Red Bull is in pole position
Teamwork has created an intelligent space that responds to the needs of its users
Words by: Cathy Hayward
Red Bull Racing is synonymous with success and high performance at major events, its brand conjuring up images of speed and innovation. The Formula One team is dedicated to achieving gains, both large and small, that could give it the edge during a race, where the difference between winning and losing is measured by fractions of a percentage. The team at Red Bull Racing pursues continuous improvement, and it is precisely this relentlessness that has led to its recent collaboration with Mitie, the strategic outsourcing and energy services company, to implement an intelligent buildings solution at its factory in Milton Keynes.
The impressive facility, some of which is open to the public, is spread across three buildings. Bottom of Form Building One, the organisation’s original home, houses the design and technical offices upstairs, with initial manufacturing in the workshop below. The operations room in Building One comes into its own whenever the race team is away from base. The room is tiered, Mission Control style, and is used by Red Bull Racing’s engineers when the cars are on track. Key to making the ops room work is a data link to the circuit: the engineers in Milton Keynes receive the same information as those at the track, and the clocks on the wall display whatever time it is on the track.
Building Two is the race workshop, where the cars are put together (and taken apart) by the race crews, over and over again. There is also a replica pit box over which they repeatedly practise stops. Building Three is the latest addition and is home to the new machine shop and composites facility, together with the all-important cafe. The new agreement between Red Bull Racing and Mitie, signalling the beginning of a long-term working relationship, grew out of Mitie’s existing contract to provide mechanical and electrical maintenance to all three buildings, which began in October 2015. Red Bull Racing was impressed with Mitie’s intelligent buildings solution and was keen to see how it could be deployed across its facilities to optimise its team’s performance off the track.
The pit road
The first leg of the journey was to establish a Comfort Policy at Red Bull Racing around five key areas of temperature, air quality, lighting, design and image, and productivity and health. More than 270 people took part in the survey, which then allowed Mitie to identify the key areas of focus. More than 400 sensors were positioned around the building’s space, installed to collect information on air quality, light levels, temperature, humidity, noise and occupancy levels – variables that can affect both physical manufacturing processes and human performance.
The data was then analysed and interpreted at Mitie’s State-of-the-art Remote Operating Centre, where experienced engineers remotely monitored and assessed data received from the buildings. From this, they can remotely make changes through the Building Management System (BMS), or provide analytical diagnostics to the onsite team to help them make adjustments for optimisation. Using the data from the site, Mitie created a live 3D model of the working environment, providing key insights into how Red Bull Racing can implement a workplace that’s smart enough to adapt to its ever-changing business needs. The pilot went live this May. Mitie has been collecting and analysing live environmental data from the office and factory buildings using custom-built sensor technology, just as Red Bull Racing gathers data from sensors all over its cars during a race.
Pole position
The three-month pilot produced tangible results, with the data demonstrating that Red Bull Racing’s premises could be optimised through a series of fundamental building adjustments. Changes such as increased office airflow, isolation of loud workshop processes, and control over temperature were shown to have benefits.
Red Bull Racing has a packed trophy cabinet at its headquarters in Milton Keynes
By using this technology, colleagues can obtain a newfound understanding of their workplace, and control the conditions of their working environment in a way they could not before. Following the pilot, Red Bull Racing has introduced building telemetry as standard, with the aim of creating a completely intelligent building that can respond to the needs of its users. The aim is to reduce energy consumption, achieve better asset management, and deliver workplace changes that can improve employee productivity.
Comfort policies – around lighting and temperature – have been created for individuals and teams in different areas to ensure everyone is able to work at their peak performance and at their preferred temperature and lighting levels. The rich array of data means that numerous variables can be monitored and tailored according to conditions on a particular day. In addition to this, trends can be identified and measures put in place in order to anticipate changing conditions and colleague habits.
On the way to a podium finish
This new smart-buildings technology has already created changes to the way the workplace is managed. Plant is now maintained based on its condition and use rather than on pre-set schedules. Cleaning is done on a needs-based model, whereby cleaning staff will service areas that have been heavily used rather than simply follow a set pre-planned schedule. This has resulted in improved levels of cleanliness and increased worker satisfaction. The approach to security for the sensitive site has also been changed with reactive security analysis.
The workplace team is also using the data to automatically forecast catering and hospitality needs based on occupancy levels rather than adopting a daily average approach. ‘Competing in races is not just about performance on the track; it’s about leveraging the whole team in preparation for each race, and making sure they have a healthy and comfortable environment in which they can produce their best work,’ says Al Peasland, head of technical partnerships at Red Bull Racing. ‘Across all areas of our facility, building telemetry is helping us to measure and analyse our working environments and ensure that our team members have the optimum working conditions. Races are won long before we reach the track,' he says.
The idea is to take the vast amount of data from the building and turn it into meaningful and actionable information explains Stephen Foxley, managing director (London & South) at Mitie Technical Facilities Management. The tool’s dashboard shows not just the average temperature throughout the Red Bull Racing facility, the average CO2 level, the average sound pressure level and other metrics, but the compliance to the comfort policy for all data so that the facilities management team can ensure it is meeting the required levels and make adjustments where that’s not the case.
‘Red Bull Racing shares our drive for innovation and continuous improvement, and the building telemetry underlines the positive correlation between what happens in the factory and what happens on the track,’ says Foxley. Mitie and Red Bull Racing’s partnership has demonstrated that part of the UK’s productivity riddle can be alleviated with the introduction of non-intrusive equipment. Investing in these technologies should not be a ‘nice to have’, but part of a long-term investment strategy. However, the technology involved in the Mitie / Red Bull Racing relationship demonstrates that large figures need not be spent in order to yield great returns.
The wide availability of wireless technology now means that a job that previously would have taken months to execute now only takes days, or less, to complete. The business potential of intelligent buildings is clear. This collaboration is just one example of how workplace can recover lost ground in the UK’s productivity battle and engender sustainable economic growth. A marginal gain for Red Bull Racing could turn out to be a major gain for the UK economy.
