Unsafe by Design for Operations

The inherent dangers of siloed building data, and why open source is the solution.

Grenfell Tower, London, 2017 – Unsafe by Design for Operations. A faulty fridge ignited, but combustible cladding and missing safety data turned it into a catastrophe. 72 lives lost. What the Corvair was to cars, Grenfell Tower is to buildings: a symbol of preventable design flaws and missing information that turned negligence into tragedy. At Grenfell Tower, a faulty fridge should have been a nuisance. Instead, missing safety data and combustible cladding turned it into a catastrophe.

In Part 1, we explored the “everything problem”: BIM, GIS, building controls, digital twins, and AI, all emerging at once but rarely connected. In Part 2, we examined the state of standards, where BIM and GIS have matured but still coexist in parallel worlds, with gaps and overlaps.

In Part 3, we now turn to the consequences of those gaps. Siloed data isn’t just inefficient. It creates systemic risk. Owners pay more, operators stumble, and in the worst cases, as Grenfell and Surfside showed us, people die. This is the “unsafe by design and operation” challenge that must be confronted head-on.

Next month, we will take this message to Capitol Hill at the Federal Asset Data Handover & Exchange Summit. Leaders from Congress, the GAO, GSA, the State Department, and major public owners will join with industry to address the systemic risks of siloed building and asset data.

3.1 A Wake-Up Call

In 1959, Volvo invented the three-point seatbelt. Instead of locking it up as a proprietary advantage, they made the patent available to every automaker. The technology was free, proven, and available to all. Yet most car manufacturers refused to install it, claiming customers didn’t want seatbelts or that the costs were too high.

In 1965, Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, exposing the designed-in dangers of cars like the Chevrolet Corvair and the auto industry’s refusal to adopt obvious safety measures. His book became a wake-up call. Within a year, Congress established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and mandated the use of seatbelts and crash testing. Open source, combined with governance, has saved millions of lives.

Currently, our facilities and assets have the capability to use technology to capture, connect, and share building data, because it already exists. Open-source foundations and standards are proven. Yet owners and agencies still respond as if it’s 1970, locking data in silos, leaving firefighters blind, and wasting billions in lifecycle costs. What was once difficult is now negligence. Just as Nader forced accountability in the auto industry, our industry needs to demand it for the built environment.

3.2 The Oaths We Break

Doctors swear to do no harm.
Architects and engineers are licensed to protect health, safety, and welfare.
Firefighters pledge to protect lives even at risk to their own.

Yet every oath is broken when building asset data is missing. For owners, it might start as inefficiency, not knowing where the air handling unit is to fix a hot room. Annoying, costly, but manageable. For firefighters, the stakes are life and death. Missing floor plans, blocked stairwells, hidden structural risks, or undisclosed hazardous materials mean they go in blind. The same negligence that makes facilities inefficient can make emergencies fatal.

The risks are not abstract. They are clear and measurable:

• Lives at risk: Responders and occupants face preventable dangers.
  
• Law at risk: Federal reporting requirements go unmet.
  
• Liability at risk: Insurance gaps fall back on owners.
  
• Money at risk: Months wasted recreating handover data before a facility can function.
  
• Memory at risk: Portfolios forget and repeat mistakes.
  
• Future at risk: AI cannot use junk data.
  
• Security at risk: Silos and patches open doors to attack.
  

For owners, these failures also inflate the total cost of ownership, but today that must include the total risk of ownership. Operations stall while staff hunt for missing data. Maintenance costs rise when parts and equipment cannot be located. Capital decisions repeat errors without a living digital record. And when the standard of care shifts, liability and insurance costs climb. The cost of doing nothing is no longer neutral; it is an active risk to lives, value, and trust.

Former Bethesda Fire Chief Victor Esch put it plainly: “One of the things to cooperate and collaborate on is getting real-time asset information to firefighters and first responders so they can reduce their risk of injury and death. That is a socially responsible ‘Why’ that we can elevate to moral and legal responsibility with simple and clear legislative language.” Former Bethesda Fire Chief Victor Esch put it plainly: “One of the things to cooperate and collaborate on is getting real-time asset information to firefighters and first responders so they can reduce their risk of injury and death. That is a socially responsible ‘Why’ that we can elevate to moral and legal responsibility with simple and clear legislative language.”

