“Some building systems are born smart, some achieve smartness and some have smartness thrust upon them,” Shakespeare might have said if he were a 21st century mechanical engineer or facility manager working in Chicago. Taking center-stage in the ambitious Midwest city is a smart building retrofit worthy of applause. Completed in 1990, 311 South Wacker Drive is an iconic post-modern 65-story skyscraper. At 961 feet tall, it is the seventh tallest building in Chicago and the 21st tallest in the US. Its heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems (HVAC), however, were less impressive until the building’s owners, Zeller Realty Group, found an innovative way to drag the outdated building into the smart world. Like many buildings of its generation, 311 South Wacker’s HVAC system is made up of mechanically operated pneumatic thermostats. This pre-digital system utilizes an old-fashioned pressure release, provides no centralized control function and creates absolutely no data at all. “The problem with the […]