In its recent piece on wireless labor costs and security issues, Building Operating Management featured input and comments from Bluestone’s Director of Operations, Ryan Kessler. From the article:
For more and more facilities, wireless systems and sensors are making sense, as their popularity and benefits are both growing. When AWeber Communications, an email marketing firm, moved its headquarters from leased space into its own facility in December 2012, it was ready to pursue any innovation to manage the facility the way it wanted, says Mike Flanagan, senior facility manager. “Every innovation we could put into the building, we tried,” he says.
Wireless access into the building automation, security, and lighting systems through WiFi is a major part of that strategy, allowing Flanagan’s team the ability to troubleshoot devices on the fly with a laptop. But wireless controls at the system level also play a big part. For example, the lighting system uses occupancy sensors and daylight sensors, but Flanagan also has wireless sensors mounted directly on the windows which scan the amount of cloud cover every 15 minutes and, in conjunction with tracking the sun, control the window shades accordingly to get the maximum use of the available sunlight. This functionality would not have been feasible as a wired solution “because of the complexity of the wiring and too many connection points,” he says.
For AWeber, pursuing wireless is in keeping with its ethos as a tech firm. But for other facilities, wireless is driven by evolving product offerings and upfront cost savings. In fact, a recent study by Navigant Research predicts worldwide revenue from wireless nodes for building controls will reach $434 million by 2023, up from $84.8 million in 2013. While some facility managers are hesitant about wireless systems, others are beginning to address their concerns and cut the cord. Here’s what to consider to establish robust, secure, and reliable wireless systems in your facility.
Benefits of Wireless
While wireless controls for systems such as lighting have been around for quite some time, it’s only in the last few years that the market has evolved to solve problems that hampered widespread adoption in the past. These innovations include increased battery life of five or more years for sensors, or even no batteries needed, for example through sensors with built-in ambient light power cells. The range of wireless controls and sensors is ever increasing. It is becoming common to see wireless occupancy sensors, daylight sensors, audio/visual controls, temperature sensors, and door access controls, the latter especially in hospitality spaces. But wireless options exist now for humidity sensors and also carbon dioxide sensors, driven by the increased need for energy savings through demand-controlled ventilation, says Michael Isenberg, senior associate, building mechanical systems, WSP.
The growing adoption of wireless solutions is also being driven by a merging of the traditional silos between facility management, IT and engineering, says Peter Babigian, partner, Cerami & Associates, a technology design-consulting firm. “The concerns are starting to go away with more education and collaboration between departments,” Babigian says. “It forces a reliance on IT that facilities hasn’t been comfortable with until recently. That’s starting to be overcome because the benefits are greater than the risk.”
Be Cautious In Bundling WiFi And Cellular Technologies TogetherSolutions exist that combine WiFi with cellular, but Peter Babigian, partner, Cerami & Associates, a technology design-consulting firm, urges caution when considering such an option. “There’s a careful study required before you make that decision,” Babigian says. “The densities and capacities of the two are designed differently, so trying to get one solution that fits both has a little more complexity than sometimes makes sense for one to follow.” Also, choosing a solution which bundles the two technologies together might prevent an upgrade path for one of the technologies in order to preserve the other, he says.
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The benefits of wireless systems are several, starting with the obvious, no wires, but facility managers also need to be aware of security and reliability issues. Running wire is expensive, both in material and labor costs. “The wireless solution really allows you to be most efficient labor-wise, which turns into the most economical and efficient solution for the customer,” says Ryan Kessler, director of operations for Bluestone, a design-build engineering firm. “And it gives you the greatest flexibility on where you can install the controls.”
The flexibility of wireless sensors and systems makes them particularly beneficial in spaces which need to be frequently reconfigured, like leased tenant space. It is also a good solution in historic facilities, where it is not desirable to disturb the original construction in any way.
In addition, wireless systems simplify troubleshooting. “You can easily point to an area where the issue is, the exact fixture or sensor,” says Kessler. “You’ll get an alert of the system, you’ll have a serial number and exactly where it will be.” In a wired system, an issue along the wiring would require tedious tracing.
FM Concerns
Despite the benefits of wireless solutions, many facility managers still balk at applying the concept in their own facilities. “A lot of it depends on the culture of the company,” says Babigian. “There are still a lot of places where this isn’t really ready for prime time.”
Security concerns are often top of mind, for both the IT and FM departments. With system breaches in the news seemingly every other week, maintaining the security of systems carrying data in a facility is of clear importance. “Any way into a network needs to always be secure and you never know how someone is going to get in,” says Rick Szcodronski, senior associate, technology consulting, with Environmental Systems Design. However, systems that communicate over WiFi are typically more secure than wired systems, Szcodronski says, because the protocol always requires user names and passwords, and traffic is encrypted as robustly as possible. Even control systems that use proprietary communications protocols are still better off than wired systems, where there isn’t typically port-level security. “In a lot of companies, you can walk up to a random Ethernet port on the wall, plug in, and have access to the network, which is very insecure,” he says. With a wireless system, that simply can’t be done, even with just the most simple security protocols in place.
Just as important as securing the WiFi and wireless networks is securing the interface between the local area network and the Internet, which is often used for remote access, says Szcodronski.
Granted, a wireless system would not have to reside on the network, says Kessler, but this would limit remote access for facility management oversight.
Perhaps causing even greater concern than security is reliability. A dropped connection on a building system is not acceptable. “You need it to be as robust and reliable as if there was a wire connecting the two devices,” says Szcodronski. In an attempt to achieve that goal, system and sensor manufacturers have invested considerable R&D into reliability, he says. Devices can frequency hop to avoid interference. They often operate with small data packets, like on/off signals, that don’t require a lot of bandwidth, so the system can use lower frequencies that penetrate walls better, he says. And there is no wire to get accidently cut, as often happens when multiple trades are working in a space during a retrofit, says Isenberg, a failure often not discovered until the ceiling is sealed up.
