In our latest podcast episode, we explored 5 smart buildings trends with co-host Rob Murchison that have reshaped how we operate and think about commercial buildings in 2025.

From the changing role of property managers to new ways of measuring building performance, to the growing role of IT managed service providers. Whether you’re a property manager, building owner, or technology provider, understanding these trends is essential for navigating the year ahead.

Property Management Is Now a Technology Job

Buildings have evolved into digital ecosystems, and property managers are now responsible for managing increasingly complex technology stacks that would have been unthinkable just five to ten years ago.

Unlike consumer devices that get replaced every few years, smart buildings technology continues to accumulate. Systems are upgraded with new software capabilities layered onto aging hardware. Imagine if each technology in your building were a radio, and they all turned on simultaneously. The noise becomes overwhelming without a realistic plan to manage both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT).

This creates a significant challenge. When asked whether buildings will have more technology in five years, everyone agrees they will. However, when asked if we’ll need more people to run that technology, the answer becomes uncomfortable, because if we do, we’re admitting to a failure. Technology should be helping to reduce manpower costs, not increasing them.

The solution isn’t for property managers to become technologists themselves; that’s a different profession entirely. Instead, they need to partner with the right experts and leverage automation and artificial intelligence to streamline operations. The focus must shift from understanding every technical feature to achieving desired outcomes.

Digital Infrastructure is Now a Utility

Digital infrastructure has become as essential as electricity, water, and gas. Always on, foundational, and invisible until it fails.

The dependency runs deeper than many realize. We’ve become dependent on connectivity and digital systems at every level, from tenant Wi-Fi to the operational backbone that keeps buildings functioning.

By treating digital infrastructure as a utility from the earliest stages, during design, development, construction, and through to operations, building owners can optimize their capital deployment and reduce the operational burden on property management teams. This mindset shift ensures that systems are designed for reliability, availability, and resilience from day one. As AI and machine learning become more prevalent in buildings, this dependency on rock-solid digital infrastructure will only intensify. We need professional IT-grade reliability for smart buildings, not just for the enterprise.

IT Managed Services Entering Commercial Smart Buildings

The third trend follows logically from the first two. Commercial buildings haven’t been invaded by IT, they’ve become IT environments. As smart buildings have evolved into software-defined ecosystems, a skills gap has emerged. Traditional integrators understand building controls and building automation, and many are working to upskill in networking and cybersecurity. However, this isn’t their core competency.

IT managed service providers are stepping in to bridge this gap. These companies already provide network management and cybersecurity to enterprises, and they have established relationships with IT departments. As commercial buildings become more software-defined, IT departments naturally turn to the partners they trust.

The challenge is that operational technology in buildings is cyber-physical, not just cyber. A digital signal doesn’t just move data, it unlocks doors, opens or closes VAV boxes, and controls physical systems. Managing this requires both IT expertise and deep knowledge of operational technology.

The most successful approaches combine IT best practices with an understanding of building systems. Moreover, the economics must work. You can’t charge enterprise IT rates to a typical commercial building. The additional cost of achieving utility-grade resiliency must be offset by taking a holistic view of all systems and finding optimization opportunities.

From Per Square Foot to Per Occupant Metrics

The shift to hybrid work has exposed a fundamental problem with how we measure building performance. Buildings might be only 60% occupied, but still consuming 80% of their energy. The math no longer works. We’ve always used square footage because it was easy to measure—but it was never particularly meaningful.

The breakthrough comes from human mobility analytics, powered by the phones we carry in our pockets. This isn’t about Bluetooth beacons or sensors on chairs, it’s about aggregated, anonymized data from mobile devices that allows us to understand occupancy patterns across smart buildings and portfolios. While this data isn’t real-time, it provides enough historical insight to make dramatically better decisions.

With occupancy as the new denominator, we can measure energy per occupant, cost per occupant, water consumption per occupant, and greenhouse gas emissions per occupant. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure, and you can’t measure what you can’t describe.

This new denominator unlocks a first level of decision-making for operators. For those who need more granular, real-time occupancy detection, this establishes whether that investment makes sense. Human mobility analytics has already been used for years in retail to calculate dwell time and even to determine average commute times for office buildings. Now it’s transforming how we operate smart buildings.

Startups in the Squeezed Middle

The final trend is more sobering for the smart buildings sector. After the funding boom of 2021 and 2022, some startups find themselves in an uncomfortable middle ground. They had too much investment to fail quietly, but not enough traction to reach Series B and beyond. Several factors contribute to this squeeze.

Hardware deployments are expensive, and larger platforms are absorbing functionality that point solutions once provided. AI is accelerating this trend by making it easier to automate tasks and, in some cases, commoditizing features that were once differentiated offerings.

From the operator’s perspective, subscription fatigue is real. Building owners and managers, especially those without deep in-house technology expertise, want one partner to call when something goes wrong, not ten different software subscriptions to manage.

The key to survival is focusing on outcomes rather than features. As the property manager becomes responsible for more technology while simultaneously unable to become an expert in every system, they need integrated solutions that deliver results, not point products that require specialized knowledge.

Do you want to buy just a word processor, or do you want Microsoft Office? Do you want just the trimmer, or do you want the all-in-one yard tool? The companies that will thrive are those that deliver integrated outcomes, not those that offer a single feature for smart buildings.

Key TakeAway

Smart buildings don’t fail because of bad technology, there’s plenty of good technology available. They fail because we fail to manage the complexity. The companies, property managers, and building owners who succeed in 2026 and beyond will be those who master that complexity, not through technical expertise alone, but through partnerships, integration, and a focus on the outcomes that truly matter: buildings that are efficient, effective, and reliably serve their occupants.