The Static Building Problem
Commercial building operations inherit HVAC schedules that were configured when the building opened and adjusted when someone complained loudly enough. The schedule says the building conditioning starts at 7 AM and runs until 7 PM, Monday through Friday, with weekend setback. Every floor gets treated the same way.
The actual occupancy pattern is nothing like the schedule. Finance has early arrivals at 6:30 AM. Marketing empties out by 4 PM. The 12th floor conference center runs full on Tuesdays and Thursdays and near-empty Monday mornings. The open office that seats 200 runs at 60–70% capacity most days and under 30% on Fridays.
The building’s conditioning system doesn’t know any of this. It runs the schedule.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, commercial buildings consume approximately 30% of US energy production, with HVAC accounting for roughly 40% of building energy use. A significant portion of that HVAC energy goes to conditioning unoccupied or underoccupied spaces because the system doesn’t know who’s there.
ArgusIQ connects occupancy sensing to HVAC automation, giving building operations the feedback loop that static scheduling can’t provide.
Occupancy Sensing: What the Building Knows
Sensor Technologies for Occupancy
ArgusIQ IoT Hub integrates with multiple occupancy sensing technologies:
PIR (passive infrared) motion sensors: Detect motion in a space. Low cost, widely deployed. Limitation: they detect motion, not sustained presence — a person sitting still at a desk may not trigger motion detection.
CO₂ sensors: CO₂ concentration rises when people are in a space and falls when they leave. CO₂ monitoring provides a proxy for occupancy density that doesn’t depend on motion detection. A CO₂ level of 900 ppm in a conference room indicates significantly higher occupancy than a baseline of 420 ppm (ambient outdoor level).
Ceiling-mounted people counters: Infrared or computer vision people counters mounted at room or zone entrances provide accurate count data — the number of people who entered minus the number who left equals the current occupancy count. More accurate than PIR, higher cost.
BLE occupancy beacons: BLE scanners detect phones and devices in a space — a proxy for people. Works where people carry smartphones; less reliable in spaces where device policies restrict it.
Desk occupancy sensors: Small sensors attached to desk surfaces detect whether a desk is occupied (body heat or capacitive detection) with resolution to the individual workstation. Relevant for hot-desk environments where desk utilization is a space planning concern.
ArgusIQ’s approach: combine the most appropriate sensor type for each space type. PIR for restrooms and high-traffic corridors. CO₂ for conference rooms and open office areas. People counters at building and floor entrances.
Space Hub: The Occupancy Floor Plan
ArgusIQ Space Hub renders occupancy data on the actual floor plan of the facility. Each monitored zone appears on the floor plan with its current occupancy status — a color indicator showing empty, low occupancy, moderate occupancy, or full. Conference rooms show their scheduled status vs. their actual occupancy.
Facilities managers and building engineers can see the live occupancy state of the entire building from the Space Hub view, without visiting each floor.
HVAC Integration and Automation
BACnet/IP and Modbus Integration
Most commercial building HVAC systems communicate over BACnet/IP — the building automation protocol standard. ArgusIQ IoT Hub integrates with BACnet/IP building automation systems (Johnson Controls, Siemens, Honeywell, Schneider Electric, and others), reading current temperature, setpoint, supply air, zone status, and damper position.
For older or simpler HVAC systems, Modbus integration provides access to thermostat data and zone control.
Demand-Controlled Ventilation
Demand-controlled ventilation (DCV) is the practice of adjusting ventilation rates based on actual occupancy rather than design occupancy. ASHRAE Standard 62.1 already permits DCV for occupancy-variable spaces — the building code supports it.
ArgusIQ implements DCV by connecting CO₂ sensor data to BACnet/IP VAV (variable air volume) controllers:
- When CO₂ in a conference room indicates low occupancy, ArgusIQ adjusts the VAV damper setpoint to minimum ventilation — reducing both heating/cooling energy and fan energy
- When occupancy increases (CO₂ rises), ArgusIQ increases the VAV setpoint proportionally
- When the room is empty (CO₂ returns to ambient), ArgusIQ commands setback temperature setpoints
The adjustment happens automatically, based on actual occupancy data, without building engineering staff manually modifying schedules.
Energy Monitoring: Seeing Where the Money Goes
Electrical Submetering
ArgusIQ IoT Hub connects to electrical submeters — revenue-grade meters measuring energy consumption at the circuit or panel level. With submetering, building operations can see:
- Energy consumption by floor, by zone, by HVAC system
- Consumption by tenant (for multi-tenant buildings with separate metering)
- Consumption by circuit category (HVAC, lighting, plug loads)
- Real-time vs. historical comparison: is today’s energy use tracking above or below the same day last month?
Submetering data in ArgusIQ Asset Hub creates an energy consumption baseline for each monitored zone. Anomalies — a floor consuming 40% more energy than its baseline — appear as alerts and warrant investigation (HVAC system issue, equipment left on unnecessarily, failing equipment drawing excess current).
Demand Peak Management
Utility rate structures for commercial buildings typically include a demand charge — a fee based on the peak 15-minute demand period during the billing month, not just total energy consumption. A brief spike in demand can add hundreds or thousands of dollars to a monthly electricity bill.
ArgusIQ’s Alarm Engine monitors real-time demand from submetering data and can alert when demand is approaching a threshold that would set a new peak. In buildings with controllable loads, the alert can trigger automated load shedding — reducing non-critical HVAC setpoints, dimming lights in unoccupied zones — to bring demand below the peak threshold.
Space Utilization Analytics for Workplace Planning
Beyond energy management, occupancy data drives workplace planning decisions:
Desk utilization: Which desks and workstations are occupied at what rates? For organizations with hybrid work policies, actual desk utilization rates inform the decision about whether to maintain current desk inventory or reduce it as remote work patterns stabilize.
Conference room utilization: Which rooms are over-subscribed (consistently booked but turned away), which are appropriately utilized, and which are consistently reserved but then unoccupied (ghost meetings)?
Headcount-to-capacity ratio: At the floor or building level, what is the peak simultaneous occupancy compared to the seating capacity? This ratio drives both short-term space management (which floors need additional seating) and long-term real estate decisions (is the current square footage appropriate for the workforce).
ArgusIQ’s occupancy analytics provides the data to make real estate decisions from evidence rather than from facilities manager estimates.
Maintenance Management for Building Systems
ArgusIQ CMMS applies condition-based maintenance to building systems:
- HVAC unit maintenance triggered by operating hours (from runtime tracking via BACnet integration) rather than calendar
- Filter replacement work orders triggered by measured pressure differential (a dirty filter increases static pressure across the filter — when pressure differential exceeds the configured threshold, the replacement work order is generated)
- Chiller health monitoring from supply/return temperature differential and energy consumption per ton of cooling
- Roof unit inspections triggered by seasonal scheduling with automatic work order generation
Building engineers can see the maintenance queue for all building systems in the CMMS work order view — prioritized by urgency, assigned to the appropriate technician, with the building system’s identity and location pre-populated from Asset Hub.
Talk to our team about ArgusIQ for your commercial building or campus.