Bridging the Gap: Advancing Smarter Buildings Through Seamless Connectivity 

A smart building is no longer a futuristic luxury. It is quickly becoming a business imperative for commercial real estate owners and enterprise IT teams under pressure to reduce operating costs, improve energy efficiency, strengthen security, and deliver better tenant experiences. From HVAC systems that automatically optimize energy consumption to sensors that detect operational problems in real time, today’s smartest buildings turn connectivity and data into measurable business outcomes. But none of it works without a reliable, seamless network foundation capable of supporting thousands of connected devices, applications, and critical systems simultaneously. 

That was the central message from a recent webinar hosted by the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA) and the Association of Smarter Homes & Buildings (ASHB), where industry leaders discussed how dedicated connectivity infrastructure is enabling the next generation of intelligent buildings. 

What is a smart building? 

 While there are myriad definitions of a smart building, applications that enable more efficient, predictive, quantifiable and automatic processes are important components to get to smart. “It is a building that delivers more value than the sum of its parts,” said Marcus Ellson, Senior Product Manager at Trane, which designs Building Automation Systems (BAS.)  Using the technology to get systems to work better leads to even greater outcomes, he noted. 

Integrating the physical environment into the digital layer enables the next level of smart buildings, said Stephen Leotis, CEO of Moso Networks, a provider of private 5G networks for commercial and enterprise buildings.  “Smart buildings connect sensors, cameras, HVAC, access controls, logistics systems, and the customer experience layer — and take all the data being generated to turn infrastructure into intelligence. That’s how you improve efficiency, safety, and tenant outcomes.” 

In the hospitality sector, Nextivity VP of Sales Americas Brian Ensign discussed a hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, where guests can walk into the hotel using the hotelier’s app, which then can check guests into their favorite rooms, set the room temperature to the guests’ preferred temp, set up their favorite TV channels and more ahead of time. “That is truly a predictive environment.” 

A smart building manages the automation before people come into the building for the day, said Jerry Brown, Head of Commercial Markets US at Siemens Industry, Inc. Connecting all of the building envelope and power makes the building more efficient, safe and increases tenant satisfaction. 

Managing applications and connectivity 

Innovations in Building Automation Systems supported by 5G continue to advance – from integrated subsystems to centralized dashboards and IoT and automation. Trane offers an application that looks at how a building runs, parameters that the customer has set in terms of comfort or operating hours, and it develops a model of how that building operates, the expected energy consumption and the emissions footprint of the building. “Once that model’s in place, we simulate a variety of different control sequences on the HVAC side against the needs of the customer, the parameters that have been set around their goals – whether that is just to reduce their utility bill or if it is a more nuanced blend of energy and emissions.” 

Ellson mentioned a company with hundreds of donation centers across the country that wanted to improve its emission targets. Incorporating a BAS allowed the customer to see results quickly. “But most importantly, it was able to be deployed without any changes to the infrastructure in the building.” 

All of the pieces that make a building smart depend on data reliably getting somewhere in the building, Leotis commented. “So maybe in some locations it can be done with some wired network, but in many different kinds of environments, you have these evolving assets and this evolving need to collect more data.”  

Introducing private 5G cellular brings more reliability to the data because it is inherent in the protocol. IT departments don’t want enterprise-critical functions running on a consumer-facing Wi-Fi network or an employee-facing network. Leotis added: “It needs to be a dedicated network.” 

Siemens’ customers can incorporate tools that monitor a variety of activities – trend reports on energy costs, when people are coming into the building, how many people etc., Brown said. They look at all of the factors that go into the building or sections of the building and make sure those are running well to help reduce some energy consumption. It is important to see those reports in real time. Brown pointed to a high school in Iowa, where the trend report showed the energy usage every Friday night was going up by 30% but no one knew why. Someone went into the high school gymnasium on a Friday night and discovered it was hot so people were leaving the back doors open in the winter to cool down the gym. “And so it was heating and cooling at the same time.  Sometimes it’s not brain surgery but being able to respond sooner rather than later.” 

Sensors that manage air quality, air handling, lighting, access control, security and temperature can be monitored in real time. Losing power is a real threat to a building, Brown said. Both schools and healthcare facilities need to keep food and some medicines cold, for example. Being able to take corrective actions in real time is part of the simplicity of the solutions.  

Running those systems on a dedicated network is preferred by the IT departments, Ensign said. “From a security perspective, it’s easier to manage.” Using 5G connectivity to be able to respond to an event in real time is critical. “We can use notifications and do something with the data much quicker.” 

Challenges and Solutions  

One of the challenges with projects in a smart building or enterprise is there is often no single owner of the problem, Leotis noted. You may touch IT, which controls data and digital connectivity, Operations Technology (OT,) which handles physical hardware and machinery, as well as real estate and financial departments. “As you get these committee-driven decisions, it can create a lot of challenges to get something over the finish line.” Getting organizations to appoint a champion with budget authority can get stakeholders engaged in solving the problem, he added. Sometimes people think a Wi-Fi network is good enough to run these critical applications because Wi-Fi is generally good enough in people’s personal lives. However, if the smart building applications require critical IoT, mobility or latency, a private CBRS network can address those needs at a lower cost. 

Different groups within the enterprise often have different priorities so getting them to work as a team is important. Along with interoperability and technology obsolescence within the building are budget challenges, Brown added.  

We need to make it easy for the enterprise to understand the process, and that also translates into getting a return on their investments, Ensign said. “No matter how cool our technology is that we want to deploy, how much money we can save over three years, the first cost in a budget is sometimes a showstopper.” 

Getting a smaller win up front is often an easy way to show the larger organization about the smart building application and getting buy-in at the design level for the connectivity piece helps get those wins, Ellson noted. 

As smart buildings evolve from concept to competitive necessity, the infrastructure underneath them matters as much as the applications on top. Private dedicated networks — whether 5G CBRS or a hybrid approach — are becoming the backbone that makes real-time monitoring, predictive automation, and cross-system integration possible at scale. “Every building system generates data,” Leotis noted. “The question is whether your network is built to use it.” For organizations ready to move beyond pilots, the path forward starts with a dedicated network foundation and a clear champion to drive it across IT, OT, and real estate stakeholders. 

Watch a Replay of the Webinar: