NABERS Indoor Environment

24/7 Critical Sensor Monitoring

Utilise PEAK's real-time Indoor Environment module to achieve and maintain a high NABERS IE rating.

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How your indoor environment impacts your building

Why you should care about the NABERS IE rating

Critical requirement

The quality of the office environment has become a critical requirement for attracting premium tenants. Organisations post-COVID are increasingly focused on creating a healthier, happier and more productive working environment for their employees.

Leading system

Leading Australian property owners (including 8 out of 10 of the top ASX listed property owners) are using the NABERS IE rating system to ensure that their buildings are delivering a highly productive work environment and using this to attract and retain premium tenants.

Annual assessment

A NABERS IE rating is an independent and voluntary annual assessment that measures the indoor environment quality of a building, based on factors that impact people’s cognitive performance, satisfaction and productivity, including air quality, lighting quality, temperature and thermal comfort, and acoustics. A building is awarded a rating from one to six stars, where one is poor, three is median and six is market-leading.

Benchmark performance

Thanks to NABERS IE, the Australian office sector now has the world’s highest number of buildings benchmarking their indoor environment performance. It complements compulsory NABERS Energy ratings, indicating a building is both highly energy efficient and comfortable.

The challenges of achieving a high NABERS IE rating

Data requirements

Obtaining a NABERS IE rating requires data from three parameters; thermal comfort, air quality and acoustic comfort. Thermal comfort data requires 12 months of continuous data from temperature sensors. It also requires a minimum of 90% annual sample data for each sensor. The problem arises when this data export is incomplete, possibly due to a faulty sensor, resulting in the final building score being penalised after-the-fact.

Lack of visibility

Temperature sensors in the majority of commercial buildings are only periodically checked as part of routine maintenance schedules. This means building owners and operators have very little visibility into whether sensors are working correctly. This is particularly important for NABERS IE as each nominated sensor needs to provide valid data for a minimum of 90% of the annual working days.

Manual data extraction

Exporting temperature sensor data in commercial buildings is often performed manually, which makes it time-consuming and expensive. An external contractor is usually hired for this purpose.

No margin for error

‍The data is extracted once a year because the NABERS IE rating lasts for 12 months, leaving no margin for error. If any of the temperature data is found to be incomplete due to faulty sensors during the assessment, it is too late to make any corrections and the NABRES IE rating will be significantly impacted.

PEAK Indoor Environment module

How PEAK Indoor Environment transforms the process

PEAK’s Indoor Environment module continuously monitors and analyses the critical elements of your building which includes thermal comfort and relative humidity against ideal comfort conditions and set point controls. In real-time. Across all zones, floors, and tenancies.

This is supported by AI powered algorithms that constantly monitor your building utilising advanced FDD algorithms to immediately identify any major issue or anomaly.

24/7 real-time monitoring

PEAK provides a complete solution to not only monitor critical NABERS IE sensors but for thermal comfort across all thermal zones in the building.

_{Monitoring critical NABERS IE sensors}

PEAK Indoor Environment module provides a complete digital solution to monitor critical NABERS IE sensors. PEAK is able to group the nominated NABERS IE sensors and report on their performance in real-time at a group and individual level.

_{NABERS-friendly default settings}

PEAK’s Indoor Environment module has default settings which follows the NABERS IE thermal comfort scoring methodology. For example, % of readings between 21.0°C and 24.9°C, 9am to 5pm weekdays.

Take Action

PEAK notifies asset operations teams instantly when an issue arises to help keep your building's thermal comfort levels in the optimum range.

_{Continuous AI-powered algorithms}

PEAK’s AI-powered algorithms continually monitor every temperature sensor in your building and will immediately detect issues with critical sensors including temperature readings outside range, broken sensors, root cause mechanical failure such as airflow blocks and leaks.

_{Automate workflow}

You can also utilise our workflow automations to set up specific alerts for NABERS IE sensors. Anyone in the asset or operations teams will receive immediate notifications in apps they use everyday like Teams when any NABERS IE related issues occur.

Reporting and Data extraction

Generate custom Indoor Environment monitoring reports for all NABERS IE sensors across your portfolio.

_{Real-time reporting}

PEAK’s real-time reporting functionality enables anyone in the Asset or Operations teams to view the current or historical NABERS IE performance at any time.

_{NABERS-ready data}

Thanks to PEAK’s powerful data normalisation capabilities, extracting the temperature sensor data required for the NABERS IE assessment is able to be achieved in a few clicks in the platform.

Set up for Success

Ensuring that your building receives an excellent NABERS IE rating is made easier with our dedicated customer success team. They have the ability to set up specific monitoring to ensure your target ratings are achieved. Having a single point of contact means that you and your asset operations team will have a consistently positive experience.

How leading REITS are using PEAK to support their NABERS IE ratings

PEAK data helps avoid drop in NABERS IE rating

NABERS IE score
In Sydney, a prominent commercial office building was being inspected for its latest NABERS Indoor Environment (IE) score. During the assessment, a built environment assessor identified a critical issue. Three sensors on Level 7 were malfunctioning, showing stagnant data below 21°C between October and December 2022. This sensor failure risked the building's coveted NABERS IE rating, threatening to drop it from an exceptional 6 stars to a 5.5 star rating.

PEAK Platform monitoring
Fortunately, CIM's PEAK Platform had been monitoring zone temperature data at the property since November 2021. The Facilities Manager swiftly stepped in to provide the assessors with this alternative dataset from the functional sensors on Level 7, ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the NABERS assessment.

The value of data
Thanks to the availability of data and continuous monitoring enabled through the PEAK Platform, the assessors were able to use the alternative sensor data to validate the building's thermal comfort scores. This intervention directly led to the building retaining its prestigious 6-star NABERS Indoor Environment rating, a testament to our software's capabilities in safeguarding sustainability standards.

PEAK transforms compliance monitoring for NABERS IE

Premium property
A leading facilities management company oversees a prestigious portfolio of commercial properties, valued well into the billions. The renowned portfolio offers close to 300,000 square meters of premium office accommodation. The properties are renowned for their superior indoor environment and sustainability standards, attracting global companies as anchor tenants.

Critical NABERS IE rating
A critical aspect of maintaining the portfolio’s premium IE standing has been the management of over 4,700 temperature sensors, essential for tenant comfort, compliance and assessment. Historically, the process of monitoring these sensors has been highly reactive, manual and riskily relying on yearly data exports to assess compliance. Such a process is known to identify malfunctioning sensors after-the-fact, rendering the requisite temperature data unavailable to NABERS IE assessors.

AI-powered analytics
The deployment of CIM’s PEAK Platform has transformed this reactive maintenance approach in favour of data-driven maintenance (DDM), as continuous monitoring and advanced AI-powered analytics now guide maintenance decisions. For our client, the process supports their delivery of an exceptional tenant experience, and ensures their NABERS IE ratings remain industry-leading. This has improved their ability to attract premium anchor tenants while avoiding penalties for failing to meet minimum lease requirements as they relate to IE ratings.