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Success Story

Leading BAS Manufacturers: Achieving Global Asset View and Driving Cost Savings

Two leading multinational Building Automation Systems (BAS) manufacturers used GraphDB to leverage the Brick metadata schema for buildings, enabling global asset visibility and streamlining system management, while reducing costs and accelerating implementation for BAS integrators.

The Client

Two leading multinational BAS manufacturers providing integrated solutions for HVAC, lighting, fire safety, security, and IoT-enabled building management systems

The Challenge

Both BAS manufacturers needed better tooling to model and manage complex, multi-component systems that remained isolated and difficult to coordinate across building expansions and changes

The Solution

Using GraphDB and the Brick metadata schema, the manufacturers created a unified semantic model that provides integrators with a global view of diverse BAS

Technical capabilities

  • Standardized asset descriptions using Brick schema for HVAC, lighting, electrical, sensors, and spatial systems
  • Graph-based data integration enabling centralized modeling and change management across isolated systems

Business outcomes

  • Faster BAS implementation with reduced operational risks for integrators  
  • Lower maintenance costs through enterprise-wide asset visibility and centralized management

The Challenge

Building automation systems have become increasingly complex, integrating HVAC, lighting, fire safety, security, and IoT devices. Each system typically has proprietary input/output devices connected to controllers and UIs that work together to process real-time information.

The core problem was that individual systems were modeled differently and remained isolated from each other. When changes were needed (e.g. expanding a building), the modifications had to be reflected manually across multiple different systems. This fragmentation made it difficult for BAS manufacturers to gain a global view over segmented models, creating inefficiencies for both the manufacturers and the BAS integrators who implemented their systems.

The Solution

The manufacturers chose to implement the Brick schema — an open-source RDF framework designed by industry leaders including Johnson Controls and Schneider Electric — to represent all BAS components and their complex interactions. Brick provides standardized semantic descriptions of physical and virtual building assets and their relationships, covering HVAC, lighting, electrical, sensors, and spatial systems.

To maximize collaboration and data visualization, the manufacturers selected GraphDB as their RDF database to house the semantic model and data. The RDF graph model closely resembled real-world building automation systems and relationships, providing the optimal framework for data integration, linking, reuse, and analysis.

GraphDB’s robustness, standard compliance, and excellent query performance delivered the business-critical stability needed for production environments. It enabled BAS integrators to easily set up systems, load data, monitor differences, and compare different model versions from a central location.

The Impact

The semantic integration delivered significant improvements for both the manufacturers and their integrators:

  • Enhanced efficiency and cost savings through visual understanding of relationships between building systems and data points
  • Streamlined modeling and change management, saving time and resources when implementing building automation systems manufactured by the companies
  • Improved competitive positioning by offering BAS integrators easier and quicker implementation processes
  • Global asset visibility enabling better analysis of system efficiency and easier decision-making regarding the balance between productivity and cost

The standardized Brick descriptions now provide contextual awareness that makes it easy for BAS integrators to model systems and make changes from a central place, with GraphDB delivering the efficient, flexible, and reliable tooling that enhances the manufacturers’ market offerings.

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Solution: GraphDB
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Facing Similar Challenges?

Struggling with isolated building systems that slow down implementation and drive up costs?

Whether you're a BAS manufacturer, systems integrator, or facility management company, Graphwise can help you:

  • Unify fragmented building systems using standardized semantic schemas like Brick
  • Enable centralized modeling and change management across all BAS components
  • Accelerate implementation with powerful tooling that reduces operational risks 
  • Deliver global asset visibility for smarter building management and cost optimization

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