Frequently Asked Questions – Commercial Real Estate
Get clear answers to common questions about using smart building analytics in commercial real estate. Learn how Bueno’s platform helps manage energy use, detect faults in office buildings, and support your building rating improvement goals.
Platform & Deployment FAQs
What is Bueno Analytics and how does it improve building performance in commercial real estate?
Bueno is a smart building analytics platform designed to enhance performance across commercial properties. It integrates with your existing systems—such as the BMS, energy meters, and HVAC—to collect and analyse operational data in near real-time.
By turning raw data into actionable insights, Bueno helps reduce energy costs, identify and prevent equipment failures, and optimise indoor conditions for tenant comfort. For asset managers, this translates to improved net operating income (NOI) and increased portfolio value. For facility managers, it means fewer reactive callouts, better resource allocation, and more streamlined operations.To see how Bueno addresses specific challenges, explore our detailed Use-Case Scenarios page.
What makes Bueno different from other building analytics platforms?
Bueno stands out through our unique hybrid AI model, which combines deep engineering expertise with advanced machine learning. Unlike many providers, we’re fully BMS-agnostic. We integrate seamlessly with your existing systems without the need for costly rip-and-replace projects.
Our platform is designed to grow with you. We support a modular journey, starting with foundational energy monitoring and scaling up to full AI-driven building optimisation. Additionally, our dedicated customer success model ensures we act not just as a vendor, but as a long-term performance partner committed to your outcomes.
Do I need analytics if my building already has a BMS?
Yes. While your Building Management System (BMS) is excellent at controlling your building’s systems based on set commands, it is not designed to analyse performance. Bueno’s platform acts as the analytical brain on top of your BMS, continuously monitoring the data to uncover hidden faults, system inefficiencies, and optimisation opportunities that a typical BMS cannot see. Learn more about how this works on our Fault Detection & Diagnostics module page.
What industries does Bueno support?
Our platform is designed for a wide range of commercial and complex properties. We have extensive expertise in premium office towers, mixed-use precincts, university campuses, public hospitals, hotels, data centres, and large-scale retail centres. You can see a full list on our Industries page.
How quickly can I see value from Bueno?
Most clients gain actionable insights and see early savings within 4–6 weeks of onboarding. A typical full deployment takes less than 12 weeks, with a measurable ROI visible within the first year of operation.
Are alerts and updates delivered in real time?
Our platform collects data every 5 minutes, which we define as near real-time. This high frequency allows our system to trigger alerts for critical issues and reflect performance changes much faster than most standard systems, giving your team the ability to react faster and more effectively.
Can I start with Bueno on a single building, or is it only for large portfolios?
Absolutely. While our platform is powerful enough to manage global portfolios, it delivers significant ROI for a single asset. Our modular approach allows you to start with the specific solution that meets your immediate needs, such as the Energy Management Module, then scale your strategy at your pace.
Energy Management
How does the Bueno platform help reduce energy costs in commercial buildings?
Our platform reduces energy costs by providing deep visibility into how, when, and where your buildings consume energy. It automatically identifies operational inefficiencies, such as equipment running unnecessarily after hours, simultaneous heating and cooling, and deviations from optimal setpoints. By flagging this wastage, our platform allows your team to take targeted actions that lower utility bills. On average, clients see an 8% reduction from our Energy Management module alone, with total savings reaching up to 30% when combined with our Building Optimisation module.
Can Bueno help reduce Scope 2 emissions?
Yes, reducing Scope 2 emissions is a primary outcome. By identifying and eliminating energy waste from your HVAC, lighting, and other base building systems, our platform directly reduces your electricity consumption (a major contributor to Scope 2 emissions). This provides verifiable data for your ESG and carbon accounting reports.
What’s the difference between energy monitoring and energy management?
Energy monitoring collects and views data from your meters. True energy management, which our platform provides, analyses that data to derive actionable insights and drive strategic improvements. While monitoring tells you what happened, our energy management solution tells you why it happened and what to do next to improve performance and reduce costs.
Can Bueno help improve my NABERS energy rating?
Yes, absolutely. Improving NABERS ratings is a core function of our platform. We provide a live NABERS Tracker that shows your real-time performance against your target rating. Our analytics pinpoint the specific inefficiencies impacting your energy score, providing a clear roadmap for uplift. We have a proven track record of helping clients achieve and maintain high NABERS ratings, which you can read about in our NABERS Optimisation Use Case.
