The next several years will see the emergence of technology capable of producing double-digit savings in the operation of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems; fire and life safety systems; lighting systems and other key building systems. The new technology will do this by operating building systems more efficiently and by reining in costs for the labor and materials required to maintain and repair building systems.

K-12 school buildings may be major beneficiaries of these new technologies and the efficiencies they will generate.“There are so many schools that have taken cursory looks at energy use (and building system control) but have not gone the extra step,” says Terry Hoffmann, global products marketing manager with Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls.

The technology that controls building systems has been getting smarter and smarter for about 20 years. During the 1980s, HVAC control systems underwent dramatic changes as direct digital control or DDC controllers began to replace pneumatic controllers. DDC controllers could adjust the temperature and the quantity of air entering rooms and common areas throughout a building with much greater precision than pneumatic technology.

Since the 1980s, continual improvements in DDC controller technology have added new energy management and comfort features to building control capabilities, while the cost of the control technologies themselves has declined.

Better DDC controllers have also led to useful building system integrations. Take the integration of HVAC and fire safety systems, for example. Because DDC controllers continually monitor and provide individual rooms with fresh supplies of air, they can integrate with fire safety system sensors and control smoke from a fire within a building. Fire safety systems connected to DDC controllers can tell the controllers where a fire has broken out. In turn, the controller network will increase airflow into adjacent rooms and hallways, pressurizing the spaces surrounding a fire so that smoke cannot spread.“In high-rises, this is called a smoke sandwich,” says Hoffmann.

While preventing air from flowing out of a smoke-filled room into the rest of a building, DDC controllers can also vent smoke to the outside of the building.

Many K-12 schools have yet to see any of these benefits. Buildings built prior to 1980 — including most K-12 school buildings — were designed with building control systems that use old pneumatic technology.

New buildings, however, including new schools built to serve growing populations and to replace aging schools, can take full advantage of the benefits of DDC controllers —as well as what comes next.

“From a user’s point of view, the most recent advance in building control technology is the ability to use Web browsers from remote locations and get real time information about building system status,” says Nancy Stein, director of Product Marketing for Siemens Corporation in New York City.

As building automation systems haveconverged around technologies such as DDC controllers, building control software has converg

In recent years, all three major building control systems providers have introduced Web-based management systems. Minneapolis-based Honeywell has weighed in with a Web-based version of its Enterprise Buildings Integrator (EBI), a technology platform designed to integrate building systems and subsystems, including security, digital video surveillance, access control, life safety and HVAC. Similarly, Siemens has added Web server capabilities to its APOGEE building management and control system. And Johnson Controls has enabled its latest version of Metasys to tap into the Web.

First, DDC controller technology connected building systems to each other and coordinated building system operations. Then, building automation software connected facility managers to building systems and improved the management of those systems. Today, Web enabled software has extended the reach of facility managers.

The next step will connect administrators to building technology in ways that will improve organizational management. This is the goal of an emerging technology called Web-services. “We think Web services will provide an interface between building systems and administrative enterprise applications,” says Hoffmann.

For example, continues Hoffmann, web-services technology may make it possible for an accounting department to query all of the systems that use electricity in a building or a school district and ask for summaries of past energy use and estimates of future energy use By analyzing the results, administrators can make more informed decisions about budgets.

Web-services also promise to make it easier to manage complex scheduling issues. Imagine a Website that monitors current energy use across the school district, along with outdoor air-temperature and temperatures inside individual buildings. This Website might also contain a calendar tied to building control systems in buildings across the school district. The calendar records schedules for all district buildings. For example, the calendar may note that the district’s four high schools host PTA meetings on the second Tuesday of every month. By placing that information on the calendar, administrators have automatically set the HVAC, lighting and security systems in all four high schools to turn on appropriate building systems.

Next month, suppose the district superintendent agrees to host a community meeting in one of the high schools on the second Tuesday. He or she could insert that information into the calendar, which would then e-mail a message informing the school’s principal that the PTA meeting will have to be rescheduled. The principal in turn would take up the issue with representatives of the PTA, select a new date and schedule it at the Website. Web-services would then schedule the building to turn itself on at the scheduled times for both the community meeting and the PTA meeting.

None of this can be done now because most buildings, including school buildings, have systems with different brand names on the HVAC components, the lighting system components, the fire safety system and the security system. While facility directors can coordinate building functions across different kinds of systems by using integrated building automation systems, it took years to develop control systems that could talk to different devices. Even now, it doesn’t always work smoothly.

Web-services may change this. Using a new and highly regarded communications standard called XML or Extensible Mark-up Language, Web-services aims to create standard communications schemes for devices, no matter what they do or who makes them. Web-services software will, in short, use XML to coordinate the communications between everyone and everything: the administrator at the Website using the calendar, the HVAC system, the lighting system and so on.

Building systems will not only operate more efficiently, they will operate more conveniently.

“Web-services will standardize building system controls, even if different schools have different kinds of systems provided by different vendors,” says Hoffmann. “And there is another side to this that can reduce operational costs — the cost of equipment and labor to repair or replace devices.”

How? Hoffmann points out that most people don’t know very much about the inner workings of the vehicles they drive. But everyone knows that when a vehicle suddenly starts to make an unfamiliar sound, it’s time to take the vehicle to the garage and have it checked. Ignoring such warnings can cost a lot of money.

XML web-services will one day be able to listen to your building’s technology in the same way people listen to their cars, continues Hoffmann. These new programs will alert facility managers, for example, when a building suddenly begins to use more energy than it has been using. “Actually, the system will be smart enough to evaluate the problem,” Hoffmann says. “It might say, well, it’s colder outside, so the heating system should use more energy. But then it will also be able to say: it might have gotten colder, but not that much colder.”

“Looking into this, a maintenance technician might find that a pump is not being maintained properly. If a pump goes out of alignment with a motor, it can reduce energy efficiency by five to 10 percent. The idea is that when you find variances, you can act on them before they become more expensive problems.”

“The energy savings made possible by this kind of technology and the knowledge it can provide can be significant — perhaps in double -digit percentages.”