Mike Newman, the father of BACnet, has passed away - Big-eu

Press Release

March 10th, 2020

Page 1/5

Mike Newman, the father of BACnet, has
passed away
Dortmund, March 10th, 2020. – Mike Newman, the founding father of the BACnet
protocol (ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-1995) and honorary member of the BACnet
Interest Group Europe (BIG-EU), died on March 4th, 2020, at home in Ithaca, N.Y.

It is with heavy hearts that the worldwide BACnet community says goodbye to Mike. We
would like to send our thoughts and deepest sympathy to his relatives. In BACnet he
created a landmark which has become the standard of choice for industry experts all over
the world. Mike will be remembered by all of us who had the pleasure of knowing him as
someone who was extremely sympathetic and an expert in his field. His legacy will be in
the continued application of his standard.

Mike’s initiative and efforts to standardize a data communication protocol for building
automation will never be forgotten. He successfully built a bridge, linking Europe and
North America. May he rest in peace.

In the mid-1970s, Mike Newman took over the operation of an energy management
system at Cornell University, Ithaca NY. He wrote: "That's when the real trouble began. All
the building automation companies started offering DDC equipment – and none of them
could communicate with each other. I began to wonder who was working on a standard
protocol. It was clear to me that the lack of a standard would ultimately be a major barrier
to the widespread adoption of DDC technology".

When IBM introduced a "FACN" integration protocol for their sites, Mike Newman
contacted ASHRAE towards the end of 1986. This provided the impulse for the
standardization work in the ASHRAE Working Group 135. The resulting protocol ANSI
135 has been protected as a trademark "BACnetTM" since 1992 and has been the
worldwide ISO standard 16484-5 since 2004.

Press Release

March 10th, 2020

Page 2/5

The ASHRAE working group, of which Mike Newman remained a passionate member all
his life, is still active today. Mike Newman will be greatly missed and we will all keep a
fond and honorable memory of his services to building automation in our hearts.

Key facts from Mike's eventful life

H. Michael "Mike" Newman had a long and distinguished business career. He graduated
from Cornell University in 1965 with a bachelor's degree in technical physics. In 1966,
after an internship at AEG in Berlin, he received a master's degree in the same field and
subsequently worked as a postgraduate in astrophysics at the NASA Center for
radiophysics and space research.

After ten years as a pilot and flight instructor, assisting in the design and maintenance of
electronic aircraft installations, Mike returned to Cornell to work in facility management
operations to further develop and install the university's "BACSI" (Building Automation and
Control System Integrator). The system controlled nearly 400 buildings with almost
1,337,531 BACnet objects (data points) (Feb. 2020 figures) and was one of the first
systems of its kind to combine multi-user and multi-protocol computers in an integrated,
vendor-neutral environment. He was head of the building automation systems integration
group within facilities services at Cornell University. Mike was also a member of the
Association of Energy Engineers of the Cornell Society of Engineers, the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a leading member of the Instrumentation,
Systems, and Automation Society (ISA).

As a Fellow and lifetime member of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and
Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Mike was a member of the Research and
Technical Committee that oversaw ASHRAE's research program and its technical
committees; he was a member of TC 1.4, the Technical Committee "Control Theory and
Application", until July 2000. He was also the founding chairman of the Standards Project
Committee 135P, which developed the BACnet communication protocol for building
automation networks, and until July 2000 he was chairman of the subsequent Standing
Standards Project Committee SSPC 135, which was responsible for the interpretation and
extension of BACnet.

Press Release

March 10th, 2020

Page 3/5

In 2003 he received the ASHRAE Standards Achievement Award and in 2010 the
Distinguished Service Award. The following year, in 2004, he was appointed head of the
XML working group of the BACnet committee that published the BACnet Web Services
Addendum, BACnet/WS, and was later made head of the elevators working group. He
was a member of the board of directors of BACnet International, the successor group to
the BACnet Manufacturers' Association, and chairman of the ASHRAE Standards
Committee, which oversees all of ASHRAE's standards work, and a member of the
Technology Council.

