Mixing and matching: growth and of building control integration in Asia
Issue23 - Sep 2006

If you think building and IT systems integration does not sound like a terribly exciting topic, you are wrong. Like anything that is frightening in its ability to influence the way we work and live, you should take note.

Sitting behind the DAS Intellitech reception desk on the fifth floor of the W1 A building in the pleasantly landscaped grounds of the Shenzhen High Tech Business Park, were two young women. They took my name, asked who I was looking for and directed me to a meeting room nearby to wait for my appointment. Nothing out of the ordinary. The building was, from first glance, like any other low rise office building in a business park. It was a warm day, inside there was a relaxed atmosphere of people, who seemed very happily into their jobs. A little later, I was pleasantly surprised to see my name, title and a welcome notice scrolling across a plasma screen mounted behind the receptionist’s
heads. I smiled, thanking them and my host Eric ZG Liu, Vice President and Post Doctoral Programme Manager, who I assumed had passed on my contacts in advance. Then, one of them clicked a mouse, the screen changed, and the show began.

“Listen”, said one, looking at another screen at her desk, while I watch her cursor on the wall mounted display. She clicks on a CD-shaped icon and the reception fills with the sound of the local radio station. Seconds later, having not heard the mouse clicks, the room suddenly brightens: “That was the lights”, she grins. The other woman grabs the mouse and between them and my host, I am taken through the entire building system; floor plates show lighting, ventilation, air conditioning (“Dark blue means it is very cold there”) and security. She does a close up of my handbag, noting the good resolution with digital cameras. This is not like other reception encounters.

Put simply, building control systems are getting closer to the people affected by them. The increasing convergence between IT and the physical infrastructure that makes up our workplaces is happening on all levels of products, systems and services. For example, Dell is currently marketing a space saving desktop screen because “real estate is expensive”, says a spokesperson for the company. In-house, an increasing number of companies are now choosing to assess their IT and virtual security along with their building security, building up both physical and virtual integrated firewalls to protect information, along with hardware and people. And it is here, behind the scenes, that some of the most interesting and useful integration is taking place.

history
It started with each building system developing, and in some cases automating, independently. For example, fire system sensors detect smoke, fire system bell rings, sprinklers are triggered. Over time, each system, from air-conditioning to meeting room booking, became more complex and slowly digitised. The numbers of vendors offering solutions for each of these subsystems rapidly grew. Some multi-product and service providers, like Johnson Controls and Honeywell, independently developed integration platforms for their own products – they saved money for clients, who implemented them successfully, as well as providing much more data forfacility managers to work with. These proprietory singlevendor
systems were attractive in many ways, however, only the company that supplied the system could update, modify or operate it. Not everyone was comfortable with
this arrangement, not least single product and system vendors. Enter “middle ware” and systems integrators.


click above image to enlarge

Conceptually, the basics of systems integration are straightforward. Rather than overcoming the problems of multiple systems by creating one big system that does everything, from opening the air vents to making the coffee, many companies now create custom technology that joins separately developed products and systems. Now-a-days proprietory systems are on the way out.

Taking their place are systems based upon “open source” protocols, such as BACnet and LonMark. Their function can be understood by the layperson as being like Esperanto for machines.

Taking their place are systems based upon “open source” protocols, such as BACnet and LonMark. Their function can be understood by the layperson as being
like Esperanto for machines. Any type of device that has been built according to the standard can be programmed to exchange data with other similarly-enabled devices. The information flowing horizontally between machines can also be read by other programs and fed into a computer aided facility or asset management system to allow for more centralised, comprehensive reporting and control. This information can then link into a business enterprise system, such as SAP, for integration between HR, accounting and increasingly, company intranet, giving
any user with authorisation the ability to control their physical surroundings.

integration in practice
Mr Chia Wei Tat, Manager (Engineering, Research & Development), CNA Group Ltd., was personally involved in the new Suvarnabhumi (“Golden Land”) Airport Project, due to be opened in September 2006. He assisted in the integration of around twenty systems as diverse as the radio paging system, perimeter control system, graphic display system and the fire alarm network into a mesh
of interoperable components. He sees the benefits of integration to be enormous and says efficiency, economy, productivity and data aggregation are just a few of the benefits of integrating during the planning, design and construction process. For example, a carpark locking system in a commercial building could be linked to
the ventilation and lighting systems, so that when a car enters the building, more air vents will become operational and lights in a certain sector will be illuminated. So long as the three systems control vendors in the above example are compliant with the same, preferably open source, protocol, says Chia, their devices can be programmed to perform actions according to a schedule or in response to predetermined events.

