Sekhar N. Kondepudi, PhD.

White Paper

Integrating Traditional Building and Enterprise IT Systems

A Case for Increasing Building Energy Efficiency and Employee Productivity Over the years, enterprises (both large and small) have made large investments into IT infrastructure and networking technologies, which enhance their overall efficiency as organizations. Examples of such technologies include Internet Protocol (IP) networking, Voice over IP (VoIP), mobility, wireless, and collaboration tools. Now that a lot of this infrastructure is in place, these organizations are constantly seeking new and innovative ways to leverage their investments, reduce their operating expenses, and optimize overall organizational effectiveness even further. One way to achieve such savings is to reduce energy usage and improve employee productivity by using a network-centric approach towards buildings that integrates common IT functions with traditional building management systems.
Overview

Enterprises (both large and small) today have invested large sums into IT infrastructure and networking technologies such as IP networking, VoIP, mobility, wireless, and collaboration tools (voice mail, email, video conferencing, and scheduling). In addition to the IT and networking infrastructure, most enterprises have facilities or physical building systems such as HVAC, lighting, power, elevators, and AV equipment, all of which tend to operate in a siloed fashion. Across the board, these same sets of enterprises are actively seeking innovative and new ways to leverage this infrastructure to reduce operating expenses (OPEX). One way to achieve this OPEX savings is to reduce energy usage and improve employee productivity. By using a network-centric approach, the convergence of these siloed systems enables enterprise facility management teams to get increased visibility on the usage of resources across the building and track optimal utilization of the different resources. This paper describes an approach towards Energy Efficient Smart Buildings that integrates common IT functions such as PC or network-based calendaring, scheduling (reservations), trouble ticketing, and VoIP with traditional building management systems, including HVAC, lighting, and physical spaces such as individual offices, conference rooms, and lecture rooms. The resulting effect is an enterprise that ensures increased energy efficiency coupled with improved productivity and, therefore, lower OPEX.

Copyright 2012 Smart+Connected Communities Institute.

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The Carbon Economy and Building Energy Usage

Buildings consume over 40 percent of all energy worldwide and energy costs represent about 30 percent of a buildings total operating cost. It is estimated that by 2025 buildings will be the biggest consumer of energy in the world.1 The absolute number of buildings in the world is rising rapidly, especially with the construction boom in emerging economies such as India and China. The property market growth in China is particularly noteworthy since China is adding almost 18-20 billion square feet a year, equivalent to a third of Japans existing building area. This means that every three years, a new Japan is being created in China in terms of building area.2 According to a European Union-sponsored study,3 the energy consumption in buildings in the European Union (EU) is primarily through heating (cooling in hotter climates) and lighting, which in turn are the largest sources of CO2 emissions. In France, the energy use number for buildings is estimated to be 43 percent, which in turn contributes to 21 percent of carbon emissions. Energy costs typically represent about 30 percent of a buildings total operating cost over its lifetime. The same EU study indicates that most energy usage by buildings throughout their lifecycle is during their operation (about 80 percent) compared to during construction or commissioning. The impact of user behavior and real-time control is estimated to be in the range of 20 percent and, therefore, Information Communications and Technology (ICT) has been identified to be a credible means to help design, optimize, and control energy use in existing and future smart buildings.
The Smart Connected Enterprise

Enterprises today are looking for ways to optimize their current IT infrastructure spending across new and innovative end uses. Two aspects that ring true across all enterprise segments (small and medium businesses to large corporate) include:
1. 2.

Optimizing and reducing energy use through improved energy efficiency Enhancing employee productivity

These two goals on the surface may appear to be orthogonal in nature but are actually complementary and can be achieved by integrating the different traditional building systems

Kolodny, Lora. (June 27, 2011). IBM Buildings Whisperer Dave Bartlett On The Dumb Ways We Waste Energy. TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/27/ibm-intelligent-buildings-mgmt-solution-tctv 2 World Business Council for Sustainable Development. (October 2007). Energy Efficiency in Buildings - Business Realities and Opportunities, Summary Report, p. 10. World Business Council for Sustainable Development. http://www.wbcsd.org/Pages/EDocument/EDocumentDetails.aspx?ID=13559&NoSearchContextKey=true 3 Prez, Juan and Zarli, Alain. (2010). REEB - The European Strategic Research Roadmap to ICT Enabled Energy-Efficiency in Building and Construction. ArtistDesign European Network of Excellence on Embedded Systems Design. http://www.artistembedded.org/docs/Events/2010/GREEMBED/0_GREEMBED_Papers/REEB_greembed2010_final.pdf

