SRI and IT-Label: from smart building to digital use

The real estate sector loves labels. We measure energy performance, we certify sustainability, we assess health and technical condition, and increasingly also how smart a building is. Now comes the Smart Readiness Indicator, or SRI. An interesting European development that looks at a building's capacity to use smart technology: optimizing energy performance, responding to user needs and reacting to the energy system.

That has value. Yet from IT-Label's perspective, we raise a critical follow-up question. What good is it to a user that a building is smart, if he does not know what he can actually do with it digitally? Real estate, after all, is not developed to achieve a high technical score. It is developed to be used.

And that use is changing rapidly. In this article we explain why SRI is an interesting test case, and why the question of digital functionality for the user remains a separate issue.

From building performance to user performance

The discussion around real estate is still often framed from the building's perspective. How sustainable is it? How energy efficient? How smart? Which installations does it contain? All relevant questions, but the tenant ultimately looks at it from a different angle.

An organization mainly wants to know whether it can work here, and increasingly whether it can work here digitally. Is there sufficient connectivity? What fiber optic infrastructure is present? Is there redundancy? Can the infrastructure support hundreds of simultaneous users? These are no longer technical details, they are housing questions.

Wait, that got cut off in my draft. Let me rewrite this paragraph correctly.

An organization mainly wants to know whether it can work here, and increasingly whether it can work here digitally. Is there sufficient connectivity? What fiber optic infrastructure is present? Is there redundancy? Can the infrastructure support hundreds of simultaneous users? These are no longer purely technical details, they have become housing questions.

The underlying themes increasingly come together. Think of the WiFi coverage in buildings, the data cabling present, the layout of patch and server rooms and what happens in case of an outage. And perhaps the most important question is whether the workplace can handle the organization's future AI and data use.

SRI looks at the building, IT-Label at what the building can facilitate digitally

That is where an important difference lies. SRI primarily looks at the smart readiness of the building and its installations. IT-Label looks at the digital delivery level and the relevant digital infrastructure for both building and user. That may seem like a nuance, but for the real estate market it is a fundamental difference.

A building can be technically very smart while still being digitally underequipped for a specific user. Sensors may function excellently, climate installations may respond intelligently, lighting may be controlled automatically and the building management system may collect large volumes of data. Meanwhile, a tenant can still run into limited connectivity, outdated internal cabling or unclear responsibilities.

Smart, therefore, does not automatically mean digitally suitable. We see SRI as an interesting test case for a larger development, one that connects well to what is happening around smart building technology and the infrastructure underlying it.

A building can last decades structurally and still fall behind digitally within a few years of what the user needs.

The test case: does the market still want another technical indicator?

SRI is going to teach us something interesting. Not just about smart buildings, but also about how technical building information ultimately reaches the user. Because how many tenants will actually know what a particular SRI score means for their daily operations?

That, in our view, is the challenge. The real estate sector already has an enormous amount of technical information available. The problem is not always that information is missing, but that the translation step is missing: from technology to real estate, from real estate to broker, from broker to tenant, and ultimately from building to use.

That is exactly where IT-Label takes a different approach. It is not about another number for specialists, but about translating standards into an understandable delivery level that tenant, landlord and broker can all relate to.

A tenant does not want a technical report, he wants an answer

Suppose a company is looking for 2,500 m² of office space. Management does not actually want to know how every technical component works. It wants to know whether 150 employees can work here properly tomorrow, what the organization itself still needs to invest, what the landlord provides and whether the location will support growth over the next ten years.

The next step, therefore, is not more technical complexity. The next step is making that complexity understandable. That is the idea behind IT-Label.

IT-Label starts with use

The starting point is simple. Not just cataloguing which technology is present, but translating what that infrastructure means for the digital delivery level of real estate. What does the landlord provide, what does the tenant receive, what is missing, where does the user's own responsibility begin and what improvements are possible?

An audit can look at connectivity, fiber optics, redundancy, data cabling, WiFi, technical rooms, digital continuity, relevant cybersecurity provisions and smart building infrastructure. Topics such as network redundancy and cybersecurity in real estate thus become part of one coherent picture rather than separate technical themes.

This is not because every tenant needs to become an IT specialist. It is precisely because they do not need to become one.

Tomorrow's user changes faster than the building

On top of this comes AI. A building leased today will likely still be standing in twenty or thirty years. But consider how much organizations' digital use has changed in just the past five years: cloud, video conferencing, IoT, data analytics, automation and now AI assistants and digital twins. We are probably still only at the beginning.

That creates a fundamental problem. Buildings develop slowly, digital use develops rapidly. A building can continue to function excellently from a structural point of view and still become digitally outdated at an accelerated pace. This phenomenon is sometimes called digital obsolescence, and it may ultimately become a bigger real estate issue than the question of how much smart technology is present today.

You can read more about this tension in our article on future-proof building, which focuses on the digital lifespan of a building.

Functionality becomes the new standard

That is why we may need to look differently at future-proof real estate. Not only: is it sustainable? Not only: is it smart? But: does it remain functional for the user?

An office where the lights work and the climate installation functions perfectly, but where hundreds of employees cannot work reliably in a digital sense, is not fully functional for that organization. A smart building that becomes increasingly dependent on data and digital systems, while the underlying infrastructure cannot keep pace, also runs into limits.

The chain can be summarized briefly. Smart needs data. Data needs connectivity. Connectivity needs infrastructure. And that infrastructure ultimately needs to facilitate the user. Seen this way, a solid digital foundation actually strengthens a building's smart ambitions, rather than competing with them.

The difference in perspective

The table below places the two approaches side by side, making the difference in starting point visible.

The broker will soon face a different question

This also changes the leasing market. Today, a broker gets questions about square meters, rent, parking, energy label, accessibility and delivery level. Future tenants, however, will increasingly ask which connections are available, whether there is redundancy, what the digital delivery level is and whether the organization can grow digitally at this location.

At that point, "there is fiber optic cable" is no longer a complete answer, just as "there is heating" is not a serious answer to the question about energy performance. That the modern broker is learning to understand IT-labels is therefore not a side issue, but part of complete advice.

The real estate question is gradually shifting: from how many square meters do I need, to how many workplaces do I need, and ultimately to what those workplaces need to be able to handle digitally. What matters to users becomes relevant to landlords and investors, and can ultimately become part of the property's value.

Getting started with digital functionality

SRI shows that Europe understands buildings are becoming smarter, and we support that. The next question is at least as important: who translates all that smart technology into actual digital functionality for the user? IT-Label does not replace SRI, but adds the translation step from digital technology to digital functionality, in one shared language for tenant, landlord, broker, investor and IT specialist.

If you want to know what your building can facilitate digitally, start with the basics. Read how the IT3 READY classification indicates which infrastructure needs to be present, and check our overview of what the IT-label actually is. This way, you can map the digital functionality of your property before a tenant asks the question you can already answer today.