Do we need $6/gallon gas?
Gas prices have started to creep back down and the American people will now start to fall asleep again. We need to cause enough pain in the average American to continue to push innovation. The American people have the power to push the Government in the right direction. Subsidizing fuel to keep the price down is not the answer. Enough already, wake up, this is not going to go away and we owe it to the next generation to solve the problem. Our legacy should be one of greatness, bold, smart and innovative. The alternative is to sit back enjoy every last bit of fossil fuel and leave to our children and their children to suffer and hopefully fix the energy issues.
The United States has an opportunity to get it right. I’m talking about the ability to solve the dependence on fossil fuel. The question is will the Government help or just get in the way? Why would Countries that supply fossil fuel be ahead of us in implementing technologies to reduce energy consumption? Is it because they see the future past fossil fuel and are positioning their Countries to be the technology provider of the future? According to Pickens, we are redistributing wealth at an alarming rate. If we don’t solve the fossil fuel problem, they will, and we will continue to send our money overseas. The US for all off of its greatness has some significant challenges ahead, education, heath care, energy and infrastructure. The US will be an also ran in the world economy if we don’t change the path we are on. Historically the US has stepped up to any challenge, we need to face this challenge as if our very existence depended on it, and it might.
We should have a distributed smart power distribution network, one in which many diverse sources of energy can coexist. We need build homes that produce much of their own power, solar, wind, fuel cells and others could be viable. I certainly don’t have all of the answers, but we the American people have the intellectual resources to solve these complex issues. Don’t fall asleep, continue to push, we have to get this right.
Response to Demand
Demand Response is all the rage but quite frankly if buildings can respond to an ADR then they could run more efficiently every day. If buildings were smarter about how they are being utilized, we could start to decommission power plants not build new ones. Systems are available today that will do constant commissioning, control optimization and we are now entering a new era of presence based automation. Think about thousands of low power wireless sensors sprinkled throughout a facility. Their purpose is to add a layer of intelligence about how spaces are being used. Systems for controlling elevators, life safety, BAS, Lighting and others would all have access to this layer to make better decisions about how to control their media. At BuilConn this year several vendors mentioned saving 20% - 30% of the energy consumed by buildings just by optimizing their current infrastructure. I hate to see the government get involved but if they put energy restrictions on buildings based on type and size, owners would have to optimize their holdings. Call it a CAFÉ standard for buildings! We don’t need Demand Response we just need to have Buildings Respond to Demand.
Chain of Events
Someone recently asked me how an electrical contractor came to start a new company and to develop a software solution from the ground up. It made me think, how did we come that conclusion?
A little background is necessary to set the stage. In 1990 we were a turnkey parts and smarts distributor for a major controls manufacturer. By 2000 we were out of the turnkey business and just installing controls for all of the majors. By 2003 we were out of the install business and I needed something to do. So I went on a job interview for a local controls company that wanted to start another branch office.That interview took me to a national sales conference to preview the perspective control manufactures products. At the conference the CEO talked about the service industry and the commoditization of the controls market. His comments made me think there has to be a better way. I have a way of reading too much into the message, but it seemed clear to me this CEO just told all of the distributors to get out of the controls business!
I returned from the sales conference and told my employer about the experience, yes I told them about the job interview as well. They were intrigued and allowed me to do some research. I attended several of the industry trade shows that year.Through this process it became evident to me that the same people who owned the current marketplace were the ones working on solutions for the new open marketplace. I’m no genius but it was a little strange to me that anyone that was an established player in the current market would want to help the eventual commoditization of their products.
I continued to attend conferences watching and waiting for the solution to the promise that everyone kept talking about to materialize, it didn’t. In a chance encounter with our marketing and communications firm, I happen to mention what I was researching. They suggested I meet with one of their technology partners to discuss what I was looking for. The best part for me was that they had absolutely no knowledge of the building systems market. When I explained the market and my vision, they approached the solution from a purely IT perspective. Thus was born the idea of an enterprise class building services portal.
And so the rest is the future!
Chimney Generator
Someone needs to build this!
