WO2011031135A2

WO2011031135A2 - Building management system, and system for intelligently cleaning a building

Info

Publication number: WO2011031135A2
Application number: PCT/NL2010/000128
Authority: WO
Inventors: Petrus Johannes Wilhelmus Van Herp; Johannes Hermanus Petrus Maria Oonk; Tijmen Karel Jan Boogers
Original assignee: The Clean Air Factory B.V.
Priority date: 2009-09-10
Filing date: 2010-09-08
Publication date: 2011-03-17
Also published as: NL1037916A; NL1037916B1; WO2011031135A3; EP2476084A2

Abstract

A building management system (1000) for a building (1) that comprises a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like, accessible to persons, the management system comprising for each room an availability indicator (15), and the management system comprising a central control system (100) for controlling the availability indicators of the several rooms. Each availability indicator may be implemented as a light emitting element capable of emitting either red or green light. For each room, the management system further comprises a controllable lock (14) controlled by the central control system for locking or releasing a door (13) of the room concerned. The control system only releases a limited number of rooms, depending on demand, and directs service personnel to only clean those rooms that have actually been used.

Description

TITLE : Building management system, and system for intelligently cleaning a building

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates in general to a management system for managing a building or building complex, comprising a plurality of spaces available to people for staying for a longer or shorter period of time.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

It is to be noted that the present invention does not relate to residential houses or apartment buildings, or other types of buildings where there is a fixed relationship between persons and rooms. In contrast, the present invention relates to a situation where a building (or plurality of buildings) has a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like available to users, where an individual user is in principle free to use any room of his choice. By way of example, an office building is mentioned. Conventionally, an individual person would have a fixed working space including a desk, chair, cabinet, etc, so he would have his own dedicated office room or would share such room with a group of predetermined colleagues. A problem in such case is that the office capacity, in terms of people, corresponds (putting it simply) to the number of desks in the office while it is a statistical fact that not everybody is always in the office so there are empty desks and the

occupancy ratio is less than one. It has already been proposed to have flexible work places, meaning that an office worker entering the office building does not have a fixed working place dedicated to him but he is free to select any of the available working places to be his working place for that day. As a result, it^" is possible to accommodate more workers in the same building with less empty desks.

^• Another example is a conference building offering

conference facilities in the sense of rooms that can be rent for a day to arrange a conference meeting. In principle, it would be possible for a group to assemble and then go to any conference room that is still free. A similar example would be a school having class rooms available for a group of persons to have classical teachings or courses. A comparable example would be a study centre having study cabins for individuals to do individual activities like writing, reading, studying, etc.

Another example relates to the toilet facilities. There are many examples of buildings where there are a plurality of toilets available to a plurality of persons, such as offices, schools, restaurants, theatres, airports, etc. Whenever a person wishes to go to the toilet, he just selects any one toilet that is free at that moment.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

An important aspect of concern for the owner or manager of such buildings is the cost of maintenance and cleaning. Regularly, depending on circumstances, the rooms, cabins, toilets etc need to be cleaned. Further, in each of the places occupied by individuals or groups of persons, the light must be switched on, the heating and/or ventilation and/or airco must be functioning, etc. It is an important aim of the present invention to offer a management system capable to reduce these costs.

In one aspect of the present invention, the lights in a room or cabin or the like are automatically switched on or off depending on whether the room concerned is occupied or not. It is already known to use presence detectors, but the known detectors are typically infrared motion detectors, having the disadvantage that the light in the room is switched off if the occupant is sitting still for some time. The present invention proposes that each individual is equipped with an RFID tag and that each entrance of a room is equipped with an RFID reader, enabling a room management system to keep track of the number of occupants.

