Global building automation moves toward more integration, intelligence

Developments in the Internet of Things (IoT) are driving the market forward, offering property and facility managers a wide range of new technologies and the ability to integrated devices and sensors in their buildings for intelligent automation and overall better management. Integration and openness are key for growth in the building automation industry.

Integration and Openness are Key

The industry has been dominated by proprietary systems for years. Open-standard platforms are believed to have the potential to accelerate market adoption and enable better data acquisition and device control. Willy Wu, Business Development Manager at Advantech, said that standardization is essential to enable easy integration and operation for systems integrators (SIs) and building managers. “We provide an open and scalable platform like our solutionready package (SRP) and standard web service to adapt to different scenarios, allowing our customers to develop their customized solutions. It provides advantages for SIs to shorten the learning curve, for building managers to reduce operational complexity, and for solutions providers, of course, to increase sales at scale.” However, one system does not fit all. Wu said that it still requires customizable solutions to fit industry demands for a variety of requirements in different vertical markets.

Konkana Khaund, Director of Consulting at Frost & Sullivan, thinks proprietary systems will still continue to have a share in the market. “There has been tremendous technology changes in the last few years such that proprietary systems can now intercommunicate with other systems in the building. However, industry participants are certainly pushing more toward advocating open systems.”

Rick Focke, Senior Product Manager for Building Technologies & Solutions at Johnson Controls, thinks it’s important for the systems to communicate in a common language. He sees BACnet as a popular standard for sharing information between HVAC control systems and other systems such as lighting, access control and fire systems. He said, “BACnet/IP is most common. SNMP is gaining traction, especially among the IT community. Modbus is also popular, bridging the gap between industrial automation and third-party systems.”

Greg Turner, VP of Honeywell Building Solutions, said, “Proprietary building systems and building management systems have gone by the wayside as communication network protocols such as BACnet, LonWorks and more recent solutions like OPC have come in to play. We’ve seen the move to open protocols across all regions. Currently, LonWorks is more popular in the European regions, while BACnet is popular in Asia and the United States. The Pacific areas seem to lead the way in terms of large, open, integrated systems. We’re hoping the same thing transfers into the security and fire space, which currently still has many proprietary areas.”

System convergence is the future in the BAS by integrating disparate systems into one platform supporting open architecture and interoperable operation. To enable smarter BA, it is a trend to mix and match different BAS which has been siloed. Benjamin Freas, Principal Research Analyst at Navigant Research, said that the advantage of integrated systems like reducing redundant sensors or communications networks in combining disparate automation systems.
 

Robert Luor, GM of the Building Automation Solutions Business Unit at Delta Electronics, has witnessed a trend happening across industries involving the convergence of operational technology (OT) and IT. “Over the years, open protocols or a high convergence level with IT has become a norm in the BA industry as well. We already see more and more partnership and cooperation opportunities between BA and IT companies and we are looking forward to it.”

Optimization From IoT

Industry players try to differentiate themselves by providing value-added services like data analytics and predictive maintenance. Collected and analyzed data is beneficial for better building management to create value to customers. Freas said, “In IoT, the real opportunity is data. A connected, integrated building provides data on operations and enables solutions that go beyond optimizing building systems.”

Turner said, “We see customers taking steps to drive more value out of their buildings, like moving to predictive maintenance instead of relying on a less effective, traditional scheduled maintenance, or using connected equipment to make activity-based or occupancy-based decisions around tasks like cleaning services and security staffing.” He thinks the improvement of building connectivity enables users to have a much better understanding of a building’s usage patterns and apply these insights to safety and security. “Up until now, we’ve seen analytics play a major role in energy, but going forward, we will see this make a bigger impact when appliedjhto security as well,” added Turner.

Focke touched upon access control as an example to illustrate these benefits like energy savings and operational efficiency. “Access control data on known occupancy can help reduce a building’s energy usage in three major areas — heating and cooling, fresh air ventilation and lighting,” said Focke. With regard to operational efficiency, access control trend data on a building’s occupancy can be used when planning future real estate needs. Focke explained, “If more people are traveling or working at home, the occupancy data will show it, and that can be used to justify reducing a company’s real estate footprint.
 

This data can be combined with the practice of ‘hoteling’ or ‘hot desk management’ to greatly reduce a company’s fixed real estate expenses.” This data is also useful for other future planning and development purposes. Focke said, “Occupancy info can be used for long-term space planning, and it can also be used for both short-term and long-term food and resource planning. Occupancy and traffic flow info can be used to optimize security guard deployment.”

Ryan Martin, Principal Analyst at ABI Research, said, “The ability to capture, bifurcate and analyze data from disparate sources is a key capability that companies need to accommodate to fully realize the potential of a comprehensive IoT investment strategy.” With regards to the benefits, Martin said, “We can talk about things like cost savings, ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO)/lifetime value-type considerations, but I think things really get interesting when we look at the ways in which facility, building and infrastructure automation impact people and process.”

Lour sees a growing trend toward decentralization of control and management in the IoT-enabled world. Lour detailed, “Nowadays, in a room control system, multiple devices can interoperate based on the same information feedback from the field, and better control decision can be made this way.”

Khaund indicated that the BA industry is a very homogeneous industry and hard to differentiate. She found that large companies show interest in innovative companies that can provide data analytics or differentiated solutions. “In the IoT world, it’s not just about the hardware anymore. You need to have other abilities to offer more value-added features,” remarked Khaund.