How often is the energy data on the platform updated?
Our platform collects data at 5-minute intervals. This is three times more frequent than the typical industry standard of 15 minutes. This near real-time data provides a much more granular and accurate view of your building’s operations, allowing us to detect issues faster and provide more precise insights.
What energy systems does Bueno monitor?
We monitor all primary utilities, including electricity, gas, and water, and on-site generation sources like solar. Our platform integrates with both main utility meters and any sub-metering systems you have, allowing us to track consumption at the portfolio, building, floor, or individual equipment level.
Can I benchmark buildings against each other by energy use?
Yes. Our portfolio-level dashboards are designed for benchmarking. You can easily compare energy performance across different assets, regions, or building types. This allows you to identify outliers, understand what top-performing buildings are doing differently, and apply those best practices across your entire portfolio.
Can Bueno support tenant-level submetering or multi-tenancy visibility?
Yes, this is a core strength of our platform. We can integrate with any existing sub-metering infrastructure to provide granular visibility into tenant energy consumption. It enables accurate billing, helps you manage green lease agreements, and provides tenants with the data they need to understand and improve their own energy footprint – a key part of our Energy Management solution.
Fault Detection & Diagnostics
What is Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD)?
Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD) is an advanced analytical process. It continuously monitors a building’s equipment data to automatically identify issues (the “fault detection” part) and provide insights into the underlying cause of the problem (the “diagnostics” part). It helps you understand not just that something is wrong, but why it’s wrong, enabling a faster and more accurate resolution.
Can I use Bueno to support condition-based maintenance?
Yes. This is a core function of our platform. By using our FDD analytics to continuously monitor the operating condition of your equipment, you can move away from a fixed schedule. This condition-based maintenance (also known as data-driven maintenance) approach ensures your resources are focused only on the assets that need attention, saving time and money. Learn more at our Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) Use Case.
How is Bueno’s FDD different from traditional BMS alarms?
Traditional BMS alarms are often reactive and simple, typically only triggering when a major threshold is breached (e.g., equipment failure). Bueno’s FDD is proactive. It uses over 130 advanced rules and machine learning algorithms to detect subtle inefficiencies and performance deviations that a standard BMS would miss, such as incorrect chiller staging, sensor drift, or simultaneous heating and cooling. It enables problems to be fixed before they trigger a critical alarm or cause energy waste.
How does FDD help reduce operating costs?
FDD reduces operating costs in several key ways. Firstly, it identifies energy wastage from faulty or inefficiently run equipment, directly lowering utility bills. Secondly, pinpointing root causes reduces expensive diagnostic time for contractors and improves first-time fix rates. Finally, it enables a shift to a more proactive Data-Driven Maintenance strategy, reducing the high costs associated with unexpected, reactive repair work.
What kinds of faults can Bueno detect in commercial buildings?
Our platform can detect hundreds of specific faults across all major systems. Common examples include HVAC equipment short-cycling, faulty valves and dampers, sensors that are stuck or out of calibration, pumps and fans running at incorrect speeds, and control logic issues that lead to systems fighting each other. You can explore the full capabilities on our Fault Detection & Diagnostics Module page.
Is FDD the same as Predictive Maintenance (PdM)?
They are closely related but distinct. FDD is the engine that makes Predictive Maintenance possible. FDD focuses on identifying existing faults and inefficiencies right now. Predictive Maintenance uses the patterns and insights from FDD over time to forecast future failures before they happen. A strong FDD platform is the essential first step to implementing a successful Predictive Maintenance strategy.
Does FDD help reduce tenant complaints?
Yes, significantly. Many tenant complaints about comfort (being too hot or cold) are symptoms of underlying equipment faults that FDD is designed to find. By proactively identifying and resolving issues with VAV boxes, temperature sensors, and central HVAC plants, you can create a more stable and comfortable indoor environment, which directly reduces comfort-related complaints.
What happens after a fault is detected?
Once our platform detects a fault, it automatically generates a detailed “Insight” or ticket. This insight is triaged, prioritised based on cost and risk, and enriched with diagnostic data. It is then delivered to the appropriate team member or contractor through our workflow platform with clear recommended actions. The platform then tracks the resolution process from assignment to completion and validates the success of the fix, creating a full audit trail.
