Be the Change

Let me start with two well-known quotes that frame the present mindset of our industry, "The only constant is change," which leads us to, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” (Mahatma Gandhi).

We have invited new people to join our industry of change, Your New Vocation, Building Automation. Our March issue will celebrate the present and invite the future women who are changing our industry. Our contributing Editor Sudha Jamthe opens the discussion with this article, My Vocation is Technology Futurist:  

Today I work with, teach, write or do keynotes about technologies that did not exist when I graduated college.

What helped me make a vocation out of my passion for data was simply my choice to surround myself with people smarter than me. And to go with them on a journey chasing our passion in the latest technology and to learn how-to to bring it to work for my latest job. Amazing people got me thinking in new ways to see a cascade of disruption across industries and got me thinking about the impact of autonomous vehicles colliding with building automation. One simple example of this that we see today is how computer Vision that trains Autonomous Vehicles is making its way into Automated Buildings with cameras for building safety.

For International Women's Day, Automated Buildings is teaming up with the Business School of AI to bring the stories of amazing women in technology, building automation and autonomous vehicles. Tell us if you are one of those women with an inspiring story to share or have a referral of an amazing colleague. We are ready to follow IWD 2020's  #ChooseToChallenge theme this year and challenge the lack of diversity and bring the careerpivot stories of these women in the March issue of Automated Buildings right here.

Women have a superpower. We are not hesitant to use it. 

We ask questions.

When we ask questions, we get smarter.

When we ask questions, we learn.

When we ask questions, we drive change.

When we ask questions, we make people think.

When we ask questions, we make companies smarter.

As you can see, Sudha’s vocation is built on change. We all need to follow her example and make our vocation being the change.

Not just change but Quantum change. Our Contributing editor Nicolas Waern, Innovation and Digital Transformation Expert, shares his thoughts in this article, From BACnet to Quantum Computing?:

The world depends on us, coming together and making this industry far better than it is today.

It is high time to utilize our combined industry knowledge and accelerate time to value creation for all. 

The mission - I aim to disrupt the ways of working in this industry that will lead to creative destruction for the most part. It will solve the skill-shortage gap with technology as an enabler. It will be people first, and AI a close second. The recipe of going from BACnet to Quantum Computing does exist and for the ones who want to go after it, just let me know and we will do it together. Existing dragons, new dragons, whatever happens, we need to create an industry that does not lock people in. We cannot settle for just modern technologies with old mindsets. We cannot settle for lock-in effects that make it harder for everyone involved to create more sustainable buildings.

The world depends on us, coming together and making this industry far better than it is today. I urge you to join me in going above and beyond to make our future selves proud.

Creating the Future together - Future flexibility and understanding the context will be the focus for future podcasts and articles from the Beyond Buildings Podcast.

·        3D Printing and the need for an increased sense of urgency

·        Security and sustainable buildings

·        The role of 5G and what is the difference between the past, present, and the future.

·        AI conversations regarding real-time real estate

·        Ontology-based discussions clarifying the meaning of meaning with Real Estate Core, ASHRAE 223p, Haystack, BACnet, Brick, and others.

·        How ontologies are being used today to create cognitive portfolios

·        Fixing the lifecycle problem, understanding where they are and what to do about them

·        How Tridium could be leveraged for more sustainable buildings worldwide

Following up on the theme is his article, Quantum: The Digital Twin Standard for Buildings by Troy Harvey, CEO of PassiveLogic:

Quantum is the industry’s first true ontology: an existential definition of properties, behaviors, intent, and interactions between building objects…

Quantum is a new digital twin standard for buildings, developed through a partnership between PassiveLogic, the U.S. Department of Energy, and industry partners. Quantum is the industry’s first true ontology: an existential definition of properties, behaviors, intent, and interactions between building objects.

Ontology-based digital twins are a requirement for autonomous building systems, self-assembling data, unified building APIs, and smart city energy networks — filling a huge gap in the market that has until now been largely focused on the retrospective effort of tagging and topology semantics, or creating BIM-like digital twin middleware. The Quantum standard provides a complete building definition, allowing the description of everything in and around buildings including thermal zone connectivity, proxemics, systems, equipment and IoT component models, IT and data network structures, weather models, and occupant models. It can also embed the data time series for these features, for both histories and predictive futures.

Why a New Standard?

Why do we need a new standard? Previous standards have focused on communicating point labeling, or the post-hoc descriptions of equipment linkages. While standards like Haystack provide tagging, Brick adds taxonomy, and ASHRAE 223p is a formalization of the former concepts — these primarily define human-to-machine communication, but have limited utility in machine-to-machine and machine-to-self contexts. As such they are primarily what we'd call semantic standards.

This article, The Impact of Digital Twins on Smart Buildings, by Anto Budiardjo, CEO of Padi, Inc., writing on the digitaltwinconsortium.org, explores how digital twins can help realize that vision:

Digital Twin is the first, and only, mechanism that has been created that could change these transactions as well as stakeholder behavior.

