It's All Connected: How the Internet of Things is rewiring our facilities.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

The Internet of Things (loT) is rapidly evolving and becoming a standard part of new commercial and residential buildings. Property owners and managers have integrated more and more technology directly into commercial spaces to improve workplace environments and increase efficiencies, as well as collect highly valuable data that allows them to make better choices.

loT is the next evolution of smart buildings, allowing smart devices and sensors to communicate through an online system, explains Siemens Industry General Manager for Alaska and Hawaii Dan Hart, though the modern concept of a smart building started gaining traction in the '90s.

"There was a big movement to move buildings into an electric interaction," he says, explaining that most heating systems were controlled by pneumatic air systems at the time. In a pneumatic air system, as the air temperature in a building warms or cools, a spring in the thermostat expands or shrinks accordingly, forcing air pressure to move a heating valve up and down.

They worked, but the technology was somewhat primitive and definitely Limited. Many buildings with pneumatic air systems were upgraded to electric; this electrification of infrastructure also facilitated a move toward direct digital controls.

"You had electric actuators, and they were connected to systems that were called direct digital control systems," Hart says. "It was still pretty basic, but there was some kind of level of interaction with a PC."

This meant that by the mid-'90s building owners or operators could monitor and control a structure's temperature remotely.

For about a decade, buildings were designed or updated with various systems that could be controlled remotely but existed in isolation. The next step was getting these systems to interact with each other--and their operators.

"You've got these different systems from different manufacturers that are now talking to one another and coordinating their interaction in the building," Hart says.

A strong example of this in Alaska is at UAF, Hart says: several systems in a number of buildings work in conjunction with each other through a server.

The benefit of intra-network systems is that a building manager or systems specialist can access the server and identify issues with the building. Particularly in Alaska, this can help address problems with energy efficiency; however, operating and maintaining such systems still requires a trained professional.

"The difference now is we're...