One of the predominant themes of this year’s show was energy. More specifically how to save it, how to harness it, how to analyze it and how to gather data to study it, were the talk of the show. Several workshops were dedicated to the topic of energy and addressed these issues. During our time at the show we attended several of the educational sessions and learned new ideas and confirmed that the industry is moving towards an open building for more efficient energy and performance. NFM&T makes all of the workshop session presentations available on their website.
Another theme of the show was the need for facility managers to keep up with new trends in building automation and the control configuration/integration options that are available. Shows like NFM&T provide facility managers the opportunity to view and compare competing products and to learn about new emerging technologies.
Wireless technology continues to be a hot topic in the automation industry and was the subject of workshops. The S4 Group shared a booth space with the EnOcean Alliance and discussed the benefits of using the EnOcean products that are wireless and battery free. The S4 Group has developed The S4 Open BACnet-EnOcean router which is currently in the testing phase. We anticipate a summer release for the product and will further publicize its release at that time.