As industries start to view the Digital Twin as a consistent category of information equivalent to what a book of accounts is to a business, it will become the natural way for professionals to manage the phase of a building they are involved in. The Digital Twin will also allow professionals to make building information available to others, such as the acquirer or lessee of the building.

Similar to a spreadsheet, a Digital Twin of physical assets allow users to see the information about the asset. Digital Twins also give the ability to model future behavior and anticipate how a building will react to changes; with such predictions being based on design intent and past history of gathered information. Furthermore, with AI, this modeling can happen continuously, thus making the modeling and actions autonomous in its behavior.

To achieve this automation, information in Digital Twins has to be present with the building from the initial intent of the building, through design, construction, commissioning, and multiple cycles of occupation. Digital Twin information must also be in a form that can be reused for different and unexpected purposes. Lastly, the information contained in the Digital Twin must be easily accessible and compatible between systems. The implementation of a Digital Twin will also need stringent controls in relation to access, privacy, and security that are critical to information flow of the building.

For buildings, the Digital Twin is a new way to look at a building by focusing on the information associated throughout its lifecycle. If the concept of a Digital Twin is understood and widely adopted, will we actually have buildings that can be defined as smart.

We been talking about change for several years now. This article I wrote, Embracing Change, is from back in 2011. Key passage:

As they say the only “constant is change” and this has never been truer than now in our industry. Our Building Automation industry has become very visible anywhere and a very large part of today's web services and smart grid.

But are we embracing the necessary changes enthusiastically and fast enough to keep control of our industry? If we do not evolve and morph fast enough others will take our opportunities because they better understand the tools of change and not because they better understand our industry…

Our first ten years were focused on the impact of the internet and open protocols. Our next few years will be spent breaking down the past silos of which we were all part.  We will embrace the online convergence of humanity and define new business models with self-realization and publication of how we can contribute.

AutomatedBuildings.com is committed to the continuance of our existing work plus the creation and nurturing of a community of change agents, to lead those who will accept change and convince those who resist. To quote Maslow's theory and restate "What we can be, we must be”

We have a long, long way to go to move out of the deeply rooted vendor-centric unconnected world of traditional marketing of our products and services. We need to define the services and recognize the transaction and the performance we can deliver. We need to "Give our customers the ability to do something new, that they couldn't do before, but would have wanted to do; if only they knew they had the ability to do it."

Imagine every single possible bit of information at your fingertips, perfectly contextualized, and perfectly personalized. This may never be realized, but the journey to find perfection will be the change we seek.

Episode 389 of ControlTalk NOW Digs into “BAS as a Vocation.” Repurposing People? Works for Buildings, so sure, why not? From the promo:

How do we attract more talent to the BAS Industry? An industry that is busier than ever -- and in need of more people because of the pandemic. Automated Buildings' Ken Sinclair has some great ideas and remedies. Plus, how did Ken Sinclair get involved in Building Automation? Listen in and "know the rest of the story!"

This article From Harbor research, Widows and Orphans, does a great job of pointing out the dangers of just being a carrier of change and not being the change:

The continued evolution of Smart System and IoT technologies will impact virtually all OEMs, and will likely make most OEM businesses look and feel very different in the coming years. The divide between the technology-fluent “haves” and the technology-hampered “have-nots” will widen considerably as some OEMs figure this out early, while the rest become digital widows and orphans.

The core technologies that inform Smart Systems and Services are driving many new growth opportunities and efficiencies for OEMs based on new data collection, management, and analytics tools that provide a deeper understanding of a connected product or machine’s performance and usage. Because of immediate returns on efficiencies and the new applied values these systems can generate, OEMs have the opportunity to become the primary “translators and interpreters” of new Smart Systems and Services technologies. Like “Typhoid Mary,” they can carry these innovations to end customers where their presence and impacts will expand like a disease spread pattern.

As users and customers become familiar with digital and IoT capabilities, they realize that these technology innovations push the boundaries of how products, systems and equipment are used and managed within their operations. This, in turn, increases pressure on machine builders and equipment manufacturers to embrace these capabilities. End customers in factories, hospitals, buildings and elsewhere are coming to see how these technologies work together in new and novel ways to solve operational and business problems. As a result, specification and adoption of digital and IoT enabled equipment and systems is beginning to shift towards a “shared” set of roles between end customers and their OEMs.

These thoughts are all part of an ongoing discussion on our MondayAlive LinkedIn group. Just what is a smart building—and what do we want it to evolve to? This includes an amazing conversation with Glen Allmendinger from Harbor Research about what we mean when we say "Smart" Buildings.

We just finished our 9th annual Connection Community Collaboratory, and the Covid Change became everyone’s take on the year 2020. From the intro:

Watch as Ken Sinclair, Marc Petock, Troy Davis, John Petze, and George Thomas discuss the issues and opportunities in Smart Building Controls. Because we were all Covid-ized we could not come together for our 9th Annual Connection Community Collaboratory AHRExpo.com

Join us and Be the Change, not just the messengers and carriers of change.