He expands on this at the Café ZAi Podcast.

3.3 Total Risk of Ownership

Some of these challenges were once real. In the last century, before digital tools, open standards, or AI, owners could argue it was too hard to capture and share building data. That excuse belonged to the 1970s.

But it is 2025. Owners who still treat data as optional are inflating costs and compounding risks. Every missing record, every proprietary lock, every compliance-only report adds to the total risk of ownership.

Even Congress already mandates federal asset reporting through the Federal Real Property Profile (FRPP). Yet GAO has shown for years that FRPP can barely count buildings, let alone track the assets inside them. The authority exists, but execution is stuck in the 1970s. The private sector often mirrors these same habits, treating asset data as paperwork instead of infrastructure.The same is true at the system level. Building controls were meant to be the nervous system of facilities, yet too often they are locked in proprietary formats that can’t communicate with other assets or even each other. Instead of enabling communication, today’s controls are often over-controlling , silencing buildings while owners still call them “smart.”

3.4 Opening the Map

In 1983, a Korean Air flight strayed into Soviet airspace due to navigational error, and hundreds died when it was shot down. President Reagan responded within weeks: he ordered GPS, then a top-secret military tool, opened for civilian use. Congress backed the funding. That act of opening data transformed global safety and commerce.

Today, we face a similar crisis in our buildings. Data is locked in proprietary systems, inaccessible even to the owners who paid for it. Firefighters walk in blind. Owners bleed money. The public pays with lives and value.

The government has a role here, just as it did with GPS. Owners and agencies that take public money must be required to make their building and asset data open, structured, and accessible. The UK’s “Golden Thread” is one example. Through the Linux Foundation, the Coalition for Smarter Buildings, and a growing network of advanced owners, the mechanism already exists to do the same at scale.

This is our moment to open the map. Just as GPS made the world navigable, open data can make our cities and assets safe.

3.5 A New Standard of Care

The good news is that not everyone is stuck in the past. Some owners, architects, engineers, and technologists are already proving that asset data can flow, that handover can work, and that operations can be driven by open, structured information.

The Coalition for Smarter Buildings and the Linux Foundation are applying open-source principles to the built environment,just as open systems secured the digital world. The model is here, the solutions are proven, and what’s needed now are doers, not talkers.

3.6 A Seatbelt Moment for Buildings and Assets

Unsafe by design. Unsafe by operation. Unsafe by negligence. The pattern is clear.

Lost data doesn’t just waste money. It raises the total risk of ownership, lives, value, and trust are on the line. What was once difficult is now negligence.

This October, we are taking that message to Capitol Hill at the Federal Asset Data Handover & Exchange Summit. Owners, agencies, and technologists must stop treating asset data as optional. It is essential infrastructure.

The excuses are gone. The solutions are here. The only question left is:
Will you open your data, or continue putting lives, value, and trust at risk?

Got thoughts on what Congress needs to hear?Ping me on LinkedIn, we’re shaping the message now.

3.7 Giving Buildings and Assets a Voice

At the heart of it, building controls are supposed to be the voice of the building. But owners still install proprietary systems that don’t talk to each other, and then declare the building or the city “smart.” If a building cannot talk, it isn’t smart. It’s dumb. In fact, today’s controls are often over-controlling, locking data in, silencing buildings instead of letting them communicate.

In Part 4, we will demonstrate how this is changing, where open-source connections, smarter controls, and AI are already giving buildings back their voice, proving that asset data can flow securely, efficiently, and at scale.

This is Part 3 of a four-part series. Here’s what’s coming next:

• Part 1 – Everything BiM-Everywhere GiS-All Together DigitalTwins-All at Once Ai
  • Synchronizing the chaos into a system of systems
• Part 2 – Planes, Trains, Buildings & Synchronized Assets
  • Voices from the stage: OBO, Plannerly, Autodesk, ESRI, DOTs, and more. What worked, what didn’t, why validation matters, and how to openBIM.
• Part 3 – Unsafe by Design for Operations
  •  The inherent dangers of siloed building data, and why open source is the solution.
• Part 4 – From Sandboxes to Action and Ai
  • A call to the industry: less talk, more connection. What owners, practitioners, vendors, and standards bodies must do next.