What is a SMART washroom system?

Reading time: 6 minutes / Updated: February 8, 2023

A smart washroom system is unique technology that measures the usage of water and energy components in sensor taps, flush plates, hand dryers, etc., monitors various washroom characteristics, and delivers predictive maintenance and fault reporting alerts of these washroom products.

This technology allows business owners and facility managers to analyse granular data collected by the smart washroom system to make informed decisions to improve processes, implement measures to encourage better hygiene practices or use the washroom system to monitor washroom product settings.

As Dolphin Solutions has worked on smart washroom projects (including our own office washrooms), we will explain the benefits of smart washroom technology and the types of washroom products that can integrate with a smart washroom system.
 

7 benefits of SMART washroom technology

1. Accurate data analysis
2. Demonstrate a sustainable washroom
3. Green Building Certifications
4. Fault reporting alarms
5. Predictive Maintenance
6. Predictive cleaning
7. Employee wellbeing and wellness

2. Demonstrate a sustainable washroom

You can demonstrate the sustainability of your commercial washroom in real time by using a smart washroom system that provides water and energy consumption data from each smart enabled washroom fitting. Total water consumption, manual flush duration, total uses, operating hours since implementation, and other statistics are all fed into the digital interface and are displayed in easy graphs and tables to analyse.

This granular data provides concrete verification that you can use and produce a legitimate report to measure and analyse the performance of your commercial washroom. You will be able to find areas that need improvement and, for peace of mind, ensure the water and energy consumption is in line with your sustainability standards.

3. Green Building Certifications

Green building certification bodies like BREEAM, NABERS UK, LEED etc., assess and rate various construction and performance aspects in a commercial building, such as carbon, energy, water, waste, transportation, materials, health, wellbeing and indoor environmental quality.

A smart washroom system helps you to meet many of these green building certification requirements because of the extra measures you have implemented to reduce and conserve our natural resources. You will be able to prove the sustainability of the washroom by submitting the data and showing your efforts in monitoring and improving water and energy consumption.

You can also receive an internationally recognised SmartScore certification through a smart building rating system. Companies like WiredScore implement, assess, improve, and benchmark digital connectivity for smart buildings, and by implementing a smart washroom system, you better the opportunity to receive a SMARTScore certificate.

5. Predictive Maintenance

Analysing the data fed into the smart washroom system means you can see how many uses a sensor tap has gone through. Why would you want to do this? Because it will allow you to predict when to change the solenoid before it is due to fail, keeping customers happy that their washroom is in constant working order.

6. Predictive cleaning

Learn to use your resources correctly by analysing the data from the smart washroom system to see how often people use a washroom. With a hybrid working model introduced into most businesses, buildings are not necessarily fully occupied during the week or weekend. It does not make sense to send cleaners into all washrooms every day when some areas have not been used therefore you can strategically allocate their time to other cleaning services elsewhere in the building.