Total Facility Awareness

Its about information stupid!

Why do people keep talking about protocols and data (Bacnet, Modbus, LON)?  Why do they keep talking about wireless (Zigbee, Mesh, Wifi)?  Why do they keep talking about the standards definition of what a light switch can do?  Would you explain the value of email by discussing what kind of hard drive you had?

Real decision makers worry about what needs to be done to lean up the enterprise and deliver a better product to the customer.  They don't care about how it is done, other than wanting an open solution.  They care about the money.  They care about customer satisfaction.  Real deicsion makers don't go to the Zigbee, Lon, or Bacnet standards meetings :-(

Standards meetings are important and as an industry we have a lot of great people working on tough issues - all but one: "Show me the money"

Folowing the lessons of the IT industry, true savings probably comes from convergence at the information layer.  What's the information layer?  Its the point at which data from the building control system, lighting system, security system and ERP system are integrated and presented in a clear way so that a smart person can make a smart informed decision.

I know of an integration company that used one of those middle-ware products to connect into a family of high schools.  The facility manager wanted to have total visibility into operations.  The product was perfect.  It linked to all the protocols, systems and devices without incident.  Amazingly....  It linked in so well that the customer did not quite believe it was working, but ultimately he believed he had 100% visibility.  He had the data at its most granular level of detail.  So, that is good right?  Sort of....

What happened next is a circuit breaker failed somewhere on one of the systems, that led to other systems not operating, and ultimately 100's of alarms showing up in his "Data Console".  He was more likely to think he was under attack then to realize that one circuit breaker had failed.  He had data!

He needed information.  He needed a solution that knew how the chiller, fans, VAV, etc were all interconnected to the same core system.  He needed an information layer that could determine root cause.  At the end of the day, his job is to go fix the circuit breaker, not reverse engineer the building automation system.

A system that sets off 100 alarms is a data system.  A system that tells the user the circuit breaker failed is an information system.  100 alarms is a data paralysis.  1 circuit breaker alert is a productive information system.

Its about information stupid!

Smart Buildings?

I keep hearing about Smart Buildings.  The notion being that a building can be smart enough to fix itself, manage its own energy, or somehow optimize itself.  Why don't we talk about smart people? 

The reality in life is that people are smart, buildings are dumb.  Buildings will always be dumb (sorry to the coalition of under achieving buildings).  In the late 90's corporations realized that computers were not going to make companies more competitive.  Competition and efficiency comes from smart people using computers to make better decisions.  And the people running buildings are smart!

So what is missing?  Why do we still talk about building inefficiency?  Why do we talk about the notion of a smart building? Because......

We are not effectively addressing the need to deliver information (rather than data) to our smart facilities folks.  Rather than leading our team, building a business case, or developing a strategy for change, we buy the latest control system believing somehow that it will make up for our lack of leadership.  We outsource performance improvement to an ESCO.  We suffer proprietary solutions because somehow we think a magic bullet will make our building smart.

Does your team have the tools that let them understand the enterprise objectives and determine how the facility operations help deliver a better product or reduce cost?  We think about square feet in terms of rent, energy on maintenance.  Do we think about the fact that for every 200sq feet in our facility there is a person, who is helping make money for the firm, defend the country, or educate our children.  What we do every day running our facility also impacts how that person performs.  An what that person does every day effects how our facility performs.

So I ask again, does your team have the tools that let them understand the enterprise objectives and determine how the facility operations help deliver a better product or reduce cost?