From the initial days till 1980
From the 17th century onwards, systems were designed for temperature control, the mechanical control of mills, and the regulation of steam engines. During the 19th century it became increasingly clear that feedback systems were prone to instability. A stability criterion was derived independently towards the end of the
century by Routh in England and Hurwitz in Switzerland. The 19th century, too, saw the development of servomechanisms, first for ship steering and later for stabilization and autopilots.
However, it credit goes to Warren Seymour Johnson (November 6, 1847 – December 5, 1911), an American college professor who was frustrated by his inability to regulate individual classroom temperatures. His multi-zone pneumatic control system solved the problem. Johnson’s system for temperature regulation was adopted worldwide for office buildings, schools, hospitals, and hotels – essentially any large building with multiple rooms that required temperature regulation.
In the next decade or so, the non-residential control industry evolved rapidly to create a fully automatic
control system operating steam/hot water, and eventually ventilation and air conditioning. With most
controls and interestingly, the control logic (algorithms) operated by compressed air (air logic).
Up until the 1970’s almost all controls (thermostats and valves) and even central control stations for large
commercial buildings continued to be pneumatic. Not surprisingly, in 1980’s the conversion from
pneumatic control to electric controls began with digital computers taking over the control, while most
equipment in the space remained pneumatic.
1980 to 2000
By the late 1980’s the central computer began to give way to distributed digital computers (essentially process controllers) located on individual devices and communicating back to the central system. Not surprisingly, the data produced from such systems often contained valuable & sensitive informations about building operations including off-normal conditions, occupants comfort problems, resource consumption details and lead to development of processes to improve them and become more efficient.
During this period, the building had a standalone central building management system (BMS) with one or two sub-systems, isolated from each other, typically used to control heating and air conditioning, the lift or lighting systems and separately handling water & wastes. The control implemented by the BMS included simply switching on or off the right equipment at the right time of the day or year.
2000 to 2020
This situation rapidly changed as in response to high energy cost which forced building owners to see
consumption of electricity as well as other resources like water, gas, air etc, not as a freely available commodity but as a cost of doing business. This forced them to look the conserving these resources and thus began a need to monitor & control them.
This initiated the process of monitoring building performance (first locally and then remotely), and then began entry of a wide range of new systems in the building ecosystem including access control system, smart metering, solar panels, climate control, automatic fire detection system, PA System & AV systems, improved HVAC and Water management systems.
With time, as semiconductors started becoming more powerful and their cost started to fall, low cost microchips started making inward ways in controls and automation & with explosion of Internet in 2000 as well as cloud computing, enabled a staggering range of new applications and services, as well as their complex integration. BMS was now called iBMS, with the ‘i’, standing for integration or intelligent, and the buildings were called intelligent because of their highly complex networking.
2020 and beyond
Current trend of merging of Green technologies and Intelligent building which clubs the best of both areas to form the basis of smart buildings, and is not just another incarnation of industrial control systems (ICS) or simple building management system (BMS) because smart buildings are not only just interconnection of various controls but are almost like an self-sustaining living entity connected to internet and constantly responding to changing requirements by altering their own operating parameters to meet customer needs.
Also with the deep proliferation of IoT technologies, owners could tap into boundless possibilities for optimizing property operations without incurring outrageous costs – trend which is reshaping the building automation as well as building industry itself.