Electrical Engineering Solutions

The Information Technology (IT) industry needs to urgently engage with built environment professionals to ensure that the communication needs of tenants are properly considered at the planning stages of buildings, said Bradley Hemphill, managing director of Electrical Engineering Solutions.

He recently addressed the Intelligent Building Automation 2008 symposium at Gallagher Estate  on ‘Convergence and the role of Information Technology in Building Automation Systems (BAS)’ .

“There is an urgent need for intelligent backbones to be included in the early planning phase of commercial property developments and the IT and BAS industries, mindful of their clients’ needs, must engage with architects and developers to ensure the required infrastructure is installed during construction,” Hemphill said.

The intelligent building must have a smart backbone that will support not only today’s technology but tomorrow’s as well. This structured cabling system must cater for the converged business systems common to data and telephony networks as well as the BAS that also use the network

He said that “the convergence of the industry of BAS and IT is a new paradigm shift and the start of a perfect storm. Convergence is happening so quickly we are failing to notice that all the major players are using internet protocol (IP) platforms for their networks yet are not integrating these. They’re working in silos.

“For example, you can’t have a data centre without a BAS and this needs to be integrated with the IT system so the support staff can use their physical access cards to gain entrance to the data centre and their logical access to gain access to the network to do their jobs of monitoring the centre.

“Should this person stop working for this company there will be no security breach as the HR business system will automatically remove logical and physical access rights to the data centre.

“Developers take advice from architects and consultants and few of these have the skills to conceptualise an IT network that converges with BAS. This is why the IT industry must take the initiative and educate the built environment professionals.

“IT is not usually part of the construction. This effectively means that not enough upfront planning is happening and the stakeholders who may use the buildings’ network are not being engaged in the early planning stages. It means that often there is no effective procurement model to enable all the relevant IT components to be procured during construction.”

A building’s integrated IT platform needs to accommodate a variety of systems needed for the efficient operation of the building and tenant experience. These include security systems, BAS, life safety systems, and the converged IT systems of data, voice and video.

There must be sufficient flexibility in the design of the intelligent backbone to allows for future inclusion of feature-rich services that were perhaps not initially envisaged or available at the time of planning, said Hemphill.

“Making allowances for expansion of services will contribute substantially to the owners ability to attract high-value tenants on long-term leases, thereby ensuring an attractive return on investment.”

The first step in planning for an intelligent building is to appoint an IT/BAS engineer - either a firm or an individual fully conversant with the technology required for smart buildings and a track record of working on such projects, said Hemphill.

“The concept of a complete intelligent electronic backbone in a building needs a master integrator to ensure compatibility between disparate systems and to ensure systems integration at implementation stage. This integrator takes responsibility for the multi-disciplines and is a key sub-contractor to the main contractor. This relationship will become the single most important for the main contractor in the foreseeable future.