How does an IT-Label assessment work? (Simply explained)

What an IT-Label assessment is

An IT-Label assessment is an independent evaluation of a building's digital foundation. A certified partner establishes what is present and whether it works as intended.

That second part is what sets the assessment apart from an inventory. A list of available provisions is quickly made, but says nothing about what a user actually gets from them in practice. More on the approach on the page how it works and in the methodology.

1. Connectivity

The link to the outside world. Assessed are the type of connection, the capacity, the redundancy, the internet speed, the latency and the stability.

Redundancy is a question of its own: does more than one connection come in, and do they run via physically separate routes? A single fibre route cut during roadworks brings an entire building to a halt, whatever speed it was rated at. More on fibre, cloud connectivity and network redundancy.

2. Infrastructure

Everything inside the building. The cabling and its type: CAT5e, CAT6, CAT6A or internal fibre, partly determines which speeds are achievable and how much room there is to grow.

Alongside that: the wifi infrastructure and its coverage, the patch and server rooms, network management, cybersecurity, monitoring and back-up connections. The state of the technical rooms counts too: a server room that cannot be locked or has no fire detection is part of the same picture.

3. Performance

This is the area that makes an assessment more than a list. Here the performance is measured under real conditions, instead of being copied from the specification.

A connection rated at a given capacity on paper can disappoint in practice because of the internal cabling, a misconfigured switch, or a link that is shared at peak times. What is measured counts, not what was ordered.

A building with fibre on paper and disappointing throughput in practice is assessed on the practice. That is the whole point of measuring.

4. Scalability

Whether the infrastructure grows along when the load increases or new applications are added. A network that suffices today but leaves no room for expansion places a limit on what a user can do in the building.

Assessed is whether there is spare capacity, whether the architecture allows expansion and whether there is physical room for additional provisions. More on future-proof building.

5. Integration

Whether the building systems work together or function as separate islands. A building can have excellent individual systems that know nothing of each other: access control disconnected from visitor registration, climate control that does nothing with occupancy data.

Integration determines whether the sum is more than the parts, and whether it can be built on later. More on smart building technology.

6. Smart building

The smart provisions themselves: climate installations, access control, camera security, visitor registration, booking systems and building management systems.

Assessed is not only whether they are there, but also whether they are connected to a stable network, whether they are secured and what happens when they fail.

What happens after the assessment

The findings are translated into a classification from IT1+ PREMIUM to IT5 SHELL. That classification describes what the building delivers and which provisions the user fits out themselves: it is not a grade.

The owner also gets a picture of what was found: where the infrastructure does what it promises, and where practice diverges from the design. What is done with that is up to the owner. The certificate is valid for two years: digital infrastructure ages, and a five-year-old statement says little. See what appears on your certificate.