Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, has spent years observing property owners delegate operational technology decisions to IT managers or property managers who lack the necessary training. According to Douglas, this is one of the most consistent and expensive blind spots in the commercial real estate industry.
Information Technology (IT) manages organizational infrastructure such as servers, email, identity management, firewall policy, and directory services. Operational Technology (OT), on the other hand, runs the building itself: HVAC systems, lighting controllers, access control, parking management, leak detection sensors, elevators, and the data these systems generate. OT makes a building function and determines whether it is efficient or wasteful.
When ownership groups ask who is responsible for technology in their properties, IT managers often raise their hands because low-voltage wiring in a rack looks like their domain. Property managers raise their hands because the building is their responsibility. Asset managers remain quiet, focused on financial reports rather than building systems. As a result, no one truly owns OT, creating a vacuum where inefficiency thrives.
When no one internally owns OT, vendors fill the gap. A general contractor completes a building and hands technology decisions to a property manager who is already stretched thin. The property manager, needing quick solutions, attends a trade show, sees a compelling demo, and purchases a system that solves one problem without fitting into a broader strategy. Over time, a typical quarter-million-square-foot building ends up with a dozen or more disconnected systems, multiple redundant networks, and data scattered across vendor platforms the owner cannot access.
“They have strategies to build properties, to buy properties, to sell properties, to lease up, to increase rent roll,” Douglas said. “But they often just ignore the digital. So the vendors run the roost.”
The consequence is a loss of data. Every system generates operational data that belongs to the property owner. When vendors manage the system, they hold the data, and the owner pays for a service without receiving the intelligence it could produce.
“We are asking the wrong people to do the right tasks,” Douglas said. “A property manager’s job is to take care of tenants and lease up the building. Not to manage networks they never designed and probably cannot document.”
OT management requires a digital strategy, a digital architect, and someone accountable for the data it produces. These roles need not be internal but must exist somewhere, or the gap remains. The Peak Property Performance framework, developed by Douglas and OpticWise founder Drew Hall, provides owners with a structured process for auditing current systems, connecting the right systems, collecting data they own, and using it to improve performance and profitability.
When OT is unmanaged, utility savings are missed because energy consumption is not tracked. Insurance rates remain high because maintenance history is undocumented. Tenant experience suffers because problems are not caught early. Lights stay on in empty buildings, water damage goes undetected, and systems run on default settings for years.
“You lose control of your expenses,” Douglas said. “And you lose the data you should be able to use to operate more efficiently and drive more revenue.”
The data is already there, produced by systems the owner paid for. The question is whether anyone is positioned to use it. That is not an IT problem or a property management problem. It is a strategy problem, and it starts with recognizing that OT is its own discipline with its own requirements and return.