Building Optimisation
What is building optimisation?
Building optimisation is the proactive process of fine-tuning your building’s interconnected systems (HVAC, lighting, meters, etc.) to ensure they work together at peak performance. It moves beyond simply fixing what’s broken to focus on enhancing control strategies and operational logic to achieve the highest levels of efficiency and comfort, as detailed in our Building Optimisation Use Case.
How is building optimisation different from Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD)?
FDD is foundational—it tells you if your equipment is running correctly and according to its basic commands. Building Optimisation is the strategic layer on top. It assumes your equipment is working and asks, “Could these systems be running smarter?” For example, FDD might fix a faulty valve, but optimisation will fine-tune the entire chilled water system’s logic to reduce energy use while maintaining comfort. Our platform combines both, using the FDD module as the base for our advanced Optimisation module.
What specific optimisations can Bueno implement?
Our platform can implement over 40 advanced optimisation strategies. Common examples include implementing dynamic setpoints that adapt to live conditions, improving chiller and boiler staging for maximum efficiency, tightening control deadbands to balance comfort and energy use, enhancing economy cycles for free cooling, and resolving simultaneous heating and cooling conflicts across different zones.
Does building optimisation improve tenant comfort and IEQ?
Yes, this is a primary goal of optimisation. By fine-tuning air-side and water-side controls, we can create more stable temperatures, improve ventilation based on occupancy, and reduce equipment noise. A truly optimised building is a more comfortable and productive environment, which is key to improving your Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) and tenant satisfaction.
How does building optimisation help extend equipment life?
Optimisation extends asset life by ensuring equipment runs only when needed and under the most efficient conditions possible. By preventing issues like short-cycling in chillers, pumps running at unnecessarily high speeds, or systems fighting each other, we reduce the overall wear and tear on your critical plant and equipment, helping you maximise your capital investments.
NABERS & Ratings
What is NABERS and how does Bueno support it?
NABERS is a leading global building performance rating system that measures the energy efficiency, water usage, waste management, and indoor environment quality of a building. Bueno provides powerful support for improving your NABERS rating. Our platform includes a live NABERS Tracker, automates the collection of auditable data, and pinpoints the specific operational inefficiencies that are impacting your score. Our founders were involved in the creation of NABERS, so this expertise is part of our DNA.
What other certifications can Bueno support?
Our platform is designed to support a wide range of global green building and sustainability frameworks. We provide the verifiable performance data needed for certifications like LEED (US), BREEAM (UK), WELL, and Green Star. By tracking energy, water, IEQ, and waste metrics, we help you align your operations with the specific requirements of these leading international standards.
How does Bueno help me track my ESG performance?
The Bueno platform is a critical tool for any CRE ESG strategy. It provides the core data layer for the “Environmental” pillar by automatically tracking and reporting on your entire portfolio’s energy consumption, carbon emissions, water usage, and waste. This makes your annual ESG reporting simpler, more accurate, and less reliant on manual data collection.
Can I use Bueno for GRESB reporting?
Yes. GRESB is a key framework for real estate investors, and our platform directly supports its requirements. We provide the asset-level performance data required for the GRESB Real Estate Assessment, helping you streamline your submission process and demonstrate tangible improvements in energy, water, and emissions performance to your investors.
What data do I need to improve my building’s rating?
To significantly improve a building’s rating, you need granular, near real-time data from both your main utility meters and your sub-metering systems. Most importantly, you need to correlate this with operational data from your core systems (BMS, HVAC, Lighting). Our platform excels at integrating these disparate data sets to give you a complete, holistic picture of performance, which is essential for making the strategic improvements that lead to a higher rating.
How does Bueno support Green Star and WELL ratings?
Our platform provides critical, verifiable data that directly supports multiple credits within the Green Star and WELL frameworks. For Green Star, we help you track and report on energy, water, and IEQ performance. For WELL, we provide the detailed analytics needed to manage and validate key metrics for thermal comfort, air quality, lighting, and acoustics, helping you achieve and maintain these globally recognised certifications.
Reporting & AI
Discover how Bueno’s AI-powered reporting and dashboards turn complex building data into actionable clarity. Find answers on custom reports, natural language queries, and more.
What kind of reports does the Bueno platform provide?
