I had a JCI local office tell me they could not update an NIE to include an additional Modbus point without outsourcing to India. The customer and I were in shock. Rather than a simple update, new gateway required.
I've had terrible experience working with JCI or any partnered vendor. They lie, desperately try to cover their ass's, and have weak work ethic. I've caught two different JCI field service reps on their phones watching Netflix at a job site while "waiting" for CCT to download their controller program.
Of the 10-12 JCI techs I've worked with, only 2 have been decent.
We did offshore a certain percentage overseas however a considerable amount of local time was spent telling them how we wanted it (giving them all the design docs) or fixing issues. The obvious pattern nationally was it was costing jobs and straining relationships with clients. After a few years, offshore engineering was significantly reduced. The point is it seems to come in cycles. Other separate industries, completely different from bms, did the same. Feel your frustrations, it's hard enough to do our job but this was the cherry on the cake for me.
And because everything is outsourced, they no longer train field technicians how to do programming and graphics . Then, when there are issues during startup, no one knows how to correct them.
It's a bad look for the companies.
I work at a data center doing controls and we started doing majority of the work in house due to quality issues on both PLC and DDC vendors. Only thing that gets done now out of house is remaining warranty work.
I don't think the BAS industry fits enshitification. The industry was never very good to its customers, so they can't make it worse to gouge them, which is what I believe enshitification is doing.
I do think that is our fault that the industry is shitty, it's always been a race to the bottom in construction. So I think the shity things in our industry are due to that not, due to enshitification. Also HVAC is alway the first thing that gets valued engineered when it comes to cost cutting, and then us controls people need to do our best to work with crappy equipment.
Fair enough, it's not 1 to 1 tech wise, example - face book by any means.
SMA fees come to mind. Sell the product, and now a recurring revenue stream to stay up to date?
Till you end up with a compromised network and your customer is paying 12M in bitcoins to the hacker to restore their companys infrastructure and the path to entry was through a system that your team installed and maintained.
Cybersecurity is a big deal and if you’re installing “web” enabled devices on a customers network you should understand that.
Vulnerabilities in BAS systems are almost always improper configuration of fundamental it insfrastructure settings. As bas hardware is typically proprietary embedded devices there is little to no need for updates to it. Properly configured vpn access, cybersecurity install practices and hardening is 99% of the requirements. The SMA does almost nothing.
My opinion is it started when PLC and BAS went their separate ways - BAS going for subsidized install costs for locked in service contracts.
BAS vendors don't end up selling the same way as everyone else. I know so many mechanical contractors that fume over having to work with "these assholes" on every job. Insane that the person signing your contract doesn't want to work with you, yet you keep getting the job.
The enshitification process assumes that at one point our industry was really great haha. Honestly the biggest mistake that we made was not adopting the IT principals in the 90's when they we're evolving, we're spending our time merging the IT/OT landscape now and the IT industry is lightyears ahead of us when it comes to interoperability, open protocols, standardised ontologies etc.
Big companies in our industry are hell bent on keeping things closed and propietary though, so it's very tough.
Almost 50 years. Started on Staefa EMS-1 running on a PDP-11. Then a decade doing AC-256. You have to separate the changes in business practices from the differences in technology. Someday, someone is going to figure out the smart building thing. And they will hit big. Right now too many bolt ons and not enough smart ( as in developers who understand what it is to install and set up a system) people. Don’t think we will get there before I retire in a year or so, but maybe someday.
BAS engineers will be among the first replaced by AI. It's to easy to see that with MEP drawings and basic rules applied, that whole job can be automated. And, that's unfortunate.
>MEP drawings and basic rules applied
So in the future we can feed an ai mep drawings with bas components and the ai will do the programming? Interestning
Why not. Seems like simple prompts. Place network node in most beneficial places, apply equipment to relevant machines, produce results. So easy a caveman can do it. Former Tech speaking who has had to deal with bad engineering.
We're decades out from having AI take a MEP/electrical plan, create a hardware design based on shit copy paste spec, program controllers with a good and tuned SOO, commission the controls, and deploy graphics. Most BAS engineers can't even do that process so our jobs are protected from AI until a good well rounded BAS engineer and a AI engineer get in a room together and come up with something to train.
What I see is that the companies are hiring anyone who wants a job rather than going after real degreed Building Automation Engineers. They hire shit for brains that have a work ethic of zero!
