Facility E Connect

‘HelixSense provides organizations with the actionable data they need to reduce hidden costs’

We spoke to Sanjeev Bhandari, EVP – Strategy and Solution, HelixSense to understand the various activities and objectives of his organization, key challenges confronting facilities managers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era, how IoT can assist facilities managers in improving asset management within their organisations and in better COVID-19 protocol management, as well as some of their key solutions that help achieve that.

Interviewed by Adeesh Sharma

1. Please tell us about your organization and its objectives.
   
   HelixSense is formed out of constant need to change the way facilities are being managed in primitive non-efficient way with heavy dependency on Human intervention and control. HelixSense is a Digital Transformation Organisation having an Integrated platform with power of IoT & proprietary sensors, edge analyzer which can transform the asset Management.
   HelixSense is disrupting Asset Management. We seek to provide organizations with the actionable data they need to reduce hidden costs, risks, and incident occurrence. HelixSense enhances the awareness of stakeholders across all departments by empowering them to collectively make decisions that benefit the organization as a whole.
   Our goal is to help organisations maximize the long-term value of their assets by creating a culture of continuous improvement and global standards, where information is your greatest asset.



2. What are the key challenges confronting facilities managers in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era?
   
   During COVID 19 pandemic, Occupancies at client offices was reduced to 5% or ever less, moreover, the clients are promoting work from home culture to keep their employees safe and keep the business continuity. This has made many of the builders to rethink and re-strategies to keep their workplace safe, secure, and efficient by reducing their Cost of Operations as well as manpower dependencies.
   This shift had put many IPCs/ facilities managers under constant pressure to ensure equipment uptime, optimize costs, reduce manpower, and add value to your organization’s core business. While delivering the above, the expectations are mitigated and managed risk operations, which is one of the core value of HelixSense.



3. How do you feel IoT can assist facilities managers in improving asset management within their organisations?
   
   IoT has a great power in transforming facilities but at times it is underutilized or delivered with very low value to match the cost. Moreover, many organisation claim to put IoT by placing some sensors and gaining data, however, they don’t know the inferences and importance of data with mathematical model which can bring high value-added services.
   IoT power can only be seen when all the assets are connected and integrated in a platform like HelixSense, which helps in getting view of asset traceability, asset health, accurate data points, data analytics, oncondition monitoring and predictive management. Also, it has an edge over traditional BMS’s since IoT is constantly changing and improving and has lot of flexibility to upgrade without heavy cost investments.



4. Does it help in better COVID-19 protocol management? If so, how?
   
   Yes is the answer! Our solutions helped clients to manage and navigate during the stressed COVID-19 managed requirement. We had started developing the products & Solutions during April Month onwards. We were helping our clients with the best technologies and global protocol for managing their facilities.
   We have also introduced our range of UVC disinfection products which can be connected with IoT to give traceability in disinfection and sanitization.



5. Which are some of your key solutions that you would like to highlight here? We are consulting lot of large organisations, builders with multiple building and IPC of some of our solutions, which can really transform their operations and engineering. Some of the key solutions being proposed are:
   
   a. Engineering & Facility Management Automation with IoT based strategy which can bring down their cost up to 35% post implementations
   
   b. Smart Washrooms which can help with proactive/data driven operation and saving up to 30% on headcounts and consumables.
   
   c. Occupancy Management & other product / solutions for your back to office compliances
   
   d. Touch free operations like Green Checklist of engineer & Housekeeping operations / Facility management