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FROMthe PUBLISHER
Pennzoil Place Sets New Benchmarks for
Smart Buildings and the Internet of Things
Ask 100 different people for their definition of a smart,
connected, energy efficient, high-performance, sustain-
able, intelligent building and you will get 100 different
answers. People look at buildings from various perspectives,
often with different agendas and issues. Energy management,
security, maintenance, occupant
experience (WIFI
and DAS), parking,
water…the list goes
on and on.
If you attempt
to optimize each
HBoewrgaredr of these business
processes inde-
Managing Partner pendently, you may
Realcomm in fact improve the
efficiency within the
unique process, but in the end you will
have 8-10 very well organized, dis-
connected systems—and therein lies
the challenge. Will they all require their own network? How will
security be addressed? What would happen if you tried to get
these systems to communicate? Without careful planning that
starts with comprehensive, strategic network design, you could
very quickly find yourself in a corner.
Quietly, one engineer from Transwestern, and his team, de-
cided to take the idea of a smart building to the next level. One
network, converged disparate systems, integrated, interoperable
and able to grow as the team discovered new opportunities,
including adding a revenue stream by providing tenant services.
Transwestern manages Pennzoil Place, a 1.4 million square
foot, twin 36-story, glass-walled towers in Houston, Texas. Built in
1975, it’s occupied by 37 tenants.
A couple of years ago Roger Vasquez, Director of Engineering
for Transwestern, started looking for ways to reduce energy
costs and to increase the efficiency of building management
without sacrificing tenant comfort. “To compete in the Houston
real estate market, we had to keep costs down and differentiate
ourselves by providing innovative services,” said Mr. Vasquez.
His challenge was figuring out how to connect the 95,000 sen-
sors and data points including fire alarms, wireless access points,
video surveillance cameras, temperature sensors and HVAC
equipment to the network for continuous monitoring.
After discussions with Stephen Lurie from Zones, A Cisco Partner,
50 Realcomm
Mr. Vasquez decided to install a core Cisco IP network to connect
all current and future building systems, communications systems,
and physical security systems so building engineers could monitor
and manage the BMS in near real-time via a web browser.
In the first year alone (2011 to 2012), Transwestern reduced
energy usage by 21%,
and then an addition-
al 11% the first eight
months of 2013. They
then added physical
security and access
control, which addi-
tionally saved them
more than $50,000
annually in outside
security services fees.
The bottom line
was that these
operational savings
allowed Transwestern
to offer tenants much more attractive lease rates in a glass-walled
building in a VERY competitive market.
The use of Cisco wireless IP phones and tablets for mainte-
nance staff gives the building engineers real-time access to main-
tenance requests and allows them to correct many problems
immediately. The impact on tenant satisfaction and retention has
been measurable.
Mr. Vasquez concludes, “Property management is a service-ori-
ented business. Happy tenants are more likely to renew their
leases with us and pay their rent and operating charges on time.
Embracing the Internet of Everything concept has increased
tenant satisfaction while also lowering operating costs.”
In addition to creating a building that automated every aspect
of the smart, connected concept, this team figured out a way to
not only reduce expenses, but also add revenue. By designing a
network that could also deliver bandwidth to tenants, the project
is now generating income for the property owners. Wholesale
bandwidth with a capacity to offer faster and more reliable ser-
vice soon had tenants signing up. The addition of revenue to the
smart building story has just taken this idea to the next level.
Pennzoil Place will be featured in the Smart Building Best
Practice Showcase to be held in conjunction with Realcomm
and IBcon on June 10th, 2015 at the Marriott Rivercenter Hotel
in San Antonio.