AutomatedBuildings.com Review - Just back from CoRE Tech 2015 Silicon Valley

The positive blur of this conference is well defined in this four minute You Tube. Take a moment to watch it to quickly understand the scope and excitement that was the CoRE Tech conference.

CoRE Tech partnered with Intel, Google and Stanford University this year, giving the unique opportunity to explore three of the most innovative campuses in the world. Exploring how technology and automation can help RETHINK, INNOVATE and TRANSFORM your organization’s Corporate Real Estate, Facilities, Energy or Sustainability objectives.

Jim Young advised; that we hoped we would be in the 9th inning of the game, but the truth is we are just in the first or second inning of this ball game but the message is clear that it is game on and what we have all been talking about for the last 30 years has clearly begun happening.

Our second best read article last month is this ten year old article amazing. Pull quote from 10 year old article is; Over the last 20 years, there has been a lot of discussion and debate about the concept of an “intelligent building.” Work has gone on in many forums to define and quantify what the term really means. The end result of all of these efforts is that an intelligent building is not just one thing. My definition of intelligent buildings is as follows: “Use of technology and process to create a building that is safer and more productive for its occupants and more operationally efficient for its owners.”

What else are folks reading from the past? Connecting BACnet Devices to an IP Infrastructure This paper reveals how all BACnet devices can effectively share a common IP network — thereby enhancing the power and convenience of BACnet. George Thomas, President, Contemporary Controls

A strong trend away from laptop thinking to mobile device thinking and movement from cloud to edge devices is underway. IWMS or Integrated Workplace Management Systems are the latest iteration putting all data of all types in a virtual data warehouse.

More and more the work space in most buildings is starting to look like the work space of start ups and the large software campuses. The transition from cube farms to collaborative space is everywhere.

Much of the resistance to this internal change is existing middle management. The workers want mobility, collaborative space and flexibility. The traditional middle management world revolves around the number of offices, not productivity, a radical change marking the end of the Dilbert syndrome.

All physical office space will support more employees than ever before combining mobile off site workers and on site activities in shared work space "hotelling" all valuable real estate.

This will greatly reduce the the need for new office space in the future, and shift the focus and financial resources to reutilization, renovation, and technology upgrading of existing space.

Large software companies have an excess of soft cash that could disappear as quickly as it appeared so investments in their real estate surroundings and sustainability and better utilization is one of their best investments.

Haystack is gaining acceptance in almost everyone's product but explaining the gory details to the client sometimes is problematic as they are only interested in the results it can achieve, and not how it actually does that.

This session was Moderated by Paul Oswald with discussion by Darrel Smith, Microsoft and Dan Cocosa Regional Facility Manager, BMS/Fire Systems Real Estate and Work Place Services (REWS) Google.

Great insight into what is required to get ready to play the game. Lots of planning and good definition of your game plan.

In this advisory Jim Young, Co-Founder & CEO, Realcomm discusses the template of the profound possibilities;

IWMS or Integrated Workplace Management Systems are the latest iteration of the corporate real estate and facilities information management journey. These systems merge the enormous number of business processes associated with running a corporate real estate portfolio with the potential benefits: lower operating expenses, energy conservation, more strategic insight, better occupant experiences and achievement of sustainability objectives

“Why isn’t a comprehensive automation plan an integral part of every corporate real estate strategy?” After years of conversations and observations we have deduced some of the more apparent barriers:

1)    There are over 50 vendors representing 750 different solutions on the market, causing a great deal of confusion in the selection process
2)    Projects are costly, take too much time and struggle to define benefits
3)    Many corporate real estate organizations do not have dedicated people with comprehensive IT skills on their team
4)    IT organizations of the fortune 500 companies focus on their high priority specific business IT needs and very rarely do they reach out to corporate real estate or facilities to offer assistance
5)    In the event CRE and IT get aligned, their languages are very different and it takes time and effort to assimilate their goals and objectives
6)    Third party outsourcing resources, objectives and capabilities are not always in alignment with the internal corporate real estate strategy
7)    Internal Corporate Real Estate and Facility automation project management leadership often changes before the project is complete

Despite these apparent barriers and because the benefits of automation are so great, many organizations have had success with sophisticated and comprehensive corporate real estate and facilities information management projects. These progressive companies provide a template of the profound possibilities in this area.

I took the Stanford University tour. Stanford Energy Systems Innovations (SESI) is considered one of the world’s leading initiatives to move from fossil fuel based energy to more sustainable alternatives.

Certainly the largest heat recovery system I have ever seen, but in some way it seemed that we have failed the incredible original architectural plan that presents this campus as a world class art form, while using natural structure heating and cooling mass plus natural lighting solutions from the turn of the century.

I feel we need to work harder to get back to our roots of making architecture, location and orientation part of the solution and interweaving renewable and hybrid solutions into stand alone grid free or grid sharing solutions. We need to start the movement to completely cutting our connection to the grid or sharing grid resources with living buildings.

It is interesting that as an industry we are always moving towards or away from centralization. These days we seem to be moving in both directions at the same time. I think it is because the IoT and a transactive energy grid allow us. We need to understand that centralized energy grid growth is not our future and we all need to better understand how to better utilize energy use, storage, and generation at a building level while transactively sharing the wasted off peak capacity of the grid.

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