Interview
The Ambitious AI-Powered 2025 Roadmap for Smart Buildings
Interview with our CTO Christophe Penninckx
With the launch of Trigrr 5.21, the proptech company continues to push the boundaries of smart building management. We sat down with Christophe Penninckx, CTO of Trigrr, to discuss the latest release and what lies ahead for 2025.
Q: What does the future hold for Trigrr?
Christophe Penninckx: The future is all about automation, intelligence, and sustainability. With the advancements in AI, IoT, and cloud computing, Trigrr is evolving from a smart building platform into a true building assistant, capable of managing properties autonomously and efficiently.
Q: How does Trigrr stand out from other Building Operating Systems regarding AI implementation?
Christophe Penninckx: Our main strengths are flexibility, ease of use and data unification. Trigrr works in both new and existing buildings, integrating multiple technologies into a single, coherent system. Unlike other solutions, we unify data and controls from HVAC/BMS, IoT, access control, lifts, lighting and audiovisual systems into one intelligent and proactive platform.
This is made possible by a universal and highly flexible approach based on our metalanguage, our feature-based connections and overlaid with the BRICK ontology. This means that all data is classified in a structured and understandable way, making the nomenclature of sub-systems much less important. This well-structured and agnostic approach is the perfect foundation for putting AI on top of it with ease.
Q: What role does AI play in Trigrr’s roadmap for 2025?
Christophe Penninckx: AI is of course a major focus for Trigrr moving forward. We are currently training AI models to analyze live and historical building data to provide actionable insights for property managers.
One upcoming feature is AI-powered energy optimization, which will allow buildings to automatically adjust heating, cooling, and lighting based on occupancy patterns, IoT sensor data, and real-time energy costs. AI will also assist in fault detection, helping facility managers predict and prevent system failures before they occur.
We are also working on AI-driven user interaction, enabling managers to simply describe what they need in natural language, and Trigrr will configure the building accordingly. The goal is to create a building assistant that continuously learns and adapts to its users’ needs.
Q: What new functionalities can we expect in the next updates?
Christophe Penninckx: The next phase of Trigrr will introduce several key features:
- Project and Multi-Project Dashboards – Providing a high-level overview of multiple buildings, ideal for property managers and ESG specialists tracking sustainability goals.
- Fault Detection Dashboard – Offering a real-time, centralized view of technical issues across all systems, allowing quick intervention before users even notice a problem.
- AI-Enhanced Notifications – Expanding beyond alerts to recommend corrective actions, such as adjusting HVAC settings when a window is left open.
- Automated Energy Efficiency Scenarios – Users will be able to set predefined optimization rules that Trigrr enforces autonomously to reduce costs and carbon footprints.
Q: Trigrr 5.21 has just been released. What are the key innovations?
Christophe Penninckx: Trigrr 5.21 represents a major advancement in data-driven building management. One of the most significant improvements is our new dashboarding tool, which functions similarly to Power BI, enabling property owners, ESG managers and facility managers to monitor and analyze smart building data in a highly visual and actionable way.
Until now, we focused primarily on data collection, but with this release, we are prioritizing extracting valuable insights from that data. Our new dashboarding capabilities allow users to aggregate various data points into a single view, making it easier to understand and optimize building performance.
We have also introduced a cost-analysis feature, allowing users to correlate energy consumption with real financial impact. Instead of just showing kilowatt-hour usage, Trigrr 5.21 calculates real-time energy costs, making it easier to track expenses and implement cost-saving measures.
Another breakthrough is the enhanced widget-based dashboard editor, which provides a fully customizable and intuitive way for users to build their own monitoring panels without any coding. We’ve really expanded our range of visualization tools, allowing users to generate more sophisticated graphs, including Pareto charts that highlight the most critical inefficiencies, such as the top energy-consuming areas or most frequently used spaces.
Users can drag and drop widgets to display temperature, occupancy levels, energy use, and more, creating a tailored experience suited to their needs.
Q: Does this advanced data management also help technical teams to intervene proactively in case of a problem?
Christophe Penninckx: Trigrr now alerts the right personnel before an issue escalates—whether it’s an elevator failure, an HVAC malfunction, or an access control problem. Notifications are delivered via email and in-app alerts.
One major addition is the fault prediction mechanism, which anticipates potential failures based on past data trends. This means facility managers can proactively schedule maintenance before issues arise, reducing downtime and extending equipment lifespan.
In future releases, we plan to integrate interactive notifications, allowing users to take immediate actions, such as adjusting heating levels or unlocking doors, directly from the notification.
Trigrr is undoubtedly the best intuitive building solution to address both business and technical challenges on a single pane of glass.