In another aspect of the present invention, the rooms or cabins or toilets or the like have doors that can be remotely locked by a central computer or the like. Preferably, each door is provided with signal means signalling whether or not the door is open or locked. Suitably, each door is provided with an illumination device that can produce red light to indicate that the door is locked or green light to indicate that the door is open. Depending on demand, i.e. the number of persons looking for a free room, the management computer unlocks a number of doors and turns the corresponding signal lamp to green, to indicate that the room concerned is

accessible. If the building is used to its full capacity and the demand is high, it may be that the management computer has to open all rooms, but on many occasions it is not necessary to open all rooms. If a room has not been opened within a service interval, it may be decided that it is not necessary to clean this room, which saves costs. On a larger scale, the above applies not only to single rooms but also to entire floors, wings or even buildings.

As regards the toilets in a toilet room, individuals tend to select the same individual toilet, so on average one toilet will be used much more than other toilets. If the number of times that a certain toilet has been used exceeds a limit, that specific toilet needs to be serviced by cleaning

personnel while the other toilets do not yet need to be serviced. Each additional round of servicing represents additional costs, and each round of servicing that can be delayed or even omitted represents a saving of costs. Thus, the present invention proposes that the management computer keeps track of the number of times each individual toilet cabin has been used. When a certain cabin reaches a certain limit, the management computer locks the door of this cabin and the corresponding indicator light is turned to RED for

"not available". As a result, possible pollj tion in this cabin does not increase any further, but in any case is not an annoyance to users any more because users can not enter this cabin and are thus not being confronted with the pollution. Users are forced to use other cabins with less "mileage".

Finally, when all toilets approach their limit or the time interval since previous services approaches a limit, the management computer directs service personnel to this toilet room. The signal means may be .identical to the signal means that warn an approaching potential user that this cabin is currently occupied by another user. Thus, for a user, there is not difference between being prohibited from entering a cabin because it_. is occupied on the one hand or because the system has taken this cabin out of service.

The present invention also provides an intelligent system for cleaning buildings. For cleaning buildings in a

professional manner, a cleaning company typically employs a staff of .cleaning personnel. It is normally desirable that individual cleaning personnel is allocated to specific

buildings, so that the individual gets experienced in cleaning this specific buildings. However, it is not always possible to avoid that a building is cleaned by someone who is not

familiar with that specific building, for instance as a replacement in case of the usual cleaning personnel being ill or having a holiday. Further, cleaning buildings involves a wide range of cleaning tasks, which tasks however normally do not necessarily have the same service interval: some tasks need to be performed on a daily basis, and some tasks need to be done only once per week^' or once per month. So, it may be difficult for a cleaning person to know precisely what to do when. This difficulty may be increased if, according to the specific concept of the present invention, some tasks need only be done "when needed": for instance, if a toilet cabin has not been used today, the cleaning person may skip this toilet cabin; likewise, it may be possible to skip a desk or an ashtray, or to skip vacuuming, etc, if a work station or an office room has not been used.,^" Thus, in general, there is the problem for the cleaning person of determining what to do, and there is the problem for the management system and/or the cleaning company of communicating to the cleaning person what he/she is expected to do.

The present invention also provides a solution to this problem. Through a wireless link, the cleaning person receives computer-generated cleaning instructions. Depending on

circumstances, and on desire, these instructions may be more or less detailed, and it may even be possible for the cleaning person to set the level of detail . For instance, a more experienced worker may just need the instructions "go

vacuuming room X"; while a less experienced worker may even need directions to the closet where the vacuum cleaner is stored, which key to use, how long to continue vacuuming, etc

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

These and other aspects, features and advantages of the present invention will be further explained by the following description of a preferred embodiment of the building

management system according to the present invention with reference to the drawings, in which same reference numerals indicate same or similar parts, and in which:

figure 1 schematically shows a floor plan of a building;

figure 2 schematically shows a block diagram of a building management system of the building of figure 1;

figure 3 schematically shows a ventilation system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Figure 1 schematically shows a floor plan of a building 1 having one or more wings 10 (the figure illustratively showing four wings) . Each wing 10 has one or more corridors 11 (the figure illustratively showing one corridor per wing) with one or more rooms or cabins 12; all in all, the building 1 has a plurality of rooms or cabins 12. Each room 12 has at least one entrance door 13, giving access to the corresponding room 12 from the corresponding corridor 11. The building 1 is provided with a building management system 1000, which comprises, for each door 13, a remotely controllable lock 14 and an

