Offer

Membership

As an enrolled member of the Center Smart Commercial Building on RWTH Aachen Campus, you will be among the pioneers in the property trend for smart buildings.

You will utilize the innovative, state-of-the-art research infrastructure, demonstrate your solutions in the Innovation Labs, and benefit from increased visibility based on the high visitor numbers at the Smart Logistics Cluster. You will have access to use and showcases for your own events, and have the opportunity to rent space for your business needs on campus.

A dedicated contact person from the Center Smart Commercial Building will offer comprehensive support. You will furthermore have exclusive access to the member network on RWTH Aachen Campus.

Membership

As members, companies have exclusive access to the Center Smart Commercial Building, the interdisciplinary team of RWTH Aachen University academics and to the RWTH Aachen Campus network. This combination fosters the discovery of cross-application synergies and the creation of new business relationships. A variety of options for mutual knowledge exchange and collaboration are provided. The membership in the Center Smart Commercial Building increases visibility of the businesses at RWTH Aachen, which supports the businesses in recruiting skilled staff and managers.

Research & Development

The Center Smart Commercial Building researches and develops various digital complete systems for buildings under the Smart City umbrella.

The Center supports enrolled businesses in  development and implementation of newly generated business models and in their participation in the business area “Smart Commercial Building”. New, application-oriented solutions are developed in projects and studies, which are customized to the situation of the individual company. The members also contribute actively to the annual center study.

Community

The Center is a think tank for a variety of protagonists from the software and hardware industry and represents a platform for the joint development of new products and services for the topic of building digitalization on the basis of established business know-how, startup mentality and academic research. Enrolled center members receive exclusive access to the member network, which offers an excellent basis for cooperations and the development of joint innovative project ideas and their implementation. The members of the Center Smart Commercial Building meet up twice a year for knowledge exchanges amongst each other and members of other centers in the Smart Logistics Cluster.

Further Education

Breathtaking advances in the area of digitalization require innovative qualification and further education offerings in addition to the generic selection at universities and further education academies.

The Center is currently working on developing a further education offering in partnership with other experts, which will prepare property, asset and facility managers for the operation of tomorrow’s digital buildings. The education offerings and concepts will continue to grow over time and an academy focusing on the topic of digital building facilities is under development.

Services

One central element of the Center Smart Commercial Building is the development and operation of scalable demonstrators as temporary or permanent test environments for individual buildings. Facility developers and operators have the opportunity to utilize demonstrators in the Demonstration Factory of the Smart Logistics Cluster to test and study the interoperability of individual field devices.

Members furthermore benefit from the interdisciplinary team in the Center, which bundles the various competences: Cooperations here include the RWTH chairs of Informatics, Property & Project Development, FIR at RWTH Aachen and Drees & Sommer. The result is a broad spectrum of consulting and engineering service offerings.

One service provision project of the Center Smart Commercial Building has already been implemented as a scalable demonstrator for the flagship project Cube Berlin, commissioned by CA Immo. It comprises:

• Certification of SCB components/interoperability tests
• Development platform (Living Lab) for smart buildings
• Showcases for state-of-the-art solutions
• Development and operation of customer-specific test & demonstration environments

Consortial studies

Consortium study: Digital Customer-Centric Building

In the future, the value of a Smart Building will be defined by the degree of digitization and the digital services specific to the building. User requirements for buildings, however, vary greatly depending on industry and role profile. Industry-specific needs must be identified to ensure the ability to offer facilities that add benefits for the respective sector.

The user requirements for Smart Buildings can be very specific and must be identified for each industry sector. To that end, the consortium will begin with identifying the industry sectors the study will focus on. An analysis of the industry-specific requirements and the needs of relevant role profiles will follow, where relevant customer journeys will be generated. Based on these customer journeys, a series of user surveys will be conducted in the associated industry sectors, followed by a reconciliation of the findings with actual user requirements. Once the user surveys have been conducted and their results analyzed, industry-specific services will be identified in a subsequent step, which will help users to satisfy requirements conveniently and cost-effectively. An analysis of the type and quality of data needed for the implementation of the various services will be next. And finally, an assessment of the kind of connectivity prerequisites required for optimal service provision based on that data will conclude the study.

Would you like to know, which industry sectors will benefit most from what types of building services? Take part in our year-long consortial study “Digital Customer-Centric Building” and learn alongside us and other experts. We will be focusing on exactly these issues!

Your contact person

Alexandra Köther, M.Eng.

