Why intelligent buildings?

The term 'intelligent buildings' IS OPEN TO MISINTERPRETATION but it is a fact that building systems are rapidly becoming an important factor on real estate projects. They are no longer simply a technical solution to a particular area of the building process. Enlightened clients and developers are buying into the commercial advantages intelligent buildings can bring and large investments are being made in this area by major multinational corporations. Skanska in Sweden, for example, has recently established a Hi-Tech Buildings division and it has grown from a standing start to 100 people in only eight months.

Clearly the market is waking up to the fact that buildings and real estate can be far more efficient, whilst being less expensive to construct. This, coupled with life cycle cost benefits, and efficiency of resources, provides flexibility and adaptability which can be simply changed to meet the business challenges of the 21st Century. The main losers are waste, inefficiency, and out-dated attitudes.

Technology issues seemed to dominate discussions in the '90s. When the "bus wars" were being waged alongside the proprietary lock-in systems, it was unclear which, if any, of the contenders would be the winner. Echelon with its Lon Works made the running in some markets, with EIB bus and BacNet gaining acceptance and supremacy in others. At the same time in the process control industries there were other alternative technology communications protocols being advocated such as J-bus, S-bus and so on. It was all interesting for the technical people to argue, about and they could agree to disagree forever - hardly the thing to get building owners and operators excited. They are not much interested in the technology: they are interested in benefits.

Fortunately convergence came about in the late '90s with integrated voice, data and video over IP which had an effect on both the process control and building systems markets. Initially it manifested itself in process control, with the emergence of Industrial Ethernet, and IP enabled field devices such as sensors, valves and actuators. More recently, the ubiquitous internet and the underlying Ethernet and TCP/IP communications/IP addressing conventions have been adopted in the building systems world by Skanska and others. Using middleware, fire alarms, intruder alarms, building management systems, CCTV, access control and other systems can be integrated together in the same way that printers, scanners, telephony and other equipment is integrated in the office environment.

Where buying integrated systems once incurred capital cost penalties even though significant operating cost savings could be clearly demonstrated, recent technology improvements especially in CCTV and Ethernet bandwidth have rationalised costs, so that there is now no reason for any capital penalty when adopting an 'intelligent building' philosophy.

In this technological age, existing buildings are having more systems installed to meet the increasingly onerous requirements of clients, occupiers, and the demands on facilities managers. The possibility of getting real time performance data from connected and integrated systems allows quantitative measurement both of systems and of the maintenance organisations responsible for availability, reliability and operation. Service level agreements are rapidly becoming the mechanism used for defining contractual arrangements between service provider and client, supported by automatically gathered and processed real time data. With intelligent buildings, both service provider and client can measure performance without an army of clerks.

With all progress, though, there are barriers, sceptics, and prejudices, and the property and construction industries have more than their fair share of them. Conservatism, vested interests and fragmentation within the industry all conspire against universal acceptance. However with overwhelming evidence of the benefits Intelligent Buildings can deliver, large and powerful players companies are now taking a lead and promoting change. Maybe it will encourage others to join the game.

• CDC
  Email c108@industrialnetworking.co.uk