Apartment building: what the SRI measures

What does the SRI mean for an apartment building?

The Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) shows how well a building's technical installations are prepared for intelligent control. In apartment buildings, this concerns mainly collective systems: the shared heating, lighting in corridors and stairwells, and charging points in the car park.

Unlike an office building, no single owner decides here, but rather the homeowners' association or a housing corporation. This makes the path to a higher score often slower, because investments must first be discussed and approved.

Which domains carry the most weight?

The SRI methodology has nine domains, each with its own weighting factor. For this building type, heating and electric vehicle charging carry the most weight, both with weighting factor 3.

Hot water, ventilation, electricity, and monitoring and control follow with weighting factor 2. Cooling, lighting, and the dynamic building envelope weigh less heavily, with weighting factor 1, because they play a smaller role in residential buildings than in utility buildings.

Whether a building has collective heating or individual boilers per dwelling makes a significant difference to the final score.

Is the SRI mandatory for apartment buildings?

The SRI is currently voluntary, also for apartment buildings. The European Commission must adopt a delegated act by 30 June 2027 that will make the SRI mandatory, but this applies for now only to utility buildings with an installation above 290 kilowatts.

Large apartment buildings with a collective installation can approach that threshold in rare cases, but most residential buildings fall outside it. For them, the SRI remains a tool that the homeowners' association can deploy itself, for example to justify charging infrastructure or monitoring.

What does practice in other countries show?

Sixteen member states conducted an official pilot phase with the SRI, the Netherlands did not. In Czechia, 162 buildings were assessed, with an average score of 20.6 per cent, indicating that many existing buildings still score low.

In Denmark, all 27 tested buildings fell into the three lowest classes. This picture is relevant for apartment buildings: without targeted investment in control and monitoring, the score typically remains low.