The recommendation you get depends on who you called
There is an uncomfortable pattern in building automation: ask three contractors what your building needs, and each will name the line they sell. Not because anyone is dishonest — it is simply what they are trained on, stock, and are authorised to install. But it means the most consequential decision in your project, the platform your building will run for the next fifteen years, gets made by your choice of phone number.
That works out fine when the product happens to fit. The trouble is what happens when it does not, and nobody involved is in a position to say so.
What single-line lock-in actually costs an owner
Owners rarely feel the cost on day one. It shows up later, usually in one of these forms:
How it shows up
- Pricing leverage disappears. If only one or two firms in the region sell the line on your campus, your renewal quote is effectively uncontested.
- Expansion is pre-decided. The new wing has to match, whether or not that product is still the right answer.
- Your data lives behind their front end. Trends and graphics are hard to extract when you want analytics, benchmarking or a second opinion.
- Service follows a calendar, not the building — because the contract, not the data, defines the visit.
- Documentation gaps become leverage. If nobody else has the database or the source files, nobody else can bid.
What we do instead
- Four major lines — ABB Cylon, Siemens, Honeywell and Johnson Controls — so the fit conversation is real.
- Open supervisory layer. Tridium Niagara above the controllers, so the operator experience outlives any single hardware generation.
- Open protocols first — BACnet and Modbus — because interoperability lives in the protocol, not the badge.
- Documentation handed over as a deliverable, not held as leverage.
- We will recommend a line we do not lead with when that is the right answer.
How we actually choose
“Brand-agnostic” is easy to put on a website, so here is the decision process in plain terms. We weigh:
The installed base. What is already in the building, what condition it is in, and what genuinely carries forward. Reusing sound controllers and field devices is often worth more to an owner than any product feature.
The owner or agency standard. If a state, district or corporate standard names a platform, that standard usually wins — and our job is to execute it well, not argue with it.
Who supports it on Monday. What can your in-house staff realistically operate and troubleshoot? A more capable system nobody can drive is a worse outcome.
IT and cybersecurity requirements. Network architecture, remote access and secure transport are now design inputs, not afterthoughts.
Parts, service and lifecycle. Availability, roadmap and who else could service it in ten years if we are not around.
A concrete example
The clearest proof we can offer is a job where the answer was not our product. At a State of Colorado facility, working with US Engineering, we converted a live central chiller plant off Siemens and onto Distech — because the state’s controls standard called for Distech — and we did it without ever losing the plant. The building kept running the entire time.
Distech is not a line we lead with. That is precisely the point: the owner had a standard, the standard was reasonable, and our job was to meet it competently on live equipment. A contractor who only sells one product cannot make that recommendation, because it would mean recommending against themselves.
The trade-off, stated plainly. Working across multiple lines costs us more — more training, more platforms to document, more tooling — and we will not always be the low bid on a spec that sole-sources one product. We think that is a fair trade for a recommendation that was not decided before we saw your building. If you would rather have the cheapest number on a single proprietary line, there are plenty of firms happy to provide it.
