- BACnet
- The open communication standard purpose-built for building automation, designed to let equipment from different manufacturers interoperate. It dominates new commercial installations and is the primary means by which facilities integrate multiple vendors and avoid lock-in, alongside older or industrial protocols such as Modbus and LonWorks.
- Building Management System (BMS)
- The supervisory software and controller network that operates a facility's mechanical and electrical services — cooling, humidity, airflow, and plant. In critical facilities it provides continuous, precise thermal control and is the closed feedback loop wrapped around the heat the workload generates. Also called a building automation system in its broader form.
- Control Hierarchy
- The three-layer structure of a building system: the field level (sensors and actuators), the automation level (controllers running the real-time feedback loops), and the management level (supervisory software). The design ensures lower, more critical layers keep operating autonomously when the layer above them fails.
- Economization
- Using outside ambient conditions to provide cooling with little or no mechanical refrigeration. Airside economization draws in cool, dry outdoor air to idle the compressors; waterside economization rejects heat through cooling towers or a heat exchanger without fully running the chillers. It is the single largest efficiency lever a BMS operates in a suitable climate.
- Electrical Power Monitoring System
- A layer dedicated to monitoring and managing electrical distribution — voltage, current, power, energy, power quality, and fault capture — often kept distinct from the BMS because electrical faults evolve in milliseconds and require specialized protective functions. It integrates with the BMS through a protocol so both mechanical and electrical state appear in a shared supervisory picture.
- IT/OT Convergence
- The merging of operational technology (controllers and sensors governing physical processes) with information technology (networks and servers), driven by remote monitoring and analytics. It ended the historic isolation of building systems, making the BMS a networked physical-control surface that must be secured on operational-technology terms — prioritizing availability and safety, chiefly through network segmentation and controlled access.
- Setpoint
- A target value the control system drives the plant to meet — supply-air temperature, chilled-water temperature, humidity, or differential pressure. A facility's chosen setpoints are a direct readout of its efficiency posture: conservative, cold-and-wet settings favor margin over energy, while warmer, wider bands tuned to real equipment tolerances favor efficiency.
- Supervisory Platform
- The management-level ecosystem sold by a vendor — supervisory software, a family of matched controllers, and the engineering tools and service network around them. Examples include Siemens Desigo, Johnson Controls Metasys, Honeywell's building-controls portfolio, and Schneider EcoStruxure Building. Platform choice is sticky because the cost lies in installed hardware, programmed logic, and trained people.