The Continental Automated Buildings Association announces its Building Intelligence Quotient Awards

by Brianna Crandall — February 10, 2012—The Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), an Ottawa-based international nonprofit that promotes advanced technologies in homes and buildings throughout North America, has announced the recipients of its inaugural Building Intelligence Quotient (BiQ) Awards. The annual awards recognize property owners and operators whose buildings achieve the highest rank using CABA’s building technology assessment tool.

2012 Gold recipients include:

  • Comcast Center: the tallest building in Philadelphia and the 15th tallest building in the United States;
  • MaRS: an innovation center in Toronto that supports entrepreneurs building Canada’s next generation of growth companies in the life sciences, cleantech, social innovation and ICT sectors; and
  • Ottawa Paramedic Service Headquarters: a facility from which all paramedic operations and training are consolidated in Canada’s National Capital.

The 2012 Silver recipient is:

  • Three World Financial Center: a skyscraper in Lower Manhattan, New York City.

CABA’s Intelligent & Integrated Buildings Council guides development of CABA’s BIQ tool in conjunction with the Building Intelligence Quotient (BiQ) Consortium. The BiQ ranking tool has three functions. It serves as: a means to evaluate and measure the “value” of intelligent building performance; a design guide for integration of building intelligence in new building projects; and a building automation retrofit action plan tool, says CABA.

The tool allows property owners and managers to rate a building’s intelligence and provides design guidance to ensure that all relevant issues are considered when making a choice of subsystems and their level of integration. Owners and developers with multiple properties can also use the BiQ tool to assess and compare the building intelligence systems in their portfolio.

As more and more buildings are BiQ verified, point scores are aggregated in an anonymous database, enabling users to analyze how their building intelligence design performs in relation both to the median and to buildings that are similar in terms, type and region. Because the assessment is completely online, owners and managers have the ability to change input up to a year, with an option to extend, notes CABA. This allows users to keep their assessment up-to-date, since the building intelligence changes through the project delivery stages as buildings are retrofitted.

The modular assessment generates a report that provides benchmark rankings as well as recommendations for improvements in the following categories: communication systems; building automation; annunciation, security and control systems; facilities management applications; and building structure and systems.

All building assessments are ranked, and the top four receive recognition through annual Building Intelligence Quotient (BiQ) Awards.

“Building intelligence results in higher property values, improved comfort, security, flexibility and reliability while reducing costs and increasing productivity,” notes Ronald J. Zimmer, CABA President & CEO. “CABA is proud to showcase this year’s award recipients, who are actively demonstrating the advantage of assessing building technology.”