Embracing Convergence
Santeri Suoranta points out that the digitalisation enables effective separation of control logic from physical equipment; for example, elevator control can be separated from the physical elevator or access control intelligence can be separated from the physical readers and locks.
“ This trend opens up new possibilities for integration and system optimisation within and between multiple systems,” Suoranta says. One can, for instance, integrate elevator control with access control or integrate elevator lobby lighting control with elevator’ s arrival in the lobby.
According to Suoranta, KONE’ s approach on intelligent buildings consists of integrating the people flow in four domains: destination controls, access controls, monitoring and information systems.
“ The starting point has been shifted from technology towards the key question – how to optimise the user experience. The technology here is used to enable the required solution,” he sums up.
Make Data Work for You
In order to identify the user and ensure access to the building and proper access control, smart solutions are needed. Under the KONE master concept, the elevator destination control solutions guide the users to their desired destinations easily, with minimal journey time and with optimal elevator capacity.
“ During the journey, various information is shared to users via screens. Monitoring solutions are needed for the building management to ensure safe, reliable, and effective operation.”
Suoranta points out that adopting to digital change is easier to accomplish in the early stages of the design effort, working together with the different vendors in the industry.“ Intelligence on buildings is possible to integrate in the design phase, but very hard to adopt afterwards.”
Rethinking Construction Sites
De Rotterdam, Netherlands.
The same mindset of planning ahead has encouraged KONE to come up with solutions for the construction sites. Jussi Kojamo, Head of KONE Major Projects Sales, observes that in the construction industry there are often clear cases where time is being wasted – bottlenecks appear that can’ t be solved on the spot, there aren’ t enough resources etc.
“ This waste impacts every worker, every builder and every building owner,” says Kojamo. To speed things along, KONE turned its attention to the traditional builder’ s hoists that are often used to move people and goods on construction sites.
Builder’ s hoists are of particular importance since on a high-rise construction site workers can spend hours commuting between floors every day. Large sites can easily employ 500 to 1,500 workers, which can mean that up to 4,500 working hours per day are lost simply traveling within a building.“ It goes without saying that cutting this number by half would have a huge impact on both the project schedule and cost,” Kojamo observes.
JumpLift to the Rescue
KONE decided to tackle this bottleneck by bringing in the KONE JumpLift. Having been successfully utilised in numerous high-rise construction sites around the world, KONE JumpLift is a self-climbing construction-time elevator which uses the building’ s permanent hoistway.
“ Workers can use the elevator while the elevator guiderails are being installed above from the self-powered installation platform. The KONE JumpLift climbs higher as the building grows taller,” Kojamo explains.
Benefits for Builders, Owners & Workers
For builders, KONE JumpLift speeds up the construction process considerably. Since the KONE JumpLift can travel 4 to 6 times faster than traditional external hoists, it can increase the traffic capacity by as much as 300 % and shorten construction schedules by up to 20 %.
“ This means savings, for example, in both labor and hoists rental costs. JumpLift can be used to complement, or even replace entirely, external hoisting systems,” Kojamo says. As well as being faster and safer, JumpLift can also operate in all weather
conditions, in a weatherproof shaft inside the building; the work can continue regardless of the outside weather conditions.
For building owners, KONE JumpLift accelerates the whole construction schedule, meaning that the building can be completed faster and opened earlier.“ Benefits for owners include enabling a faster return on investment, lower interest payments, and other indirect cost savings,” Kojamo says.
For workers, there’ s considerably less time spent waiting, and they no longer need to compete for space with building materials. As a result, on-site logistics improve by leaps and bounds.
“ And when you have a fully functioning elevator, compliant with the same safety standards as the completed elevator, it also significantly improves site safety,” Kojamo adds.
Worksite Flow Manager
According to Jussi Kojamo, once construction is completed, changing over to the permanent elevator is very quick and straightforward indeed.
“ The KONE JumpLift machinery is replaced by the permanent elevator machinery, the car and landing door materials are finished, and the permanent signalisation is installed.”
Kojamo observes that improving the construction site flow is really just an extension of KONE’ s core business. The company is a veteran of using sophisticated traffic planning tools to optimise people flow in modern high-rise buildings – and now the construction sites are able to reap the benefits of the KONE solutions, too. l
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