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with common enterprise IT systems. Both of these objectives result in improving the bottom line through reduction in OPEX for the enterprise. In a typical modern building infrastructure, facilities and technologies that are provided can broadly be divided into two categories, as illustrated in Figure 1. 1. IT systems and applications that form an important constituent of the buildings such as wired and wireless networks, IP telephony, and digital signage systems 2. Core building systems like lighting, elevators, HVAC, and security systems

Figure 1.

Siloed IT and Building Systems

The individual subsystems in each of these broad categories typically are smart in their own silo but do not communicate with one another. In other words, all of these individual components operate as independent systems without any centralized or coordinated mechanism. Some convergence may be there in the IT systems and applications, but the same is not true in traditional building systems. If these siloed systems can be integrated and optimized, the result is an Energy Efficient Smart Building that has multiple advantages, including: Optimize resource efficiency with faster access to real-time building information Provide a single system interface to improve building performance Achieve sustainability and energy-saving targets All of the above will lead to OPEX savings, thereby improving the bottom line for the corporation, while at the same time improving the image of the enterprise as a green champion with a highly motivated workforce.

Copyright 2012 Smart+Connected Communities Institute.

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Project Goals A project was developed and implemented with an overall goal to pull together the above traditional building and IT infrastructure systems into a converged architecture and solution to create an energy-efficient work environment with increased productivity. Examples of this include: Ease of scheduling meetings Convenience in reserving meeting rooms Ability to to seamlessly raise trouble tickets for malfunctioning equipment Optimization of energy usage and physical comfort via appropriate cooling, heating, and lighting levels In order to achieve the above end goal, a set of typical employee behavior use cases was identified along with a study of which subsystems were normally in play. Following this, a determination was made as to which technology building subsystems (both energy and IT) need to be converged and how they could be integrated for an overall improvement in productivity and energy efficiency. Behavioral Use Cases The following series of behavioral use cases that emulate the current employees typical work environment was developed: Use of IP telephone and other IP-based network tools such as WiFi and Ethernet for their computers Use of calendaring (common, commercial software tools) for meetings and to physically reserve conference and meeting rooms and associated physical resources such as projectors Find the physical location of specific meeting rooms using LCD-based digital signage Once in the meeting rooms, the employees typically did a series of actions: o Turn on and adjust the lights o Turn on and adjust the HVAC systems for comfort o Check if the projector in the room was functional o Adjust blinds in the rooms for appropriate privacy and ambient lighting o Check if the phone in the room was working for a telephone or collaborative conference o Call facilities and maintenance department in the event any of the above were non-functional

Integration of Subsystems The following subsystems were recognized to be those which needed to get integrated to meet the goals listed above. (These subsystems are often designed with specific functions in mind and do not endear themselves to a converged and connected system.)

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Table 1.

Traditional & IT Based Sub-Systems Chosen for Integration IT Systems & Applications IP telephony Calendaring software systems Trouble ticketing systems Digital signage

Traditional Building Systems Lighting HVAC In-room projectors Blinds

Solution Requirements Since the different subsystems typically operated in silos, a series of high-level solution requirements were first established. Some of these included: Modular and scalable architecture Ability to integrate with other building systems (future proof) A common software and hardware infrastructure architecture Ability to configure and customize Policy and role-based access control and management Standards-based and vendor-agnostic technology Minimal network bandwidth and latency implications Ability to uniquely identify different devices within subsystems Ability to establish specific locations for these devices Ability reserve a given resource or device Ability to raise and respond to alarms or alerts Secure data transactions

From these high-level requirements, over 150 very detailed software solution requirements were developed and implemented as software. Resulting Solution As a result of pulling together all the above requirements, a system was developed that provides the enterprise and employees better utilization and understanding of their resources. The system-integrated building management systems, including HVAC and lighting control, with IT applications, such as calendaring, will help scheduling and optimize utilization of resources in meeting rooms, conference rooms, and studios including: Meeting room booking Calendars and schedules IP network VoIP network (telephony) HVAC on/off Thermostat controls
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Lighting on/off/dimmer controls Blinds control (open, half open, or close) Projector with associated actions(dim/brighten the lights, projector screen to roll up/down, turn projector on/off) Multimedia

Figure 2.

