“Building automation, electrical power distribution systems, lighting systems, fire safety and security systems are generally not ordered at the same point of time. The planners/technical consultants who design these systems for the developer are also not the same. Therefore, there is a situation where different systems that need to talk to each other to create a homogeneous, intelligent environment are designed by different people, tendered at different points in time in the construction program and awarded to different suppliers who may not be able to deliver an integrated value proposition,” Mecheri said.
As green building projects cross the boundaries of different business cycles and company specialties, there is a great organizational challenge posed for these projects, Boriskin said. “It is rather difficult to ask different groups of people to work together and to understand each other's business, yet organizational convergence is crucial for these businesses to work together. Even when the top management team pushes for more efficiency from top down, getting these groups to work together is challenging.”
In order to have a holistically integrated system, higher-level management software is needed to connect the building automation system (BAS) and security system through a standards-based approach, allowing them to speak the same language, Boriskin said. “The ideal situation is that end users are able to pick a protocol that everyone can utilize and communicate with. A helpful way to overcome communication barriers might be adopting network standards, computer standards, XML and Web services as industry standards, based on an internationally unified set of standards, for easier integration, although this has yet to be established.”
In addition, the lack of awareness, education and technical knowledge of building managers and owners on the full features and capabilities of BAS might lead to conservative cost considerations, which often influence the scalability of the BAS installed. “Most usually regard the budget of BAS as the last priority of the whole building construction cost,” Liong said. “Whenever necessary, at the end of the construction project they can easily cut down the budget of a proposed BAS to the lowest minimum and downgrade the specification requirement without considering the lesser functions of the installed BAS later on.”
To facilitate smooth integration of different systems into one BAS, having an integrated building technology project manager would lead to successful project completion, Wilts said.