Building Automation

What is building automation?

Building automation (BA) centralises and controls the technical systems in buildings such as offices, hotels, shopping centers and other infrastructure facilities. With trend topics like BIM, smart home, smart grid and smart building shaping the Real Estate’s market today, modern building automation systems must be intelligent, flexible and transparent. In addition, ease of use and system functionality also have significant impact on the total cost of ownership. Thus, they are very important parameters for the sustainable value of the buildings as well as during renting and selling of the buildings

The systems in many new or existing buildings often do not produce the desired results because

• The systems in the building do not speak the "same language"
• The agreed building performance is not achieved
• Lack of transparency on how the systems work

TÜV SÜD can support you with our expertise regardless if you are a builder, planner, investor or operator in the following areas:

The benefits of a well implemented building automation system

• Improve user comfort
• Save energy and operating costs of the building
• Process functional processes automatically and according to defined parameters

The 3 levels of building automation system- Field, Automation and Management

Operation and monitoring should be as simple as possible. All sensors, actuators, control elements, consumers and other technical units in the building are connected to allow intelligent and optimised interaction between these components.

Management level: The management level operates and monitors the processes on a higher level as well as triggers alarms in the event of faults. All information on building automation is collected and evaluated at this level. The management level also implements cross-system and higher-level control and optimise the algorithms.

Automation level: The automation level controls and regulates the building systems. The basis is formed by data supplied from the field and specifications provided by the management level.

Field level: Field devices such as sensors and actuators are used in the operation of various systems in the building such as lighting, air conditioning and ventilation systems. The sensors record and send information to the actuators. The data is then converted into switching signals.