SmartViz takes two Building Innovation Awards for digital twin estate platform

Building intelligence software firm SmartViz said on Friday 9 October it had won both categories it entered at the Building Innovation Awards 2026, Best Asset Management Innovation and Most Innovative New Product (Digital).

The company said the awards celebrate organisations using emerging technologies and digital innovation in the UK construction and built environment. The wins are reported in SmartViz's own release and news post; the organiser's own results pages could not be checked.

SmartViz's platform combines Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, building systems, room-booking data, and energy and environmental information in a 3D digital twin. The company said the twin is built on more than 17 billion data points.

Dr Shrikant Sharma, founder and chief executive of SmartViz, said: "Every university and every business is being asked to find efficiencies. Our answer is that the money is already there, sitting in empty rooms."

The client figures

SmartViz said the University of Glasgow had identified surplus space across 12 buildings and 50 teaching spaces, which it put at more than £14m of potential avoided capital investment and over £1m a year in operating savings. Those Glasgow figures rest on SmartViz's release alone.

David Gray, head of estates digital and insight at the University of Glasgow, said: "SmartViz has significantly enhanced our understanding of estate utilisation by providing reliable, evidence-based occupancy data."

At Cardiff Metropolitan University, SmartViz said the university avoided £5.1m of new construction and later made changes to cut utility use that produced more than £1.8m in operational savings. The £1.8m figure appears only in SmartViz's release. In its own 2025 news item, Cardiff Met described SmartViz as a technology start-up whose collaboration had transformed how it manages campus space, and said the project had won a TechFest award for Best Use of Technology: Smart Data Collection for Asset Management.

The Cardiff Met work also took Best Asset Management at the Digital Construction Awards 2025, according to SmartViz, which said the project cut energy use by 1.4 GWh across a campus portfolio worth more than £100m. The judges there called it "a fantastic and timely solution" for university estates departments struggling with cost savings and space utilisation.

For Vodafone, SmartViz's release gave $40m in annual property savings, with a further $140m being explored across more than 3,000 properties. SmartViz's own Vodafone case study, which describes a portfolio of over 3,000 offices, call centres, retail stores and data centres, gives the $40m figure without the annual qualifier and does not mention $140m. In that case study Richard Muraszko, group property strategy manager at Vodafone, said the company was using the platform to save multi-million dollars a year, and SmartViz said 30% of meeting spaces could be saved.

The utilisation case

SmartViz cited an AUDE estimate that 10 to 40% of university estate footprints are underused. Its own data across more than 15 UK universities, it said, shows teaching space used about 20% of the time in term and office space about 30% on the busiest days.

In feedback summarised by SmartViz, the awards jury said the platform showed lifecycle value through estate optimisation, avoided capital expenditure, reduced operating costs and improved utilisation. It cited the firm's "peel and stick" sensors, platform design and interoperable approach as evidence of a product ready for broad industry adoption.

The company

Companies House records SmartViz Ltd at 124 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, classified under SIC code 62012, business and domestic software development.

The firm lists a service titled Campus Space Management with IoT and AI Powered Digital Twin on the government's G-Cloud marketplace, priced at £5 to £100 a unit a month. The listing describes pre-configured "peel&stick" sensors as easy to install and GDPR compliant, and cites the Cardiff Met £5.1m and Vodafone $40m savings as proof points.

Sensor maker Milesight has announced a UK partnership with SmartViz. Sharma said in that announcement that the two companies share many customers worldwide and use the SmartViz digital twin platform to deliver insights.

SmartViz said its platform now supports more than 15 UK universities alongside NHS organisations, global corporates, local authorities and infrastructure assets.