Center Smart Commercial Building
Campus-Boulevard 55
52074 Aachen
E-Mail alexandra.koether@smart-commercial-building.de

Consortium study: Smart Parking & Charging

The content of the consortium study is, on the one hand, the bundling of knowledge on the topic of “Smart Parking & Charging” in the form of user experiences, technologies and business models. On the other hand, technology tests and further developments can be carried out in the established LivingLab. For this purpose, in addition to benchmarks, in-depth research and interviews with the partners, tried and tested, successful approaches in the field of “Smart Parking & Charging” are transferred into a user-friendly overview and development paths are shown. The requirements, the approach and the results will be discussed together.
Furthermore, the consortium study provides an insight into the “state of the art” in the field of “Smart Parking & Charging”. Many current challenges and questions such as connection to existing buildings or manufacturer-independent
integration are addressed.

Your contact person

Aleksander Cavlek, M.Sc.

Center Smart Commercial Building
Campus-Boulevard 55
52074 Aachen
E-Mail aleksander.cavlek@smart-commercial-building.de

Consortium study: Digital Real Estate Management – Scalable solutions for services and organizations

IoT and digitization give the real estate industry the chance to redefine itself and to increase its efficiency by orders of magnitude while at the same time improving user orientation. New services related to real estate are created almost daily and are shown in numerous demonstrators. The functionality of digital solutions can also be credibly demonstrated using prominent examples such as the Cube Berlin or The Ship in Cologne. For the real estate industry as a whole, however, the question now arises as to how digitalization can make a broad-based entry into the industry and what measures are required to scale digital services. This is the only way to achieve targeted growth at reasonable economic costs.

Against this background, a project consortium consisting of top-class company representatives from institutional investors, corporate real estate management organisations and project developers as well as service providers from asset, property and facility management, supplemented by technology companies is to develop forward-looking answers to the following questions:

1. Where are adjustments to existing service profiles and structures necessary due to digitalization in real estate?
2. What specific adjustments need to be made?
3. How can the adjustments be implemented?
4. What consequences does the adaptation have for existing classifications and standards?

A project consortium under the leadership of the Smart Commercial Building Center at the RWTH Aachen University campus has joined forces to work out this question. The results will be developed within one year.

Your contact person

Alexandra Köther, M.Eng.

Center Smart Commercial Building
Campus-Boulevard 55
52074 Aachen
E-Mail alexandra.koether@smart-commercial-building.de

Further education

RWTH-Certificate Course Digital Real Estate Manager

Increasing digitization continues to introduce changes to the operative requirements faced by project developers, real estate portfolio holders and corporate stakeholders. The data and other information gleaned from building operations are increasingly becoming success factors and form the basis for the asset and corporate real estate management of the future. On operational level, this development will demand entirely new skill sets for real estate management. The successful handling of the ongoing digitization process is set to becoming a key qualification.

In the future, the development and management of portfolios and individual assets, a profound understanding of business potential, the development of new business models and the assessment of investment opportunities will be on a par in importance with knowledge regarding digital twin concepts and data analytics in real estate management. Basic principles of cyber security, data management, the Building IoT and the Managed Services IoT, as well as statutory requirements will be prerequisite to professional success.

We offer a 6-day training course, in which we will convey the skills needed in the future of digital real estate management. The program includes theoretical content, as well as practice-oriented case study work moderated by high-caliber presenters from industry and academia. The course will give you a comprehensive understanding of the required basics and a broad spectrum of applicable practical knowledge to equip you with the qualifications you will need for your future tasks. The course is certified by RWTH Aachen International Academy and culminates in an RWTH Aachen Academy certificate.

Participation Fee

7.000 EUR (plus VAT)

Your contact person

Alexandra Köther, M.Eng.

Center Smart Commercial Building
Campus-Boulevard 55
52074 Aachen
E-Mail alexandra.koether@smart-commercial-building.de

Projects

Ready2Deploy

Technological development and the advancing digitalization lead to innovative solutions in almost all business sectors – including the real estate sector.

In the course of this, a multitude of challenges arise for project developers, investors and technology providers. In addition to the description of the added value of new technologies and their possible use cases, the technical safeguarding of components and their integration is a central challenge that causes enormous costs and increased coordination processes. In order to increase security in construction and reduce costs, the technical components must therefore be preconfigured prior to construction.

With the “Ready to Deploy” concept, we respond to this need and give you the opportunity to ensure the interoperability of building and neighbourhood components before construction and to test innovative use cases.

We offer you a full-service approach for this:

We take over the requirements management and the selection of partners for the building components, support you during the construction and commissioning in a test environment and develop a cyber security concept with partners and accompany you right up to the construction stage.

Aleksander Cavlek, M.Sc.

Center Smart Commercial Building
Campus-Boulevard 55
52074 Aachen
E-Mail aleksander.cavlek@smart-commercial-building.de