B7 Reflection Kevin Saldivar

This intelligent building course covered a range of interesting topics such as robots and sensors, but also provided insight into other areas such as green buildings and construction process.  My understanding of intelligent building was not very broad at first, my definition for intelligent buildings as described in post 1 was, “An intelligent building is a structure that can react to internal or external changes in order to regulate a process or system of processes”.  Basically I thought sticking sensors in a building to regulate something encompassed an intelligent building in its entirety.  I learned that it is actually a process that begins much earlier in a project during the design phase.  After this was established other areas such as construction or green building were taken into consideration.  These processes were analyzed and any areas that the intelligent building process could be applied to were discussed.  I have not seen the intelligent building process first hand at work yet, but can definitely see it being a large part of my future work.  It has not been implemented into my workplace most likely due to the smaller size of the majority of the projects.

There is no doubt that it will have a profound effect on my profession, and any design profession for that matter.  I think it will be imperative to at least have a basic understanding of where the field is now as well as what direction and where the field is heading in order to work effectively and efficiently.  There will also be more technology available in the future to complete more thorough inspections and condition assessments.  This will mainly be completed through the use of devices and not the process but is still important to consider.