Building Automation and Controls: From Compliance Tool to Enabler of Smart, Healthy and Grid-Interactive Buildings

For many years, building automation and control systems were too often treated as a technical add-on: useful, but secondary to the “real” performance of the building envelope and HVAC systems. That view is no longer sufficient. In a decarbonising energy system, where buildings must reduce demand, support healthy indoor environments and interact intelligently with the grid, automation and controls have become central to building performance.

The revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive has strengthened this message. It confirms that better energy performance cannot be achieved by insulation, efficient equipment and renewable energy alone. Buildings also need the ability to sense, monitor, communicate and respond: to occupants, to weather, to operational faults and increasingly to signals from the energy grid.

The role of SRI in making smartness visible

The Smart Readiness Indicator provides an important common language for this transition. By assessing how well a building can optimise energy efficiency and in-use performance, adapt to occupants’ needs and respond to grid signals, the SRI helps make the value of smart-ready services visible to owners, designers, policymakers and occupants.

This is not simply a matter of adding sensors or dashboards. The real value lies in well-designed control strategies: demand-controlled ventilation that protects indoor air quality while avoiding unnecessary energy use; heating and cooling systems that anticipate occupancy and weather; lighting and shading systems that balance comfort, daylight and overheating risk; and fault detection that keeps performance from drifting after commissioning.

IEQ must remain the focus

A smart building is not smart if it saves energy at the expense of people. Indoor environmental quality must therefore remain at the centre of automation and control strategies. The EPBD’s increased attention to indoor air quality and monitoring is welcome, but implementation will require careful translation into practice.

Controls should support comfort, health and productivity by making performance transparent and actionable. This means reliable sensors, meaningful indicators, understandable interfaces and control logic that prioritises both energy and IEQ outcomes. It also means recognising that buildings are occupied by people with different needs, behaviours and expectations. Smart controls should empower occupants, not confuse them or remove agency.

Grid interaction: the next performance frontier

As renewable electricity grows, buildings will increasingly be asked not only to consume less energy, but to consume energy at the right time. Grid-interactive buildings can shift loads, modulate demand, use thermal storage and coordinate with electric vehicle charging and on-site generation. These capabilities depend on automation, interoperability and robust control logic.

However, flexibility should not be pursued as an isolated objective. A building that responds to grid signals must still maintain comfort, ventilation, safety and usability. The challenge for our sector is to develop control approaches that integrate energy efficiency, indoor environmental quality and flexibility into one coherent operational strategy.

From requirements to real performance

The success of the EPBD, SRI and related EPB standards will ultimately depend on implementation quality. Poorly commissioned controls, fragmented systems, inaccessible data and unclear responsibilities can quickly undermine the promised benefits of smart technologies. Conversely, integrated design, commissioning, continuous monitoring and competent operation can turn automation into measurable performance.

REHVA and its community have an important role to play in this transition. We need to support practitioners with guidance that connects policy requirements to engineering reality; promote performance-based thinking; strengthen links between EPB standards, building automation standards and IEQ assessment; and ensure that smartness is understood as a means to deliver better buildings, not as an end in itself.

A call to the sector

The next generation of buildings must be low-carbon, healthy, resilient and flexible. Building automation and controls are essential to achieving that goal. The SRI and the revised EPBD give Europe a framework and a policy direction; now the task is to make them work in practice.

If we succeed, smart controls will no longer be perceived as optional technology. They will be recognised as part of the core infrastructure of high-performing buildings: helping people feel comfortable, breathe better air, use energy more wisely, reduce emissions and participate actively in a smarter energy system.