How To Assess Smart Buildings

This article on smart buildings showed the readership of Indian Architect and Builder magazine how to advance from a strict technology orientation to one that focuses more on investment return to the owner.

• Article Abstract
• Historical Context
• High Technology
• Facilities Management
• Information Systems

Article Abstract

In the early l980s, trade magazines began running stories on "intelligent buildings." Publications concerned with mechanical systems did articles on automation systems making buildings more energy-efficient. Magazines serving the communications industry told how advanced telecommunications systems have made buildings more efficient and therefore more intelligent.

Smart buildings are said to be more attractive and easier to lease. Existing buildings, lacking the attractive features of the newer, more intelligent ones could lose tenants to their more intelligent competitors.

Historical Context

As long ago as 1985, the November issue of Engineering Digest carried an article showing how steel framing and cellular steel flooring had contributed to building intelligence. Fortune, Forbes, Business Week and countless trade magazines all carried extensive articles on the smart building business. In effect, new buildings incorporating the latest technologies could be touted as intelligent and therefore more easily marketed.

One developer said that it's "a building that is fully leased." According to this line of thinking, any feature helping to lease the building fully could be considered intelligent.

One definition, which resulted from the International Symposium on the Intelligent Building, May 28 and 29, 1985 in Toronto is: "a smart building combines innovations, technological or not, with skillful management, to maximize return on investment."

The Intelligent Building Institute has proposed: "a smart building is one that provides a productive and cost-effective environment through optimization of its four basic elements - structure, systems, services and management - and the interrelationships between them. Smart buildings help business owners, property managers and occupants to realize their goals in the areas of cost, comfort, convenience, safety, long-term flexibility and marketability."

Such definitions lead inexorably to a more all-encompassing meaning - overall performance, not only of the building itself, but also of the entire construction process.

The UNIFORMAT approach to building intelligence encompasses previous definitions which emphasized incorporating the latest technology. Equally importantly, it facilitates a rigorous means of evaluating which technologies should be used to maximize building investment performance, since the role of technology remains undeniable.

High Technology

The high technology concept of smart buildings was introduced in the United States in the early 1980s. According to this approach, smart buildings use electronics extensively and are high-technology related. In fact, the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC had a committee dealing with "electronically-enhanced" buildings. This electronic view of things addressed four groups:

• energy efficiency
• lifesafety systems
• telecommunications systems
• workplace automation

The ultimate dream in the design of an intelligent building has always been to integrate the four operating areas into one single computerized system.

All the hardware and software would be furnished by a single supplier who would use compatible equipment and common CPUs and trunk wiring. Even today, such total integration is far from being realized, even on a small scale. Nevertheless, there are suppliers capable of packaging all four categories mentioned, all as part of a single contract.

Over time, the four categories have merged into two broader ones: facilities management (energy and lifesafety) and information systems (telecommunications and workplace automation.) In general, facilities management deals with the physical structure itself and how it is operated.

Facilities Management

Facilities management implies a computerized system that oversees and controls building operations, generally energy and lifesafety. Although the potential exists to integrate all facilities management activities into one monstrous system, practical and economic considerations discourage this.

What is more likely is an interface among the various systems - HVAC, lighting, fire, and security - enabling essential communications.

Owners resist putting all their eggs in one basket. For some selfish reason, they want competitive bids from a number of qualified suppliers.

Having everything wrapped up in a single integrated package could limit competition to extremely few bidders. So few that one unnamed government representative said, "I could count them on one finger."

Although total integration remains as practically out of reach as the rabbit in a greyhound race, there have been giant strides toward it in facilities energy management systems.

Almost 25 years after the oil crisis in the early 1970s, energy efficiency continues to be a top priority in intelligent building design. The goal is to reduce energy use to the bare minimum without sacrificing occupant comfort. For this, computerized systems are used extensively. Such systems have as many aliases as the top dog on the FBI's most-wanted list: Building Automation System (BAS), Energy Management System (EMS), Energy Management and Control System (EMCS), Central Control and Monitoring System (CCMS) and Facilities Management System (FMS).

Strategies used by facilities management systems to reduce energy consumption in smart buildings include:

• Programmed start/stop
• Optimal start/stop
• Duty cycling
• Setpoint reset
• Electric demand limiting
• Adaptive control
• Chiller optimization
• Boiler optimization
• Optimal energy sourcing

Intelligence with respect to lifesafety in a smart building consists of the use of high technology to maximize the performance of fire alarm and security systems while at the same time minimizing costs. Lifesafety factors involved in intelligent buildings include:

• Reduced manpower dependence
• Closed-circuit television
• Card access control
• Smoke detection
• Intrusion alarms
• Emergency control of elevators, HVAC systems, doors
• UPS

Information Systems

Information systems include telecommunications and workplace automation. It consists of the offering tenants of many sophisticated telecom features at a considerably reduced cost as equipment is shared by many users. Some of the telecom features involved in intelligent buildings are:

• private telephone exchange systems,
• cablevision,
• audio-visual and videoconferencing,
• satellite communications and,
• electronic mail, Intranets and Internet access.

Intelligence with respect to workplace automation in a smart building consists of the use of high-tech office automation systems to render the operation of a company more efficient. This can be done at a reduced cost to tenants. by virtue of the equipment being shared. Some of the factors involved in workplace automation in intelligent buildings include:

• centralized data processing,
• word processing,
• computer-aided design and
• information services

Author

Donald A. Coggan, PE, is recognized internationally as an expert in the field of control systems design and training. In addition to consulting directly to clients in the United States and Canada, he has addressed groups throughout North America as well and in Europe and Asia. He is the originator of a design evaluation technique called "Specifying for Maximum Value" based on principles set out by the Society of American Value Engineers (SAVE). Mr. Coggan has authored numerous technical publications including a training system and accompanying software for instrumentation technician evaluation for the Instrument Society of America (ISA). He has also co-edited Fundamentals of Industrial Control, the flagship volume of the ISA's Practical Guide Series.

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