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By Ronald D. Padilla, Control Technologies Inc.

Today, owners have the ultimate responsibility to assure themselves that they are truly adopting the foundations of integrated building systems. They cannot rely on design professionals to provide this as part of their building model. Owners of commercial establishments in all types of businesses (ranging from office buildings to retail as well as the restaurant industry) understand their businesses and their needs better than any design professional.

Office buildings have specific needs contingent on, for example, factors such as their tenants, overtime billing and monitoring for additional energy usage during off hours, as well as security to keep tenants and visitors from having access to unauthorized areas in the facility. These vary greatly from, say, a retail establishment that focuses on lighting, scheduling, and service needs, since their staffs are typically not self-sufficient and maintenance is usually outsourced. Yet both of these have specific lighting requirement schedules for maintenance and cleaning crews.

We can break down the restaurant industry into two types: dining and fast food. Both of these industries have great needs for maintenance scheduling and monitoring to avoid losses due to equipment malfunctions, such as cooking or refrigeration equipment. Unfortunately, these items are rarely taken into consideration or recommended to be put onto the building monitoring system network.

As a result, there is a lack of understanding of the construction of these types of buildings and the operations and sustainability of these buildings. These should be considered as equally important. In today’s economy, operating costs and maintenance expenditures play a vital role in the competitiveness and profitability of the company, as does the initial cost of the building.

It is important to not only educate the owners, but to engage them into multiple partnering relationships during the design phase of their buildings. It is more costly to implement systems after a building is built, and in some cases the cost may be as high as 50 to 100 percent more. This is the primary reason why owners today try to “make do” with what they have. They cannot afford to start all over again, and incur greater losses over the life of their building.

By working with multiple design professionals as well as additional consultants such as a master integrator (MI), the owner must move away from the traditional construction procurement methods and step “outside the box.” In doing so, the owner can create a business partnership with experts in the field of building integration, resulting in reduced cost, a smarter building for their needs, and a sustainable building environment that can be serviced and maintained at a fraction of the cost of traditional buildings.

How is this possible? A simple example is that today, equipment such as lighting, boilers, chillers, card access, packaged AC units, and even power distribution can all be procured with intelligent controllers as part of the factory manufacturing process. Manufacturers offer many different types of controllers and it is critical to get the right type, so that these controllers can share information in more than one way.

Common wiring platforms and communications protocols need to be coordinated and detailed to maximize energy efficiencies as well as keeping the installation costs to a minimum. A rooftop AC unit can be ordered with the controls right out of the factory. The cost will be 10 to 15 percent of the cost to field install a similar controller by a contractor.

If the wrong type of controller is ordered, the savings will be spent on the interface equipment and additional labor that is necessary to add this equipment to the building automation system. The end result: lost functionality, no first cost savings, and additional maintenance costs to support the added equipment and code necessary. It is also a prime target for ads and extras on a typical construction project.

This long-term economic drain can be eliminated by hiring an integrator at the beginning stages of the project's design, and by having that professional work directly for the owner throughout the entire construction process, including design, installation, testing and training processes. The MI will be thoroughly familiar with all of the details necessary to help in the selection process, as well as the installation and wiring phases. In addition, the MI will prepare system architecture drawings that will provide a solid backbone for not only the initial construction work, but future work as well.

The MI will bridge the gap between the traditional construction business model and the isolation of trades, so that electrical equipment (typically in Division 16 of the bid documents) as well as mechanical (Division 15) equipment can share a common network infrastructure that allows the owner to maximize their usefulness while reducing installation and operating costs.

Owners pay for this service anyway, so why not eliminate the middle man (and the markups associated with them), and have a productive relationship by partnering with the MI directly from the start? In my 27 years of experience in the building automation industry, there have been numerous times where I have uncovered opportunities to save both time and money for an owner, yet never had the opportunity to share that with them, merely because I represented a third tier sub-contractor who archaically should be seen and not heard.

Today, our business model has changed. Now it’s time for the owners to embrace that change and recognize how valuable this resource truly is.

Ronald D. Padilla is the vice president of integration services for Control Technologies, Inc. He can be reached at rpadilla@controltechny.com.

Copyright Ronald D. Padilla 2008, used with permission.