Systems and integration design
Systems and integration design is the architecture that determines how a building's systems, data and applications connect, including what a master systems integrator is contractually accountable for.
How do these systems connect without locking us in?
What we do
01 / 05This is the layer that decides what everything costs to change in year five.
We design the integration architecture. Where the integration layer sits, which standards apply, how data moves between systems, and precisely what a master systems integrator is accountable for.
The master systems integrator category is mostly sold by the firms who then do the integration. That is a structural conflict: the party defining the scope is the party who benefits from its shape. We write the MSI scope as the independent client-side party, then hold the appointed integrator to it.
Point to point connections are cheap on day one and ruinous by year five. Every interface you add multiplies the ones you already have. An integration layer costs more up front and is the reason the tenth system takes a fortnight instead of a quarter.
- Integration architecture, drawn and documented
- Data model and standards, open where the market supports it
- Interface schedules, system by system
- Master systems integrator scope of works, written client side
Developers, design teams, and asset owners at design stage.
How it works
02 / 05- Weeks 1 to 2
Architecture principles
Agree the rules before the drawings. Where the integration layer sits, what stays federated, and what the estate must be able to do in year five.
- Weeks 2 to 5
Data model and standards
A common data model across systems, using open standards where the market genuinely supports them rather than where a brochure claims it does.
- Weeks 4 to 8
Interface design
System by system. What connects to what, by which protocol, owning which data, with which failure behaviour.
- Weeks 7 to 9
MSI scope
The master systems integrator scope of works, written so that accountability is unambiguous and testable at handover.
Durations are indicative and depend on the size of the estate and how quickly we get access.
Questions we get asked
03 / 05What is a master systems integrator, and do we need one?
An MSI is the party contractually accountable for making the building's systems work as one. On a single fit-out with four systems, usually not. On an asset with a dozen systems, several contractors and a decade of life ahead of it, an unnamed integrator means the accountability lands on you by default.
You write the MSI scope. Do you also bid for it?
No. We do not bid for the work we specify, and we have no integration arm to bid with. That is the entire reason the scope is worth what you pay for it.
Which integration standards do you design to?
Whatever the asset and the market can genuinely support, with a strong bias to open. In practice that usually means BACnet at the building layer, MQTT for event data, and a semantic model such as Brick or Haystack so that a sensor means the same thing in every system. We do not design to a standard that only one vendor implements.
Can you work with a system we have already bought?
Yes, and most projects start there. Existing systems are constraints, not failures. The design work is establishing what each one will and will not give you, then architecting around the ones that cannot move.
At what stage of a project should integration design happen?
Before tender, and before the systems are selected. Once the packages are awarded, the architecture is whatever the winning contractors happen to build, and changing it means variations. Concept or early design stage is where this is cheapest and most effective.
Is this the same as a digital twin?
No. A digital twin is an application that sits on top of this. The integration design and data model are what determine whether a twin is achievable, or whether it stays a visualisation with nothing live behind it.
Ready to press start?
05 / 05Tell us about the space, the asset, or the problem.
We will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.