The term “smart building” has been batted around for more than a decade as if you could give a building some kind of”I.Q.” test, and the building with the highest test score would be declared the best and move to the head of the leasing class.
A decade ago, smart buildings were usually synonymous with shared tenant services, but today’s typical smart building will probably incorporate satellite antennae, fiber optics (at least to the electrical closet), and an array of sensor-activated energy-efficient lighting, multi-zone HVAC, and high-tech security equipment. Whether it is turning up the air conditioning if five people come into your office for a meeting or firing off the latest quarterly figures to Hong Kong via fiber and satellite, the building almost seems to think on its own.
But the perceived “smartness” of a building depends heavily upon the present and future needs and expectations of tenants. In the varied marketplace, one tenant’s genius is another’s dunce.

Matching IQ to the Market

Power users - architectural firms transferring large computer files or traders with confidential information - may need all the capacity a high-tech building has to offer. But even the average business is beginning to include telecommunications capacity and system survivability as negotiation points.
“Office tenants today have the expectation that a building will be able to supply reliable, easy-to-configure telecommunications,’’ says Jerry Marmelstein, president of Riser Management Systems, a Burlington, Vt., consulting firm that has engineered and managed telecommunications installations in buildings throughout the country. “Realistically, many tenants do not need more than three to five watts of power, but they want double or triple that capacity in case they need to grow.
Marmelstein believes that for owners, the principal factors influencing smart building decisions are “flexibility and the ability to leverage technology and existing capital to attract and retain tenants.
Not everyone is sold on smart building technology, however, unless specific tenant needs can justify its initial cost and long-term maintenance considerations.
“Sometimes electronics such as environmental and access controls are more management-driven than market-driven,” says Paul White, president, Alan Morris Company. “They can be a good marketing tool to attract clients, but that doesn’t mean the tenants are necessarily going to use it once they’re in the building.
White talks about the computerized HVAC control system he installed which would allow tenants to telephone to the computer in order to extend the heating or cooling operation for their particular parts of the building should they be working late or on the weekends. He says that maybe two or three major tenants actually bothered to do that - the others would call the building manager. “They forget how to use the phone to change their hours, or maybe they forget their access codes, and who can blame them for that?” says White. “We have so many passwords and access codes in our lives now, it’s hard to remember one more. “
But White acknowledges that “people expect these kinds of things in first-class and newer buildings. I try to think of the initial cost as a marketing expense, not something that’s going to pay me back through energy savings.

Smart Equals Communication

Today, “smart” often seems to equate to offering the latest in communications technology. The buzzword for those who focus in on the latest telecommunications technology is “fiber optics.” Optical fiber is a thin, glass wire designed to transmit data as light. The copper wire used in most telephones, on the other hand, transmits an electrical impulse. An optical fiber cable approximately the size of the cord running from your telephone to the receiver is capable of transmitting billions of bits of digital information per second. And unlike electrical impulses, random environmental radiation does not affect light pulses.
Few would argue that fiber is the wave of the future. By 1995, U. S. telephone companies had laid some 8 million miles of fiber, and most newly constructed buildings are installing fiber optic networks. But is a fiber optic network necessary to make a building smart today?
“There is currently a practical limitation on what is commonly called ‘copper wire,’ the twisted pair wire currently in use in most buildings and homes,” says Bill Engle, managing director ofCS Technology, a communications systems consultant headquartered in Jersey City, N.J. “However, that practical limitation is fairly high in terms of speed. At 155 megabits/second, it’s much slower than the current computer system sitting on someone’s desktop. But it’s still faster than the average business is going to need to operate its systems efficiently. For your everyday building tenant, outside of businesses such as publishers, possibly pharmaceutical and engineering companies that must be able to move large files quickly, we don’t find any applications out there that need the kind of capacity that fiber optics delivers.”
“As far as the connections within the building itself, you can work with the existing copper wire,” says Gerry Benjamin, vice president, principal engineer of Pyramid Design - A Division of Alpine Computer Systems, Holliston, Mass. “But where all the information is going to come together, you want the communication between those devices to have the higher speeds, and that’s where the fiber optics would really come into play.”
“There are not a lot of fiber optic applications at the desktop,” agrees Marmelstein. “For most uses, high-speed copper wire can provide all the bandwidth that is needed.” However, Marmelstein often advises his clients to run fiber optics to the electrical closets and create a high-speed backbone to transfer data.
Factors that may change this outlook in the near future are faster and more powerfUl computers, the tremendous expansion in Internet use, video conferencing, and the rise of wireless PBX and telephone systems, all of which will need to move tremendous amounts of data rapidly.
“The backbone capacity of the Internet has increased 1,000 percent in the last year and will probably continue to grow at a similar rate,” notes Doug Morgan, vice president of marketing for WinStar Communications, a company that provides digital wireless service through 12-inch dishes. Video conferencing allows a virtual “gathering” of people throughout the world to hold an online conference in real time by using the Internet, their computers, and video cameras. Video Technology News made a prediction of a market worth over $10 billion by 2001.
“We’ve seen computers get progressively faster and more powerful, and this isn’t going to end any time soon,” says Engle. “Modern equipment currently becomes outmoded about every 18 months, and that’s predicted to keep happening for at least another decade. We also will see more and more glorified software programs with increasing capabilities, and the need for the connection to be faster than a 155 megabit copper wire is going to be significant.”
Wireless PBXs and LAN systems, while still too expensive and untested for widespread use, may soon allow telephone and laptop users to stay constantly in touch as calls and e-mail move automatically from one radio dish to another.

