Getting excited about FIATECH next week.

While I have attended a FIATECH charrette and teleconference or two, I am looking forward to my first FIATECH Conference down in New Orleans next week. It was very tempting to place the oBIX development process as a FIATECH project a few years back. In the end, we decided that it was more important to place oBIX among the e-commerce standards at OASIS, but I have long had a solid appreciation for the vision in the capital projects technology roadmap.

Several of the FIATECH projects are this year coming out of the woodwork after a quiet period. This is normal for new technologies and methods. Initial excitement is followed by disillusionment, which is followed by actual use.

A speaker observed last year at an OASIS conference that those of us who understand Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) should hunker down for a few years of abuse. Vendors have oversold products that may have a few symptoms of the approach, but substitute products and slogans for the hard work of thinking about the business. (Pretty much any product that includes the phrase “Enterprise Service Bus” fits this description.) The speaker went on to observe that the season of disillusionment was at hand.

Several FIATECH initiatives have gone through this cycle. FIATECH is now one of the main loci for ISO 15926 efforts. ISO 15926 started life as "Industrial automation systems and integration—Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities" This work slowed when half done, only to be revived as a FIATECH project. There it has developed a generic data model and Reference Data Library for process plants, and has become the most compelling standard for modeling any state information. We have discussed within oBIX whether we can adopt some of the ISO 15926, now considered a general purpose standard for data integration, sharing, exchange, and hand-over between computer systems. I am looking forward to learning more about ISO 15926 this week.

By most accounts, BIM (Building Information Modeling) has also served its years in the wilderness, and come out of the crucible as buildingSmart. FIATECH remains one of the best forums to discuss real life BIM experiences across a wide range of construction activities.

This year, with FIATECH meeting in New Orleans, Kimon Onuma is launching BIMStorm New Orleans. I very much hope that he can carve out a little time to talk to me. His planning system provides an astonishing nexus for live data exchange between tools and purposes of BIM related information. When I look at OPS, however, I see a tool just as interesting for operating a building, for pulling modeled information out of building systems to produce building dashboards. I also see the potential for an integrated operations repository, particularly useful with outsourced maintenance and analytics.

I recently accepted a request to become co-champion of Element 5 of FIATECH’s Capital Projects Roadmap. Element 5 is titled Intelligent, Self-Maintaining and Repairing Operational Facilities. I will be presenting a talk aligned with that entitled “The Enterprise-Responsive Facility”

Beyond Efficiency, Beyond Sustainability

Regular readers know that sustainable buildings are not sustainable unless their inhabitants are willing to continue using their features. Nothing is less sustainable than the feature that is uncomfortable, or awkward to use. For the owner of commercial buildings, the desired amenities are ones that reduce costs, or extend asset life while reducing tenant inconvenience.

Building Systems that support agile integration open up realms of integration for everyday use. These functions have been available, at great expense, for those who absolutely required them. Others have been adopted by those are simply driven, like the energy strategies used by those who live off the grid. These functions, and the amenities they offer, will make the the operating efficiencies they also provide sustainable.

So what kinds of new abilities will real sustainable buildings offer? Access to information will allow all service providers to improve operating efficiencies and to offer new and enhanced services. Whether the service providers be life safety related or task (contract) related, operating efficiencies allows improved use of resources while reducing risk and liability. Below are some benefits that intelligent, agile integration will offer to building operators:

• Knowledge Systems for Autonomous Maintenance –Intelligent systems able to determine and communicate maintenance and repair needs based on defined requirements (e.g., reliability predictions/calculations) vs. measured performance and sensed and assessed condition.
• Automation Technologies for Life-Limiting Factors - Able to detect, assess, and repair materials, structures, equipment, and systems affected by corrosion, fatigue, breakage, stress, and other life-limiting factors.
• Automation Technologies for Critical Performance Factors - Able to detect, assess, and repair materials, structures, equipment, and systems with respect to safety, security, health, and environmental issues.
• Facility Condition Knowledge Base & Baseline - Real-time human and machine access, both locally and remotely, to as-built/installed configurations, maintenance/repair history, and material/equipment life predictions.
• Uniform Equipment/Process Information Standards - Digital documentation and sharing of data on material and equipment properties and characteristics (including simulation models) and O&M best practices.
• Sharable Standard Equipment/Process Models - Mathematically accurate 3-D simulation and performance models for all forms of material and equipment, such that vendor-provided models can be "plugged together" into the master facility simulation model.
• Facility O&M Advisory System - Intelligent advisory systems able to process status information from all facility sensors and systems in real time and make optimum recommendations for proactive and corrective actions (including emergency response) and which is able to implement the desired actions through automated command and control systems and through communication with O&M personnel.
• Integrated Safety/Security Systems - Continuous monitoring for safety/security hazards and threats from personnel, equipment, and materials and provide automated tracking and alerting capability when a hazard is detected or suspected.
• Facility O&M Systems Integration – Connection of the facility O&M system to higher-level enterprise management systems, enabling passing of status and activity information to enterprise functions such as business planning, labor allocation, resupply, and other site support functions.
• Enterprise O&M Systems Integration –Connection of the facility O&M system to customers, equipment/material suppliers/manufacturers, and automated design advisory systems, including the feedback of maintenance/repair results/data to the master facility simulation model.
• Enterprise Control Model Linkages - Feedback of maintenance and repair results and data to process-level, facility-level, and enterprise-level knowledge systems, enabling visibility of performance and issues, real-time updating of operational control models, and extension of the planning and design knowledge bases.
• Shared O&M Knowledge Bases - Accessible databases of maintenance and repair experience for different kinds of capital projects/facilities, enabling the sharing of expertise across the industry with appropriate provisions for anonymity, security, and intellectual property protection.

These higher order activities require common building semantics (naming of things) BuildingSmart looks to be the only game in town for capital asset semantics. These semantics will unify the information coming from the sensors below into objects intelligible to the building owner.