnson Controls. A look inside the new OpenBlue Innovation Center. Singapore was chosen as the site of the centre because of the talent pool available in the country.

The investment marks the company’s commitment to spearhead the creation and adoption of disruptive solutions for the built environment industry in the region. As an analogy provided OpenBlue can be considered the operating system of a building, helping to reboot it so as to make it smarter and more sustainable.

Visal Leng, President, Building Solutions, Asia Pacific, Johnson Controls, explained that today's buildings have had more sensors and technologies added to them over the past two decades, with the systems becoming interconnected more recently. He said that key performance indicators used to be based on building efficiency and energy management, employee productivity and occupant experiences, as well as space utilisation and workplace strategies. In our new normal, priorities have changed to highlight safety and security, health and energy efficiency, he noted.

Leng said: “The Johnson Controls OpenBlue Innovation Center embodies our approach towards building dynamic and resilient spaces, injecting new lease of life into the built environment sector. Taking an unprecedented holistic and human-centric methodology, we are incorporating people and design perspectives, thus sparking greater innovation within industries and outside traditional boundaries.”

Alvin Ng, VP and GM, Digital Solutions, Asia Pacific, Johnson Controls, said the centre focuses on people, technology and spaces within a built environment with the aim of creating human-centric, connected spaces. Blueprints will first be developed for cognitive buildings, and through a collaboration with NUS, evolve towards blueprints for campuses, and then scaling to blueprints of entire cognitive districts.

"The intersection of people, technology and space is where value is being created," he observed. Key discoveries will be incorporated into the Johnson Controls portfolio to address customers' needs, he added.

Johnson Controls announced the OpenBlue Innovation Center, with support from the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), in mid-2020. The facility is expected to have more than 100 employees within four years, with a strong focus on talent development with NUS at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels.

The new facility, located within the School of Design and Environment (SDE) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), will be a living laboratory for a new breed of customisable, contact-free applications built on OpenBlue. Together with its ecosystem of partners - which includes NUS and Microsoft - the centre is pioneering the use of a common configuration language that bridges core building technology with behavioural, wellness, and spatial data to develop solutions that meet new demands for safety and sustainability in connected spaces.

The 240 sq m centre is housed in SDE4, Singapore’s first new-build net-zero energy building. It has sensors fitted throughout the indoor space - including for monitoring air quality and airflow, occupancy and occupants’ alertness levels. Technologies that occupants can draw on include a companion app for booking a workspace, wayfinding, and smart controls for lighting and temperature; facial recognition for authentication, as well as contactless access.

Engineers from the centre and collaborating NUS researchers will collect and analyse data using OpenBlue, leveraging artificial intelligence and analytics to obtain insights about the interactions between technology, indoor environments, and occupant wellbeing. Partners will tap on the intelligence generated from the centre to create evidence-backed solutions for healthier, safer, and connected indoor spaces.

NUS will further serve as a living laboratory for the OpenBlue Innovation Center’s pioneering solutions, thus helping the university in its ongoing efforts to develop a Smart, Safe and Sustainable Campus for its staff and students. The collaboration also includes joint research and innovation in the areas on built and urban environment, particularly in data analytics, sustainability and operations, as well as people and wellness. There will be new opportunities for collaboration on teaching and internship programmes as well, Johnson Controls said.

Professor Yong Kwet Yew, NUS Senior VP (Campus Infrastructure) said: “NUS and Johnson Controls have collaborated on several campus projects and we are therefore very excited to extend our partnership through these new initiatives which are part of our Smart, Safe and Sustainable Campus strategies. The opportunity to test Johnson Controls’ novel solutions on our campus and conduct joint research will help advance our ongoing efforts to build smarter, healthier and sustainable work, teaching and learning spaces for our staff, faculty and students.”

One proof-of-concept at the OpenBlue Innovation Center involves creating digital twins of building spaces to simulate the effect of different occupancy levels on indoor air quality and COVID-19 compliance, he shared.

Professor Yong also emphasised design is now being rethought not only for efficiency, but to think of space utilisation, safe distancing and air quality. He also noted that the work to integrate energy management, space utilisation, and occupant experience will come in useful not only for new buildings but more importantly for existing buildings as well, scaling up nationally and then regionally.

Professor Lam Khee Poh, Dean of NUS School of Design and Environment, noted that Johnson Controls and NUS are aligned in vision, mission and strategic directions going forward. He said: “Our School of Design and Environment is thrilled to host theJ ohnson Controls’ OpenBlue Innovation Center in SDE4 and to facilitate cross-disciplinary research and development initiatives across the entire NUS community. This partnership strengthens the School’s Well & Green vision that emphasises a people-centric integrated design approach (and) generates sustainable and resilient value propositions in its endeavours.”

In 2008, Johnson Controls implemented a converged campus building management solution forNUS University Town (UTown). UTown achieved the Green Mark District Award, a first for NUS, in 2010. In the last 10 years, Johnson Controls has introduced different technologies to enable the precinct to achieve energy savings of 20%. The latest remote maintenance capability introduced at UTown has also proven to be practical and crucial during the current pandemic conditions.

OpenBlue is a suite of connected platform, solutions and services. This open digital platform, when integrated with Johnson Controls core building systems and enhanced by ecosystem partners, connects traditionally-separate systems to create new capabilities for safer, more agile, and sustainable space usage.

Johnson Controls has a comprehensive portfolio of building solutions, technologies, software and services that serve 90% of the world's most iconic buildings.