Getting Smarter Now

Clearly, there will probably come a time when the average company may no longer be satisfied with the limitations of copper wire, and for some companies that time is now.
“As leasing agents, we’re finding that we’re getting a variety of requests [for telecommunications services] from clients, with the only common denominator being fiber optics,” says White. “It seems the tenant always wants something other than what we have. If I want that tenant, I have to enter into an agreement to bring those services into my building.”
White says he learned his lesson the hard way the first time he signed such an agreement. “I thought they’d be able to use existing conduit, but I was wrong,” he says. “They patched it up, but I was under construction for a month.”
“Companies are thinking more globally and want to plan for changes in staff size, in business needs, and in space configurations easily, without the need for expensive, complex rewiring,” says Marmelstein.

Making a Smart Choice

While the need for advanced communications technology in the business world is driving building owners to make these services available, the proliferation of telecommunications companies vying to provide such services to tenants can make the situation more challenging for building management.
“A tenant only has to deal with one provider at a time, but if I have ten tenants with ten different vendors; I’ve got to find out how to get ten different sets of cabling through my building,” says White.
“There are more than 40 companies providing some form of telecommunications services in New York City alone,” says Marmelstein, whose company offers cable management service that, in part, acts as a clearinghouse for coordinating the work of telecommunications providers to a building. To provide service without constant disruption, Marmelstein advocates the use of an owner-controlled system in the building through which a variety of cable and satellite providers can direct services to tenants from one point of entry. “We believe that this strategy brings a greater efficiency of service delivery and greater security,” he says.
This active management of telecommunications can be achieved either through assuming control of an existing network or installing a new one. Marmelstein notes that this centralized management of communications is viable in an office tower of 200,000 square feet or in an office park where several buildings can be wired in a loop from a central point.
“We have been able to accommodate a wide range of tenants from the very start,” says Marcel Borg with Sage Realty Corp., and chief engineer of the 77 Water Street building in Manhattan. “We have allowed communications companies such as WinStar wireless phone service, Metro Fiber, Teleport Communications, World Com, and Bell Atlantic all to install their fiber optic and wireless services in our building so we are able to offer a wide range of choices for our tenants, who use them either as the main carriers for their phone systems, or as backups to their phone systems.” Wireless providers such as WinStar Communications can work through either their own cabling or an existing backbone, says Morgan. He also points out that there is an advantage to having both hard cable and digital wireless systems installed in each building. “One backhoe can wipe out a hard cable connection,” he notes, while the radio waves used by wireless providers are more subject to interference from rain and weather.

