Building Automation Systems

What is a Building Automation System (BAS)?

Most simply put, a BAS is a network that connects and controls all of your facility's utilities, such as mechanical and electrical systems as well as heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems (HVAC). With industrial facilities, we mainly focus on critical HVAC applications - meaning that we regulate the conditions for controlled/validated environments such as laboratories and data centers. Regulating conditions in these types of spaces is critical to the functionality of our customers' facilities and overall products (or purpose). Thermo Systems' solution is specifically industrial PLC/SCADA-based.

Thermo Systems can design, build, install, modify, support, and retrofit BAS systems. When Thermo is included in the initial design of a building or space, we use our expertise to find the best solution with open controls products and name-brand controls equipment to meet all of the requirements of your project and facility. After implementation, we are there to help support our customers with troubleshooting, new additions, changes, and modifications to the systems. And when a system is nearing the end of its life, Thermo Systems can retrofit the systems and extend its run for years to come.

BAS Terms

Building Management Systems (BMS)

BMS is essentially a synonym for BAS. A building management system will allow you to control all of the individual systems and processes within your facility.

Validated BAS

Typically used in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry, a validated building automation system specifically refers to controlling those critical processes within the pharma and life sciences industries which can have an impact on meeting regulatory compliance, safety, and quality measures.

Mission-Critical BAS

"Mission-critical" operations refer to those processes that would have a detrimental impact to your facility if interrupted. These are often in pharmaceutical labs and packaging facilities, data centers that rely on cool environments, hospitals, and more. If power or HVAC utilities fail in these facilities, there is often massive loss of product, capital, data, etc.

Qualified BAS (QBAS)

Closed loop control and monitoring of temperature, pressure, humidity, and more. Like Validated BAS, these systems have to meet specific compliance measures and often involve monitoring, reporting, and data historians.

Environmental Monitoring System (EMS)

These sytems also focus on temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. of a controlled environment like labs, manufacturing facilities, and data centers.

Why might you need a BAS?

• You have critical materials within your facility that you need to maintain in a regulated environment. Building automation systems take the guesswork out of the design and show you in real time if you are meeting space environment requirements and/or energy savings goals.

• You would like to evaluate and lower your energy usage through monitoring and controlling consumption. Investing in a good BAS usually results in a very fast return on investment and long term energy savings, which means lower costs to run your facility.

• You need to know immediately when your building environment becomes unsafe for your product or people. Safety is a top priority for our customers, and a BAS can alert operations staff when there are major issues.

• You simply want to make your facility more comfortable, productive, and environmentally friendly.