CABA unveiled its intelligent building ranking tool: the Building Intelligence Quotient (BIQ). The BIQ ranking tool has three functions. It serves as: i) a means to evaluate and measure the "value" of intelligent building performance; ii) a design guide for integration of building intelligence in new building projects; and iii) a building automation retrofit action plan tool.

"The Building Intelligence Quotient is designed to paint a clear picture of your building intelligence performance against best practices for design, installation and operation," states Ronald J. Zimmer, CABA president and CEO. "It gives practical advice for improvements, offers resources for making the upgrades, and provides additional information on relevant strategies and technologies."

The tool allows property owners and managers to rate a building's intelligence and provides design guidance to ensure that all relevant issues are considered when making a choice of subsystems and their level of integration. Owners and developers with multiple properties can also use the BIQ tool to assess and compare the building intelligence systems in their portfolio.

In addition, as more and more buildings are BIQ verified, point scores will be aggregated in an anonymous database, enabling users to analyze how their building intelligence design performs in relation both to the median and to buildings that are similar in terms, type and region.

Because the assessment is completely online, owners and managers have the ability to change input up to a year, with an option to extend. This allows users to keep their assessment up-to-date as the building intelligence changes through the project delivery stages as buildings are retrofitted.

Building intelligence results in higher building value, improved comfort, security, flexibility and reliability while reducing costs and increasing productivity. Lower costs and higher property and lease values can result in aggressive return on investments and clear justifications for making buildings more intelligent.

The modular assessment will initially generate a report that will provide benchmark rankings as well as recommendations for improvements in the following categories: communication systems; building automation; annunciation, security and control systems; facility management applications; and building structure and systems.

The ranking tool is available at www.caba.org/biq.