Current building data management practices report

EN-TRACK, which stands for Energy Efficiency Performance-Tracking Platform for Benchmarking Savings and Investments in Buildings, is a critical and timely project that seeks to address key barriers holding back greater investments in building energy efficiency. The core objectives of the project, which is funded through the European Union (EU) Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 885395, are to:

 enable massive gathering of data on the energy performance of buildings before-andafter the application of energy efficiency measures;
 create a continuous data collection process through structured engagement with stakeholders;
 adopt standard data descriptions that align with current international standards and existing data platforms, notably the De-Risking Energy Efficiency Platform (DEEP); and,
 create a self-sustaining solution that continues to be viable after the completion of the project in 2023.

This report provides an up-to-date review and analysis of current data management practices of energy, financial and building data used for the day-to-day building management. This information has been obtained via structured conversations and surveys with some of the major potential users of the system. The value of the report is the insight it contains, from users about their data management practices, that will contribute to the design of the templates and guiding material related to data governance that will be produced in the next deliverable of work package three (D3.3).

Following a brief background and introduction, the report explains the information gathering methods and describes the surveys performed. The survey responses came from a wide range of professions ranging from energy managers and maintenance to accounting and financiers from the target institutions in both countries. Altogether, the responses represent a significant number of buildings (around 4000) and thus provide a relevant reference in terms of current data management practices.

The main section of the report focuses on the identified organisation archetypes, based on their data management practices. The main focus is on their energy, building and financial data to help with building management and decision making. The archetypes can be divided into three main groups and four subgroups. The basic level organisations are those that, although they do have some information about energy consumption and cost, do not take action based on it, and that do not share any information among the different departments. The middle level organisations are those that start to use the information sources to track the building evolution, normalise the energy data with building properties to compare different buildings and that share information among different departments of their organisation. The advanced level organisations are those that use the information to act, start implementing advanced monitoring equipment that facilitate the modelling of the building to create baselines and future consumption forecast.