By Ernie Beck, CTS-D, WELL AP
It’s not uncommon to see news stories about companies enticing remote workers back to the office with the latest Intelligent Building technologies and amenities. Maybe your own building or real estate project is going through the same effort of identifying and planning for upgrades. While this is a noble endeavor, the question becomes, “Can your building’s information and communications technologies (ICT) infrastructure even support these goals?” Before we look at some ways ICT directly supports today’s Intelligent Buildings, let’s take a step back and look at the building holistically. A building can be thought of in different layers of technology:
- Hardware – physical components such as devices, IoT sensors, gateways, controllers, touch interfaces, speakers, and displays. These can be referred to as “Operational Technologies” (OT) in a building. I like to think of this as the “sense” layer or the Eyes, Ears, Mouth, Skin of the building.
- Network – the communications network consisting of copper and fiber cabling, network switches and routers, wireless networks, telecommunications rooms, and software management of networks. These can be referred to as “Information Technologies” (IT) in a building and is the neural network of the building, sending information between the various OT’s.
- Data – this layer helps identify and explain the relationship between the devices, as well as the meta-data generated by a particular OT device. In anatomical analogy, this is the information received via your sense organs and computed in your brain.
- API – this layer is vital to allowing the different types of OT and IT devices to communicate via a common language. Think of this as the translation layer, where software and code is used to ensure one device language is recognized by another completely different type of device.
When evaluating new systems for your building, it is important to understand a few key questions. Let’s use an example of Indoor Air Quality measurement. It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on the lack of attention given to the air quality in our built environment. To abate this, your company wants to deploy an IAQ system consisting of wireless sensors, wired/networked controllers, and software dashboards that aggregate the data. When retrofitting this type of system into a new space, here’s some ICT-specific considerations:
- Is our Wi-Fi network robust enough to accommodate new sensors distributed throughout the building?
- Can we segment and secure the network to allow IoT devices without opening up a cyber security risk?
- Do we have adequate space in our telecommunications rooms to support installation of additional controllers?
- Do we have spare port capacity for new data required for the head-end controller(s)?
- Where does the data go once it’s collected?
- How does the data from my IAQ network communicate to my Air Conditions & Ventilation controls network?
- How do we as an organization communicate that data in a way that promotes our objectives?
As you can see, ICT plays a crucial role in deploying something like Indoor Air Quality, as do network policies and procedures, data governance, change management, and communications. This same thought exercise can be applied to virtually any type of new technology you wish to retrofit or design into your buildings. Each will have different considerations, but the core ICT questions around connectivity, communications protocols, data collection, cyber-security, and management of devices should stay consistent. The first step in creating Intelligent Buildings is to identify the outcomes you want to achieve, but the second step of identifying the ICT considerations is arguably the most important to the execution of those ideas.
Ernie Beck, CTS-D, WELL AP is an Associate Principal in the Washington, DC office of NV5 Engineering & Technology (formerly Sextant Group). Ernie is our resident project specialist in the emerging Intelligent Building Technology space.
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