Cabling-industry veteran interviews a noted author and speaker on building automation and intelligence.
BY FRANK BISBEE, COMMUNICATIONS PLANNING CORP.
I had the opportunity to interview James Carlini, president of Carlini and associates (www.carlinij.com), who has been involved in intelligent buildings since the inception of the term. He was one of the first authorities on the subject, recognized for his articles written in the mid-1980s for publications including Real Estate Review, Government Data Systems and Telecommunications Products and Technology.
He was chairman of the Definitions Committee of the Intelligent Buildings Institute in Washington, D.C. from 1986 to 1988, and pioneered the concept of measuring a building's IQ in 1985. He wrote about the building IQ concept in several published articles, as well as a chapter in Johnson Controls' Intelligent Buildings Sourcebook, published by Prentice-Hall in 1988.
Bisbee: How was the industry back in the 1980s and how did you get into it?
Carlini: At the time, the big buzzword was "shared tenant services" and there were companies pursuing real estate developers to add these new types of services to their buildings to attract tenants. I was a director of telecommunications and computer hardware consulting at arthur Young at the time, and was asked to review whether or not clients like Santa Fe Southern Pacific Development Company were getting their money's worth from adding amenities like network services and phone services.
Bisbee: What was the first project you worked on?
Carlini: It was to review what technologies were being put into a six-building campus in Silicon Valley that Santa Fe Southern Pacific was building on some land they owned. We were asked to review the network infrastructure of the campus and determine if Santa Fe was putting in the right mix of what I called "intelligent amenities," and seeing if they were getting their money's worth.
Bisbee: How was Silicon Valley back then? I mean, that was before most of these tech companies were even born.
Carlini: It was interesting to go out to Silicon Valley, which at that time had a lot of vacant buildings around. It was easy for a startup company to outgrow their space and the owner would just drive around to find the next bigger building to move into. It was not a sophisticated approach, but it didn't have to be because of the very high vacancy rates at that time.
Bisbee: How did you get into the measuring of building IQs and comparing buildings?
Carlini: Another large real estate and property-management company at the time was doing a large, $20-million retrofit of a Class a building in Seattle. JMB Realty was a premier firm at the time, and the senior group vice president of property management wanted me to devise something that would tell them if they were getting their money's worth out of the project.
Bisbee: It seems like everyone back then worried about getting their money's worth.
Carlini: They did. and they still do. Property-management firms and owners are still concerned about getting their money's worth when they add on intelligent amenities.
Bisbee: So how did you look at the building in Seattle? What did you measure?
Carlini: There were many categories within the areas of information and communication technologies, as well as building automation, within the test I designed. The issue was to gather a list of all the services, traditional and intelligent amenities within each building, compare them, and analyze the competition in downtown Seattle to see how the retrofitted building measured up.
Bisbee: How did you get all the publicity on it?
Carlini: At first, the test was going to be an internal measure. When the results came out that their older building actually outscored the newer buildings because of all the technologies they added to it, they wanted to publicize that new type of measurement. Building IQ actually helped market the building. From that point on, traditional approaches to marketing a building became obsolete.
Bisbee: There seems to be a resurgence in the interest in rating buildings and figuring out a building's IQ. Where do you see intelligent buildings today?
Carlini: Today some have talked about measuring the "green" aspects of a building but there are more important things for the owner to focus on. The main issue is whether or not the building is profitable and whether or not adding these green technologies provides cost savings. The problem is that some of these cost-saving systems have too long a payback period and therefore, are not viable.
Bisbee: How long are you talking about to make it a viable option?
Carlini: If these green capabilities like dimming systems and energy-saving systems have a payback period of 20 to 30 years they are not going to be put into a building. The payback is way too long.
Bisbee: Are there systems like that out there today?
Carlini: Yes, and they are being hyped. But they will not survive under close scrutiny. Other systems are cost-effective and should be applied.
Bisbee: How has the industry evolved?
