The Building Will Tell You
Lessons from an Inexperienced Controls Technician
Early in my career, I often found myself standing in front of control systems I did not fully understand.
Like many technicians entering the building controls industry in the 1980s, I was learning as I went. Some systems were electronic. Many were pneumatic. Documentation was often incomplete, outdated, or unavailable. The buildings themselves were complex, and experienced technicians were not always available to provide guidance. Looking back, it would be easy to assume that success depended upon having all the answers. Surprisingly, I discovered something different.
The building itself often provided the answers.
At the time, I would not have described it that way. I simply knew that when faced with a difficult problem, it often mattered less where I started than that I started somewhere. If I could establish contact with the system and begin observing its responses, the building would gradually reveal which direction was productive and which was not. Every observation became a clue. Every test became a question. Every result narrowed the possibilities.
There were occasions when I would deliberately disconnect or isolate a pneumatic control line and simply watch what happened. If nothing changed, that was information. It meant I was probably investigating the wrong area of the system. If a damper moved unexpectedly, a valve changed position, or operating conditions shifted, the building had just revealed something important. The result was not necessarily the answer, but it provided direction.
In many ways, troubleshooting became less about possessing knowledge and more about establishing a dialogue with reality.
The Importance of Starting
One lesson from those early years has remained with me throughout my career. When confronting a complex problem, waiting for complete understanding can become a form of paralysis. The desire to know everything before taking action often prevents us from learning what the system is attempting to teach us.
Buildings do not typically reveal themselves all at once. Instead, they provide feedback in small increments. A pressure changes. A temperature drifts. A valve fails to respond. An alarm appears. An operator mentions a recurring issue. Each observation contains information that helps orient the investigation.
The important thing is to begin.
Once contact is established, reality begins providing feedback.
Experienced technicians eventually become very skilled at interpreting that feedback, but the feedback itself is available to anyone willing to pay attention.
Intelligence Hidden in Plain Sight
This experience has influenced how I think about facilities today. Modern buildings generate enormous amounts of information through Building Automation Systems, energy meters, maintenance records, commissioning reports, trend logs, and operational data. Yet despite this abundance of information, many organizations struggle to understand what their facilities are trying to tell them.
The challenge is not always the absence of knowledge.
In many cases, the knowledge already exists.
The challenge is accessibility.
A building may contain years of operational history, lessons learned, successful strategies, and warnings about recurring problems. The information is present, but it remains fragmented across systems, documents, databases, and individual experience. The facility remembers more than the organization can easily access.
This realization has become increasingly important as facilities have grown more sophisticated. While technology has advanced dramatically since the pneumatic systems of the 1980s, the underlying challenge remains remarkably similar. The building is continuously communicating through its behavior. The question is whether anyone is listening.
Understanding Through Interaction
One of the misconceptions surrounding intelligence is that it must always originate from a conscious source. Yet complex systems often contain forms of embedded intelligence that emerge through their structure, behavior, and interactions. Buildings are no exception.
A facility may not think in the human sense, but it continuously responds to changing conditions. It reacts to weather, occupancy, equipment performance, operator interventions, maintenance activities, and countless other influences. These responses contain information. They reveal relationships. They expose dependencies. They create opportunities for learning.
The building does not necessarily explain itself in words.
Instead, it provides clues.
The skilled practitioner learns how to recognize and interpret those clues.
Finding True North
Years ago, I learned that when troubleshooting a difficult control problem, I did not always need to know the destination. I only needed to determine whether I was getting warmer or colder.
The building would tell me.
Sometimes the clues were obvious. Sometimes they were subtle. Sometimes an entire day would be spent eliminating possibilities before discovering a meaningful lead. Yet the process remained consistent. Observe. Interact. Learn. Adjust. Observe again.
Over time, a direction would emerge.
Today, I believe the same principle applies far beyond building controls. Whether commissioning a new facility, optimizing operations, preserving institutional knowledge, or improving organizational performance, progress often begins by establishing contact with reality and paying attention to the feedback that follows.
The answers may not appear immediately.
But if we are willing to listen, the system often reveals the next step.
The building will tell us.