More than ever, commercial buildings are multi-purpose in use and therefore present building operators with increasingly complex challenges. At the same time, scarcer resources and growing costs demand more efficient operation of properties. To meet these challenges, facility managers, building operators, technical managers, safety and security officers as well as investors and planners rely on building automation systems. Integrated building management, which bundles all disciplines and functions in a single platform, goes one step further. It delivers tangible efficiency benefits, increases comfort and protects people, buildings and assets. 

Comfort, security, safety, types of use – requirements for a building involve very different areas. How that impacts the building technology deployed is reflected in energy efficiency. Buildings consume approximately 40 percent of primary energy worldwide, which means increasing energy costs are immediately felt in buildings. Add to that political requirements and new regulations such as the sustainable reduction of CO2 emissions and greater use of regenerative power. 

Conversely, every effort toward energy-saving in a building has a positive effect. Legislative regulations such as the European Energy Saving Ordinance (EnEV) and internationally recognized quality seals for sustainable construction such as Green Building, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council) define criteria for sustainability and ecological and energy efficiency over the building's entire life cycle. In addition to operational savings, complying with these criteria in managing properties fundamentally increases their value.

No less complex than ensuring energy-efficient operation are the other building requirements and the systems they involve. Employees in administration and production expect optimal working conditions, including during flexible working hours and with varying room usage. Fire safety and security must also meet equally high standards.

From building automation...

Suitable automated solutions have already been available for building comfort, safety and security. They yield substantial savings by automatically adjusting heating, air conditioning, ventilation, lighting and shading to current needs. E.g. after detecting a fire, safety and security systems can independently trigger appropriate measures, such as activating extinguishing systems, releasing evacuation doors and stopping elevators in a safe position. – But even if these systems work well on their own, they are separate disciplines that must be managed separately.

...to integrated building management

With its integrated building management concept, Siemens is now taking a decisive step into the future. In contrast to conventional scenarios, integrated building management means the holistic and technically uniform combination of multiple or all disciplines within a comprehensive and user-friendly management platform.

Open interfaces based on industry-standard communications protocols such as BACnet allow for the seamless integration of existing and new systems from various manufacturers into the management platform. The result is either an integrated homogeneous system landscape or a heterogeneous system landscape with a uniform operating layer. Also, to cover a broad spectrum of buildings with a single management system, it must be extremely flexible in its ability to adapt. It needs to cover everything from the building management

platform to room operator units, fire detectors and video cameras. And last but not least, the solution needs to comply with international standards – ideally worldwide.

Future-proof with Desigo CC

With its newly designed building management platform Desigo CC, Siemens recently began offering a market-ready solution for integrated building management. Implementing integrated building management with Desigo CC offers numerous advantages: greater safety and security, lower costs, better performance and comfort, and an improved company image. The result is a platform that integrates and centrally controls all of a building's disciplines, including heating, ventilation and air conditioning, lighting, shading, room automation, energy management and fire safety, as well as security functions such as video surveillance and intrusion detection.

Information in real time

As the first platform of its kind on the market, Desigo CC integrates all the disciplines in a building on an equal basis. It displays the status of the disciplines in real time and controls them, including remotely if desired. This creates synergies and saves costs, not only in installation but also when it comes to training because employees need training on a single platform only. As an open platform, Desigo CC supports numerous standard protocols.

 Scalable solution

Desigo is flexible enough for individual disciplines as well as complex, networked end-to-end solutions. Thanks to its extensive scalability, the platform is an ideal choice for medium and large commercial buildings as well as large, distributed building complexes and campus infrastructures. Desigo CC can grow along with building management requirements as well as integrate successive additional disciplines.