An Australian cloud and wireless-enabled building and energy management system has won the 2019 Facility Management Industry Award for Industry Innovation.

The award was announced recently by the Facility Management Association, which is the peak national industry body for facility management.

The judges praised the cloud-based Encompass Blue system, developed by Victorian company Blue IoT, for delivering “incredible outcomes”.

Those outcomes include achieving what Blue IoT says was a 72.5 percent reduction in energy used by HVAC equipment in a City of Greater Dandenong building in Victoria over a 12-month period.

Blue IoT system uses LoraWAN-connected controllers and sensors to modernise control of mixing boxes that distribute air through the council building.

It also provides demand-based control of a variable speed drive for the building’s air supply fan. And it ensures that heating and cooling units aren’t operating simultaneously.

The system also uses machine learning to optimise when heating or cooling switches on early each morning, based on the outside temperature. And it optimises ventilation.

Blue IoT founder and Chief Innovation Officer Bob Sharon says the company is taking on industry incumbents. It is lining up resellers and next year it plans to begin using Azure, in addition to its own cloud.

Sharon won IoT Hub’s IoT Pioneer Award earlier this year. Blue IoT sponsored the 2019 IoT Festival.