The Smart Building Certification is NOT a Badge: Certification is a Starting Point
Certifications for buildings can be an important tool for promoting sustainable, healthy and smart building practices. Certification should NOT be used only as a badge or to check a box.
This is something we fundamentally believe at the Smart Building Collective. For us, our smart building certification is a starting point: it shows how your building stacks up against others based on current trends, identifies what your building is doing well and highlights opportunities for improvement. Then we work together with the collective to optimize buildings to improve health, wellness, performance, efficiency and safety and we collaborate on research and sharing insights to move the entire industry forward. Simply put, anyone just looking for a badge or a stamp to show how “smart” their building or solution is without any commitment to improve need not apply to the Smart Building Collective.
“I have zero interest in making micro steps into healthy, sustainable, and higher performing buildings. There is no reason why we can't be taking giant leaps, and we plan to." - Elizabeth Nelson, Co-Founder Smart Building Collective
Smartwashing and How to Avoid It
One of the biggest issues with certifying for the sake of obtaining a badge is smartwashing. Similar to greenwashing, smartwashing refers to the practice of making false or exaggerated claims about the “smartness” of a building or technology. This can mislead clients and be used as a marketing tactic or to gain public favor. A building that claims its smartness without actually implementing proper, proven or established smart solutions is engaging in smartwashing - and, unfortunately, we see this a lot in the building industry. The Smart Building Certification avoids smartwashing by focusing on providing information that building owners and operators need to make informed decisions to improve performance and then following up to make sure action is taken.
Accountability
Certifications that are checklists or only used as a badge are often self-reported, meaning that the building owner or manager is responsible for providing **all** of the information needed to obtain the certification. This can lead to a lack of accountability, if there is no independent verification of the information provided. The Smart Building Certification uses a unique peer-review model to assess buildings, ensuring the process is dynamic and specific to each building and that all data provided is verified by an expert from our pool of assessors.
Scope
Checklist certifications may have a limited scope, only addressing a limited range of smart functionality, such as energy efficiency or security. In reality, buildings vary a lot and smart practices are continuously evolving. If a building is doing something truly innovative and unique with respect to smart, it would not be captured on a standard checklist. The same is true for practices that may be highly inefficient. The Smart Building Certification recognizes that smart building practices are continuously changing and the benchmark is moving - we capture these trends and use them to benchmark each building individually. If your building is the smartest in a particular area, then you become the new benchmark!
Continuous Improvement
Obtaining certifications can be a complex and costly process, requiring significant time and resources. Buildings that are only seeking certification as a badge may be less likely to invest the necessary resources to the process. Furthermore, once the certification is obtained, there may be no further motivation to make further investments or improvements. We want to avoid this with the Smart Building Certification, and we seek to collaborate only with buildings and solutions that are committed to making impact and improvements.
If you are a building owner with a genuine commitment to sustainable, healthy and smart practices, get in touch to learn more about the Smart Building Collective and Smart Building Certification.
The Smart Building Certification assesses the “smartness” of buildings - but because every building is different and smart building practices are evolving, the smart building certification is not a checklist. Each building is certified individually based on our unique peer-review model and our SBC framework to assess how a smart asset is actually functioning.
Join the Smart Building Collective | Certification and certify your building, service, solution, and knowledge against the market.