availability indicator 15, controlled by a central control system 100, for instance implemented as a computer or

controller, as schematically illustrated in figure 2; this central control system is also indicated as management

computer. On a larger scale, a corridor 11 may be provided with an availability indicator 16, and the same applies to an entire wing or even the entire building. It is further noted that the same applies to different floors within a building. In one aspect of the present invention, each room 12 is provided with controllable facilities such as light 30 and/or heating and/or internet access, and is provided with an RFID receiver or reader 21. Figure 2 schematically shows an RFID tag 20, which will be carried by a person authorized to enter a room 12. When at least one such authorized person enters a certain room 12, the corresponding RFID receiver or reader 21 will read the RFID code from the person's tag 20 and will communicate this to the central control system 100, which responds by releasing the room's facilities, i.e. turning on the light 30. When the central control system 100 receives RFID information that the last person has left the room, it will deactivate the room's facilities.

In another aspect of the present invention, the central control system 100 controls the room locks 14 and availability indicators 15, 16 such as to reduce maintenance costs, based on occupancy demand. In a conventional system, there is no central control, and all rooms 12 are open and accessible to any interested person. This would mean that cleaning personnel would have to check each and every room in the entire building 1 to see whether cleaning would be necessary. According to the present invention, if a room has not been used, this is signalled to the cleaning personnel so that cleaning is done much more efficiently.

In the following, in order to indicate specific

corridors, letters A, B, C etc are added to a reference numeral; in order to indicate specific rooms in one corridor, ciphers 1, 2, 3 are added to a reference numeral (generalized as integer i) . Assume, for example, that odd numbers relate to the lefthand side of a corridor while even numbers relate to the righthand side of a corridor.

At the start of a working day, the central control system 100 may release a first group of rooms 12, for instance six (or any other number of) rooms at the beginning of corridor 11A of wing 10A, or all rooms at the lefthand side of corridor 11A of wing 10A. Hereinafter, such group is indicated as starting group. The central control system 100 controls the corresponding locks 14 to be open, controls the corresponding availability indicators 15 to indicate that the corresponding rooms are available (for instance green light), controls the availability indicator 16A to indicate that the corresponding corridor 11A contains available rooms, and controls all other indicators to indicate that the corresponding corridors and/or rooms are not available (for instance red light) . A user will enter the building 1 through entrance 2 to enter central lobby 3, and will note that only availability indicator 16A

indicates a corridor 11A with available rooms. Thus, this user will not enter any of the other corridors.

On the scale of individual floors of a building, it may be assumed that the building has one or more flights of stairs with access doors to such floors, and has one or more

elevators giving access to such floors. Again, the central control system 100 may start by releasing one floor only, so that an availability indicator associated with one access door from a flight of stairs is green while the others are red. The same applies to availability indicators in the control panel of the elevator. It may even be that the central control system 100 influences the control of the elevators so that an elevator can only stop at an available floor.

Using the RFID information, the central control system 100 knows when a person enters a specific room 12 (i) . It may be that a room can be used by a group of persons for a meeting of any kind, such as teaching. In that case, there should preferably be some kind of indication as to which group is assembling in which room, but anyway, in that case, such room is still indicated to be available if one or more persons have already entered, unless, perhaps, a signal is given to the central control system 100 that the group is complete. It may also be that a single room is to be used by a single person; this would for instance apply to study cabins, toilet cabins, telephone booths. In that case, as soon as the central control system 100 detects one person entering a specific room 12 (i), it controls the corresponding availability indicator 15 (i) to indicate that this room is no longer available. Also, the central control system 100 may switch the availability

indicator 15 (j) -of another room 12 (j) to switch from

"unavailable" to "available" (from red to green), this room belonging to, for instance, the same corridor as the starting group of rooms. Eventually, it may be necessary to release rooms in other corridors, floors, etc.