Taking their place are systems based upon “open source”
protocols, such as BACnet and LonMark. Their function can be
understood by the layperson as being like Esperanto for machines.

The Singapore Management University (SMU) has one of the most integrated building management systems in the city state. “It’s an excellent system that allows me and my staff to be at different locations on campus and pull up a web page from a laptop to adjust temperature, scheduling and power supply presets,” says Ho Thim Seng, Director of Facilities Management at SMU. His system is based on the LonWorks protocol, which he promotes with enthusiasm.

standards
The expansion of open source protocols is also opening new markets and establishing new standards. Many multinational corporations in China are now integrating their building controls with their enterprise management systems says Sam Huang, General Manager, Greater China, Echelon. In addition, he continues, leasing and sales agents are marketing buildings for the quality of their building management systems. These developments have led to an urgent need for accepted standards to be developed. The development and adoption of various integration systems as standards by national governments and international bodies, such as the ISO, is happening and will rapidly increase the value
of the already significant industry. Liu notes: “There are around 100 bil sqm of new construction sites in China every year, in which building automation techniques could be used.” With that sort of market, institutes have a lot to contribute, as do knowledge leaders from abroad.



Echelon, whose Chairman and CEO Ken Oshman, says: “Our vision is one where every electronic device will one day be on a network,” is the creator of the LonWorks platform, which was recently incorporated into the Chinese standards system (standard GB/Z20177). Lai, Ming, Director General of Department of Science and Technology, China’s Ministry of Construction, said in a statement that this “is the first step in creating a new building automation standard for China. We believe that the new GB/Z20177 standard will help drive the development of the Chinese construction community toward the use of advanced networking technology”. The application of this control standard ranges from mines, to
office buildings, to homes.

Like Huang, Liu believes the Chinese Central Government’s enactment of a series of energy saving schemes has created huge potential for growth of the industry. A “desperate need of energy saving in China” generates opportunities for organisations like ASHRAE (American Society of Heating Ventilation Refrigeration and Airconditioning Engineers – developers of the BACnet specifications) to assist in “energy saving in construction to combine air conditioning and automation technology. This could have enormous benefit to the world in both energy using and energy saving. At the same time, it provides a lot of business
opportunities,” says Liu. Building automation integration helps Liu’s company DAS, for example, earn a profit by helping organisations save money
through energy management contracting.



Other knowledge leaders set to benefit include pioneers of technologies that are bringing building systems closer to end-users. For example, The ZigBee™ Alliance is a group of companies that create chips the size of your fingernail that enable two-way wireless communication. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are similar, but are “read only”. By all accounts, both technologies are set to explode in Asia’s built environment. For example, in May, ZigBee announced a new collaboration with BACnet establishing interoperability between the two technologies, allowing building operators relying on existing wired BACnet infrastructure to add wireless devices to their existing Building Control Systems.

applications and risks
Security is one of the main drivers of building automation integration, despite the
possibility that desirable functions, such as off-site control, can provide security risks in themselves, says Liu. If a building had a grid of sensor nodes installed throughout, for example, a person carrying a ZigBee enabled security card could be tracked in real time wherever they went, similar to a localised global positioning system (GPS). With further integration, cameras can also follow the identified person or notify relevant staff through some form of messaging that irregular activity is happening in a certain location.

Donald Aw Tuan Kee, Lecturer, Intelligent Building Technology, Temasek Polytechnic, has focussed his recent research on human performance within an intelligent building context. He warns against looking for gadgets or gimmicks because the interest in them will “only last five minutes”. The real way to get enthusiasm for automated building technology is to show how it can save time, money and effort, while increasing human comfort and productivity, he says. The growth and convergence of building controls with the wider business context will be shaped by how they can be integrated and to what extent they get into the lives of real people.

If all users of office space were to be given the demonstration I received in the DAS reception, you could be sure the resulting increased demand for control would increase the speed at which the industry developed, while making the way people use it far easier. In effect, everyone could be a facility manager. RFP

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