There’s a moment in every smart building project when the confetti settles and reality walks in. The app works. The dashboards load. Then, within weeks, the control room drifts back to radio calls and spreadsheets. The gap isn’t technological, it’s operational. That’s why the most valuable deliverable on any PropTech programme isn’t a feature list, it’s a Minimum Viable Operating Model.

Think of the MVOM as the lightest possible set of decisions that makes technology behave in the real world. It’s not a 200-page manual. It’s eight agreements you can put on one page, attach names and budgets to, and live by the day after handover.

  1. Value hypothesis - What are we moving, by how much, and how will we verify it? “Reactive callouts down 20% in six months measured via CAFM tickets” beats “better operations.”
  2. Process fit - Where does this actually live? Who acknowledges alarms, how are tickets triaged, which legacy pathways stop? If nothing is being retired, nothing is truly changing.
  3. Decision rights (RACI) - Name who is Responsible and Accountable for integrations, data quality, security, and change control. “The project team” is not an operating role.
  4. Data contracts - What are the authoritative sources for assets, spaces, users and telemetry? Which fields are mandatory? What IDs do we use? How fresh must the data be?
  5. Integration ownership - Who owns middleware and APIs after go-live? Is the MSI stick around or will it move to internal IT? And what happens when a flow fails at 02:00?
  6. Runbook & Service Level Objectives - The boring, essential bit: incident, problem and change procedures, with target response times and clear escalation.
  7. Training & adoption - Role-based training with competency checks, plus a time-bound plan to switch off old ways of working to avoid zombie systems.
  8. Governance cadence - A monthly, one-hour value review (business outcomes) and a quarterly architecture review (health, debt, roadmap). If it’s not on the calendar, it’s not a priority.

Why does this matter? Because buildings are enterprises in disguise. They have outcomes to hit (availability, comfort, energy, compliance, cost), processes to run (work orders, permits, change), data to trust, and tooling that should serve the first three, not the other way round. The MVOM forces that order.

Facilities managers are the natural owners of this discipline. They sit at the junction of operations, contracts, tenants and budgets. They don’t need to become technologists, they need to claim the operating decisions that make the technology pay back. In practice, that means insisting on a system of record for assets and spaces (usually the CAFM/IWMS), pushing vendors to use your identifiers and APIs, and agreeing up front what gets retired when the new capability goes live.

A quick example. A portfolio deploys fault detection, a visitor app and an energy tracker. Each works alone but together they create duplicates, inconsistent names and three places to raise a ticket. An FM-led MVOM fixes the root cause. The CAFM becomes the data backbone, alarms are enriched and converted to tickets automatically, visitor and contractor flows are bound to access control with single-identity policies, a monthly value forum tracks resolution times, comfort compliance, energy intensity and data health. Within a quarter, false alarms fall, MTTR improves and savings become verifiable rather than anecdotal.

The MVOM also changes how you buy technology. Ask vendors to show where their product sits in your process map, which data they consume and produce, and the runbook they’ll leave behind. Price pilots like miniature production projects: outcomes, integrations and adoption included - or don’t call it a pilot.

None of this is theatrical. That’s the point. The MVOM replaces enthusiasm with ownership and turns demos into durable capability. If your next handover pack names an accountable owner, a value hypothesis, a data contract and a governance cadence, you’re ready. If it doesn’t, the smartest feature you can add isn’t another dashboard. It’s an operating model.

In Dr Marson’s monthly column, he’ll be chronicling his thoughts and opinions on the latest developments, trends, and challenges in the Smart Buildings industry and the wider world of construction. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, you're sure to find something of interest here.

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About the author:

Matthew Marson is an experienced leader, working at the intersection of technology, sustainability, and the built environment. He was recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as Young Engineer of the Year for his contributions to the global Smart Buildings industry. Having worked on some of the world’s leading smart buildings and cities projects, Matthew is a keynote speaker at international industry events related to emerging technology, net zero design and lessons from projects. He is author of The Smart Building Advantage and is published in a variety of journals, earning a doctorate in Smart Buildings.