After a while, a person (or group) may leave the room 12 (i) . This is detected by the central control system 100, which in response controls the corresponding availability indicator 15 (i) to indicate that the room is again available (green light) .

During the day, the central control system 100 keeps a log of the use that is made of. the individual rooms. This log may contain information relating to time- of day and duration per visit, but in any case it contains information relating to the number of visits. The log is contained in a memory 101 of the central control system 100. The central control system 100 may have limitation information, for instance indicating a maximum number of visits. When the log shows that the number of visits made to a specific room 12 (i) has reached this limit, the- central control system 100 may decide to keep this specific room 12 (i) unavailable (red light and lock 1 (i) locked) until the room 12 (i) has been serviced; this will specifically apply in the case of toilet cabins, and can also be applied to individual urinals in a washroom, except for the lock.

In the case of a plurality of toilet cabins, users will typically tend to all select the same cabin for use; in any case, one cabin will be used more than the others. After a few visits, such cabin is locked by the central control system 100, and users are forced to use another cabin. As a result, users are not confronted with possible pollution in the much- used cabin, and servicing of this cabin can be delayed. When the central control system 100 finds that the number of visits to all cabins exceeds a certain limit, it will generate a command to service personnel to go to this group of cabins for servicing, i'.e. cleaning. This command may suitably be given as an SMS message to a mobile telephone. Thus, the service personnel is directed in an efficient manner to only service cabins when needed, in stead of the expensive method of service personnel having to constantly monitor or regularly check the condition of the cabins. When the service personnel arrives on site, they may communicate this to the central control system 100, which in turn releases the locks 14 of the cabins 12. It is also possible that the central control system100 is automatically aware of the presence of the service personnel through the RFID readers 21. It is also possible that the service personnel have a key to open the locks 14. After a cabin has been serviced, the central control system 100 switches the corresponding availability indicator to

"available".

An additional advantage of this system is that the log demonstrates that cabins actually have been serviced, when, by whom, etc.

Over the day, the number of persons in the building may vary, and thus the number of rooms/cabins occupied at any time will typically have varied. In many instances, the building will not have been occupied to 100% of its capacity. The system proposed by the present invention, preventing users to select any room of their liking, assures that use has been restricted to a limited number of rooms, and that there may be individual rooms and/or corridors, wings, floors etc that have not been visited at all. Consequently, at the end of the day, service personnel does not necessarily have to visit and check each and every room: it is possible to restrict servicing to only those rooms that have been used, or even to only those rooms of which the number of visits is higher than a certain threshold number. This results in a saving of servicing costs.

It is possible that servicing personnel is already directed to clean certain rooms during the day. Further, ^"for instance in case of toilet cabins in an airport, it may be that users are expected to potentially use the cabins 24 hours. In that case, it may be unavoidable that users meet service personnel at work.

It is also possible that use has a peak during a day and reduces after office hours. It is possible that the central control system 100, during periods of reduced demand, switches a group of rooms (for instance an entire wing 11) to

"unavailable" so that service personnel can already start cleaning these rooms (if used) without "colliding" with users. It is also possible that a building is only accessible up to a certain time, and that servicing is only done after that time, for instance at night.

As already mentioned, an advantage of the .present

invention is that it allows to limit cleaning to only those rooms that actually have been used. On different days, the starting groups may be different, i.e. belong to different corridors, floors-, etc, so that it may be assumed that over a longer time period all rooms have been used and cleaned. In practice, it is possible that at the end of a day one or more rooms of a certain group (corridor, floor, etc) or even one or more rooms of the starting group have not been used, and that the central control system 100 decides that nevertheless all rooms of such group are to be cleaned, including those which have not been used, such as desired by a building manager.

