Unveiling the Unseen World at UNC

Many problems of sustainability stem from costs that are invisible or are ignored. Building performance is rarely managed as building control systems are rarely accessible. As long as building systems are invisible and uncontrollable, then they will only rarely be operated with more than minimal efficiency.

We are just completing a multi-year project at UNC in exposing building control systems using ecommerce protocols. We called this system the Enterprise Building Management System (EBMS).

We had hundreds of existing buildings, each with its own low-bidder installed systems.

Most solve such complexity by opting for sole source acquisitions. Some areas, however, have special purposes that demand a special solution that may not be available from a sole source. In any case, we were starting with a substantial installed base. Merely achieving a traditional sole source solution applied to hundreds of buildings would take decades to complete, and cost far more than our budget.

We placed each system securely in its own sandbox, keeping the low level protocols off our network while exposing web services interfaces to operations staff and our customers. Our central monitoring and operations, based upon open source software, can now interact with systems from each vendor. Its interface is exclusively the web browser, and we have used it, and its graphics, on devices ranging from PCs to iPhones. We are planning to introduce these interfaces to the wider campus, faculty, and students.

While we were planning EBMS, I recognized we needed a new model for interactions with building systems, to open them up to the interaction with business operations, and make their operation visible to building occupants, to students, and to the public. Low level standard protocols such as BACnet and LON and proprietary vendor protocols require deep integrations while shielding information from the non-elect. Even when based on low level standards the supervisory systems are proprietary and without programming interfaces.

Five years ago we decided to move oBIX to OASIS for standards development. We lost several members of the team at the time, members who wanted to develop the standard within the traditional building system community. Web services are the protocols used for business-to-business interactions, but not all web services are usable by business or e-commerce. OBIX uses ecommerce style interfaces so that business programmers with normal skill-sets can interact with buildings.

The approach opens up systems to market competition and innovation. Each building system can be chosen based upon performance and functional fit, rather than compatibility to installed base. We anticipate this will help us see more rapid improvements in the future.

With this work in place, we are now moving forward to more exciting opportunities that our open interfaces create. We are working with the Registrar to schedule building operations around actual use, exchanging information using the same protocols used to schedule meetings by email. This will enable us to schedule heating cooling tied to actual building use. We are opening up environmental monitoring information to building users. The data center can see the building’s operating posture. Archeology can see each collection's environmental conditions.

Service Performance and Compliance

So what are the essential components for Building Service Performance framework? What things would you want the building designer to be able to specify early in a project, without selecting a supplier, or a vendor, or a technology?

Some of you may recall an earlier post describing the business services provided by environmental conditioning systems in a big-box pharmacy. The first service was “Ahh, I’m here”. This highly variable service makes the customer glad they have arrived. The second service is a highly regulated environment for storing and dispensing labile pharmaceuticals. This service is less variable and this type of service may be tightly associated with detailed reporting and requirements. The third service, defined for the storage areas, was “Don’t melt the chocolate”. The effectiveness of this service can only be judged by information from inventory and sales systems.

Each Building Service must be defined in terms of Business Values, not in terms of processes or components. No retail business manager ever started the day thinking “I hope I can buy some air conditioning and compressors today”. Each business service implies a compliance metric. Compliance metrics define how quality of Service (QOS) is measured. Compliance metrics may be delivered and documented by building systems or by their effects on other business processes.

A business may have its own building service definitions. IT-savvy businesses often define their unique value proposition through a proprietary service definition. Even these unique service offerings should fit within the framework as a variant of one service or a combination of several.

The compliance portion of the framework defines how we get performance information about each service. The elements of compliance define the actual deliverables. We may be able to derive some aspects of compliance definition from the emerging Business Quality of Service (BQOS) web services standard. Compliance is the only rational basis for business decision making about system selection and performance.

Service and compliance may span several systems. For example, occupancy sensors for lighting systems can provide compliance information for the security service of intruder detection. Under a common Building Service Performance framework, compliance reporting for that service has identical requirements. The lighting system, though, may have other compliance requirements to support the other services it supports.

Why is this important?

Perhaps the most critical factor in improving building design and construction is making important decisions earlier and expressing those decisions in terms that allow the owner to be the informed decision-maker in control of the project. The owner cannot be in charge of a project when the questions are expressed in terms of equipment and processes that the owner does not understand.

Real energy modeling during design requires more than understand building mass and envelope, it requires understanding how the space is to be used and how many will occupy it. A developed Building Service Performance framework will enable design processes that develop real energy models based upon business services, and let the owner choose the compliance level he wants to pay for.

When building designs define compliance requirements up front, then the requirements for building commissioning will be known. This will make processes for automated commissioning possible. Automated commissioning will lead to perpetual autonomous commissioning, a key precursor to self-maintaining facilities.