I had this idea after seeing a solar adaptation that was 7 km across at the base. I couldn’t help but think, what a huge waste of space, why not build a building around it. With as many buildings that I have been in struggling to control the chimney effect, why not induce it by channeling the waste heat.
Please feel free to discuss the technical merits as I’m not a mechanical engineer.
Seems like it should work.
Disintegration
With all of the talk about integration, I think what we need to disintegrate! By tightly coupling systems we create fragile networks vulnerable to failure. Years ago when BAS systems first came to be, they ran on central computer systems that controlled all aspects of operations and control. Then came distributed control systems, by far a much better solution. So it goes in today’s market, only instead of distributed control systems, we are applying the same standards to the systems in the building. Let the systems designed to control discrete functions do their job. Let them do it better by providing data services collected from all data stores throughout the facility.
Everyone talks about basement to boardroom data propagation, what about boardroom to building. Number one, data is not information; information comes from the compilation of data into meaningful reports. Reports designed by stakeholders in the boardroom not the basement. Corporations use complex processes designed to drive efficiency and profitability. We need to apply the same concepts to buildings. Buildings should be responsive to changes in the business processes.
The New Daedalus
One of my favorite blogs is the New Daedalus. Toby Considine has a visionary perspective of buildings and the services that are possible. Last year I hired Toby to provide some consulting work for us. I was looking for confirmation of the direction we were heading with the CePORT BSP product. I think Toby and I are kindred spirits. My software developers and I got into a somewhat heated discussion about market focus. They wanted to focus improving some more traditional applications that are low hanging fruit and I wanted to stay focused on creating something new and innovative. Toby sat quietly listening to our conversations and finally pronounced, don’t take away the passion for the product. He went on to say, what will make us successful is our passion about doing something completely different. After gaining a better understanding of what our system can do, Toby coined the tag line, “the Convergence of People, Space, Time and Energy”.
What Toby writes about in his blog is possible today! People need to shed their past experiences with closed system architectures and focus on a new paradigm of what’s possible. Our portal, even though it’s patent pending doesn’t invent any new technology. What is does, is apply existing technology in a new way as to enable innovative applications. Loose coupling of systems across a diverse landscape is the future, reusable data services provided to systems regardless of platform is will be key.
Don’t discount Toby’s posts, I think the things he writes about will be commonplace in the near future.
BIM and the Electrical Contractor
Building Information Modeling has the potential to revolutionize the estimating process and for that matter, the electrical construction business. Theoretically, if the electrical engineer enters all of the information required by BIM, the electrical material list will be complete. Everything from conduit and conductors to switchboards will be covered. Owners or GC’s may decide to pre-purchase and furnish all of the electrical materials for a project. Several GC’s have done this with the larger electrical equipment but now could buy out an entire project. Great for them, but not a very appealing proposition for the electrical contractor. Material markup and buying power offer the electrical contractor a buffer to lost hours because of job conditions.
That leaves the electrical contractors to figure out how efficiently they think they can install the material. In the short term electrical contractors that adopt BIM will have an edge over the stragglers but in the long term, BIM will commoditize the electrical construction industry. BIM has the potential for setting up industry standard pricing for the installation of electrical systems. How will contractors differentiate themselves in this new era? EMR rating, installation quality, reputation, and relationships will become more important than they already are.
You’ve heard it before, “nothing is free”, and this will be true of BIM as well. Will the extra 20-30K spent in overhead to implement a BIM project really save even more on the installation side? The shift to BIM will put more emphasis on the talent pool inside the office to efficiently and accurately manage projects. If low price in and change order out is your business model, you better find another way. Change orders will be scarce and closely controlled.
People, Space, Time and Energy
Have you ever wondered what effect occupancy has on your facility? Do you know if your business processes lead or follow your facility’s systems? Building systems waste lots of energy because they don’t respond to people and to business processes. Buildings should be responsive to their occupants and the environment. Building Automation Systems (BAS) and other infrastructure systems do a good job of automating the systems in the building but fall short when it comes to the business processes.