Mike was part of the organizing committee that set up the Professional Development
Seminar (PDS) on "Automatic Temperature Control" and was the PDS spokesperson on
"Automation Stations for HVAC Monitoring and Control" for twelve years. He contributed
to several revisions of the "Automation" (Automatic Control) chapter of the ASHRAE
manual.

In 1999, he was the co-author of the "GSA Guide to Specifying Interoperable Building
Automation and Control Systems Using the BACnet ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 135-1995",
published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and translated
and adapted by Hans Kranz for Germany as the "VDI-TGA/BIG-EU Guide to Tendering
Interoperable Building Automation based on DIN EN ISO 16484-5" and adapted for
Germany.

Mike Newman was also, among other things, patron of the first German BACnet reference
book "BACnet Gebäude-Automation 1.4" by Hans Kranz (3rd extended edition published).

He was the author of the award-winning reference book "Direct Digital Control of Building
Systems - Theory and Practice". His second book (initiated by Hans Kranz) "BACnet –
The Global Standard for Building Automation and Control Networks" was published in
2013. In the opening chapters he described the origins of BACnet and his involvement in it
in detail.

Mike Newman was a consultant to the Architect of the Capitol, the National Institute of
Building Sciences and NIST in Washington DC, as well as a number of private
companies. He was a member of the US delegation to the Advisory Review Board of the

Press Release

March 10th, 2020

Page 4/5

International Energy Agency on the use of microelectronic control systems for energy
conservation in buildings and served as the US expert for ISO/TC 205, "Building
environment design", of the International Organization for Standardization at meetings
around the world. He was chairman of the US Technical Advisory Group and the US
delegation leaders.

Mike spoke all over the world and as early as the 1990s was a speaker at the "Home and
Building Automation Forum " in Paris. He actively participated in the foundation of the
BACnet Interest Group Europe 1998 in Frankfurt. At the Building Performance Congress
at the Light + Building in 2000, again in Frankfurt, he gave a lecture entitled "BACnet -
Past, Present and Future".

In 2001 he was a member of a three-member BACnet delegation to Beijing and
Wuhan/China and in 2002 to Tokyo and Osaka/Japan. He was in Seoul/Korea in 2004 to
present a BACnet update to the "Intelligent Building Society of Korea" together with Hans
Kranz; he participated in the foundation of the BACnet Interest Groups "Austral Asia" in
Sydney and "Middle East" in Dubai/VAE, and spoke at the SHK Moscow 2004. He
participated in many ISO/TC 205 meetings in Berlin, Tromsö, Copenhagen, Seoul, Paris,
Cairo, Delft, Kyoto, Sydney, La Rochelle, Stockholm and Wuxi. In 2003 he was a speaker
at the VDI-TGA conference "Building automation – prerequisite for building management"
in Karlsruhe.

In 1999, Mike Newman was nominated "Engineer of the Year" by the Twin Tiers Chapter
of ASHRAE, and in 2001 he received an award of the same name from the Broome
Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers. In 2014, H. Michael
Newman was inducted into the ControlTrends Hall of Fame as the "Father of BACnet". He
will be sorely missed.

Photo 1
H. Michael Newman (at Ithaca Airport, NY)

Photo 2
H. Michael Newman (at Light + Building 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany)

Press Release

March 10th, 2020

Page 5/5

About the BIG-EU
The BACnet Interest Group Europe (BIG-EU) promotes the application of the global BACnet communication
standard ISO 16484-5 in building automation and security technology in Europe. It was founded in 1998 by 18
building automation companies and currently has over 130 members from Australia, Austria, Belgium,
Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway,
Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom and the USA. The objectives of the BIG-EU are
the perception of European interests in the development of the BACnet standard. There is also an exchange
of information with the BACnet-responsible ASHRAE committee "SSPC 135" and the American BACnet
community. The group also has a joint marketing policy and qualification offer and has jointly developed
technical guidelines. Further information is available at www.big-eu.org.

Press Enquiries
Bruno Kloubert, MarDirect, Dortmund, kloubert@mardirect.de, Tel. +49 231 42786731