Smart Also Means Systems

Another vital component of today’s smart building - often overlooked in the frenzy of evolving telecommunications - is the incorporation of sophisticated operating systems into office building environments. The smartest buildings today incorporate a “whole building,” or “sustained design,” that integrates systems for lighting, HVAC, and security, and enhances energy efficiency through synergies. For example, incorporating energy-efficient lighting and motion detectors that turn off lights when a room is unoccupied may also result in reduced heating and air conditioning loads. Because heating and cooling can represent approximately 32 percent of a building’s operating budget, a reduced load can significantly reduce costs. By finetuning the system, for example transferring heat from the warmer southern to the cooler northern side of the structure, additional savings can be realized.
Another component of smart building operations used at 77 Water Street is a machine that performs IRD mechanalysis, a method of predictive maintenance. “You take readings over the course of the equipment’s life,” says Borg. “The machine can detect, say, when a bearing is going bad, and you can schedule maintenance around a convenient time for ordering parts and doing the repairs, instead of waiting for something to go wrong and then fixing it.”
Such preventive maintenance is an example of a kind of “behind the scenes” technology smart buildings may incorporate to attract and retain tenants, even if it doesn’t have the “whiz-bang” appeal of fiber or satellite communications.
Smart buildings may also incorporate such new HVAC technologies as thermal storage, as well as larger backup generators that will allow for the load shifting demanded by the soon-to-be-deregulated electrical industry. Thermal systems make ice during non-peak hours of energy use and then use it for evaporative cooling during peak air conditioning periods. Newer heating technologies gaining more acceptance include geothermal power and district heating, in which a large, central plant pumps hot water heating into a network of neighboring buildings.
Yet, even as buildings are operating at greater energy efficiency, the increased density in terms of people per square foot is placing new demands on building operations, says Eileen Channing, vice president of property management and leasing for John Alden Life Insurance Company in Miami. Channing notes that almost all of those people have at least one piece of electronic equipment on their desks and that many offices also contain copiers, fax machines, scanners, and other peripherals. All of this requires a great deal of power on a daily basis.
While providing “clean” power without surges and spikes is essential, Channing says that increasing power capacities too far may tax existing building systems. If power capacity is increased to 12 to 15 watts per square foot, the heat generated cannot be removed in the usual fashion without causing disruption. If enough ventilation volume is created to remove the heat, it actually begins to blow papers off desks, says Channing. In dedicated computer rooms, this problem can be addressed with a raised floor with an air plenum running beneath it. However, this is impractical for today’s dispersed technology.
Lighting, which represents an average of 28 percent of the energy costs in an office building, has also benefitted from new, smart technologies. Electronic ballasts can save as much as 18 percent over even an energy-efficient magnetic ballast. Dimming electronic and cathode-disconnect ballasts, halogen lamps, and improved reflector technologies can all contribute to a smart building and a better bottom line. Retrofitting buildings with these new technologies can generally be done without major disruption and often has a payback of a few years.
Security has also gotten smarter to accommodate flexible work schedules. New generations of access cards - integrated circuit, or smart, cards incorporate small microprocessors that not only provide identification but can be programmed with information on billing for off-hours use and other pertinent data, which is fed directly to the building’s central computer.
Proximity card readers, which can now be retrofitted cost effectively into existing magnetic, or swipe, readers, offer the added benefits of being difficult to duplicate and resistant to the magnetic-field interference that plagued earlier access readers.
New digital surveillance cameras offer improved reliability along with “smart” features that record images only when motion is sensed. Combining these smart features with a central, computerized monitoring and operations system produces the total building integration that is the hallmark of today’s smart building.

Smarter and Smarter

No matter what the definition of a smart building may eventually turn out to be, modern technology is changing the way property managers do business. “You have to design for the life cycle of the building,” says Marmelstein.
It is also important not to forget that the integration of telecommunications and operations technologies is first and foremost a business decision. “You must ask yourself what value a new technology brings to the building, either in terms of service or operating savings,” says Morgan. Yet, increasingly, tenants view smart building features less as an extra and more as an expected amenity. Smart buildings are only partially about technology; they are also about marketing. Both building managers and technology providers face a challenge to provide the best services at the best price.