I love technology, always have. When I go to bed at night I carry an iPad, Netbook, Kindle and my i4 with me up the stairs just in case I might need them. I have nightmares about sea-level rises from the amount of gear charging on my bedside cabinet. Earlier this year, however, on a junket to Cairns, I came across something that might let me sleep easier. It’s called IBT. Building Management Systems have been around since property managers got their first HVAC bills; it’s 5.30pm, most people have gone home — righto, shut the whole building’s AC down — crude but effective.

IBT takes this principle to a whole new level by controlling not only the HVAC but the lighting, blinds and AV — and it does so on a room-by-room basis. It is said that 70 per cent of the energy used in the US goes into buildings and 50 per cent of that is wasted. Fifty per cent…

Here’s how it works: the IBT controller has presence sensors in the rooms, and connects to the various energy-consuming devices in the building. After a period of inactivity it starts to shut the room down, anyone walking in and the room comes back to life in a snap.

Now let’s take meeting rooms. Here at AA (Automation Associates) we have what we call ‘Serial Room Bookers’, as in: “I need a room for a meeting next week, oh, and we will probably need it every week for this three-month project. Where’s that recurrence box? Hmm, weekly recurrence, TICK.” 

Now that room is unavailable for three months. Tomorrow I get a complaint that all the meeting rooms are booked and we need to spend another $80k converting the stationery cupboard into a VC suite.

Enter IBT. Mr Serial Room Booker books the sales meeting room at 3pm next Tuesday with a recurrence from here to eternity. Come Tuesday at 2.45 the IBT system turns on the HVAC so the room heats up, fires up the lights, gets the projector ready on the desktop input and we’re ready to roll … only that project got canned and Mr Serial Room Booker is getting his hair cut that afternoon. At 3.15 the presence sensor has not been tripped, so the IBT system sends a polite email to our friend and asks if the meeting is still on. Here’s my favourite part, if this happens three times in a row, the IBT system doesn’t bother emailing our room-booking buddy — it emails his boss.