AutomatedBuildings.com Editorial Comments June 2007

Our last two issues of AutomatedBuildings.com have focused on change in our industry; this change is being driven by the powerful ever evolving connectivity. This new found substance "connectivity" is no longer a concept; it is a reality that is changing how we work and what our industry will look like in the near future. Connectivity concepts such as the smart grid, the greening of buildings with better connections to everything, coupled with connections to powerful web services plus the notion of Buildings 2.0 are all creating new directions and markets for our industry. This requires that we all re-examine our core business models and make adjustments for connectivity. Our June issue gives you a peek at how connectivity changes everything as our authors talk about aspects of this new virtual substance that you may not have even thought about.

Building on BuilConn - Anto Budiardjo tells us about his successful ConnectivityWeek / BuilConn in Chicago in which Convergence took a significant step forward. Imagine a complete week to discuss Connectivity. Frank Capuano shares industry views from this event in his Connectivity Daily. In an interview with Denis DuBois we increase AutomatedBuildings.com connectivity with connection to his sound bits of interviews from Chicago in MP3 format as our first connection to podcasts.

Put your headsets on or turn up the volume and explore this new connectivity medium

Of course the GridWise movement is built on connectivity and Jack McGowan connects us to the practitioners that are making it happen.

Toby Considine writes this about the next level of connectivity and provides us connection to his Blog in his interview New Daedalus "Today pervasive intelligence in every aspect of the design, construction, and operation of the building, as well as the intelligent interaction of the building with the outside world, is making the most profound changes to the way we build and operate buildings since Daedalus. I think it is time we discuss the new archetypes."

From the review oBIX, Building 2.0 from Toby's Blog this new connectivity avenue is unfolding; "What is more interesting is the interest being shown to oBIX external to the buildings domain. The National Building Information Modeling Standard (NBIMS) and the oBIX committee have met to explore relationships between the standards, focusing on whether Energy Models developed directly against NBIMS models can be compared to live data from control systems read by oBIX to produce live models (or instantaneous commissioning)".

Tom Hartman gives us his view of how connectivity can be turn into accountability in his article Making Energy Efficiency Accountable "With the current state of controls and integrated networks, the accountability requirements for such a financial process do not require large budgets for measurement and verification nor ongoing commissioning. The reporting system can be easily built into each project and like my loan officer, the efficiency program manager should be able from her or his desktop computer to click on each project and see if we are up to date in our energy savings payments."

Find out how even your car is getting connected in an article by Jim Sinopoli Smart Parking Garages? Integrated building technology systems can improve the functionality and value of buildings, even those such as parking garages. Increasingly, technology will shape how a variety of facilities will be managed and how users will work, live, even park their cars.

In the article Truly Brilliant Buildings Deke Smith, AIA, Executive Director, buildingSMART^® Alliance National Institute of Building Sciences tells about his vision in which ever piece of building data is connected. The primary principle is to ensure that you collect and store data once when it is generated and then re-use it throughout the lifecycle of the facility.

In this month's article “Confluence, Convergence, Confusion….Kaboom“ The need to create standards for delivering automated building systems information real time to first responders en route to an incident. Allan Olbur applies connectivity to real time tasks few of us have thought about and tells us how this will changes everything and advise us that the Automated Building Systems industry must move towards meeting standards for “rich content” delivery of information, with particular emphasis on delivering life safety information to first responders.

New Advances in Digital Display Technology tells us about how the next generation of digital signage has removed the need for costly cabling and complex installations Utilizing data cellular and internet protocol technology,

A new feature of this months issue is our column on back to basics like Interlocking of AHU Safety Devices by Steven R. Calabrese, Automated Logic Chicago

With connection to new Blogs that Exploring Intelligent Buildings and their interactions with the world around them sound bits in what the industry is saying and our new column feature AutomatedBuildings.com is doing what we can to keep you connected to connectivity that is changing everything.

We have just returned from GridWeek in Washington DC where we witnessed the winds of change blowing in several directions and at several levels. This event allowed the politicians, electrical regulators, generation, distribution folks and the technology providers a common venue to talk about the smart grid of the future and changes that would be required. I was extremely pleased to hear that conservation and connectivity are the fifth fuel for the grid of the future. I was also extremely pleased to hear that our buildings demand response was much quicker from a GridWise Grid than what can be obtained presently from adding and subtracting generation to the grid. I was also pleased to hear how connectivity and innovation will help change the grid users’ behavior by communicating price breaks for time of day billing using new connectivity paths. The evolution of our building integrators to grid integrators was a great revelation which greatly increases the scope and reach of our industry.

A common theme of this month's “Winds Of Change” articles and interviews is the importance of innovation as an integral part of the change. Be sure to read all the articles and interviews and see how each editor has sited innovation as the important part of the changes that are occurring.

The winds of change are not going to stop blowing but the blast will be directed to the windy city of Chicago when ConnectivityWeek comes to Chicago for the first time, at the Rosemont Convention Center May 22-24, 2007. Be sure to read Anto's article Demand Response (DR) is without doubt the golden opportunity for building systems integrators and contractors, and his interview The Buildings 2.0 initiative promotes green initiatives and sustainable designs as well as the use of Information Technology to further the vision.

Of course the news just keeps flowing thru our web site and RSS feeds daily, and of course the only way to truly find what you are looking for in the vast quantity of information on our site is with our site search engine http://www.automatedbuildings.com/search/sitesearch.htm

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Lots of information and links in this issue use the menu on your left to explore.

If you are like I was and do not know what RSS is RSS is a Web content syndication format. The name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. Read here for more details http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

We are slowly figuring it all out so bear with us as we install this new news service. Please share with us any suggestions you have to better use this approach and others to keep moving our web site forward to meet your needs. Our News Briefs are now handled as news feed items and archived for now in a similar format as before.

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