SRI, yes. Digital readiness, no: the blind spot

Why are we moving toward a mandatory SRI for large buildings in Europe, while a tenant still cannot see what his building can handle digitally? That question sounds simple, but it touches on a contradiction that runs deeper than many policymakers realize.

Let there be no misunderstanding: this is not an attack on sustainability or on the Smart Readiness Indicator. On the contrary. Sustainability is essential. SMART Buildings make sense. And the SRI is an interesting development that makes the intelligence of a building more measurable.

Yet an uncomfortable question presents itself. Why are we making the intelligence of the building increasingly measurable, while the digital infrastructure on which the user must run his business remains largely invisible? That is the blind spot the IT-label wants to expose.

Start with the facts: what will the SRI become?

The Smart Readiness Indicator is a European instrument that shows to what extent a building can deploy smart technology. It stems from the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, the European directive on the energy performance of buildings. The SRI assesses the degree to which a building is able to adapt its functions to the user, the grid and its own installations.

Specifically, the SRI looks at, among other things, the ability to optimize energy performance, respond to user needs, smartly control building installations, and enable flexibility toward the energy system. At its core, it is therefore a measure of the intelligence of the building itself.

Legally, it is important to be precise. The SRI is not currently mandatory for all European buildings. The revised EPBD does state that the European Commission, taking into account the evaluation of the testing and implementation phase, must adopt a delegated act by 30 June 2027 at the latest. This will make application of the common SRI scheme mandatory for certain non residential buildings with an effective HVAC capacity of more than 290 kW.

Europe therefore considers it important enough to eventually make the SMART readiness of large buildings structurally transparent. Fine. But that immediately raises a second question: where is the digital readiness indicator for the user?

SMART matters, but functional matters more

There is a fundamental difference between the perspective of the building and that of the user. A building can be energy efficient, contain sensors, have automatic lighting, use smart climate control, flexibly manage energy, and run an advanced building management system. All valuable.

But what the user ultimately wants to know is much more fundamental: can I run my business here? Behind that one question lies a whole series of others. Which internet connections are available? Is there fiber? Which providers are available? Is there redundancy? What data cabling is in place? What can the WiFi infrastructure handle?

And it goes further. How are the patch and server rooms set up, and are they secured? How is digital continuity arranged? What digital building systems are present and who manages them? What is the landlord's responsibility and what must the tenant organize themselves? And above all: can this infrastructure handle my future AI and data use?

These are not theoretical technical questions. They are increasingly economic user questions. Whoever cannot answer them is effectively signing for something they do not know. Our overview on the shift from floor space to data capacity covers this in more depth.

The user will soon be demanding transparency

The digital use of European organizations is changing rapidly. According to figures from the European Commission, almost 20 percent of European organizations now use AI, and AI adoption grew by roughly 48 percent in 2025. In addition, the use of cloud, data analysis and digital collaboration has been increasing for years.

The economic consequence of this is easy to follow. As organizations become more digital, their premises automatically become more dependent on digital infrastructure. More AI means more dependence on IT. More IT means more dependence on infrastructure. And more dependence means transparency becomes more important.

That very transparency is still often missing at building level. Virtually every rental brochure states the energy performance, but we rarely read anything concrete about digital building quality. That contrast becomes more uncomfortable as the user becomes more digital, something we explored in our piece on the IT infrastructure missing from every rental brochure.

We make the intelligence of the building measurable, while the question of whether the user can run their organization there remains unanswered.

Europe already sees the problem itself, in fact

What makes this subject so interesting is that Europe has long identified the problem at macro level. In the most recent State of the Digital Decade, the European Commission notes that digital infrastructure needs to be rolled out faster, that fibre to the premises needs to grow further, and that computing capacity is under pressure due to the rise of AI.

Those same analyses state that European companies need to adopt AI, cloud and data faster, that infrastructure is one of the barriers to further digitalization, and that digital infrastructure is crucial for competitiveness, resilience and technological sovereignty. Europe is therefore investing in AI Factories, AI Gigafactories, cloud and data infrastructure, chips, cybersecurity, gigabit connectivity and AI adoption.

That raises a critical question. If Europe sees the macro problem so clearly, why do we hardly translate it into the building where the European organization actually works? Policy too often stops at the edge of the plot.

From AI Gigafactory to the workplace

Take a simple chain. Europe invests billions in AI compute. Fine. But ultimately that AI must be used. By an accountant in Amsterdam, an engineer in Eindhoven, a lawyer in Brussels, a researcher in Munich, a technology company in Paris and a logistics company in Venlo. And all these users ultimately connect from a building.

The chain runs from AI Gigafactory to data center, via the fiber network to the region, then into the building, further via the internal infrastructure and the WiFi network, to finally the workplace. Every link is needed. Yet the upper links receive the attention and the investment, while the last links are largely left to the market.

Europe invests billions at the top of the digital chain. But who controls the last hundred meters to the user? That is the digital last mile of real estate. And it is precisely there that it is decided whether all the investment further up delivers value for the organization on the work floor.

100 percent fiber coverage does not tell the whole story

An important distinction is in order here. A country can have excellent fiber coverage. A city can be excellently connected digitally. Fiber can even run right up to the front door of a building. But that does not automatically say anything about what happens inside.

Coverage at street level says little about the actual connection, the available providers, the redundancy, the internal infrastructure, the data cabling, the WiFi, the technical rooms, the security, the digital continuity or the scalability. Those are exactly the points that determine whether an organization can function.

A comparison makes it concrete. A highway at the door doesn't mean the building has good access either. In the same way, fiber in the street does not automatically mean the workplace is digitally future proof. What lies between the street and the desk often remains a question mark. Anyone wanting to understand the role of fiber within a building can find more in our knowledge base on fiber in buildings.