Our platform provides a wide range of standard and customisable reports for every stakeholder. This includes high-level executive summaries, detailed fault and action reports for facilities teams, utility and consumption reports for energy managers, and portfolio-wide performance reports for asset managers. You can explore examples on our Reporting & Dashboards page.
Can I customise my dashboard views?
Yes. While we provide a suite of standard dashboards designed for best practice, our platform is flexible. You can filter any view by site, timeframe, or equipment type, and our Customer Success team can work with you to create bespoke dashboard views, tailored to your specific operational needs and KPIs.
How do I know which insights to act on?
Our platform is designed to provide direction, not just data. Insights are automatically triaged and prioritised based on factors like cost impact, energy waste, and potential risk to the asset. This ensures your team can easily identify and focus on the actions that deliver the most significant value.
What is the AI capability within the Bueno platform?
Our platform uses a sophisticated hybrid AI model. This combines rule-based expert systems (built on our 12+ years of engineering knowledge), machine learning (to detect anomalies in data patterns), and Large Language Models (LLMs) like Google’s Gemini. This multi-layered approach allows us to deliver deeper, more predictive insights than traditional analytics platforms. Learn more on our AI & Innovation page.
Can I ask the Bueno AI a question in natural language?
Yes. One of our most powerful features is “Insights Query.” It allows any user, regardless of their technical expertise, to ask plain-language questions about building performance—such as “Create a NABERS roadmap for this building”—and receive a clear, AI-generated answer and strategic plan.
Is there an audit trail or resolution tracking for faults?
Yes. Every fault that our platform detects creates a unique action or “ticket.” This ticket can be assigned to a team member or contractor and tracks the entire resolution process from identification to validation. This creates a full, auditable history of all maintenance activities, which is invaluable for tracking contractor performance and ensuring accountability.
Can Bueno help with compliance reporting?
Yes. Automating compliance reporting is a core feature of our platform. We provide the auditable data required for mandatory schemes like NABERS and can tailor reports to meet specific local and international regulations, such as LL97 in New York or other country-specific environmental reporting standards. This significantly reduces the administrative burden on your team.
Can I use Bueno for budgeting and capital planning?
Absolutely. Our platform is a powerful tool for strategic financial planning. By benchmarking the performance and degradation of assets across your portfolio, we help you move beyond reactive capital planning. You can use our data to accurately forecast maintenance needs, prioritise upgrades based on ROI, and build a clear, evidence-based budget for both operational and capital expenditure.
Integrations & Security
Learn how the Bueno platform integrates with your existing systems and how we ensure the security and privacy of your building data. Find answers on BMS compatibility, CMMS integration, and our security protocols.
What building systems can Bueno integrate with?
Our platform is designed to be technology-agnostic and can integrate with an extensive range of on-site systems. It includes all major Building Management Systems (BMS/BAS), energy and utility meters, sub-metering systems, HVAC plant and equipment, lighting controls, IEQ sensors, and vertical transport systems.
Can Bueno integrate with my CMMS or IWMS?
Yes. We provide robust REST APIs that integrate seamlessly with most major Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS). This means insights and work orders generated in Bueno can be automatically pushed to your existing workflow platforms, creating a more efficient, closed-loop process for your teams.
Is the Bueno platform compatible with legacy systems?
In most cases, yes. Our flexible integration capabilities mean we can often connect to older or legacy BMS and metering systems, as long as they have a digital communication output. This allows you to gain the benefits of modern analytics without undertaking a costly “rip-and-replace” of your existing infrastructure.
How is my building data secured?
We take data security extremely seriously. Our platform is built on enterprise-grade security protocols. Data is encrypted both in transit (as it moves to our platform) and at rest (while stored). We use a secure cloud infrastructure hosted on Microsoft Azure and implement strict access controls, including Single Sign-On (SSO) and mandatory two-factor authentication (2FA). You can find more details on our Integrations & Security page.
Where is my data stored?
Your data is securely stored in a private cloud environment hosted on Microsoft Azure, one of the world’s leading and most secure cloud infrastructure providers. We can host data in various geographic regions to comply with local data sovereignty requirements.
Does Bueno meet international data privacy standards?
Yes. We adhere to global data privacy best practices and frameworks, including GDPR. Our data handling processes are designed to ensure your information is managed responsibly, securely, and in full compliance with all relevant regulatory requirements.
