The Building Operating System (BOS) or how to make a building smart
Discussion with Jean-Pierre Poinsignon
Jean-Pierre Poinsignon was recently in Lausanne to present the topic ‘Hospital of the future’ at the Medicalytics conferences. In this article, he gives us the keys to better understand the Building Operating System (BOS), literally the brain of an intelligent building.
The SBA & smart buildings
In 2022, everything is “smart”, from phones to microwave ovens. Buildings are becoming “smart” and it has become a current challenge to optimise the management of a site, both for owners and occupants. We are therefore witnessing a digital and energy transition in buildings, a topic well known to the Smart Buildings Alliance for Smart Cities (https://smartbuildingsalliance.org). This French association brings together more than 300 companies (active in construction, design, service, training, institutions, etc.) and aims to define the industry standards.
What an intelligent building actually is ? One instinctively thinks of light sensors allowing blinds to be lowered automatically when windows are sunny. But this is just one conventional example of hundreds of use cases. For example, one can:
- optimise the building’s energy consumption (heating, lights)
- monitor appliances and perform predictive maintenance
- display information on the use of the premises (e.g. guiding users)
All these uses require the operation of sensors and actuators, often with geolocation possibilities. An infrastructure is needed to network these devices, allowing communication and data transfer.
The “Building Operating System”, the control centre of the building
The problem is that these sensors often use their own proprietary communication protocol, and so the data interoperability takes a hit. This is where the “Building Operating System” comes in. A BOS aims at coordinating data coming from all sensors in order to make a fluid use of it. This allows everything to be managed centrally and to interface with sensors from different manufacturers. To make this possible, norms and standards need to be put in place.
As is often the case, things can only change if everyone pulls together and moves in the same direction. We have now passed the inflection point where manufacturers had better follow these recommendations if they do not want to lose business contracts.
An ecosystem of companies around the smart building
Several companies are developing BOS, for example Spinalcom (https://www.spinalcom.com) in France, a company totally dedicated to smart buildings which is developing a digital twin concept. The latter enables data of a building to be viewed in real time. Many other fields are also affected by this trend.
Architecture is in the midst of change, notably at AIA Life Designers (https://www.aialifedesigners.fr), an architectural firm that embraces the concept of smart building from its very conception.
In a slightly more specific field, that of the hospital world, we have Calyps (https://calyps.ch), which I have already mentioned in the past (see below). Calyps is developing Saniia, a solution that uses artificial intelligence to predict patient flows within a hospital’s ER and to help coordinate the various services.
Finally, I wanted to mention Qwanza (https://qwanza.fr), a consultancy firm specializing in digital technology, whose vocation is to build a Smart Building Management System (SBMS) essential for interactions between users of different types — care staff, patients and their families in the case of a hospital — and the building itself.
The man for the job
All topics covered in this article lead us to a man, an expert in the field of smart building, Jean-Pierre Poinsignon. Associate director of the company Qwanza, he is also the Ile-de-France regional coordinator for the SBA. Within the association, he is notably a member of the “Smart Hospital” commission, where he works on the R2S4Care standard, currently undergoing certification.
