JTC Summit – office of the future

With the tendency to work from home offices are becoming an obsolete thing. In this connection, a lot of businesses think of some features to attract to their physical offices, such as free lunches or flexible hours.

However, JTC Summit in Singapore seems to be the smartest office building ever. 

The 31-storey building is situated in the Jurong Lake district, and industrial clusters in Jurong and Tuas can be easily accessible from there. One can access other parts of Singapore as well by expressways, such as the Ayer Rajah Expressway and Pan Island Expressway.  By a covered walkway, you can come to Jurong East MRT Station, a bus stop, and commercial centers, JCube, IMM, Westgate, and JEM

The building includes a large gathering area, a 450-seat cafeteria, a 350-seat auditorium, and a visitor center – all this in a publicly accessible area. 

The office looks like lots of other offices with its shiny glass windows but inside there’s a network of 60,000 sensors that make this building almost alive. 

GovTech, responsible for making the office “smart”, the part of the Singaporean government, has developed a platform where it combined smart energy, building management, and robot delivery services. 

The office owners work with an identical twin of the office but in the virtual world, which lets them improve the performance.

Smart District OS controls all the parts of the quarters, including entrances, elevators, and escalators to identify any weak spots. All these items can be monitored in real-time, as well as there is a possibility of remote control. 

All the rooms of JTC Summit are fitted with smart sensors. They detect, for instance, whether the rooms are overcrowded or it is too hot there, and the air conditioning turns on automatically. 

In the parking, any potential problems are detected to prevent fire risks. 

The office is full of robots who carry out various tasks – from delivery to identifying any possible problems. The robots can be controlled in real-time and can be redirected or stopped anytime. 

Smart offices like this are not only cost-effective, due to shortened manpower and maintenance costs, but also they improve efficiency and economize on resources.

On a more global level, like the level of a city or a district, the system has got huge potential. It can, for example, track bus arrival times, the number of empty parking spaces, flights arriving, and ships waiting to enter the Singapore harbors, on the environmental level – control water levels to prevent floods, etc. 

It is only the beginning, so how smart will your next workplace or district be?