Use Case Scenarios
Explore real-world applications of building analytics. Find answers on how our platform supports specific strategies like Data-Driven Maintenance, NABERS uplift, and more.
What is Data-Driven Maintenance and how does Bueno support it?
Data-Driven Maintenance (DDM) is a strategy that uses real-time operational data to guide your maintenance activities, moving away from a rigid, calendar-based schedule. Bueno’s platform is the engine for DDM. It uses our Fault Detection & Diagnostics module to identify and prioritise issues, allowing your team to focus their resources on the equipment that actually needs attention. This reduces wasted effort, lowers reactive maintenance costs, and extends asset life. You can learn more on our Data-Driven Maintenance Use Case page.
How does Bueno support building commissioning and the Defects Liability Period (DLP)?
While we are not a commissioning agent, our platform provides powerful data-driven commissioning support. By deploying our analytics during the late stages of construction or at the start of the DLP/Warranty Period, we can continuously validate system performance against design intent. This helps project teams find and rectify hidden defects before handover, ensuring contractors are held accountable and the building owner receives a higher-performing asset from day one. Explore the full strategy on our DLP & Warranty Management page.
What is Predictive Maintenance (PdM) and how do you enable it?
Predictive Maintenance (PdM) is the next evolution of DDM. It uses historical data and machine learning to forecast equipment failures before they happen. Our FDD module provides the rich data needed to power these predictions. By identifying subtle performance deviations over time, the platform can alert your team to a potential future failure, allowing you to schedule repairs proactively and avoid costly, unplanned downtime. See how on our Predictive Maintenance Use Case page.
How do you improve Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)?
We help you proactively manage IEQ by monitoring and analysing all the key factors contributing to occupant well-being: thermal comfort, air quality (CO2, VOCs), lighting, and acoustics. Our platform identifies the root cause of comfort complaints, helps you validate performance for ratings like NABERS Indoor Environment and WELL, allowing you to optimise your systems to create a healthier, more productive space.
How does the platform help with workforce augmentation?
Our platform acts as a “force multiplier” for your operations team, helping to overcome the challenges of the skilled labour shortage. By automating complex data analysis and providing AI-guided diagnostics, we empower generalist staff to make expert-level decisions. This reduces the burden on your senior engineers and allows a smaller team to more effectively manage a larger, more complex portfolio. See the full strategy on our Workforce Augmentation Use Case page.
Support & Customer Success
Learn about Bueno’s partnership approach. Find answers about our deployment process, customer success model, training, and how we work with your existing teams and contractors.
What kind of support do I get with Bueno?
We provide a complete partnership model that goes far beyond just technology. Every client is assigned a dedicated Customer Success team, including building performance specialists who provide ongoing support, insight triage, and strategic guidance. We also offer a full technical Help Desk and comprehensive training resources.
How does the onboarding process work?
Our structured onboarding process is designed to deliver value in under 12 weeks. It involves three key stages: 1) Data Onboarding & Integration, where we connect to your systems; 2) Platform Calibration & Go-Live, where we tailor the analytics to your asset; and 3) Insight Generation, where your dedicated team begins working with you to prioritise actions and track results. You can learn more on our Deployment & Customer Success page.
Do I need to train my staff to use the platform?
The platform is designed to be intuitive, but we provide comprehensive training for all users to ensure your team can get the most value from day one. Our Customer Success team will guide your staff through the dashboards, reporting tools, and workflow features, and we provide ongoing access to documentation and training materials.
How does Bueno work with my existing contractors?
We work collaboratively with your existing service providers. Our platform makes their job easier by providing clear, evidence-backed work orders that pinpoint the root cause of an issue. This reduces their diagnostic time, improves first-time fix rates, and provides a clear audit trail for performance and accountability. We can give contractors direct, limited access to the platform to view and update the actions assigned to them.
How do I measure the ROI from using Bueno?
We work with you to establish a clear baseline for performance before we begin. The platform then automatically tracks and quantifies the savings generated from every action taken—whether it’s reduced energy consumption, lower reactive maintenance costs, or avoided capital expenditure. This is all summarised in our automated Savings Summary Reports, giving you a clear, continuous view of your return on investment.
Still Have Questions?
If you didn’t find the answer you were looking for, we’re here to help. Our team can walk you through your options, explain how our platform works, and explore solutions tailored to your needs.
