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Engineering 2012-05-21 2 min read

Realcomm Announces GSA/PBS Latest Step in Award-Winning Smart Building Program

The recent announcement of the much anticipated GSA/PBS Fast 50 Award is an important industry transformation to a more seamless, energy conserving, operationally efficient, financially optimized and more tenant friendly model.

CARLSBAD, CA, May 21, 2012

With the recent announcement of the much anticipated GSA/PBS Fast 50 Award, Realcomm Conference Group, LLC, a global leader in providing technology education and networking opportunities for the commercial, corporate, institutional and government real estate industry, announced an important milestone today - the transformation of a paper based, disparate industry to a more seamless, energy conserving, operationally efficient, financially optimized and more tenant friendly model.

The Realcomm journey on this topic started in earnest in April of 2002 with the publication of the article, "Network Appliances - Connecting Buildings & Processes to the Net!" The GSA/PBS contract that will build their Automated Building Analytics and Measurement (ABAM) platform (formerly dubbed the "Fast 50") substantiates that the industry is well on its way to completely change how commercial space is managed, operated and used.

IBM was awarded the contract to develop and install advanced smart building technology in 50 of the federal government's highest energy-consuming buildings. Part of GSA's larger smart building strategy, this initiative will connect building management systems to a central cloud based platform, improving efficiency and saving up to $15 million in taxpayer dollars annually. Commercial buildings account for nearly 40% of the United States' primary energy use and GSA owns nearly 182 million square feet of office space nationwide.

Assistant Commissioner Larry Melton, Phil Klokis, Frank Santella and their entire team, committed the last three years to making this vision realty. Phase 1 of this project will be to create "data driven buildings" which involves gathering, analyzing and acting on data from building systems, initially in the 50 most energy intensive buildings and ultimately across the entire portfolio.

"It is with much anticipation that the GSA/PBS Fast 50 Award was announced today. After many years of traveling the world, looking at the smartest, most connected, high performance, intelligent buildings, I am confident that the combined team of IBM and its subcontractors, along with the vision and commitment of GSA/PBS will result in a world-class methodology for owning and operating commercial space," said Jim Young, Co-Founder and CEO of Realcomm. "This is much more than just an announcement about a project award, starting today we are much closer to 1) creating real green jobs, 2) operating buildings with extraordinary efficiency, 3) reducing our reliance on energy exports, 4) significantly lowering carbon emissions and 5) creating a solution set that is 'Made in the USA' and sold to the rest of the world, showing once again that innovation is alive and well in America!"

About Realcomm
Realcomm Conference Group, LLC (www.realcomm.com) is the leading research and educational institution that produces annual conferences and expositions on technology, automated business solutions and intelligent buildings for executives in commercial, corporate, institutional and government real estate. Realcomm was founded in 1999 with the goal of bringing industry leaders together each year to discuss, demonstrate and debate the latest innovations that impact the industry. Today, in addition to the annual conferences, Realcomm conducts webinars, workshops and other strategic services to educate industry professionals about the latest business solutions and technologies to improve commercial real estate development, leasing, management and operations.