Please post or email me your ideas on the business services that building systems provide, and what compliance framework each requires.

Gourmet Sustainability

It’s not sustainable if they won’t keep on using it. Feeling cold while sitting in the dark is not a sustainable posture.

The last time we as a culture went on an energy savings kick, it lasted until prices went down. Remember presidential cardigans? Remember when no living room would be complete without a snuggle bag for each guest? Well, some of you don’t remember the ‘70s—but I do.

I also remember falling asleep during the 80’s in all those high efficiency low energy buildings designed during the ‘80s. All those buildings with windows that did not open, and little if any outside air.

The cultural anti-consumer moment will likely pass. The elevation of frugality into a virtue seems likely to last about as long as modern recessions do—about eight months. Thoreau lasted only 26 months in his cabin by Walden Pond—and he was dining each night in the homes of the most eligible women of Concord. Once economic uncertainty fades, it is far too easy to go back to the old ways.

Sustainable sustainability must be desirable.

The one virtue-based movement that lasted from the seventies was food. Fashionable food during the stagflation seventies was low impact and often vegetarian. The diet for a small planet was earnest and required concentration and effort. It survived because it grew into whole foods and slow foods. Low impact food became the new gourmet.

If you want to build a sustainable business, find sustainable value, in today’s interest in sustainability, you will need to find the path to benefits, just as natural food found its way to gourmet. High energy prices are a door to new business opportunities, but too many of today’s old line building systems vendors are trying to peddle acetic solutions with require too much attention, too much cost, and offer too little satisfaction.

Responsive building systems can do so much. Systems that can tune themselves should be less trouble to run that they are today. Systems that know precisely what their occupants need should be able to keep their occupants healthy and happy. Home systems that can request their maintenance in advance free up the weekends for the homeowner.

For the same reasons, sustainable systems could be an opportunity for the owner. Systems that can document how well they are doing will provide their owners more income, either higher rents or lower vacancy. The savvy owner will know what service the tenant wants, and provide that at lower cost to himself, to higher the satisfaction of the building occupants.

When I explained the service oriented building to a group of faculty at UNC, they grasped this instantly. They quickly asked when we would commit to more alert students, rather than to fixed temperatures in the classrooms. Alert students are the gourmet offering.

Let’s get cooking.

Soft and Gooey won’t Hold Back the Night

A cyber attack has already caused a multi-city power outage, according to a report delivered by Tom Donahue, a CIA analyst speaking at an energy security conference in New Orleans last week. I just hope that people thinking about this are doing a better job thinking about real security than are those in building controls or those I have talked to at energy conferences.

Most control systems engineers seem drawn to what are called egg security strategies. An egg has a nice, crisp, esthetically pleasing security system called a shell securing a soft gooey inside with no barriers whatsoever. When this security system is subjected to the planned security stress, being sat upon in the nest, it holds up perfectly. When subjected to unexpected stresses, it fails completely and badly. Even the smallest breech of the shell will introduce infection that will fester and rot the internal systems.

Many banks used to think a hardened shell was fine to protect systems. Because all in-bank systems were inside their firewall, they performed few audits. They “knew” that all systems inside the perimeter were trustworthy. Secure in this knowledge, many ATM’s based on Windows NT 4 (or worse) were rolled out. No patches were ever needed.

One day some of these banks decided to issue lap-tops to loan officers. Perhaps they were styled as personal bankers, and expected to make sales calls on businesses in the evening. Perhaps they were supposed to take their work home. Inevitably, someone, sooner or later, went to some place they out not have on the internet. Or perhaps their son used it for an evening of gaming. In any case, an infected PC arriving on a completely unsecured, un-patched, un-defended homogenous network created many a memorable moment for bank IT staff. No money was stolen, but a lot of ATMs were off-line.

A better approach to security is situational awareness, not just a locked door. If what you want is a locked door, it will be far cheaper to not cut a door, but leave the wall intact. Of course, this may limit functionality. Far better, like the high-end hotel, to have a doorman always on duty, who recognizes who is staying in the hotel, and even holds the door open when they arrive. The doorman has an unpredictable variety of responses to a security incident. He may knock the intruder down, He may sound an alarm. He may merely bar the door.

Perhaps you are sure that no one will sniff your BACnet or LON off a network hub to get to your building systems. Perhaps you know of no way to use the open Zigbee you use for automated meter reading to get to your controls. Perhaps all your technicians always treat their diagnostic laptop in a secure manner, and so you can rely that everyone with physical access will always use a secured computer.

Building and grid operators may get away with this for a while. But when someone does get in with malice on their mind, the results will not be a minor annoyance. And it may well include a loss of light.