WS-Are-We-There-Yet

We now have web services to almost any conceivable control system. We have BACnet-XML and BACREST. We have TAC Web Services. We have LON XML. We have oBIX. So...are we there yet?

As Louis Hecht has written:

XML does not provide semantics. XML does not solve business problems. XML Schemas do not provide semantics or solve business problems. XML, by itself, does not solve interoperability problems, yet it is an important tool for doing so.

This is true, to a point. Bad XML Schema, and perhaps most first generation XML schemas do not provide semantics. Good XML schemas implement semantics, bad ones do not. For an example form within this space, I would argue the GBXML provides semantics. Even oBIX 1.0, frustrating to me, offers semantics, but one limited to points services and therefore not readily accessible to business functions. Establishing base semantics was a critical early goal of that project.

Good XML Schemas are all about semantics, for without semantics there is no interoperability. I would refer to something like UBL (Universal Business Language) as an overarching semantic framework that is being built into numerous schemas at a deep level.

Louis’s larger point is true. XML and XML schema do not inherently include semantics—even if the good schema do.

One of the reasons that I am watching NBIMS so closely from the oBIX vantage point is that the higher semantics will need to be there before oBIX has an enterprise interface. I have a hard time imagining what applying Policy to point services even means.

As Enterprise programmers will never be control engineers, we are going to have to wrap up the standard functions into business services. In oBIX if I define a set of functionalities for a given period of time, it is called a contract. For these to be useful, we will need to pre-define several contracts and make each of them discoverable. Discovery will mean that we need to describe each one in terms of the service it provides. The Description/Catalogue will need to be machine readable rather than human readable, which means it will be based on Semantics.

But whose semantics?

I am hoping we can find a way to map Design Intents / Systems modeled by the energy model / spaces served into Service descriptions. It would make sense, then, to invite the control system's Service to the same meeting. To do that, to make a Service that can be subject to Policy, that can have rational Security applied, that can be Discovered by enterprise applications will require that we have Semantics embedded in the XML of the Service Descriptions.

I believe that as we all become more familiar with NBIMS, we will be able to discover the Semantics needed to do this. Somewhere in the check list of Services to be Commissioned, in the Systems in the Energy Model, and even in the Function analyzed by the Code Compliance checker are the Semantics needed to create discoverable abstract services.

And that XML will be an order of magnitude more useful because it is semantically laden.

Can BIM really transform our processes?

What would happen if every part of the planning process was done in a collaborative environment? What would happen of every tool used in design could share information? What if the information could be reviewed by everyone in real time? What would that change?

What if the bid package were 100% accurate. What if assemblies from the building model were used to construct all the duct and case work off site. What if the contractor could deliver as-builts with the building, because the build matched what was originally designed?

What if energy models were created on-the-fly with each iteration of design, so you always knew the cost and performance of each change What if part of commissioning was having the building compare itself to those energy models with live data. Automatically. What if you could renew that comparison whenever you wanted?

BIM is properly about data sharing, and information stewardship across the life of a facility from initial Design Intents and Programming to final Demolition. Data sharing is based around data standards. The data standards for BIM are referred to as IFC. That is as technical as I will get for now.

The attached Quicktime movie is about 10 minutes long. The movie takes you through a real life programming charrette, and how everything is changed once access to the information becomes universal and standards based. It is marketing literature, so of course everything works. Even so, it is a good introduction to the power of interoperability during Planning and Design.

Please take the time to watch this QuickTime movie. It *will* give you the strength to read up on buildingSmart.

The movie is information about Onuma's BIM-based server software. I have no relationship to Onuma, but I think the software shows how abstract standards-based abstractions about building information change the way we interact with acquiring buildings. Abstract standards-based information about processes in buildings will change the way we interact with buildings, The good news is that that standards are the same...

Now what if you used this process throughout operations and maintenance. What tools would you use to shape building load, when energy analysis looked like this, when you knew what the space was used for, when you knew what people were doing throughout the day. What if you could pull space, time, energy, and people together because you could see how it all worked together….

To see more training information on a BIM-based project server, go to http://onuma.com/services/TrainingSupport.php

The Inevitable Dumbing Down of Building Systems

It is fun being here in New York City, at the AHR Conference, and meeting with many of the best that ASHRAE has. ASHRAE is the engineering society that defines the standards for comfort and healthfulness of the air we breathe in every building. Their work controls a large portion of the energy budget for buildings, almost 60% of the power coming over the power grid. Their work defines Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), an area of growing concern for the public and the building owner. Solutions to issues of carbon emissions and health flow through the work of this engineering association.

Why, then, is there a sense of unease among this group?