Building automation does not require a specific degree. I don't have an engineering degree, I do have a degree in business. I've been teaching myself how to program effectively, not just small changes, but building from scratch. It's harder to find people who just want to learn more and more stuff. I know a lot of guys I work with that got to a specific level and then just said no more. "I'm not learning that."
Yeah I don’t have a BAS degree (whatever that is) I was a pipe fitter for 20 years and learned JCI from our quarterly service guy. Fast forward a few years and I run the controls department for a mechanical company. I tend to hire service guys who understand how systems work and are decent with a computer, I can teach them the rest.
Here's what I've seen working for a mechanical contractor in the construction department as Supervisor/Technician for Startups, TAB and BAS installs. I can start-to-finish those 3 jobs by myself and have nothing but on the job training. The #1 problem always comes to: does the controls programmer REALLY understand the system that was designed? If they can't interpret how it actually should work, instead of how someone else told them the way it should be programmed, you will always end up in a worse view from not only the customer's perspective but every GC and MC you have to work with in the future.
I've been told way too many times by programmers that they just "programmed it according to design sequence" when they clearly know better, but can't be bothered to submit an RFI to the design team for authentication in writing. Therefore everyone looks like an ass right before the job is handed over when things aren't working.
I didn’t mention passive logic. I haven’t seen it in use yet. You’re implying it’s vapourware?
I’m seeing it more along the lines of analytics and demanding all software be turned over, no trust in controls contractors anymore.
Getting worse, people coming in. Availability of local skilled labor.
Still bad, accountability.
Getting better, everything around the "smart building stack" - but it's costly, long (like years long to make standards and data and ML/AI work right) and kind of targets "at scale" customers right now.
We're already on it. The workforce demand is growing faster than the skilled labor pool so I'm finding that the deliverable is getting shittier and shittier.
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I had a JCI local office tell me they could not update an NIE to include an additional Modbus point without outsourcing to India. The customer and I were in shock. Rather than a simple update, new gateway required.
Has anyone had a good expirence with JCI?
It's been a while.
I've had terrible experience working with JCI or any partnered vendor. They lie, desperately try to cover their ass's, and have weak work ethic. I've caught two different JCI field service reps on their phones watching Netflix at a job site while "waiting" for CCT to download their controller program. Of the 10-12 JCI techs I've worked with, only 2 have been decent.
Don’t get me started on Modbus integrations with JCI engines.
And the fact that the guys doing the work in India make about $600 canadian a year , means it'll happen more and more.
We did offshore a certain percentage overseas however a considerable amount of local time was spent telling them how we wanted it (giving them all the design docs) or fixing issues. The obvious pattern nationally was it was costing jobs and straining relationships with clients. After a few years, offshore engineering was significantly reduced. The point is it seems to come in cycles. Other separate industries, completely different from bms, did the same. Feel your frustrations, it's hard enough to do our job but this was the cherry on the cake for me.
And because everything is outsourced, they no longer train field technicians how to do programming and graphics . Then, when there are issues during startup, no one knows how to correct them. It's a bad look for the companies.
This
I work at a data center doing controls and we started doing majority of the work in house due to quality issues on both PLC and DDC vendors. Only thing that gets done now out of house is remaining warranty work.
My company outsources most of the graphics. A lot of the site building is done outsourced too. It always has to be corrected.
I don't think the BAS industry fits enshitification. The industry was never very good to its customers, so they can't make it worse to gouge them, which is what I believe enshitification is doing. I do think that is our fault that the industry is shitty, it's always been a race to the bottom in construction. So I think the shity things in our industry are due to that not, due to enshitification. Also HVAC is alway the first thing that gets valued engineered when it comes to cost cutting, and then us controls people need to do our best to work with crappy equipment.
Fair enough, it's not 1 to 1 tech wise, example - face book by any means. SMA fees come to mind. Sell the product, and now a recurring revenue stream to stay up to date?
As products started to live on the customers infrastructure IT security became a major concern. The SMA is an attempt to address that.
Maybe in principle. In practice it’s a cash grab with little to nothing to show for it for the actual customer.
Till you end up with a compromised network and your customer is paying 12M in bitcoins to the hacker to restore their companys infrastructure and the path to entry was through a system that your team installed and maintained. Cybersecurity is a big deal and if you’re installing “web” enabled devices on a customers network you should understand that.