We protect energy performance, but what protects economic functionality?

Europe rightly has enormous ambitions around climate and sustainability. Buildings are responsible for a significant share of energy use and need to become more sustainable. That is not up for debate and deserves continued priority.

But Europe also has a second challenge: competitiveness. Our companies compete with the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Gulf states and other rapidly digitalizing economies. That competition increasingly revolves around AI, data, compute, chips, energy, talent, connectivity and productivity.

A sustainable building in which a digital organization cannot function adequately is, economically speaking, also not future proof. Sustainability and economic functionality should not be at odds. We need both, and we need economic strength precisely to keep financing the sustainable transition.

Green and smart and digital

This leads to a powerful principle: European real estate needs to become green, smart and digital at the same time. Green concerns how sustainable the building is. Smart concerns how intelligently the building can respond. And digital concerns how well the building can facilitate the digital operations of its user.

Why do we develop extensive measurement methods for green and smart, while digital at building level is still largely left to the market? The three belong together. A building that scores on two of the three is only ready to a certain extent for the organization that will work there.

Perhaps we are looking from the wrong direction

Much European building regulation reasons from the building toward the technology. What technology is in the building, how efficiently does it work and how smart is it? That is a legitimate perspective, but it is not the only one.

Tomorrow's economy requires a second view: from user to function to infrastructure to building. What does a user need to be able to do? Which digital applications does he use? What infrastructure does that require? And can the building deliver that infrastructure? That is a fundamentally different approach, a shift from building centric to user centric real estate policy.

An office is no longer just a collection of square meters

Commercial real estate is changing functionally. An office was once primarily space, a desk, a telephone and electricity. Today, a workplace is an access point to cloud, data, video conferencing, cybersecurity, SaaS, AI, digital collaboration and global corporate networks.

A modern workplace has effectively become a digital terminal of the organization. And at that point, the digital quality of the building becomes economic infrastructure, not a side issue. What used to be a checkbox on a technical list now determines whether a company's core processes keep running.

Today, a tenant still mainly asks about the number of square meters, the rent, the parking spaces, the energy label and the service charges. Tomorrow's tenant will also ask: what connectivity will I get, what redundancy, what is the digital delivery level, what must I invest myself, who is responsible for which IT infrastructure, and can this building support our AI strategy? Perhaps digital transparency will soon become just as self evident as transparency about energy performance.

So why not an IT-label?

It is precisely this information need that the IT-label aims to address. Not as a new European requirement that must be legally imposed tomorrow, but as a concept the market can start using today. The IT-label makes clear what a building can handle digitally.

Specifically, this concerns connectivity, fiber, redundancy, data cabling, WiFi, technical and server rooms, relevant cybersecurity provisions, digital continuity, smart building infrastructure, expandability, the demarcation between landlord and tenant, and the digital delivery level. All that technical information is translated into one understandable question: what can this building handle digitally?

That translation happens through a classification ranging from IT1+ PREMIUM for AI ready buildings to IT5 SHELL where no digital infrastructure is yet present. A lower classification is not a judgment on the quality of the building, but a factual description of what is and is not present. This allows a user to make an informed choice in advance. The full breakdown is set out clearly in our article on what IT4 CORE and IT5 SHELL mean for your building.

Energy label, SRI and IT-label side by side

The comparison is easy to make. The energy label answers the question of how energy efficient the building is. The SRI answers the question of how smart the building can function. The IT-label answers the question of how digitally the user can function.

Why would that third question be economically less relevant than the first two? Anyone wanting to see the difference between these instruments more sharply can turn to our analysis on the difference between the IT-label and the energy label.

Don't make it mandatory just because the IT-label wants it

It is important not to let this reasoning sound like a lobby for mandatory certification. So flip the question around. The question is not why Europe does not make our product mandatory. The question is: why does there not yet exist a uniform European transparency about digital building quality for the user?

Perhaps that will eventually become the IT-label. Perhaps another European standard will emerge. Either way, the societal problem remains the same: the user needs to know what they are getting digitally. The IT-label wants to start that conversation while also offering a practical solution, which makes the message more independent and more credible.

Does Europe have a blind spot here? Europe sees AI, compute, connectivity, cybersecurity, cloud, energy and Smart Buildings. But these subjects are often approached from different policy domains. Is the connection between digital policy and real estate policy missing? Who looks at AI, connectivity, energy, building and user together in an integrated way? And if no one does, who then safeguards the digital functionality of our built economy?

The risk of digital obsolescence

There is a subtle risk that current discussions still pay too little attention to: digital obsolescence, in other words digital aging. A building can have energy label A, receive a good SRI score, contain modern installations and be structurally excellent, and yet fail to adequately connect digitally with future users.

This creates functional obsolescence without anything technically being broken. The building looks fine, but the organization that wants to work there runs into limits that no one had made visible beforehand. Could digital obsolescence become the next stranded asset discussion within commercial real estate? For property owners, this is a real scenario to factor into long term planning already.

Take the first step toward digital transparency now

Europe wants to become the first climate neutral continent and, at the same time, an AI continent. The Netherlands wants to remain a competitive knowledge economy. Both ambitions ultimately converge in the same physical environment: our buildings. If we are soon going to require insight into how smart a building is, why do we not also make clear how digitally usable it is for the organization that must work in it?

The SRI makes SMART readiness transparent. The IT-label aims to make digital readiness transparent. Europe needs both, because the future of real estate must not only be green, but green, smart and digital at the same time. And every tenant should be able to get an answer to one simple question before signing anything: what can my new workplace handle digitally?

The concrete next step is not complicated. If you want to know how the digital readiness of your building or your intended rental space is determined, read how the IT-label works and map out the digital foundation of your property. Digital transparency is no longer a luxury when our economy becomes dependent on data and AI. It is the logical next step.