The Brick Consortium, Inc. (The Brick Consortium), the non-profit membership-led organization that sponsors and encourages the research and development (R&D) of the open source - Brick schema specifications for the built environment, has announced that five companies have joined on as inaugural members: Carrier Corporation (Carrier), Clockworks Analytics, Johnson Controls, Mapped, and Schneider Electric.
These commercial members join academic members, who hail from Carnegie Mellon University, the Colorado School of Mines, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at San Diego.
The Brick Consortium
The consortium, through the Brick schema, addresses an important industry and societal need
The consortium, through the Brick schema, addresses an important industry and societal need by helping make data of the built environment interoperable.
The Brick Schema provides a common mapping and interchange format for data from sources, such as the HVAC and building automation systems, lighting, electrical, access control, fire protection, occupancy, and other common building systems.
Governance for the Brick Schema specifications
The consortium provides governance for the Brick Schema specifications and is developing tooling, conformance testing protocols, and a repository of reference models and canonical use cases. The consortium also funds the research of work related to Brick and the built environment and works to evangelize the use of the Brick schema.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Professor, Yuvraj Agarwal, said “We are excited to have these industry leaders joining the Brick Consortium and contributing to the development of the Brick schema.”
Carnegie Mellon University’s Professor, Mario Bergés, said “The Consortium will provide the community assurances that Brick has a long-term future and can be a contributing technology for improving the efficiency and comfort of buildings.”
Both Agarwal and Bergés are Brick Consortium Steering Committee members. The Brick Consortium, Inc.’s inaugural member companies include:
- Carrier Corporation (Carrier)
“In support of Carrier’s commitment to make buildings healthy, safe, sustainable and intelligent, Carrier leverages Brick in its Abound digital platform,” said Bobby George, Senior Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, Carrier Corporation.
Bobby George adds, “We believe in an open, interoperable and connected future for the built environment and for this, we’re proud to be part of the Brick Consortium.”
- Clockworks Analytics
Clockworks Analytics is a globally renowned provider of cloud-based fault detection and diagnostics software solutions for buildings. Clockworks Analytics utilizes a standardized information model for point typing, equipment and system relationships, and mechanical and controls sequence metadata, and is currently connected to more than 400 million square feet and over 320,000 mechanical assets in 30 countries.
Information modeling with the open-source community
The Brick Consortium is an important community driving building system metadata standards forward"
In joining The Brick Consortium, Inc., Clockworks Analytics will share its consistent approach to information modeling with the open-source community, with the goal of helping drive the industry toward a universal standard.
“The Brick Consortium is an important community driving building system metadata standards forward,” said Nick Gayeski, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Clockworks Analytics.
Nick Gayeski adds, “For Clockworks, joining each of the open-source data interoperability communities underscores our commitment to help the industry turn operational data into real-time insight for healthier buildings in a scalable way.”
- Johnson Controls
“Brick is foundational to our OpenBlue Digital Twin strategy and the Brick representation schema is leveraged across multiple OpenBlue products,” said Vijay Sankaran, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Johnson Controls.
Vijay Sankaran adds, “We are pleased to be a part of the Brick Consortium and work with the open source community to create an expanded digital twin ecosystem that serves the industry as a whole, allowing for more integration and driving partnerships that create smarter, healthier and more sustainable buildings.”
- Mapped
Mapped provides an end-to-end data infrastructure for buildings. Everything from data discovery to a single user-facing API that connects all the data generated by the people, places, and things in buildings.
Mapped is proud to be a part of the innovative and collaborative Brick community"
Jason Koh, the Chief Data Scientist at Mapped, said “In today’s landscape it’s challenging to manage all the heterogeneous data within a platform, let alone also provide a common view of the digitized world to the users, while supporting interoperability across different platforms. Mapped quickly recognized the value of Brick as the best repository for collecting and organizing the common metadata schema for building applications.”
Jason Koh adds, “Creating a uniform ontology across the domains requires collective effort, and Mapped is proud to be a part of the innovative and collaborative Brick community. Mapped stands by Brick's transparent governance and aims to actively contribute to the ecosystem.”
- Schneider Electric
“We are excited to join forces with The Brick Consortium to help create momentum for its adoption within the industry,” said Manish Kumar, the Senior Vice President (SVP), Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric, adding “Building owners want their buildings to be sustainable, resilient, hyper-efficient and people-centric. Essential to achieving that is an open building system that simplifies data access and management.”
Manish Kumar adds, “Brick schema provides clear, consistent, building-centric ontology to leverage data for Schneider Electric EcoStruxure for Buildings. The schema makes it possible to enhance engineering efficiency. It helps system integrators and end-customers achieve operational and energy efficiency, as well as healthy and flexible buildings of the future.”
Next release of the Brick schema, version 1.3
The Brick Consortium members and other interested open source contributors are developing the next release of the Brick schema, version 1.3. The consortium expects to complete development this month, and after a review process the members will approve the final release of version 1.3 by February 2022.
Highlights of the version 1.3 release includes official integration with real-time data sources, such as BACnet and time-series databases, a more expressive model for chillers and other heat pumps, and features designed to make interoperability with future standards easier, such as the ASHRAE 223P standard currently under development. The code and development roadmap of the Brick schema can be found at on the official company website of The Brick Consortium, Inc.
