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How a building management system could help build a sustainable future

How a building management system could help build a sustainable future

February 19, 2023

Plus: Here's how Saudi Arabia is turning its huge desert into arable land.

Buildings and their usage account for around 30 percent of global emissions.
Installing a building management system (BMS) can lead to energy savings of up to 29 percent and a reduction in carbon emissions.
A BMS can also help a building management team spot a piece of faulty equipment and determine how soon it will need to be replaced.

THE BLUEPRINT ILLUSTRATION

THIS WEEK’S MUST READ

Expert: Building management system can cut emissions, boost sustainability

Over the past few years, individuals and governments have had a major push to move away from fossil fuels toward electrified transportation. While this is commendable, it only focuses on one part of the global emissions problem.

In 2021, transportation accounted for around 37 percent of global CO2 emissions from end-use sectors.

However, according to data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), buildings and their operations accounted for 30 percent of global final energy consumption and 27 percent of total energy sector emissions. Unlike transportation, buildings and their energy usage do not get the same attention and urgency for change.

Although research is ongoing into how emissions from construction can be further reduced, technology now enables us to connect various building equipment and monitor their energy consumption and functioning. This can help us begin reducing emissions right away.

Interesting Engineering (IE) spoke to Natalie Patton, Vice President of Customer Success at BuildingsIOT, a Concord, California-based provider of building management service software, to understand how it works and can help us reduce emissions.

The story continues…

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THIS WEEK’S MUST READ

IE: What is a building management system?

Natalie Patton: The Building Management System is the place building engineers and facility managers go to run their building equipment. A BMS typically focuses on HVAC [heating, ventilation, and air conditioning] equipment as the most energy-intensive and mechanically complex system that operates within the building. Increasingly, building management systems integrate data from systems beyond HVAC, including lighting, plumbing, life safety, electrical, IOT sensors, and even elevators.

Not all of those systems can be controlled through the BMS (life safety, for example, is almost always Read Only in the BMS as it's so heavily regulated and requires control from specialized operators). Without a BMS, operators are stuck trusting that their controls always operate as designed or pushing setpoint changes and overrides through one controller's touchpad at a time.

The first evolution of building management systems aggregated system data to a single server hosted in the building with rudimentary graphics and sometimes enough capacity to store historical data for long-term trend analysis. Today's building management system is cloud-hosted and history-enabled for secure remote connectivity and scalable storage of years worth of time-series data.

How does a modern-day BMS work?

A BMS works by connecting to controllers from disparate systems across a network. Each controller feeds its data back to a centralized server. If the BMS connects multiple systems, each server is made available for a secure connection.

The system server processes the time-series data at the edge and manages the controller-level sequences of operation, plus defines all the writable set points for the user interface. The cloud-hosted portion pulls the data in near-real time to a browser-based user interface where access-controlled users can push commands to the edge devices from the comfort of anywhere.

A BMS centralizes alarm management and equipment schedules across systems and enables fault detection and diagnostics for machine-learning analysis and multiple layers of reporting, as well as measurement and verification.

Can the platform be integrated into existing building facilities? Or does one need to install new smart devices first?

Set up of building management systems typically follow a controller upgrade. Controllers don't need to be the most high-tech on the market, but they do need to be programmable and capable of processing data on a network.

Equipment retrofits happen in existing buildings all the time. It is becoming more commonplace for building owners to choose equipment that is capable of connecting to a building management system to protect their investment and ensure the machine maintains the ability to operate as designed for its entire useful life.

Is it meant for large buildings only?

It happens that large buildings tend to be the biggest adopters of building management systems for the obvious reasons that they have lots of equipment to manage and maintain as well as at least one engineer on staff to use it. But the cost of a BMS typically scales with the [amount] of equipment, so small- to medium-sized building owners might be surprised that it's actually quite cost-effective, considering the value of the assets a BMS is used to manage.

Couple a BMS with a digital service agreement that allows a third party to both operate the building and provide data-driven maintenance, and the savings continue to add up. A cloud-hosted BMS makes it much easier for a third party to monitor a portfolio of buildings from off-site. The analytics that the BMS enables further makes it possible to operate the building more effectively and provide validation to the building owner that the fix installed has, in fact, solved the problem rather than just providing a band-aid.

WEEKLY POLL

A building management system can support a greener construction sector.

How digitalized will the construction industry be in 10 years? (Poll closes February 23)

It will be totally digitalized

AI will be more prominent

Nothing much will change

I prefer the traditional way

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

Last week, we asked if you think AI will change the way you work in the next few years. 52 percent think it’s inevitable, while 39 percent say it'd have an impact on work in certain ways.

52%

Yes, it's inevitable

39%

In certain ways, sure

No, they aren't human

I am unsure either way