Carlini: If you look at what is happening globally, we are going from standalone intelligent buildings to intelligent business campuses (IBCs) where the whole campus provides intelligent amenities. What we are doing, in effect, is clustering these buildings and trying to get more economies out of the facilities by having them all together.
Bisbee: Didn't you write a white paper on this?
Carlini: Actually, I wrote several. One I wrote in 2008 was Intelligent Business Campuses: Future Keys to Economic Development. It discussed the movement into campuses or next-generation business parks and was based on planning work I had done for an 800-acre tech park. I also wrote one for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2010: Intelligent Infrastructure: Insuring Security for Regional Sustainability. and in 2009 I wrote Intelligent Infrastructure: Securing Regional Sustainability for George Mason University. The two more recent white papers focused more on infrastructure as a platform for commerce and its impact on regional economic development.
Bisbee: It sounds like you are an expert on this evolution.
Carlini: Like I used to tell students at Northwestern University, there are no experts in this business. The best you can be is a good student-always learning. You have to continually watch what is going on in this industry.
Bisbee: What's in your future?
Carlini: I am writing a book on this paradigm shift and calling it Location, Location, Connectivity because those are the three most important words in real estate today.
James Carlini recently addressed a crowd of approximately 3,000 on intelligent infrastructure and its impact on regional economic development at BICSI's Fall 2010 Conference. His presentation got positive feedback. I am sure his book will provide pragmatic perspective on intelligent buildings and their evolution to intelligent business campuses.
FRANK BISBEE is president of Communication Planning Corporation (www.communicationplanning.com). He also authors Heard on The Street, which can be seen at www.wireville.com. The subject of this interview, James Carlini, has more than 25 years' experience developing broad strategic insights into applying complex critical networks and information technologies to organizations. His consulting has focused on computer networks, security, e-commerce, intelligent buildings, marketing strategies, wireless technologies, measuring intelligent buildings, regulatory issues, international marketing, international services and Six Sigma. Carlini uses this experience to help user organizations as well as vendors get the most out of strategically applying communications-based information systems, products and services.
CaBa examines intelligent buildings' future
The Continental automated Builds association (CaBa; www.caba.org), through its Intelligent Integrated Building Council and new research program, recently announced it has completed its 2011 North american Intelligent Building Roadmap.
The research project was designed to outline long-term opportunities in the intelligent building industry. The roadmap provides an understanding of the collective influence of emerging trends within the intelligent building industry, such as energy efficiency, renewable technology, information technology convergence and the integration of buildings with the smart grid.
The roadmap project also investigated the current and future direction of the intelligent building market in North america and the opportunities it represents for participants within the value chain. It also sought to understand the influence of current and emerging intelligent building technology solutions, with an analysis that considers commercialization, market preferences and product acceptance.
"The underlying purpose of the roadmap project was to strengthen the existing industry knowledge base and perspectives on intelligent buildings," said Ronald J. Zimmer, CaBa's president and chief executive officer. "This initiative consequently established a vision for the market today and its near-term evolution by providing a framework to support players in the intelligent building arena. It is our clear expectation that this roadmap will ultimately be used by CaBa members to identify unique opportunities in the intelligent building marketplace."
The roadmap provides a snapshot of current market dynamics within the intelligent building industry in North america and outlines evolving trends as well as the long-term industry outlook. Business research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan undertook the project. The research has been released to partners who funded the project, and CaBa said after an embargo period it plans to make the research available for purchase to the rest of the industry.
The following organizations funded the research: Belimo air Controls, Consolidation Edison Company of New York, Distech Controls Inc., Echelon Corporation, Honeywell International, Ingersoll Rand/Trane/Schlage, Johnson Controls, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Natural Resources Canada, Ortronics/Watt Stopper/Legrand, Optimum Energy, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory/U.S. Department of Energy, Philips Electronics, Schneider Electric, Siemens Industry Inc., Sloan Monitored Systems. -Ed.