Integrated GUI on IP Phone

Such an environment also enables the creation and execution of different rules and policies that could be implemented in a simple mannerfor example to turn the HVAC systems in the conference rooms to energy-saving mode if there were no meetings scheduled at any given time. By using the system, the facilities manager can get increased visibility into the usage of the meeting rooms and can optimize utilization of resources by keeping them in energysaving mode when the rooms are not in use, which results in reduced energy usage. It also allows proactive reporting of faults, allowing higher interactivity in keeping the premises maintained. The IP phone (Figure 2) was chosen as the device to help form a portal or single user interface since the phone was typically in every meeting or conference room and the need for yet another interface device was not necessary. Having said that, this particular portal could be easily applied or ported onto any IP-enabled device with a screen such as an iPad or iPhone.

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Energy Savings & Improved Productivity Benefits

While exact measurements of these savings are difficult to quantify in a live usage of a building, mathematical estimates or models can be created as a function of the number of conference rooms, the temperature of unoccupied rooms, the temperature of occupied rooms, and hours of useapplied to the estimated additional or reduced HVAC load and lighting. It has been estimated to save 8 to 10 percent in terms of energy usage for a typical enterprise. Facilities and IT system administration personnel can dynamically alter the building operating parameters based on occupancy (use of conference rooms), time of day, and other environmental considerations. For example, an administrator can automatically adjust the temperature and switch off lights during unoccupied hours based on meeting room bookings (determined by the integration of the calendaring or scheduling timetable software) within the IT system. There has been considerable literature on the intangible benefits of green or intelligent buildings, including use of technologies such as daylight harvesting (related to the use of blinds in conference rooms), temperature, lighting and an improved work environment for increased staff productivity. Clements-Croome and Li Baizhan estimate that there could be as much as a 10 percent gain in productivity based on the work environment. 4 A survey (not scientific or statistically significant) was conducted of office staff about the above system as it was implemented with topics such as experiencing higher work efficiency, saving time, and automating temperature settings and controls to improve productivity. An overwhelming majority (over 75 percent) indicated that their productivity increased between 5 and 10 percent. While this is not a definitive or highly quantifiable data point, it clearly indicates that energy savings and productivity are not orthogonal as widely surmised. It is certainly indicative of the value of such measures in terms of social benefits, which add to the overall business case benefits of implementing such a system.

Clements-Croome, Derek and Baizhan, Li. (2000). Productivity and Indoor Environment. Proceedings of Healthy Buildings, Vol 1, pp.629-634. http://senseair.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/31.pdf

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Conclusions

Traditional building systems were successfully combined and integrated with common IT and networking systems. The integrated system was applied in an enterprise environment resulting in energy savings and increased employee productivity. The system integrated PC or network-based calendaring, scheduling, trouble ticketing, and VoIP with traditional HVAC, lighting, and physical spaces such as individual offices, conference rooms, and lecture rooms. The resulting effect is an enterprise that ensures increased energy efficiency coupled with improved productivity. The traditional IT-enabled enterprise can now be transformed into a Smart Connected Enterprise in a fairly straightforward manner in a retrofit manner. Benefits to the enterprise include: Better visibility into energy usage Optimized resource utilization in conference rooms Employees become more green-aware and responsible Higher productivity and real-time information access

About the Author

Until recently, Dr. Sekhar Kondepudi led the Global Product Management and Business Development for Smart+Connected Communities Products & Solutions at Cisco Systems, Inc. He has more than 20 years of global and broad-based experience including academia, applied research and strategic planning, product management, business development, and strategic sales in multiple industry verticals such as Energy, Buildings, Utilities, Networking, Voice, Semiconductors, Healthcare, and Public Safety. His work experience spans start-ups and Fortune 100 companies across the globe, including the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Asia and Africa. Dr. Kondepudi received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University with a focus on Energy and Buildings.

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