AutomatedBuildings.com - Editorial Comments March 2003

The excitement still goes on, our April joint venture supplement/outsert called "Control Convergence" goes out this month to over 50,000 of Engineered Systems' readers in print and online to over 30,000 AutomatedBuildings.com readers. Although the printed message is powerful It occurred to me while we were preparing the online version that the extra power of linking key words and concepts allowed the depth of the data and usefulness to be significantly increased over the printed format. Now if we can figure out how to take that power to the convenience of paper we will have a winning combination. So for now I recommend that you view the information in both formats.

I was pleased that my contributing editor and friend Tom Hartman joined me on this project and as usual delivered a powerful message that encourages all our minds to thinking bigger thoughts.

My ES column for April Community Convergence shares a common theme. Our business communities must converge as part of our transition to web-based ways.

A great article in our April issue called Economy Drives Convergence by Jeff Gollnick Communications Manager, Alerton Inc. adds further power to our Convergence theme.

I was very pleased to add to our Web Services Forum a proposal from Paul Ehrlich of Trane Global Controls Creating a standard for XML and Web Services for Building Control. An initial meeting to gauge interest and begin planning will be held at BuilConn in Dallas on April 23^rd from 1:00 – 3:00 PM. If you are interested in attending in person or via teleconference please RSVP to Kirk McElwain at kirkatcaba@sympatico.ca

I am also very excited that my abstract entitled "The Greening of Buildings with Automation" has been accepted for presentation at the CIBSE/ASHRAE Conference to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, September 24-26. http://xp20.ashrae.org/MEET/scotland2003-menu.htm. The conference title is “Building Sustainability, Value and Profit”.

In addition I have also been accepted to submit a paper on a similar topic to the Asia Pacific Conference on Built Environment 2003 18-19 November 2003 (Tue-Wed), Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel, Hong Kong http://www.ashrae.org.hk/apc2003/

Their theme is buildings will need to be responsive to human needs, yet reduce their environmental loadings.

I believe that our greatly changed large building automation industry is the key to many of the required solutions of Sustainability, Value, Profit, being responsive to human needs, while reducing environmental loadings. Yet as an industry we consistently fail to tell the world. Please help me take our message to the world by sharing your thoughts on this subject with me sinclair@automatedbuildings.com.

This month I am going to repeat it......
There is a lot of excitement in the industry! WOW!

Everything our online magazine has been talking about for the last four years is actually starting to happen.

Standard Protocols have being accepted by all with BACnet and Lon the industry winners but as many as five others are still present. It is clear that standardized of communication protocols is essential for us to move to the next level.

Browser-based and web-based ways are the presentation winners with an assortment of XML and proprietary custom web based servers feeding the information and interactions.

Cross-pollination is occurring in all the Lon and BACnet camps. We are learning more about web ways, with events like the Building Connection Forum and this month's articles demonstrating common goals achieved by various methods.

Council of Advanced Building Systems This new body, Council of Advanced Building Systems, will bring together all players involved in buildings systems with members from all disciplines including HVAC/R, Access Control, IT, Lighting, CCTV, Security and Integration technologies.

Building Owners are becoming very interested in our new web-based solutions accelerating our convergence on their enterprises. See Realcomm Press Releases.

April Issue will include a supplement on Building Automation Convergence A joint effort by ES and AutomatedBuildings.com, written by Tom Hartman and Ken Sinclair, is intended to inform the industry about the many sides of Convergence. The 5700+ word document is a follow up to our last joint effort with ES in their August issue entitled "A Guide to Web -Based Facility Operation".

It includes two perspectives: "Identifying the Complex Components of Convergence" Ken Sinclair, AutomatedBuildings.com
and
"Convergence: What Is It, What Will It Mean, And When Will It Happen?" Tom Hartman, Principle, The Hartman Company.

Watch for it coming in the April issues of ES in print and online at AutomatedBuildings.com.

Sponsor and content provider for BuilConn which brings together manufacturers, distributors, integrators, contractors and dealers in the security and HVAC industries – to learn about and discuss technical and relevant issues.

Monthly Building Automation Column since August 2000 for Engineered Systems has allowed us to share the excellent online content of AutomatedBuildings.com plus my ideas with the print reading world.

In addition to the above, I have re-emerged as a Consultant operating as Sinclair Energy Services Ltd on an over one million square foot project. I have been challenged with the task of taking my web-based operations ramblings and making them into reality. It is a fun project and appears to be easier than I thought as vendors have made great progress in providing us web interfaces.

Our recent venture into online training has been well received and we again see value in providing the online training service and connection to other related online services. Good trained Building Automation personnel are hard to find and we hope that by providing an easy method to learn about our complex industry we can help.

Thanks to all Our Sponsors for allowing us to provide our industry online information service to you for free.

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