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Anniversary – 30 years of BACnet Jubiläum – 30 Jahre BACnet

founded by initially 17 member companies. This was followed in January
1999 by BIG-NA (North America), on September 30, 1999 in Sydney by
BIG-AA (Austral-Asia), and in February 2000 the BACnet Manufacturers
Association (BMA) and the BACnet Testing Laboratories (BTL) were
announced in Dallas; the first tests began in 2004. The BIG–Middle
East (BIG-ME) was founded, and the VDI conducts BACnet courses in
cooperation with BIG-EU. Also in 2004, the first BACnet Plugfest took
place in Skokie, Illinois. In October 2005, the first German BACnet book,
“BACnet Gebäudeautomation 1.4”, was published. On January 22, 2006,
BIG-SE (Sweden) was founded, on March 23, 2006 BIG-FI (Finland), and
on April 23, 2006 BIG-RU (Russia) followed. In the latter, I held membership
number 001 as “Godfather”.

See Fig. 13.

In April 2007, BIG-FR (France) was founded. This was followed by BIG-IT
(Italy), BIG-CN (China), and BIG-PL (Poland). Some of them can be found
on the BACnet.org website. Almost all of them no longer exist because they
have merged into BACnet International.

In October 2007, the AMEV recommendation “BACnet in public buildings”
was published.

In 2001, BIG-EU commissioned me to translate the GSA Guide to
Specifying Interoperable Building Automation and Control Systems using
ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-1995, BACnet (Nov. 1999), with adaptation
to the Central European market and the German Construction Contract
Procedures (VOB). This was continuously adapted to developments until
2010 as the “Guideline for the specification of interoperable building
automation based on DIN EN ISO 16484-5 Building automation systems –
Data communication protocol (BACnet)”,

See Fig. 14. Fig. 14: 2010 VDI – BIG-EU BACnet Guideline
Abb. 14: 2010 VDI – BIG-EU Leitfaden BACnet
A small anecdote on the side: I served as auditor for BIG-EU; the treasurer
was Volker Röhl of JCI. After my first audit, I wrote in the expense report
“BIG-EU audit at Johnson Controls in Essen”. The Siemens accountant did
not know “BIG-EU” and shouted loudly down the corridor: “Kranz is trying
to mess with me!”

In December 1998, CEN also confirmed the BACnet protocol as an option
at the automation level as ENV 13321 “Data communication for HVAC
application: automation net”.

In January 1999, with Addendum 135-1995a, BACnet/IP became part
of the ANSI/ASHRAE 135-2001 BACnet standard as Annex J. BACnet
devices could now communicate directly with each other on a LAN or WAN
using the Internet protocol.

In April 2001, a diploma thesis entitled ”Design and Initial Implementation
of a BACnet/IP Protocol Analyzer in an Embedded System under the Linux
Operating System” was submitted to Prof. Peter Fischer at Dortmund
University of Applied Sciences and Arts by Hartmut Müller, Carsten
Buchenau, and Tim Abenath. This implementation enabled the analysis
of the BACnet protocol using Ethereal (now Wireshark) for the first time.
The following year, as part of an engineering project, the implementation of
the BACnet protocol in a different protocol analysis software was realized
by two students, Abdellasiz Aklia and Thomas Kurowski – who is now,
among other things, president of BIG-EU. Fig. 15: ISO–CEN BACnet Maintenance Agency
Abb. 15: ISO-CEN BACnet Maintenance Agency

12 BACnet Europe Journal 44 03/26