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Historically, the facility management challenge has been to do more with less. System integration provides a solution, and offers an opportunity to lower costs and achieve greater efficiencies.
Learning Objectives:
1. Identify what a smart building is, and the solutions it can provide.
2. Learn how a BAS can integrate engineered systems within a building.
3. Understand the role data can play in increasing operational and energy efficiency.
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Typical facility management challenges associated with energy consumption, operational costs, and occupant comfort have been compounded by the growing complexity of the engineered systems designed to manage them. Operational budgets, staffing levels, and staff skill sets often fall short of need. Implementation of smart building solutions that can remedy these problems has been underexplored due to perceived lack of return on investment. Reinforcing this perception, the capabilities of smart building technologies, when employed, are commonly under-exploited for lack of capacity to do so.
Costs associated with system integration (data storage and communications interfaces) have been falling. The concept of the Internet of Things is gaining traction. McKinsey Quarterly defines Internet of Things [file:///C:/Users/arozgus/My%20Box%20Files/Amara/CSE1405_MAY/1.%09http:/www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_internet_of_things] as "objects becoming embedded with sensors and gaining the ability to communicate." This trend is generating free-use analytical tools and processes for integration optimization, prompting building owners to increasingly concur with McKinsey's opinion that "the resulting information networks promise to create new business models, improve business processes, and reduce costs and risks." The two-part challenge is to better use technology and more fully leverage data.
What is a smart building?
The promise...