Senior Smart Buildings Officer/

Role Overview
The Senior Smart Buildings Officer, funded by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) Performance Funding project titled “Towards a Sustainable University Campus”, will play a key role in establishing the physical and digital transformation pathway of TU Dublin’s building stock which will provide operational intelligence, optimisation, reporting, data and impact visualisation to multiple
stakeholders in a Living Lab environment. Reporting to the Project Manager and sponsored by the Head of Sustainability Intelligence, and working as a member of the wider Sustainability Team in close collaboration with Campus & Estates, the Senior Smart Buildings Officer has responsibility for developing digital twins for three of TU Dublin buildings which will consolidate data collections, analysis, reporting, and decarbonisation strategies to progress towards University and National objectives:

• National Climate Action Plan (NCAP) targets to achieve 51% CO2 emission reduction by 2030 compared to 2018, and improve our operational energy efficiency by 50%.
• National Development Plan by 1) Advancing the Green Transitioning, 2) Accelerating and expanding digital reforms and transformation.
• National Strategy on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) through a whole University approach to decarbonise campuses.

This project aims to pilot a scalable digital system for energy reporting in three university buildings, of different occupancy profiles, which will establish exemplars for the monitoring and optimisation of on-campus energy usage and will support teaching and training initiatives for students, staff and the wider community. The project has the potential to enhance TU Dublin’s position as a leader in sustainability in the higher education sector by establishing and disseminating models of best practice for higher education and the public sector.

Objectives:
(i) Develop a detailed monitoring action plan based on the core needs to network Building Management Systems (BMS) and integrate internet-of-things (IoT) technologies for energy consumed and produced, environmental conditions, services, and occupancies.
(ii) Pilot a smart monitoring and reporting infrastructure over 3 buildings with different occupancy profiles and usage.
(iii) Benchmark the energy performance, comfort, and occupancy profiles of the 3 identified buildings.
(iv) Develop energy, comfort, and occupancy models.
(v) Transform our buildings into interactive living labs with user-centric dashboards providing users with an understanding on their energy impacts, and potentially suggest behaviour/activity change to optimise the building operation.
(vi) Develop initiatives to upskill staff, educate students and the community.

Key outputs:
• Development of an investment plan for the digitalisation of buildings and campuses to decarbonise TU Dublin campuses through funding stream including energy performance contracts (EPC), energy savings resulting from building upgrades, fundraising, non-exchequer and non-commercial (NE-NC) fundings (EU and International), national fundings such as the SEAI Energy Obligation Support Scheme, collaborative partnerships with industries and industry contributions.
• Fundamental data infrastructure, acquisition, management, and processing in place to develop sustainable university campus environment.
• Report pathways to decarbonisation, to enhance data quality in TU Dublin Climate Action Roadmap,
• Report pathways to space optimisation.
• Report pathways to scale across all campus infrastructure.

Principal Accountabilities

The Senior Smart Buildings Officer will:
◼ Plan, procure and coordinate the physical and digital infrastructure upgrades in collaboration with various departments including Campus & Estates, Technology Services (ICT), and the Faculty of Engineering & Built Environment.
◼ Develop, pilot, implement and validate a cost-efficient sub-metering action plans to digitalise 3 buildings to assess energy, comfort, health, safety, and occupancy performances.
◼ Integrate existing ICT services data associated with the operation of buildings to the development of digital twins.
◼ Develop, implement, and maintain a data management plan of the project quantitative and qualitative data and performance indicators which will (i) ensure a high confidence in the quality of data, (ii) reporting accountabilities, (iii) inform reporting procedures including SEAI M&R, HEA, AASHE Sustainability Tracking and Assessment Rating System (STARS), ISO Standards, and University sustainability and strategic impacts, and (iv) facilitate the share of relevant information to key stakeholders for the development of knowledge, strategies, and opportunities.
◼ Contribute to (i) the mapping of Building Management System (BMS) data to spatially located services, (ii) the development of an asset repository, (iii) quantity surveying of the 3 investigated buildings, (iv) defining building services’ standard operational ranges, and (v) the assessment of the buildings’ physics properties.
◼ Develop of occupancy models and predictions leveraging data from multiple-services and sensors.
◼ Support energy and comfort benchmarking performances, the prediction and tracking of actual performances against initiatives looking at optimizing the operation of buildings.
◼ Co-develop a user-centric approach to display data to expert and non-expert. This living lab dashboards will enable to visualise (a) energy & environmental impacts of services to users, (b) decarbonisation pathways using interactive scenarios.
◼ Co-develop and co-organise a “Smart Infrastructure training initiative for Staff” training operational (e.g. Estates, Campus) and academic staff to understand and meet ISO 50001 and ISO 19650:1-2018 standards.
◼ Report technical, administrative, financial progresses, problems, challenges, opportunities, actions, decisions and impacts to the Project Manager.
◼ Maintain currency in the University’s approach to sustainability measurement methods tracking national, European, and international reporting standards.
The Senior Smart Buildings Officer will work collaboratively to build and maintain strong working relationships with functional areas across the University, delivering support locally as required to increase local level sustainable awareness and mindset. In particular, the Senior Smart Buildings Officer will work with the Head of Sustainability Intelligence, the Project Manager, a Post-Doctoral researcher, and members of Campus and Estates including a Senior Manager of Systems and a Senior Manager on Environmental & Sustainability aspects, thereby assisting Heads of functions in delivering the University’s Strategic Objectives.

Person Specification
The ideal candidate will demonstrate the appropriate mix of knowledge, experience, skills, talent and abilities as outlined below.

Qualifications
• A honours degree (NFQ Level 8) or higher in a relevant field such as Building Information Modelling, Digital Engineering, Building Physics, Building Services Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Sustainable Energy, Sustainable Building Design, Building asset and information managers or a related discipline from a recognised degree awarding authority, or an approved equivalent qualification. (Essential)
• A relevant NFQ Level 9 degree or higher in a relevant field such as the related disciplines mentioned above from a recognised degree awarding authority, or an approved equivalent qualification. (Desirable) Knowledge
• In-depth understanding of one or more sustainability measurement methods and reporting standards, including ISO 50001, ISO 19650, ISO 14001, and ISO 19011. (Desirable)
• Knowledge in data collection and integration from a wide range of ICT systems, data assessment and verification methodologies. (Desirable)

Experience
• Minimum 2 years of relevant professional experience on digital twin development, implementation and exploitation for application such as systems maintenance, energy management, and sustainability applications. (Essential)
• Professional experience with the selection, physical and data integration of energy submeters, Internet-of-Things (IoT)/smart building technologies, and Building Management Systems (BMS). (Desirable)

Skills, talents & abilities
• Proficiency with software tools used in building energy, indoor comfort, and/or building occupancy performance analysis including modelling, prediction, and benchmarking methodologies. (Desirable)
• Familiarity in developing and validating user-centric data visualization dashboards. (Desirable)
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with various functions and stakeholders; thereby translating technical knowledge into functional needs. (Desirable)