How can you make the experience of visiting and working in a building better? How do we realign People, Space, Time, and Energy in a building? Building systems are silos for good reasons: each does a great job at a specific task, and each needs to work well even when another fails. So how can facilities managers expand the capabilities of existing systems without creating fragile connections?
We have been asking these questions at Continental Electric for over three years now. CEPORT BSP is a patent-pending, platform- and technology- agnostic building services portal designed to manage the convergence of People, Space, Time and Energy.
The key is to align a building systems with its occupants and business processes, resulting in a more productive work environment and energy-efficient operation. Providing loosely coupled services to systems throughout the facility in order to extend their functionality without creating a complex and fragile system is essential. Enabling integration between enterprise software and building systems is only part of the solution. Data presentation, reporting, security, and adherence to current IT standards are the other keys. Adapting to the occupants’ IT security infrastructure is the only way to ensure acceptance. Support single / reduced sign-on so that users are not burdened by multiple logins to access the system. Corporate IT departments will have specific requirements, so being flexible and prepared to deploy on any platform will avoid common barriers to entry. If you’re going to access and store corporate enterprise data, your system must be as secure as the systems it accesses. Allowing custom business rules to be defined and executed based on calendar, events or time can facilitate interaction between disparate systems.
With energy cost skyrocketing, Demand Response will become commonplace. What is the appropriate response given the current building status? That decision needs to be based on data collected from all systems in the building. Provide a service wrapper for the systems in the building, they can monitor each other and take action on their own. An enterprise-class reporting and BI engine will provide a way to validate energy and operational data by creating professionally crafted reports. Reports should be available via printer or email and published to CMS’s and subscription lists. Using common internet search tools and terms to find predefined reports is a natural and unobtrusive way for C-level executives to find critical performance data.
At Continental, we are testing and deploying our solution on top of our own headquarters’ building systems in Skokie, Illinois, but larger and smaller buildings or companies will all see the value in true building integration. The need for a one-size-fits-all product is inherent to the market’s mode of development. We believe a truly integrative BSP will scale to any building size, with any client configuration, because every building must interact with People, Space, Time, and Energy.
Some examples of modules currently in development include:
AWS (alternative work spaces) or Hotelling
An AWS module that is fully integrated with card access, BAS, lighting, VOIP, and HR can provide a rich yet simple reservation experience. A kiosk interface should be designed for ease of use, to get you the information you need in less than 15 seconds. Using context-sensitive location routing, your AWS module should track utilization for reporting. It should facilitate LEED certification, for example, by being capable of directing employees to specific areas after hours or on weekends to minimize energy usage.
Carpooling
Where else do People, Space, Time, and Energy interact? In travel. A building can actually facilitate carpooling via a BSP module that utilizes a simple enrolment process, integrated with the HR and card access systems. Users’ origin locations and arrival /departure times can be automatically populated and compared. Simple and flexible options should be available for selecting personal preferences.
Conference Room Reservations
Another BSP module that should help the building work more closely with business processes is one that adds extended functionality to the reservation systems already in use. Whether you use Outlook or Notes or a web-based system, your IT department shouldn’t need to use APIs to add catering, A/V requests, furniture changes, climate profiles, and other meeting characteristics, depending on processes you already use. Better yet, it would enable processes and utilization reporting you have always wanted to put into place but have never had the capability to implement.
Building Event Communication
Companywide gatherings, security emergencies, and weather closures are the kind of events that stretch the limits of business processes and human patience. A BSP module that enables communication and tracking of these events and their accompanying system needs is vital to predicting and resolving public concerns in these areas. Ideally, a single-entry interface should automatically propagate data to the appropriate personnel and systems in the building. It would even socialize your corporate ecological efforts by publishing LEED data to kiosks or your CMS, earning you LEED education points.
Builders and tenants everywhere are aware of the balance needed between the “smart buildings” of the future and the reliable systems of the past and present. A building services portal that can achieve that balance, servicing people and responding to business processes to create greater efficiency of space, time, and energy, should be every integrator’s goal.
Special thanks to Toby Considine for our tag line,
“Convergence of People, Space, Time and Energy”.
