Its about information stupid!

Why do people keep talking about protocols and data?  Why do they keep talking about wireless?  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!

Comments

[Jack]

isn't building automation software like Teletrol/Johnson's control suppose to do that?

[Jim Bell]

Johnson etc. sort of do this, but only for their systems. For large enterprises, with multiple controls systems, a solution is needed to deliver one integrated framework of information.

Even in a JCI environment, it is important to integrate other data like, security systems for occupancy, spot market prices for cost evaluation, low cost wireless environmental sensors for CO2 optimization, etc. Once you have a unified framework of data it becomes much easier to manage all these variables.