The Buildy nominations are in. Nominated by their peers, the finalists in each of the five categories for the 2006 Buildy Awards have been chosen. Designed to increase awareness of the benefits of whole building integration and honor successful implementation strategies, the Buildy Awards Program celebrates the North American organizations and individuals who best support the vision of networked buildings.

The winners of the 2006 Buildy Awards will be selected by the BuilConn attendees during the expo on May 17, and announced at the Industry Gala May 18. Ballots can be cast during the expo on May 17. The three-day BuilConn event will take place May 16-18, 2006, at the Palm Springs Convention Center in Palm Springs, CA.

Within the five award categories-Best Integration Project, Best Product, Best Building, Initiative and Vision -the finalists are an innovative mix representing all facets of the integration process.

Awarded to a systems integrator, the recipient of the Best Integration Project award demonstrates the ability to efficiently integrate a wide array of building systems together and successfully enable operation over a corporate IT infrastructure. Representing North America's integrators in this category are:

Interval Data Systems for the Iowa State University Campus

Scanlon Consulting for the Denver Public Schools

Control Technologies for the New York City Schools "Children First" Project

Honoring a manufacturer whose new product or service overcame a significant challenge, enhanced, or simplified the integration process, the finalists for Best Product are:

EnNET® Enterprise Server by Gridlogix, Inc.

XPress DR+ by Lantronix

EnergyWitness™ by Interval Data Systems

The KAN 254B Wireless BACnet Router by Kiyon

JENEsys™ by Lynxspring

The Best Building award is presented to the building owner or consultant with the most progressive building technology supporting the vision of whole building integration. The finalists for Best Building are:

Boeing's Long Beach Assembly Center

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Retrofit of Novo Nordisk Laboratory

Carlsbad Public Schools

New in 2006, the Initiative award honors a company or organization that has shown or launched a key initiative to enable or otherwise forward the subject of integrated and intelligent buildings. The finalists for Initiative are:

LonMark® Open Systems Certification Program

Creation of the new BACnet International organization

Creation of a wireless protocol standard for control networks - ZigBee

Building Intelligence Quotient (BIQ) Tool

Cisco Connected Real Estate - CCRE

The Vision award will be presented to the industry professional that best demonstrates a vision of whole building integration and interoperability through advocacy, promotion, educational and training endeavors. The finalists in this category are:

Tim Huneycutt, Vice President, Engineering, Gridlogix

Jim Lee, CEO, Cimetrics, Inc.

John J. "Jack" Mc Gowan, President, Energy Control Inc.

John Petze, CEO, Tridium, Inc.

For more information, please visithttp://www.builconn.com/.