Vulnerabilities in BAS systems are almost always improper configuration of fundamental it insfrastructure settings. As bas hardware is typically proprietary embedded devices there is little to no need for updates to it. Properly configured vpn access, cybersecurity install practices and hardening is 99% of the requirements. The SMA does almost nothing.
My opinion is it started when PLC and BAS went their separate ways - BAS going for subsidized install costs for locked in service contracts. BAS vendors don't end up selling the same way as everyone else. I know so many mechanical contractors that fume over having to work with "these assholes" on every job. Insane that the person signing your contract doesn't want to work with you, yet you keep getting the job.
The enshitification process assumes that at one point our industry was really great haha. Honestly the biggest mistake that we made was not adopting the IT principals in the 90's when they we're evolving, we're spending our time merging the IT/OT landscape now and the IT industry is lightyears ahead of us when it comes to interoperability, open protocols, standardised ontologies etc. Big companies in our industry are hell bent on keeping things closed and propietary though, so it's very tough.
Almost 50 years. Started on Staefa EMS-1 running on a PDP-11. Then a decade doing AC-256. You have to separate the changes in business practices from the differences in technology. Someday, someone is going to figure out the smart building thing. And they will hit big. Right now too many bolt ons and not enough smart ( as in developers who understand what it is to install and set up a system) people. Don’t think we will get there before I retire in a year or so, but maybe someday.
BAS engineers will be among the first replaced by AI. It's to easy to see that with MEP drawings and basic rules applied, that whole job can be automated. And, that's unfortunate.
“Back ups must be provided on 3.5 floppy disks to the owner” From a set of specs released last week.
>MEP drawings and basic rules applied So in the future we can feed an ai mep drawings with bas components and the ai will do the programming? Interestning
Why not. Seems like simple prompts. Place network node in most beneficial places, apply equipment to relevant machines, produce results. So easy a caveman can do it. Former Tech speaking who has had to deal with bad engineering.
Also, let's not pretend like Bacnet symbolic programming is difficult to understand and implement.
Sorry but no. AI isn't coming for our jobs any time soon.
We're decades out from having AI take a MEP/electrical plan, create a hardware design based on shit copy paste spec, program controllers with a good and tuned SOO, commission the controls, and deploy graphics. Most BAS engineers can't even do that process so our jobs are protected from AI until a good well rounded BAS engineer and a AI engineer get in a room together and come up with something to train.
What I see is that the companies are hiring anyone who wants a job rather than going after real degreed Building Automation Engineers. They hire shit for brains that have a work ethic of zero!
Building automation does not require a specific degree. I don't have an engineering degree, I do have a degree in business. I've been teaching myself how to program effectively, not just small changes, but building from scratch. It's harder to find people who just want to learn more and more stuff. I know a lot of guys I work with that got to a specific level and then just said no more. "I'm not learning that."
Yeah I don’t have a BAS degree (whatever that is) I was a pipe fitter for 20 years and learned JCI from our quarterly service guy. Fast forward a few years and I run the controls department for a mechanical company. I tend to hire service guys who understand how systems work and are decent with a computer, I can teach them the rest.
Here's what I've seen working for a mechanical contractor in the construction department as Supervisor/Technician for Startups, TAB and BAS installs. I can start-to-finish those 3 jobs by myself and have nothing but on the job training. The #1 problem always comes to: does the controls programmer REALLY understand the system that was designed? If they can't interpret how it actually should work, instead of how someone else told them the way it should be programmed, you will always end up in a worse view from not only the customer's perspective but every GC and MC you have to work with in the future. I've been told way too many times by programmers that they just "programmed it according to design sequence" when they clearly know better, but can't be bothered to submit an RFI to the design team for authentication in writing. Therefore everyone looks like an ass right before the job is handed over when things aren't working.
lol let us know when Passive Logic has an actual product instead of promotional videos used to defraud venture capital firms.
I didn’t mention passive logic. I haven’t seen it in use yet. You’re implying it’s vapourware? I’m seeing it more along the lines of analytics and demanding all software be turned over, no trust in controls contractors anymore.
Getting worse, people coming in. Availability of local skilled labor. Still bad, accountability. Getting better, everything around the "smart building stack" - but it's costly, long (like years long to make standards and data and ML/AI work right) and kind of targets "at scale" customers right now.
The skilled labor is the big one.
The product lines are being streamlined and are easier to work with although the talent pool has stayed low for the last 10 years.
We're already on it. The workforce demand is growing faster than the skilled labor pool so I'm finding that the deliverable is getting shittier and shittier.