As already mentioned, an advantage of the present invention is that it allows to limit cleaning to a certain portion of the rooms while the service personnel does not have to deal with the other rooms. One practical problem is how to direct the service personnel to the rooms to be cleaned. The present invention also offers a solution to this problem. The central control system 100 is capable of operating in a servicing mode. In this mode, the central control system 100 again controls locks 14 and indicators 15, 16 to be in either one of two conditions. In one condition, a lock 14 is open and the corresponding indicators 15, 16 indicate "open" (for instance: green light); in a second condition, a lock 14 is closed and the corresponding indicators 15, 16 indicate

"closed" (for instance: red light) . In this mode, "closed" means that the service personnel should pass this room without cleaning, whereas "open" means that the service personnel should clean this room. Likewise, "closed" for a corridor / wing / floor means that the service personnel may ignore this corridor / wing / floor whereas "open" means that there is at least one room in this corridor / wing / floor that should be cleaned. The selection of which rooms should be cleaned and which not is made by the central control system 100 on the basis of the information in the memory 101, i.e. which rooms have been used and which rooms have not been used. In the servicing mode, whenever the service personnel is ready with a certain room, this is indicated to the central control system 100, which in response switches the

corresponding indicators 15, 16 to indicate "closed",

indicating to the service personnel that this room does not. have to be serviced, in this case because it has already been serviced. So, the service personnel themselves do not have to keep track of the rooms that have been serviced. In the above, it has been described that rooms 12 are locked by the central control system 100 in order to prevent users from using them. By the same token, it is possible that corridors and/or wings and/or floors etc are provided with access doors with remotely controllable locks, controlled by the central control system 100 in the same way. On the other hand, it is also possible that corridors and/or wings and/or floors and even rooms remain open when indicated

"unavailable", but that it is made unattractive for a user to use such room / corridor / wing / floor by switching off all facilities. Particularly, if it remains dark and if there is no internet access, and perhaps even no telephone access, users will probably tend to move on.

In the above, it has been described that facilities such as lighting are switched on/off automatically on the basis of an RFID sensor detecting the RFID tag of a user entering or leaving the room. It is also possible that ventilation in a room is controlled by the central control system 100 on the basis of demand, i.e. the number of persons in a room as determined by the number of RFID tags detected. Typically, large buildings nowadays have central ventilation and/or air suction systems. Figure 3 schematically shows a ventilation system 300, comprising a main ventilation duct 301 with a ventilator or the like 302. Rooms 12 are connected to the main ventilation duct 301 through corresponding ventilation

branches 303.^' Each ventilation branch 303 is provided with a controllable valve 304, remotely controlled by the central control system 100 (see figure 2) . When the central control system 100 detects that a room is empty, it may close the corresponding valve 304 (partly or completely) , so that suction of air from this room (or blowing of air into this room) is reduced or even stopped. When the central control system 100 detects that a user enters a room, it may open the corresponding valve 304, wherein it is preferred that the valve 304 is opened further in proportion to the number of users in the room, so that suction of air from this room (or blowing of air into this room) is controlled in proportion to demand (i.e. number of persons) . For the overall ventilation system of the building, this means that the energy consumption is reduced.

Figure 4 schematically illustrates an exemplary

implementation of another aspect of the present invention. The central control system 100 of the building management system 1000 is equipped with wireless transmission means 400, and a cleaning person (not shown) is equipped with a headset or earphone 450 equipped with or connected to wireless receiving means 460. The wireless transmission means 400 may be located centrally, i.e. one strong transmitter servicing all

receivers, but it is also possible that the transmission means 400 comprise multiple transmitters distributed over the building, perhaps even one transmitter per room. The

transmission technology is preferably RF, but other suitable technology can also be used. Instead of a receiving device being implemented as a headset or earphone 450, it is also possible that the receiving device is implemented as a

telephone or PDA or the like, but a headset or earphone has an advantage of allowing to be continuously monitored by the user, i.e. the cleaning person, whithout needing his hands.

