Start with the outcomes you want to achieve.
A smart building consultant should help you define what the building needs to achieve and turn that ambition into a practical strategy. The appointment should produce clear requirements, credible options, assigned responsibilities and a plan to check delivery. The emphasis depends on your starting point: a refurbishment, platform selection and approaching handover need different work.
Begin with two questions: what do we want the building to achieve, and what decision must this appointment enable? Name the person who will make that decision. Agree the outputs they need, who will review them and the evidence required to move forward.
Use that discussion to set a practical scope. An initial review can establish priorities, explore what is possible and define the next stage. Detailed design, technology procurement and later assurance can then be appointed around the agreed outcomes.
In Knight Frank’s 2026 London occupier interviews, advisers describe clients looking for buildings that remain useful as their organisations change, with a clear view of delivery and future costs. For a smart building appointment, that means defining how the service will enter operation, adapt to changing needs and be supported after handover. Those requirements belong in the brief alongside the launch features.
Specify the deliverables.
Define what each workshop, site visit or supplier review will produce. Every deliverable should help the client understand the strategy, resolve a question or make a decision. For an early technology strategy and roadmap appointment, useful outputs include:
- A client return brief. The consultant’s account of the decision, people affected, priorities, boundaries and agreed outcomes, returned to you for confirmation.
- An existing-system and information-gap summary. What is understood about the relevant systems, the source of that understanding and what still needs checking.
- An options and dependency assessment. Credible routes forward, including retaining useful systems, with the assumptions and enabling work behind each route.
- A roadmap and decision record. The recommended sequence, named owners, dependencies and the evidence needed before each commitment.
Agree formats the team can use: a concise recommendation, an editable requirements register and an action record with named owners. Decide who maintains each record as the project moves into specification and delivery.
Where a decision needs more evidence, identify exactly what is missing, who will provide it and which choice it affects. The client should leave with a clear next action and a proportionate scope for resolving it.
Assign responsibilities for the outcomes.
A consultant’s title does not allocate every design and delivery duty. Agree the responsibilities for this appointment and for each interface. The Scottish Futures Trust learning-estate guide is a useful reference because it identifies several distinct roles around smart infrastructure. A commercial-office appointment also needs that clarity.
- The client decision owner
- Confirms priorities, authorises the agreed scope and decides whether the evidence supports the next step. Technical reviewers and operating owners contribute to that decision.
- The smart building adviser
- Helps define outcomes, requirements, options and evidence. Coordination, supplier review or later assurance must be included in the appointed scope if required.
- The mechanical, electrical and public health designer
- Retains the appointed building-services engineering responsibilities. The technology brief needs to inform that design and be checked against its constraints.
- The master systems integrator and specialist suppliers
- Deliver the connections, configuration and demonstrations assigned to them. Identify the party responsible for each source-system interface, mapping and test; do not assume the integrator’s title covers everything.
- The operating team
- Explains how the service will be used, supported and maintained. Facilities, workplace and IT owners need to agree information, access, support and renewal arrangements within their responsibilities.
A worked first appointment for a commercial office.
Consider a hypothetical office preparing to refurbish reception and two meeting floors. The workplace team wants a more consistent visitor arrival. Facilities needs to understand which existing systems could support it. An app demonstration has prompted interest, but nobody has established the access-system interfaces or who would support a new connection.
The first appointment brings the owners together to define the desired experience and assess the starting point. A focused records review, workshop and agreed walkthrough can produce the proposed journey, existing-system evidence, priority gaps and a recommended feasibility scope.
Suppose the access supplier has not confirmed an interface. The output should record the supplier question and its owner. It should not describe the app connection as proven. The next decision might be to commission a focused feasibility check before a shortlist or tender. Our building observation guide explains how a visit can contribute evidence without answering every technical question.
Sample appointment brief: a first review.
This summary develops the hypothetical office above; the downloadable brief provides the full scope. Adapt the client-specific facts and agree the scope with the people responsible for the building. It describes an illustrative initial discovery and review appointment.
Decision and ownership
Decision: agree whether to proceed to a focused feasibility study for visitor arrival and meeting-room services while retaining useful existing systems. Decision owner: the client’s property project lead, with workplace, facilities and IT input. Record the named people before starting.
Boundary and inputs
Cover one commercial office, reception and two meeting floors. Review the relevant room records, current system list, available interface and licence information, support arrangements and agreed operating concerns. Include one discovery workshop and a walkthrough arranged with the client. Record unavailable information as a gap.
Agreed outputs
- A return brief with the priority journey, desired outcomes and scope boundaries.
- An existing-system and information-gap summary separating documented information, observations and supplier statements, with an owner and next action for each material gap.
- A retain, improve or replace options and dependency note.
- A recommended feasibility scope and a record of the client’s next decision.
Review and next gate
The project lead reviews the brief with the operating and technical owners. The review checks that priorities are confirmed, recommendations have an evidence basis and unresolved dependencies have owners. The client then records a decision to proceed, request further information, revise the scope or stop.
Assumptions and further work
The client can arrange participation and share relevant records. The first review does not establish hidden system condition or prove an untested integration. Detailed engineering, configuration, installation, specialist security design, commissioning and contractual acceptance are allocated through later appointments where needed.
Review the deliverables against the brief.
Agree how the client will review the deliverables before work begins. A first review should establish the strategy and evidence needed for the next decision, including any further investigation. Ask:
- Does the return brief describe the agreed need and boundary?
- Can the reviewer trace each recommendation to evidence and stated assumptions?
- Are material gaps, affected decisions and action owners visible?
- Is the next appointment, if needed, proportionate to what remains uncertain?
Record corrections and the client’s conclusion. Acceptance of a discovery report is different from acceptance of installed technology. A later procurement and delivery assurance appointment needs its own requirements, review boundary and evidence arrangements. Witnessing a test or making a contractual acceptance decision also needs an identified, authorised party.
Carry the strategy into specification and delivery.
Use the findings to define the next stage: interface feasibility, options appraisal, supplier evaluation or specialist investigation. Carry the agreed outcomes into the specification and link requirements to supplier submissions and delivery evidence. At practical completion, review what has been demonstrated and what remains open. Plan support, training and later performance checks for the transition into operation.
The RIBA Smart Building Overlay places technology discussions across the project stages so decisions can be made at the appropriate time. That supports early coordination; it does not mean every client needs one appointment covering the whole programme.
At Good Buildings, initial workshops establish priorities and later work is scoped around them. See how we work or tell us about your building and the decision ahead. If you are ready to compare products, our platform-selection perspective takes the agreed brief into supplier questions and demonstrations.
Sources and further reading.
- Knight Frank, The London Series 2026, What occupiers are telling us, pages 23–25 — adviser interviews on flexibility, delivery, governance and longer-term occupier requirements.
- RIBA, Smart Building Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work, February 2024 and its online introduction — project-stage discussions, roles and timely decisions.
- Scottish Futures Trust, Scotland’s Learning Estate: A Guide to Smart Infrastructure — smart infrastructure roles, skills and scope considerations, in a learning-estate context.