Convergence or divergence: which way to enterprise building management?

Engineered Systems,  August, 2004  by Anto Budiardjo

• E-mail
• Print
• Link

While the industry buzz in the past couple of years has been the idea of convergence, now is a good time to review what is really going on in the industry delivering building systems. To do this, let us look at the drivers and trends and then analyze what is going on to move us forward in delivering value to building owners and operators.

DRIVERS

Technology. Technology developments are clearly the most visible driver in our industry. In the past decades we have seen the advent of DDC, the proliferation of networked controls, and even the creation of open system standards. These changes significantly affected the internal workings of the industry. They provided new features, flexibility, cost savings, and even the freedom of choice between systems to control and manage a building. They did not, however, change the relationship between building systems and the owners in any significant manner; building systems remained entities unto themselves.

Today, the change brought about by the significant use of IT and the Internet dramatically alters the relationship between buildings and the rest of the universe. Buildings are no longer standalone entities with occasional systematic contact. The technology available today means that an enterprise (commercial and institutional alike) can have real-time information and control of all of its facilities anywhere in the world. And this is not just about a few bits of data and overrides; this is the availability of rich information and control, including trends data for any number of points, streaming video, real-time control, and download of parameters.

Cost and efficiency. Significant business drivers in the past years included the use of sophisticated IT systems to bring a new level of efficiency to enterprises in the Western world. Corporations in developed regions now have an unprecedented array of tools to manage business resources affecting the bottom line. Concepts such as just in time (JIT) manufacturing, customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and others have brought about new levels of expectations for the visibility of a corporation's activities to the C-level executives (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.) who need such information to make informed decisions.

Today, a corporate head office in Dallas can see the transactions of retail outlets around the world, in dozens of manufacturing plants, goods in transit, and consumer demographics. All of this information brings business management to a new level: corporate can tell the success of a new product within days (if not hours) of introduction and adjust manufacturing up or down instantly, or even redirect goods in transit from one region (where acceptance of the new product is bad) to other regions where acceptance is better.

Furthermore, once corporations refine the cost structures of doing business to such a degree, there will be a desire to seek out other costs to manage. Buildings, be they factories, warehouses, offices, or retail outlets, are second only to the cost of people in corporate operating cost structures. The enterprise's management of facilities means required access to the operation of a building or raw information about the building such as: inside and outside temperatures, occupancy, energy usage, equipment status, and comfort.

Security, risk, and safety. Whether a corporation is concerned about security from terrorist threats or the general safety of employees and customers, or simply managing risk on any number of fronts, the issue of security is foremost in many, if not all, corporations today.

Mitigating risk involves having good system-wide visibility in addition to visibility of the entities that make up the touch points of risk in a corporation's infrastructure of facilities.

Lighting is a significant contributor to security issues; illuminating a facility's surroundings can draw attention to a business to create revenue (retail as one example), but it also provides safi2ty to employees and customers. Monitoring the HVAC plant in such a way to predict failures can reduce the downtime of manufacturing or of a retail outlet, which in turn reduces the risk of negative impact on business. Monitoring and recording information for environment-, temperature-, or humidity sensitive goods can significantly mitigate risk from selling damaged (though visually unharmed) merchandise.

TRENDS

Flexible spaces hi buildings. It used to be that a building was built for a specific purpose, often with a lifetime of decades, not designed, nor expected to change its purpose. Those days are long gone as corporations regularly shift use and expectation of facilities to better reflect rapidly evolving markets. Most of today's facilities have an expectation of change and flexibility built right into them. Office, manufacturing, and retail facilities need to change to reflect the current needs of the enterprise. Some of these changes are on a day-to-day basis, such as flexible hot-desk and telecommuting scenarios where employees are tint provided with a fixed office. Change can also happen on a week-by-week or month-by-month basis as demonstrated by retail, distribution, and manufacturing. Other changes are slower: the ability to modify office arrangements and work teams for today's project-based enterprises who perform their work on a temporary basis.