Semantic interoperability is one of those phrases that sounds more technical than it is, but if you strip away the jargon, it simply means this: systems that can communicate and actually understand each other. It’s the difference between having a room full of people shouting in different languages, and having a conversation where everyone speaks and listens fluently.
In buildings, semantic interoperability means that devices, systems, and software can share data that’s structured in a consistent way. Not just the numbers, but the meaning behind those numbers: what they represent, where they came from, how they relate to other systems, and how they should be used.
“When our buildings learn to speak a common language, we will unlock a new era of efficiency, innovation, and user experience.”
- Andrew Rodgers
Most buildings today don’t have that. What we have instead are fragmented data environments where every system - HVAC, lighting, metering, access control, etc. - uses its own data conventions, naming schemes, and modeling approaches. Data gets trapped in silos. Integration takes months. And even when you can get systems talking, they often don’t understand what each other is saying.
This has been an ongoing friction point across the built environment for years. Commissioning engineers trying to validate building performance are forced to interpret incomplete or inconsistently named control sequences. Energy advisors face blind spots in metering data or can’t trust the sensor metadata they’re reviewing. Controls contractors are stuck rewriting logic from scratch, because the existing system can’t expose sequences in a portable or standardized format. And systems integrators are left duct-taping it all together with custom middleware or brittle one-off scripts that fall apart under any change in scope.
From our perspective at ACE IoT, these aren’t edge cases–they’re the norm. And they’re exactly the kind of problem semantic interoperability is designed to solve.
Why It’s Gaining Traction Now
Over the last few years, the building industry has taken real steps toward solving the semantics problem. Efforts like Project Haystack and Brick Schema helped lay a foundation, and now standards bodies like ASHRAE are stepping in to formalize that work. ASHRAE Standard 223P, in particular, is developing a framework for semantically modeling building systems across their lifecycle—from design and construction to operation and retrofit.
But it’s not just a standards process. There’s also a growing body of software tools that aim to make semantic modeling deployable in the real world. Tools like BuildingMOTIF, Spawn of Energy+, Open Building Control, and BOPtest are designed not just for researchers, but for controls engineers, software vendors, and building operators trying to deliver real value on real projects. Some support simulation. Some improve interoperability between existing models. Some even enable code compliance to be validated using operational data rather than static documentation.
There’s movement beyond our sector, too. Netflix’s internal Universal Data Architecture is one example of how enterprise IT has embraced semantic modeling: not as an abstract idea, but as a backbone for managing complexity at scale. When Andrew Rodgers wrote about Netflix’s UDA, he noted the clear parallel: buildings are no longer just comfort systems, they’re multi-domain platforms where policy, occupancy, grid integration, and decarbonization pressures all converge.
Why We’re Talking About It
Yes, you’re right: ACE IoT doesn’t sell a semantic modeling platform. But we do sit at the intersection of data collection, standardization, and application development, where the need for semantic interoperability is not theoretical. It’s immediate, it’s practical, and it’s something we’ve built into our day-to-day work, because the long-term value of building data depends on context that’s portable and universally understood.
More and more folks in the industry are beginning to agree that this shouldn’t be a niche concern or an “extra” feature. Semantic interoperability is infrastructure. If you’re designing a building, deploying new systems, or building software on top of operational data, you should be demanding it. Without a shared language, we’re stuck solving the same problems over and over, but with one, we have a foundation to solve both the problems we face today and the ones we’ll face tomorrow–faster, cheaper, and with real lasting impact. The sooner we agree on how to describe our systems, the sooner we can start building systems worth describing.
ACE has always taken an open, engineering-first approach to problem solving. We’re not in the business of locking customers into proprietary models. We’re here to help them make the most of their data, on their terms. That means supporting the open frameworks, collaborative working groups, and community-built tools that make semantic interoperability real.
What Comes Next
Semantic modeling isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s not as academic as it once was, either. The tools and standards are maturing. Adoption is growing. The cost of doing nothing is only getting higher.
We believe semantic interoperability is on its way to becoming a baseline expectation, essential for anyone doing serious work in building performance, integration, or automation. We’ll get there faster if we treat interoperability as a shared responsibility, not a technical footnote. It’s time to align on the fundamentals and grow from there.
We intend to be ready—not just by staying informed, but by continuing to build tools and processes that embrace semantic best practices wherever we can.
The bottom line is this: we should care about semantic interoperability not because it’s trendy, but because it’s necessary. It’s how we build smarter buildings, and how we make better decisions. It’s how we, as an industry, finally get out of our own way.
