CINCINNATI, OH — The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) approved a new approach for specifying interoperable BACnet® building automation and control systems at its 2001 Summer Meeting, held here recently.

Part of addendum d to ASHRAE/ANSI Standard 135-1995, “BACnet — A Data Communication Protocol for Building Automation and Control Networks,” the new approach is based on the use of BACnet interoperability building blocks (BIBBs). Each BIBB defines a small portion of BACnet functionality that is needed to perform a particular task, according to Steven Bushby, chairman of the ASHRAE BACnet committee.

The idea is that BIBBs will be combined together to build the BACnet functional requirements for a device in a specification. The new addendum also includes the definition of several typical building control devices and indicates which BIBBs are needed for each device.

Other addendums approved will make it easier to integrate fire and life systems with other building automation and control systems and will provide a mechanism for making nonstandard extensions to the BACnet network visible.

The published addenda are available for free at www.ashrae.org (website).

Publication date: 07/16/2001