Via the transmission means 400, the central control system 100 sends instructions to the receiving device 450, and hence to the cleaning person. The instructions are in the form of spoken text, taken from a text database 410. Alternatively, depending on the nature of the receiving device, written text may be used .

The central control system 100 is designed to calculate a task list for the cleaning person. The task list includes the individual tasks to be performed, the order in which to perform them, the time duration allocated per task, and

perhaps detailed informtion such as relating to which tools to. use and which method to use. The task list may be supplemented by guidance information, giving the cleaning person directions on how to- reach the next location to be cleaned, where to find certain items, etc. The task list is calculated on the basis of, on the one hand, information given by the building

manager: the building manager may determine that the windows should be cleaned once per month, vacuuming should be

performed once per week, the toilet cabins should be done once per day, etc. Without any additional information, the task list will show tasks with a periodic pattern of a month, a week, a day, etc. Yet, such task list is already of advantage for cleaning persons who are not familiar with this specific building: even without prepration and guidance, such cleaning persons can immediately work in "new" buildings. Nevertheless, the great advantage of the present invention is seen if the central control system 100 calculates the task list on the other hand on the basis of information relating to the use history. As has been explained in the above, one or more tasks of the standard task list may be skipped if a room or toilet cabin has not been used this day; on the other hand, if it appears that a room or toilet cabin has been used quite excessively, or if a complaint is received regarding the cleaning status of some objects, the central control system 100 may decide, or may be instructed by a remote supervisor, to add one or more tasks to the task list even before such task would have been due according to normal schedule.

The communication system may be bidirectional: the central control system 100 tells the cleaning person what to do, and is then silent until it receives^' a message back from the cleaning person indicating that the task has been

completed. Preferably, however, the cleaning instructions are given in real time, and a one-directional communication system suffices. The cleaning instructions may tell the cleaning person to vacuum a certain room for 10 minutes, and after 10 minutes (in the mean time, the headset 450 may present music) the cleaning instructions may tell the cleaning person to vacuum another room, skipping a room in between. The cleaning person does not have to check whether the room in between needs servicing or not, he is simply told (explicitly or implicitly) to skip this room. Likewise, for the smaller tasks to be done inside a room (such as empty dustbins, wipe desks, wipe door handles, etc), the cleaning person does not waste time by investigating whether such task needs to be performed or by performing the task without need, but he just executes the tasks communicated to him and obviously does not do the tasks not mentioned. It is the central control system 100 that decides that a task can be skipped, on the basis of the information relating to the use of the room/corridor/wing etc.

The system may be self-correcting and/or self-learning . If complaints are received regarding the cleaning result, the system has apparently been set too "economic", and the list of cleaning instructions can be corrected by adding tasks and/or increasing the time per task in order to improve cleaning quality.

Thus, according to the present invention, the system comprises a central control system 100 for generating

instruction messages, a user device 450 for communicating these messages to a cleaning person, preferably a headphone or an earphone, and transfer means for communicating these messages from the central control system 100 to the user device 450. In the above example, the transfer means include a wireless transmission system, and the messages are basically communicated to the cleaning person immediately after being generated and transmitted by the central control system 100, while the central control system 100 generates the messages in real time. It is also possible that the central control system 100 generates the messages in advance, and that the user.

device comprises a storage device for storing and playing the messages in real time, or that the central control system 100 stores the messages on an information carrier (such as for instance an optical disc or a solid state memory) and that the user device comprises a player device for receiving such information carrier and playing the messages from the carrier in real time.

It is further possible that the instructions transmitted to the user device 450 include, for each task, a set of identical instruction in different languages, and that the user device 450 comprises a language selection feature

allowing the user which language he/she wishes to hear, so that the user device sleets one instruction from such set of instructions per task.

Summarizing, the present invention provides a building management system 1000 for a building 1 that comprises a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like, accessible to persons, the management system comprising for each room an availability indicator 15, and the management system

comprising a central control system 100 for controlling the availability indicators of the several rooms. Each

availability indicator may be implemented as a light emitting element capable of emitting either red or green light. For each room, the management system further comprises a

controllable lock 14 controlled by the central control system for locking or releasing a door 13 of the room concerned. The control system only releases a limited number of rooms, depending on demand, and directs service personnel to only clean those rooms that have actually been used.