There is a growing sense that their excellent work to raise standards may be for naught, and that the skills of the professional on the ground may not be adequate to today’s challenges. Control systems for buildings are rarely designed. Consulting engineers and design professionals too often produce vague specifications filled with technical platitudes, the result of cut-and-paste engineering. In the end, as one executive at UNC put it, “Most control systems are designed by a man in the hall, standing on a bucket”

Maybe this is because, as Friedman says in “The Earth is Flat”, the US populace is no longer willing to do what it takes to produce engineers in sufficient numbers. Maybe this is because engineering remains the least compensated of the professions, and the best and the brightest look to quick riches as quants on Wall Street. In any case, it is certainly true.

Every LEED point for sustainability, every carbon credit for good operations, every demand/response contract from the grid relies on accurate and understood operation of these systems. We must address this problem. There are two ways to do this. We can work through it, or we can work around it.

Working through the problem is tough. Friedman issued a call for action, but even if we listened to it, and made every education change today, it would be a decade or more, before the properly trained engineers hit the job market in adequate numbers. Even when they arrive, without changes in pay scales for engineers, they will soon find other careers, less challenging, and as remunerative.

So we will probably have to work around it. We will have to remove design responsibilities from field, and from the local consulting engineer. Control systems will have to go pre-fab. If we ever hold architects and design engineers responsible for the performance of their systems, for provable commissioning, then those professionals will refuse to specify anything else.

Larger systems, will become the new package units. We know how to do this already – we just have to apply it to large chiller units, and to home power management systems. Systems will arrive pre-assembled in one or several pieces. Personnel on the job site will require directions no more complicated that those for assembling a toy on Christmas eve.

Custom systems for the spaces in the building present different challenges. We will have to work around it the way that parts of the housing industry are working around poor labor and materials stored in the rain on the job site. We will factory build these systems to meet the designs. Today, entire walls for homes are built in climate controlled conditions in factories, gluing and clamping as well as nailing each 2x4 and ship them to the job site for rapid assembly. Ducts, air handlers, and controls will be made to order in the factory in controlled conditions. Joints will be pre-caulked. Duct will be pre-insulated. Systems for whole floors will arrive on the job in a few pieces, to be assembled by low cost labor.

This will transfer responsibility and liability back to the design professionals. It will require them to fully design these systems and to warrant that those designs will work. Design professionals will respond by working in full models, with every detail worked out in three dimensions. The factory will build to the model; it can do nothing else.

Reliance on the model will be another source of cost reduction. The contractor will not assume he has to factor in covering the designers mistakes. Construction projects will be bid at lower cost reflecting all the change orders the contractor will not have to eat. We can see this already in such projects as the wet-lab renovation at UC San Francisco which reported a construction job coming in at 38% under budget.

The skills required to work on site in such job will be lower. Line salaries will be less in the future. This is how we do things in America. We design out skill requirements. Sometime we even increase waste. The important thing is always to reduce training requirements.

The LaserJet became the predominant printer in America by reducing training requirements. Everything breakable was put into one assembly. Things that wore out after X, 4X, and 10X copies were all put in the same assembly. That assembly was engineered so that any administrative assistant could replace it, eliminating 97% of the knowledge required to maintain a laser printer.

I am betting that building HVAC systems will go the same way.

Open Design goes public with BIMstorm LAX

buildingSmart is proving to be more evangelical than its predecessors NBIMS and IFC. This is an indication that the participants feel that the slow committee work is done, the concepts have been proved, and it is time to change the way buildings are designed, built, and operated.

To accomplish the change to information sharing and stewardship across the full lifetime of a building, many people in many industries will need to change their business practices simultaneously. buildingSmart is an effort to transform the way buildings are designed, built and operated based on the principles of BIM. To accomplish this, many people in many related businesses will need to transform how they work together. ONUMA is engaging the harder work of social change flat on in BIMstorm.

As I understand it, the first BIMstorm will be the public competitive design of 30 blocks of Los Angeles beginning January 31.

It looks like there first major evangelical effort will be the public competitive design of 30 blocks of Los Angeles beginning on January 31…Owners and developers can still request that their project site to be included in the BIMstorm even if it is not in the identified area.

BIMstorm will be a cross disciplinary effort (well, it would have to be!) with standards-based exchange of information. Teams include:

• Assessors
• Appraisers
• Architects
• Brokers
• Building Inspectors
• Building Product Suppliers
• City Agencies
• Developers
• Emergency Responders
• Engineers
• Facility Managers
• Landlords
• Lenders
• Other city and state agencies (domestic and international)
• Owners of Existing Properties
• Planners
• Tenants

At the start of the BIMstorm™ selected teams will be assigned a specific site. Each site will have a recommended program based on actual project requests. Judging will take place at the end of the BIMstorm™ and awards will be given for various categories. The intent is to demonstrate real-tiime collaboration, rapid design and simulation of projects.

Some of you might want to sign in to watch the melee…

http://BIMstorm.com/LAX .