£4m to do the job security camera and someone able to count could do. £4m to track your employees. £4m to spy on them. I wonder how much green infrastructure could have been put in place for £4m. How many pocket parks? Or how many homes could have been insulated with hemp for £4m.
I know in the grand scale of it all £4m isn’t considered a lot, but it’s constant ‘small’ wasteful spending like this that prevent us from having decent infrastructure or able to have high quality meals for children.
This is standard in every private sector office I’ve ever worked in. It’s basic energy/cost saving to reduce lighting and air conditioning in unoccupied areas.
Genuine question, why can they not measure occupancy with turnstile data, i.e. at no additional cost?
Pretty sure I just read an article about a school not being able to afford pencils. Then this.
Hey I actually developed and pitched a system like this for a client working for councils in London, we had a test installation but it never went further than that as the cost per installation was simply beyond their (client not council) budget.
To people questioning how this cost £4m:
– Sensors require installation by professionals who cost money
– You will require a large amount of sensors, usually at least one per room across multiple office buildings presumably across multiple campuses
– They _do_ fail and require replacing
– Often you’re putting sensors in because areas are massively distributed or remote, that takes a lot of time/fuel to send trained professionals out to
– They accrue a ridiculous amount of data between them all and servers aren’t free
– People need to write the back and front end software to actually interact with and interpret that data, including integrating with _other_ software (like building management)
– People need to maintain that software
Common questions:
> Pay a few people £100k each a year to run around with a clipboard
People typically aren’t omnipresent, nor infallible. Sensors aren’t perfect but they are at least (usually) consistent and by their nature distributed. Also if you’re running things like automatic lights/heating etc off these systems, the guy with the clipboard is gonna have great cardio running to the breakers every other millisecond.
People also don’t usually work 12+ hours a day, these offices are often open far beyond your 9-5.
> Why can’t they just use a security camera?
I actually started looking into something along these lines before I shelved the project, effectively use computer vision/machine learning to both:
– Improve the accuracy of the sensors (mines were an outdoors installation, a less controlled environment)
– Solve for difficult installations
At it’s base a security camera is useless without a person interpreting it, and you’re now mixing some of the drawbacks of that (mentioned above) with the additional drawbacks of increased sensor costs (a security camera is far more expensive than a PIR sensor).
> Government agency spend money bad
Things cost money, systems like this aren’t abnormal, £4m for a government office/tech contract isn’t a lot.
If they work out from the report they can close _one_ office of hundreds due to increased remote working then they’ll have made £4m back right there.
5 comments
£4m to do the job security camera and someone able to count could do. £4m to track your employees. £4m to spy on them. I wonder how much green infrastructure could have been put in place for £4m. How many pocket parks? Or how many homes could have been insulated with hemp for £4m.
I know in the grand scale of it all £4m isn’t considered a lot, but it’s constant ‘small’ wasteful spending like this that prevent us from having decent infrastructure or able to have high quality meals for children.
This is standard in every private sector office I’ve ever worked in. It’s basic energy/cost saving to reduce lighting and air conditioning in unoccupied areas.
Genuine question, why can they not measure occupancy with turnstile data, i.e. at no additional cost?
Pretty sure I just read an article about a school not being able to afford pencils. Then this.
Hey I actually developed and pitched a system like this for a client working for councils in London, we had a test installation but it never went further than that as the cost per installation was simply beyond their (client not council) budget.
To people questioning how this cost £4m:
– Sensors require installation by professionals who cost money
– You will require a large amount of sensors, usually at least one per room across multiple office buildings presumably across multiple campuses
– They _do_ fail and require replacing
– Often you’re putting sensors in because areas are massively distributed or remote, that takes a lot of time/fuel to send trained professionals out to
– They accrue a ridiculous amount of data between them all and servers aren’t free
– People need to write the back and front end software to actually interact with and interpret that data, including integrating with _other_ software (like building management)
– People need to maintain that software
Common questions:
> Pay a few people £100k each a year to run around with a clipboard
People typically aren’t omnipresent, nor infallible. Sensors aren’t perfect but they are at least (usually) consistent and by their nature distributed. Also if you’re running things like automatic lights/heating etc off these systems, the guy with the clipboard is gonna have great cardio running to the breakers every other millisecond.
People also don’t usually work 12+ hours a day, these offices are often open far beyond your 9-5.
> Why can’t they just use a security camera?
I actually started looking into something along these lines before I shelved the project, effectively use computer vision/machine learning to both:
– Improve the accuracy of the sensors (mines were an outdoors installation, a less controlled environment)
– Solve for difficult installations
At it’s base a security camera is useless without a person interpreting it, and you’re now mixing some of the drawbacks of that (mentioned above) with the additional drawbacks of increased sensor costs (a security camera is far more expensive than a PIR sensor).
> Government agency spend money bad
Things cost money, systems like this aren’t abnormal, £4m for a government office/tech contract isn’t a lot.
If they work out from the report they can close _one_ office of hundreds due to increased remote working then they’ll have made £4m back right there.