It should be clear to a person skilled in the art that the present invention is not limited to the exemplary

embodiments discussed above, but that several variations and modifications are possible within the protective scope of the invention as defined in the appending claims.

For instance, it is noted that communication from RFID sensors 21 to the central control system 100 may be done via wires or wirelessly.. Likewise, communication from the central control system 100 to the locks 14 and/or availability

indicators 15, 16 may be done via wires or wirelessly. In a particular embodiment, control takes place via internet.

Features described in relation to a particular embodiment can also be applied to other embodiments described. Features of different embodiments may be combined to achieve another embodiment. Features not explicitly indicated as being

essential may be omitted. Where the text mentions that two parts are coupled together, this may involve a direct coupling but also an indirect coupling, i.e. for instance via a third part or without contact.

The reference numerals used in the claims only serve as clarification when understanding the claims with, a view to the exemplary embodiments described, and should not be interpreted in any limiting way.

Claims

1. Building management system (1000) for a building (1) comprising a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like (12) accessible to persons, wherein the building management system (1000) for each room (12) comprises an availability indicator (15), and wherein the building management system (1000) comprises a central control system (100) for controlling the availability indicators (15) of the individual rooms (12).

2. Building management system according to claim 1, for a building comprising multiple corridors and/or wings and/or floors, with always at least one or multiple rooms or cabins or the like (12), wherein the building management system

(1000) for each corridor and/or wing and/or floor or otherwise ordened group of rooms or cabins or the like (12) comprises an availability indicator (16) controlled by the central control system (100) .

3. Building management system according to claim 1 or 2 , wherein an availability indicator (15; 16) is implemented as a light-generating element with at least two different light generating conditions, for instance on/off or red/green.

4. Building management system according to any of the previous claims, further comprising for each room (12) a lock (14) controlled by the central control system (100) for locking a door (13) of the room (12) concerned.

5. Building management system according to claim 4, wherein the central control system (100) is designed for making an individual room (12) available for use by setting the

corresponding lock (14) free and controlling the corresponding availability indicator (15; 16) to a condition (green light) indicating the availability of the corresponding room (12) , and wherein the central control system (100) is designed for making an individual room (12) non-available for use by setting the corresponding lock (14) in the locked condition and controlling the corresponding availability indicator (15; 16) to a condition (red light) indicating the non-availability of the corresponding room (12) .

6. Building management system according to any of the claims 1-3, wherein the central management system (100) is designed for making an individual room (12) available for use by controlling the corresponding availability indicator (15; 16) to a condition (green light) indicating the availability of the corresponding room (12) and wherein the central control system (100) is designed for making an individual room (12) non-available for use by controlling the corresponding

availability indicator (15; 16) to a condition (red light) indicating the non-availability of the corresponding room (12) .

7. Building management system according to any of the claims 5-6, wherein the central control system (100) is designed to:

- in a first stage, only make a limited group of rooms (12) available for use and making the other rooms (12) unavailable for use;

- in a second stage later than the first stage, switch other rooms from the unavailable condition to the available

condition as more of the available rooms are actually used by at least one user.

8. Building management system according to claim 8, wherein the central control system (100) is designed, as more of the rooms used by users are left by these users, to switch these vacated rooms from the available condition to the unavailable conditio .

9. Building management system according to claim 7 and 8, wherein the central control system is provided with a memory (1010) and is designed to store into this memory (101) information regarding the use history of the different rooms; and wherein the central control system (100) is designed, if from the use history of a certain room it appears that the use thereof has reached a certain limit, to switch this room from the available condition to the unavailable condition after the last user has left and to only release this room after it has been cleaned.

