The IBMS 'smart' backbone

Gerhard Hope , May 18th, 2009

A groundbreaking integrated building management system (IBMS) is being rolled out at One Business Bay by Omniyat Properties. MEP Middle East speaks to FM director Terry John-Baptiste about this ‘smart’ backbone.

Scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2009, the 30-storey One Business Bay commercial tower will feature a state-of-the-art command-and-control centre that will not only manage the building itself, but will offer the potential of being integrated with other buildings. “We will leverage this technology platform to allow us to cost-effectively maintain high-quality management standards for our entire portfolio of buildings,” says John-Baptiste.

With an MEP background, John-Baptiste’s experience includes being chief engineer for London Hotels, while more recently he was engineering director with the Jumeirah International Group on the Burj Al Arab and Jumeirah Beach hotel projects. Ironically, much of the technological integration he helped pioneer on these iconic projects is now being introduced to a much larger market by Omniyat Properties itself, in very different market conditions.
Shift to service

“The present market has allowed for a shift to cost-effective service delivery while maintaining high quality standards. FM vendors have also become very customer-focused due to the imperative need to deliver value for money. In addition, developers should be looking seriously at leveraging technology to manage ‘green’ standards like LEED requirements,” says John-Baptiste, who was also FM with Emrill Services at Dubai Marina.

“Part of my role at Omniyat Properties is to engage with the development team at the design stage to ensure that the building design is efficient from an operational point of view. We also work closely with the site contractors and consultants throughout the transitional period in preparing the buildings for full operation.”

The value of this approach is apparent when one considers that energy consumption can account for a significant proportion of a building’s total operating costs. “The challenge in Dubai is the high ambient temperature and humidity levels. This means that maintaining a comfortable climate within a building requires a huge amount of energy in terms of chilled water systems, air-handling units and electro-mechanical systems, among others.

Carbon footprint

“However, controlling and reducing energy consumption will help Dubai reduce its carbon footprint, which is a pertinent international trend,” comments John-Baptiste. “We see our buildings as an extension of our customers’ lives. At the end of the day, we want to offer our customers not just a comfortable place to work in, but an enhanced lifestyle as well. Key to this approach is integrating all the relevant technologies.” This brings us back to the IBMS being deployed at One Business Bay, Bayswater and the various other buildings coming on-line.

“Most command-and-control centres fall down in that they treat buildings as standalone structures. Either these centres lack the capacity for total integration, or the individual buildings lack the necessary technology for such comprehensive control. It does not make sense to have a command-and-control centre where all you can do is monitor various systems without being able to enforce any level of control,” explains John-Baptiste.

“We looked at the full lifecycle of the building, how we intended to operate it, and how the customer as occupant stood to benefit. This meant looking at people, processes and systems, and then seeing how technology could be used to integrate all these on a single platform.” This meant creating different layers of technology.

Standalone layer

“The layer that most buildings have is a standalone layer comprising run-of-the-mill MEP equipment such as pumps, fan coil units, heat exchangers and chillers. Then you have a standalone layer for security systems such as access control, car-park management, barriers and security cameras. Sometimes you also have an independently-run FM system, as well as a layer of process software control.

“We looked at all these different layers and then asked ourselves how we could integrate them effectively and efficiently across all of our buildings. So we added an application services layer, a business process management layer, and finally a portal service layer, which effectively rounds off our integrated building management system,” says John-Baptiste.

The benefit of such integration is that anyone can access the system via PDAs, laptops or even cellphones. “What we have tried to achieve with the various layers is to create the means of elevating problems up the chain of command. The staff in the command-and-control centre will get to see most queries, while I see all ‘Priority A’ alarms. This renders the command-and-control centre very proactive, and allows us to ‘escalate’ all relevant issues,” says John-Baptiste.

Graphical user interface

There is also a general user interface system (GUIS) that allows real-time appraisal of all relevant building data such as temperature flow, chilled water returns and kilowatt hours being consumed. “We can actually adjust the running temperatures of our buildings, adjust mechanical and electrical loads based on demand and switch lighting circuits on and off. This is particularly useful in huge carparks that cover the entire footprint of a building and hence have a high lighting load.

“We can control that lighting load in any way we wish – we can have the load come on at 08:00, and run at 50% because there is natural daylight. That lighting level can be maintained until 18:30, ramped up to 100% for an hour when everyone leaves for home, and then minimised to 10% from midnight for directional lighting. All this is controlled fully from our command-and-control centre,” says John-Baptiste.

Another benefit of the IBMS is that a customer equipped with a long-range RFID pass who arrives for work will set a suite of integrated technologies in motion once he or she enters the car park. Not only will the boom rise automatically, but the sliding doors to the lobby will open while automatically calling down the elevator.

Individual presets such as air-conditioning, lighting and even blinds can be activated while the customer is en route to his or her office.

Available technology

John-Baptiste says that the bulk of this technology is already available, but just needs to be enabled. “We have invested a lot of capital in creating a hi-tech backbone and integration solution to manage our buildings in line with modern requirements. To this end, we have engaged Cisco Systems to aid with the full seamless integration of our IBMS platform and software.

“With the technologies we are incorporating into our buildings, together with the input from our LEED consultants, I believe that Omniyat Properties is at the forefront of ‘green’ technology integration. However, once buildings have been designed, it is imperative that the FM team continue to manage and monitor the performance of each building, and ensure it meets all the criteria of the original design and energy modelling,” concludes John-Baptiste.