KEYNOTE: Are We Buying Smart Buildings Right?
The building opens. Every system is commissioned. Every dashboard is green. But the building still doesn't do what was promised. Sound familiar?
Our industry has learned to define smart buildings well, design them well and install them well. Yet deployments keep underdelivering, and the usual suspects (immature technology, skills gaps, poor integration) don't fully explain why.
Brahm's contention, after 25 years spanning controls engineering to boardroom advisory, is that we've been asking the wrong question. It isn't whether we're building it right. It's whether we're buying it right.
Here's why it matters now: tenants, lenders and valuers have all started paying for building performance, and the gap between promise and delivery has a price on it. If your projects keep producing buildings that work on paper and disappoint in operation, this session names the cause, and it isn't where you've been looking.
You'll leave with a five-minute test you can run on any live project the same week, and one question that will change how you read every contract that crosses your desk.
Session Speaker
Brahm Lategan leads Systems and Solutions, Buro Happold's independent technology advisory service line. His team helps building owners and operators choose, architect and govern the systems behind smart buildings, with no loyalty to any product or vendor.
The only stake he and his team hold in the answer is that it works: impartial advice, grounded in what the market can genuinely deliver, measured by the value the client actually realises.
His 25 years in the industry began in the delivery trenches, designing and deploying control systems in live operational environments. He founded and ran his own controls business, and worked at every level from the plant room to the boardroom.
Today he advises boards, investors and estate leaders on digital strategy, starting with business outcomes rather than a product catalogue. He speaks and writes regularly on smart buildings, cybersecurity and technology governance.
