With the ever-increasing complexity associated with today’s automated buildings, the breakdown of a critical system is a risk building and facility managers work hard to avoid. Making your building (s) “Smart” is a must to remain competitive in today’s environment. What makes a Smart Building? A Building Automation Systems or BAS is at the heart of Smart buildings.

A BAS controls a building’s functionality, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), lighting systems, and often water, fire and life safety. Beyond integrating all these separate functions, BAS technology can continually collect millions of data points from numerous sensors and meters.

Making your Smart Building “Smarter”

A BAS is the centralized network of a building and connects various building systems software with hardware. It monitors and controls the environment by uniting electricity, lighting, plumbing, HVAC, the water supply and drainage systems, all at a single control center. What’s more is that a BAS will monitor and adjust various parameter levels such as temperature, humidity, etc. A BAS can also connect to the fire alarm and security systems, and can make adjustments like dimming the lights during sunlight. As a result, building occupants can expect a comfortable environment at all times.

As much as a BAS enhances building efficiency, integrating to a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management Software) creates a comprehensive tool for optimal building management. A CMMS holds the potential to open doors to coordinating and blending facility-related programs for controlling costs and saving time and work hours in the process. The end result is a reduction in necessary maintenance, fewer (or less frequent) service calls, and lower energy bills.

In a recent study by CABA (Continental Automated Buildings Association), one of the largest impediments to utilizing software tools to provide building owners with a true “Intelligent Building” is the ability to integrate technologies. Integration gives you the ability to easily control how your building operates;

Utilize energy more efficiently
Reduce utility costs
Comply with regulations
Meet the needs of your tenants
Increase response time in emergency situations.

Smart building technology investment payoff

Cost savings are easily realized through this streamlined approach to building and facility management when you integrate BAS with a CMMS.

Eagle Technology’s Proteus CMMS is the only solution with direct integration to virtually any BAS on the market. When Proteus CMMS is integrated with a BAS, it will process alerts and alarms from the BAS and then feed them automatically into a standard work order process. The integration between BAS and CMMS is significant because it creates a comprehensive tool that leads to better building management, energy reduction and cost savings.

Most BAS includes the capability to email alarm notifications. With this approach, information that is collected by the BAS is transferred into Proteus CMMS. Over time, this historical data exposes patterns such as temperature changes and faulty sensors or changes in controls. Through the analytical abilities of Proteus CMMS, management can make decisions that lead to energy reduction and cost savings.

CMMS software also brings preventive maintenance work orders to a smart building. Preventive maintenance helps the building operations do a better job of keeping a regular preventive maintenance schedule on equipment for optimal performance. For example, a CMMS can pick up run-time information from HVAC equipment which will trigger a maintenance work order based on that run-time. Preventive maintenance based on run-time allows you to optimize your maintenance resources by eliminating unnecessary maintenance.

Simple, Efficient and “Smart”

Integrating CMMS and BAS establishes a smart building management system that has far-reaching capabilities. The two software systems combined streamline building operations and expose problems that might not otherwise be addressed. Ultimately, with efficient building management, the building occupants will also remain content.

Push the envelope and make your SMART building even “smarter” by integrating your Building Automation Software (BAS) with Proteus CMMS.