Overview

An essential step to the Virtual Facility implementation is capturing the context around the alarms generated by your BAS. Some of that context is included in the alarm message, but other alarm attributes must either be inferred from the message or are unable to be determined. A common example is an alarm which includes the name of a space, but does not include the building where that space is located.

Because the alarms themselves do not have all of the necessary information, customers need to provide Real Estate, Equipment, and BAS Alarm data to complete the picture. The more complete the information provided, the better Virtual Facility will be able to build helpful relationships between alarms, assets, and locations.

The most useful data is sources-of-truth. These are lists/inventories/databases that are considered to be the master list for assets, as opposed to multiple separate documents.

Please review the list of data sources that we've found helpful in the past and share the most helpful data sources with your Onboarding Engineer. See the Inventory Template at the end of the article for an example of the required data fields.  If you have any questions about what is needed, just ask!

Common Data Sources

Real Estate Data

• Building Names and Aliases: a list of buildings names and any other names that may exist for each building (e.g., what each building is called in the BAS or CMMS).
• Export of Building Data from CMMS: an export containing all buildings and their corresponding CMMS ID. Not necessary if provided with Building Names and Aliases above.
• Room Inventory: a list of rooms per building, including room number, room name, floor, and space type. Often available from a space management system, or CMMS. For acute care facilities (hospitals), the Detailed Space Usage Inventory that is required by the federal government is often helpful.
• Critical Spaces or Space Types: a list of specific spaces or space types that should be considered critical within Virtual Facility

Equipment/Systems Data

• System and Equipment Inventory: a list of equipment/systems including tag name, type, space(s) served (can also be provided separately). This equipment list can often be exported from the CMMS, however it is necessary for VF to understand how CMMS IDs correspond to equipment/system tag names in BAS alarm text.
• Critical Systems and Equipment: a list of specific systems/equipment that should be considered critical within VF

BAS Alarm Data

• SQL/Postgres BAS Database Exports: exports of all available tables from BAS database (if one exists).
• BAS Controller Inventory: a list of controllers including device ID, building, and equipment/system served.