“CONNECTING” Systems Helps Siemens Building Technolgies K-12 Customers Become More Efficient and Productive

A new solution developed by Siemens Building Technologies, Inc. will help K-12 facilities become more operationally efficient and productive. The new solution, called BuildingConnect™, connects fire, communication, security and building control systems.

“With our proven building systems and our unparalleled integration capabilities, we do not just deliver multiple building systems, we connect them to bring value to the school occupants and facility staff,” said Terry Heath, vice president Fire Safety Division at Siemens Building Technologies. “This means that a school or district will become more operationally efficient and productive because the systems work together, not as separate, disparate systems.”

Building systems that perform at optimum levels, day-in and day-out, have a big impact—not only on students, teachers and administrators—but on the parents and the community, as well.

Siemens connects building systems and integrates them based on the customer’s needs, their operations or, perhaps more importantly, a given set of circumstances. For example, in an emergency, a school’s fire control panel would communicate directly with the card access system, the paging speakers and the phone system. Additionally, these mass notification and access systems could communicate with the building automation system and trigger alarm notification and the execution of smoke control sequences. Similarly, BuildingConnect might link mechanical systems such as chillers and boilers to the building automation system and, as a result, provide optimal heating and cooling start-stop operation along with centralization for alarms and monitoring.

With this solution in place, a school is: