Honeywell, a provider in connected buildings, and Signify, a lighting provider, announced a strategic alliance to deploy integrated, smart lighting solutions for commercial buildings. Together, the companies aim to improve the occupant experience — focusing on productivity and well-being — and to reduce energy consumption.

The collaboration integrates Signify's Interact connected lighting system and software, and its UV-C disinfection lighting, with Honeywell Building Management Systems and the Honeywell Forge enterprise performance management platform. The combined offerings will manage energy consumption while factoring in occupancy along with air quality indicators such as temperature and humidity. Signify's lighting solutions will complement Honeywell's Healthy Buildings air quality solutions beginning in early 2021, and can be controlled, measured and monitored via the Healthy Buildings dashboard to understand air and surface cleaning compliance and metrics.

Honeywell's Healthy Buildings solutions help building owners improve their building environments, operate more cleanly and safely, comply with social distancing policies, and help reassure occupants that it is safer to return to the workplace. By integrating air quality, safety and security technologies along with advanced analytics, Honeywell's Healthy Buildings solutions are designed to help building owners minimize potential risks of contamination and improve business continuity by monitoring both the building environment and building occupants' behaviors.

Signify offers additional elements to improve productivity and well-being. These elements include human-centric lighting, such as NatureConnect, and UV-C disinfection lighting. UV-C breaks down the DNA or RNA of micro-organisms, including viruses and bacteria, rendering them harmless. In laboratory testing, Signify's UV-C light sources reduced SARS-CoV-2 virus infectivity on a surface to below detectable levels in as few as 9 seconds.

Additionally, building owners and operators will be able to better manage lighting systems and energy efficiency with smart LED lighting systems. Lighting represents 17 percent of all electricity used in U.S. commercial buildings according to the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey, making it the largest end use of electricity in buildings. Similar usage rates are seen globally.

Signify's connected LED lighting system Interact Office can save up to 70 percent of the energy used for lighting and deploying advanced building controls and sensing, like those from Honeywell, can save up to 30 percent in facility energy costs.

"Increasingly we see lighting systems playing a critical role in buildings to improve occupant comfort, well-being and productivity as well as to help meet energy savings goals. We anticipate this trend will continue to grow," said Vimal Kapur, president and CEO, Honeywell Building Technologies. "Our collaboration with Signify will allow us to enable our customers to implement integrated lighting solutions that help improve the occupant experience with customizable, personal lighting options that can be integrated into our Honeywell Forge and Building Management Systems platforms."

"There are known benefits of how lighting can improve occupant experience and well-being," said Harsh Chitale, leader of Signify's Digital Solutions. "Many of our customers expect our solutions to deliver value beyond the scope of lighting. We look forward to capitalizing on this collaboration with Honeywell to jointly develop products and systems that provide greater value to our customers. We aim to deliver end-user benefits to building occupants, such as increased well-being and productivity, while providing channel partners with products that are easier to commission and maintain."

Honeywell and Signify are deploying integrated offerings at OPTIMAX Eye Specialists, a network of eye specialist clinics in Malaysia, to help the organization improve its air quality and surface disinfection efforts.

"Honeywell and Signify offered our clinics a complete solution for air, surface and object disinfection that allows us to clearly communicate to our clinicians, staff and patients how we are working to support well-being in our spaces," said Tan Sri Dato' Tan Boon Hock, founder, OPTIMAX Eye Specialists Centre.

The clinics are using Signify UV-C lighting in upper air luminaries, stand-alone trolleys and in Honeywell-controlled fan coil units to increase well-being by contributing to disinfect air and surfaces in rooms. Honeywell's Healthy Buildings dashboard will control and monitor the Signify lighting technologies in the clinics.

The integrated Honeywell and Signify products can support the needs of any building and feature specific solutions for premium commercial buildings, airports, hospitality, healthcare, education, retail and stadia sectors. Honeywell and Signify are also currently deploying the integrated solutions, including Signify's Philips UV-C disinfection upper air luminaires, in several Honeywell global offices.