10. Building management system (1000) according to any of the previous claims, wherein the central control system (100) is further designed for giving instructions to cleaning

personnel, and wherein the central control system (100) is designed to have cleaning personnel only clean a certain room if this room concerned has actually been used.

11. Building management system (1000) according to claim 10, wherein the central control system (100) is capable of working in a service mode wherein the central control system (100) controls the availability indicators (15; 16) associated with a room to the condition (green light) indicating the

availability of this room (12) in order to indicate to

cleaning personnel that this room must be cleaned, and wherein the central control system (100) controls the availability indicators (15; 16) associated with a room to their condition (red light) indicating the non-availability of this room (12) in order to indicate to cleaning personnel that this room may be skipped.

12. Building management system (1000) according to claim 11, wherein the central control system (100) controls the

availability indicators (15; 16) associated with a room on the basis of the use history in the memory (101) .

13. Building management system (1000) according to claim 11 or 12, wherein the central control system (100) switches the availability indicators (15; 16) associated with a room from their condition (green light) indicating the availability of this room (12) to their condition (red light) indicating the non-availability of this room (12) after the room concerned has been cleaned.

14. Building management system (1000) for a building (1) comprising a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like (12) accessible to persons, preferably according to any of the previous claims, wherein the building management system (1000) comprises :

a central control system (100) for generating cleaning

instructions defining cleaning tasks;

a user device (450) for communicating this cleaning

instructions to a cleaning attendant;

and transfer means (400) for transferring the cleaning

instructions from the central control system (100) to the user device (450) .

15. Building management system according to claim 14, wherein the user device (450) is provided with audio rendering means for communicating the cleaning instructions to a cleaning attendant in the form of spoken instructions .

16. Building management system according to claim 15, wherein the user device (450) comprises a head telephone and/or an ear telephone .

17. Building management system according to any of the claims 14-16, wherein the transfer means comprise a wireless

transmission system, wherein the central control system (100) is equipped with at least one sending device and wherein the user device (450) is equipped with or connected to a receiver device (460) .

18. Building management system according to claim 17, wherein the central control system (100) sends the cleaning

instructions in real-time.

19. Building management system according to any of the claims 14-16, wherein the transfer means comprise an information carrier, wherein the central control system (100) is designed to generate the cleaning instructions in advance and to store these cleaning instructions on the information carrier, and wherein the user device (450) is provided with a player device for reading the cleaning instructions from the information carrier and communicate these cleaning instructions to the user, preferably in real-time.

20. Building management system according to any of claims 14- 16, wherein the user device (450) is provided with a memory device for storing cleaning instructions generated by the central control system (100) in advance, wherein the central control system (100) is designed for generating the cleaning instructions in advance and storing these cleaning instruction into said memory device, and wherein the user device (450) is designed to read back the cleaning instructions from its memory and communicate these cleaning instructions to the user, preferably in real-time.

21. Building management system according to any of claims 14-

20, wherein the instructions communicated to the user device (450) are multilingual, and wherein the user device (450) is provided with selection means allowing the user to choose a language .

22. Building management system according to any of claims 14-

21, wherein the central control system (100) is provided with means registrating the extent of use of parts (such as floors, corridors, rooms, toilet cabins) of the building, and wherein the central control system (100) is designed for generating or adapting the cleaning instructions depending on the use of these building parts as found.

23. Building management system according to any of claims 14-

22, wherein the central control system (100) is designed for keeping a building part closed during a certain time, and for subsequently skipping these closed building parts when

generating the cleaning instructions .

24. Building (1) comprising a plurality of rooms or cabins or the like (12) accessible to persons, provided with a building management system (1000) according to any of the previous claims .

25. Building according to claim 24, wherein the rooms or cabins or the like (12) are implemented as study rooms or meeting rooms or telephone cabin or toilet cabin or urinals.

26. Building according to claim 24 or 25, consisting of multiple building levels and comprising at least one elevator, wherein the building management system is designed to avoid the elevator stopping at a floor with only non-available rooms .