Smart building architecture to pull components together

Existing buildings, and even buildings under design and construction today, consist of independently designed and implemented building systems. The HVAC system is separate from the security system, the lighting system is completely separate from the water system, and so on. Each of these systems is designed, deployed, and even maintained by different engineering and maintenance disciplines with little to no cross-over between trades.

Each discipline competes for capital resources to acquire the latest and greatest technology, but often, each is value-engineered (an approach to get to the lowest cost possible) down to the basic requirements. Because of this, we can say that smart buildings are essentially designed from the bottom up, system by system, resulting in a collection of systems trying to communicate with each other.

If we are to achieve all the benefits a truly smart building has to offer, we need to approach it...