Scaling building automation systems (BAS) requires foresight since professionals must make sure everything continues running smoothly during expansion. While no one-size-fits-all approach exists, there are several best practices industry professionals should follow to ensure their strategy pays off.
1. Trial Expansion Opportunities
Which expansion method is most efficient, and what strategies consistently outperform? Since just 13% of small to midsized commercial buildings in the United States have adopted BAS, few standards for scaling exist — there are no clear answers to these questions yet. However, professionals can discover valuable insights using simulations.
Simulations of automated building systems are effectively cost-effective prototypes that enable realistic, risk-free testing. They allow professionals to conduct trial expansions, enabling them to see how their plans will affect their architecture, tools and operations. This way, they can identify process improvements and pain points before committing to any strategy.
2. Secure Top-Down Buy-In
While organization-wide buy-in is essential to expanding automated building systems, decision-makers should recognize the importance of appealing to higher-ups first. Their support ensures scaling remains a top priority, preventing it from falling to the wayside as deadlines shift or other projects appear. It also helps instill confidence in employees.
3. Scale IT and OT Concurrently
While information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) have been considered separate for years, digitalization has made them two sides of the same coin — one handles workloads while the other manages automation. Fortunately, since expansion is faster and more cost-effective than construction, firms should have the resources to scale both simultaneously.
IT/OT convergence will soon be an industry staple, so professionals scaling BAS should merge their disparate infrastructures. As they integrate new smart devices, sensors and nodes, they must advance their IT hardware and software capabilities. Adequate networking and security is vital for seamless expansion.
While professionals could technically upgrade one before the other, concurrently scaling them prevents bottlenecks and misconfigurations during the early stages of implementation. This way, legacy and modern technologies communicate seamlessly — even when implementation is still a work in progress.
4. Prioritize Data Interoperability
Many BAS prioritize graphical user interfaces, dashboards and controls — what the end user sees — instead of strengthening core components, meaning data interoperability often falls by the wayside. Systems should be able to share information to provide accurate, real-time insights, eliminate data silos and enable consistent performance.
5. Continuously Monitor Systems
Professionals should carefully pay attention to their existing system during expansion, as malfunctions, misreporting or underperformance can result in financial losses. Continuous monitoring lets them know everything is performing as expected — and gives them early indicators of errors — making the process more manageable.
6. Conduct Employee Training
Scalability often translates to a complex web of new tools, dependencies and graphical user interfaces. Even if firms keep their existing tech stack, employee training is essential since teams must learn how to adapt to new workloads and maintenance expectations. However, in 2023, organizations dedicated just 10% of their projected budget to systems training.
Employee training isn’t just essential for upskilling — it helps decision-makers incorporate much-needed feedback into design, testing and maintenance. Expansion provides an excellent excuse to revisit long-held pain points, enabling seamless, incremental fixes. These feedback loops are invaluable.
7. Create Built-In Redundancies
Business leaders often consider redundancies unnecessary and wasteful. In reality, they are vital for operations — they mitigate unplanned downtime and support recovery efforts. If a malfunction occurs during scaling, companies can rely on backup components to seamlessly continue operations without compromising security or speed.
8. Mitigate Vendor Lock-In
Vendor lock-in happens when overreliance on a third-party servicer makes migration impractical or outright impossible. In 2022, nearly half of survey respondents agreed avoiding it was essential. Considering this dependency can lead to incompatibilities, misconfigurations and data silos, such caution is justified.
BAS expansion provides a unique opportunity to switch vendors — or unintentionally become locked in. Decision-makers should consider whether their current servicer can meet their scalability needs. If not, they should be willing to migrate elsewhere or adopt new software. This way, they streamline management and simplify future growth.
9. Design Systems for Modularity
Horizontal scaling spreads workloads across additional servers. It is an essential aspect of long-term IT scalability. Although migrating to the cloud carries unique security and operational challenges, it brings unparalleled simplicity to expansion by offering on-demand resource availability and budget flexibility.
Decision-makers should strongly consider relying on cloud computing technology for modularity since it can streamline integrations and accelerate scaling without requiring a major system overhaul. This way, they can align resource utilization with demand, only paying for what they use. It is among the most cost-effective expansion options for modular IT and OT infrastructure.
The Secret to Scaling Building Automation Systems
Every BAS is as unique as the building it is incorporated into, meaning scalability strategies must be just as distinctive. There is no silver bullet for effectively expanding systems — the only way to ensure long-term success is to carefully follow best practices, tweaking them slightly for business-specific applications.
