Imagine walking into an unfamiliar building, swiping your visitor badge and seeing a readout on a flat-panel display showing exactly where you should go for your meeting and how to get there. Or you step into a “huddle space” for that 10 a.m. conference call, and the system automatically connects the call for you. Or you give a presentation to your group and collaborate on it without the use of a laptop or tablet.

All of this technology is now available, enabling our workplaces to become smarter— while businesses and workers to get more out of their days. In other words, it improves productivity.

Bryan J. Koop, senior vice president and regional manager for Boston Properties, which recently opened the LEED Platinum office and retail space Atlantic Wharf in Boston, believes productivity in the workplace can increase by 20 percent to 60 percent with the way we use our place and space.

There is a lot going on in this area, both in design and technology. Atlantic Wharf, for one, has communal spaces where workers can gather to socialize and for informal chats, which can lead to big ideas being discovered. Studies also show that companies who socialize a lot are more profitable than others. The Tower at PNC Plaza being constructed in Pittsburgh is designed with elevators that stop at two-floor communal spaces, forcing even workers of different companies together.

Many new office buildings today try to use as much natural light as possible, which is shown to have a positive effect on worker attitudes, health, and you guessed it, productivity. The daylighting is often paired with automated lighting controls triggered by sensors to turn on and off lights or dim them as needed.

The Bullitt Center in Seattle, billed as the greenest office building in the world, was designed to provide about 82 percent of its space with natural daylight, with the help of modeling software that was consulted each time a design change was made. Natural daylighting also saves energy otherwise used on electrically lighting a space. 

“Hotelling” is another trend that organizations with a lot of mobile, part-time or shift workers use to assign desks to workers each day. A control system connected to access control can read a badge and direct workers to their desks with digital signage, reassign them to an area using the minimum amount of space, and dynamically adjust the HVAC system to accommodate how many people are there.

“Space utilization in some corporate office buildings is actually below 50 percent. We have way more space than is needed,” says Mike Carter, director of Integrated Building Solutions for control company AMX. “People may have an assigned desk, but they’re never there. So some companies are looking to have workspaces for about 80 percent of their workforce.”

Control and automation systems for buildings can be used to schedule conference rooms, automatically start up the A/V systems for presentations and videoconferencing, turn off the systems when the meeting is done, and post the meeting on a wall-mounted touch screen outside the meeting room.

AMX’s Modero X touch screens use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology that is becoming a feature on many smartphones — it’s what Google Wallet uses — so a touch screen in a meeting space, for example, can identify whoever enters. As NFC becomes more ubiquitous, ID badges may no longer be required.

The repercussions go beyond that. “Walking around with laptop and plugging in is becoming a dated model,” says Carter. “Now everyone is walking around with tablets and their info exists in the cloud. If you ID someone entering the room, you can have your presentations right there, and you can route whatever content you have dynamically to that screen via the cloud.”

Content Everywhere

“I think we’re going away from concentrated A/V systems to the cloud-based anything, everywhere type system, tying A/V and control systems into access control so everyone knows where everyone is,” Carter adds. “Our big future is all about getting media and content to the right place and the right user at the right time.”

To that end, AMX introduced its Enzo file sharing system at the recent Infocomm conference, allowing meeting members an easy way to share their documents and other files via the cloud on an instant-on video display. The system will be available later this year.

Control company Crestron is on this as well, and in April announced its Crestron RL unified communication and collaboration system that uses Microsoft Lync to bring desktop collaboration tools to a conference. Groups can communicate and collaborate on files in real time regardless of physical location, via a videoconference with shared content and interactive whiteboarding.

“We can all go to our desks, turn on unified communications systems and all talk to each other, see each other, work on documents together and get our work done. So why can’t I get that done when I go to the conference room?” asks Dave Silberstein director of Channel Development for Crestron.

Crestron RL consists of a camera, microphone, speaker, flat-panel TVs, soundbar and overlay and a 10-inch touch screen to run the room.

Back at our desks, wherever they may be, systems are becoming smarter as well. The Bullitt Center is one of the first office buildings to implement plug load control, which regulates the energy your computer, other devices and all those chargers we plug in to keep our gadgets humming. The Bullitt Center will use Enmetric smart strips with separate occupancy sensors that detect when someone is no longer in a space and shut down certain predetermined outlets. We may see more energy dashboards delivered to user’s workstation monitors as well, to inform them when energy loads are high and that it’s time to save.

Our workplaces are getting smarter through control technology and automation, so we can work smarter and more efficiently and be more productive.

“These are exciting times in terms of how space and place can change behavior and increase productivity,” says Boston Properties’ Koop. “Those that don’t get it will see their competitors go past.”

No one knows exactly where this is going, but as Carter of AMX says, “One thing that’s guaranteed is that there will be change in how people work and interact.”