Smart buildings, take two

Bouyant real estate developers in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, bustling Vietnam and the high-tech cities of China increasingly share a common trait these days: they are not afraid to mix tonnes of concrete and steel with miles of fibre-optic cables and petabytes of software.

This cocktail is the intelligent building, where air-conditioning is managed on the same network that sends the office e-mail. And this trend is booming - as can be seen by the growing number of intelligent building deals clinched in recent times by regional IT infrastructure providers like ST Electronics and NCS.

According to one report, the market opportunity for providing the infrastructure for intelligent commercial and office buildings will be worth about US $1 billion by 2012.

Like developers of the sail-like Bahrain World Trade Centre and the sculptural China Central Television (CCTV) Beijing headquarters, many developers now see a strong economic upside to constructing such intelligent buildings. Pampering tenants with first-class digital convenience aside, imbuing intelligence into buildings can help building owners slash long-term operating costs through consolidation and automation, and create new revenue streams through new applications.

'Developers and building owners will benefit from a lower building life-cycle cost, happier tenants and lower energy bills,' says Seah Moon Ming, president of Singapore Technologies Electronics (ST Electronics).

He notes that the current breed of intelligent buildings, such as Shanghai's Jingmao Building and Jakarta's Grand Indonesia hotel and shopping complex, centre around the optimisation of basic elements of building systems, structures, services and management - and the inter-relationship between them. Both buildings were recent projects completed by the Singapore firm.