As the Internet and IT technologies become less costly, Building Automation Systems (BASs) are utilizing these technologies to give managers real-time access and control over their facilities' systems through web browsers. One area of facilities management that BASs have proven especially useful for is energy procurement. BASs let companies extract critical energy data from their systems for analysis regarding energy procurement. Illustrating the advantage this offers, the ARC Advisory Group has estimated that companies can save 20% by investing in an energy management program that uses networked BASs at its core. With uncertain energy prices, a recent survey conducted by ARC revealed that lowering energy costs is the number one objective mentioned by companies that make BAS investments.

Lower energy costs are not the only potential benefit that Building Automation Systems have to offer. Networked BASs cut down on work staff costs by allowing companies to manage all of their systems from one building. They also reduce maintenance costs by helping plant managers monitor building equipment performance. Perhaps BASs' single biggest cost benefit, however, is their contribution to reducing the cost of operations by increasing employee comfort. BASs' expanded use of the Internet and other IT technologies gives plant managers the ability to define an ever increasing number of areas and comfort ranges to best suit climate control requirements. In the course of a year, a 10,000-square-foot building can lose $50,000 due to lost productivity resulting from occupant discomfort. In determining whether Building Automation Systems are worth the cost of investment, users must weigh the initial expenditure against anticipated savings.

Once plant managers have decided that Building Automation Systems are right for their facilities, not only should they carefully oversee their integration into the plant's operations but they should also be aware of the potential dilemmas regarding BAS vendors and the incompatible protocols, or computer languages, that they use. As BAS equipment has evolved, communications ports have been added and various protocols have been developed for their use. At first these protocols were developed by individual BAS vendors solely for their own equipment. Later, as specifications began to require that mechanical and electrical equipment provide serial interfaces, the most commonly used of these protocols were elevated to the level of industry standards. Attempting to bring some order to protocol use, standards committees formed to define the BAS protocols that companies could use without having to worry about licenses or paying royalties. However, an overabundance of protocols continues to exist, each quite capable of meeting BAS needs, but redundant and confusing.

Other potential dilemmas exist. To understand how future obstacles could arise, first consider that Building Automation Systems are increasingly being seen as merely one component of a much larger information system. Plant managers currently use a variety of specialized software packages to manage different aspects of the plant's operation. These applications can cover everything from equipment maintenance to energy procurement. As a result, the requirements for information integration have expanded since when the standard protocols were defined and will continue to expand even more. At this point in time a unified information model is needed to include the relevant BAS protocols as well as other plant management applications. This unified model is especially important since, as IT technologies evolve and play a more intrinsic role in BAS, the protocol problem will only get more complicated. Companies considering adopting BASs should keep this probable dilemma in mind.

One IT technology that is certain to affect the future of BAS is web services. As self-contained applications run over the Internet and integrated into other applications, web services are increasingly being used to perform complicated business functions. For example, a plant manager could use web services to extract data such as temperature forecasts from a weather bureau to help determine anticipated heating costs. These functions are likely to grow even more complex as web services evolve. Web services will be able to combine a greater variety of content from different sources – thanks to cheaper bandwidth rates – and store greater amounts of data – thanks to cheaper storage. As they develop, web services will be forced to depend more and more on computer languages like XML (eXtensible Markup Language), increasing the complexity of the protocol problem. Any unified system model introduced to the BAS industry must not only be compatible with any BAS protocol; it must also be work with XML and thus circumvent the Web service incompatibility problems of tomorrow.

Sources: Building Automation Systems Embrace Internet, IT Technologies
Plant Engineering Magazine, Feb. 25, 2002
http://www.manufacturing.net/ple/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&doc_id=71164

Information Model: The Key to Integration
Eric Craton & Dave Robin
Automated Buildings, Feb. 2002
http://www.automatedbuildings.com/