Frequently asked questions

Intelli-BuildAI is a decarbonisation and building-performance platform by OAIRO. It converts building data — utility bills, EPCs, BMS exports, meter data, drawings and asset schedules — into deterministic engineering analysis, compliance evidence and investment-grade financial cases. It spans 35 modules covering assessment, load calculation, equipment specification, certification, costing, funding and lender-facing credit governance.

Four groups: asset managers and landlords who need carbon risk and retrofit ROI quantified; MEP and building-performance consultants who need standards-compliant load calculations and reports; sustainability and ESG teams who need auditable certification evidence; and lenders or credit committees who need a defensible bankability case for a decarbonisation loan.

Commercial offices, retail, hotels, schools, healthcare, industrial, residential and mixed-use assets. Two specialist topologies have dedicated engines: controlled-environment agriculture (vertical farms and grow rooms, with canopy transpiration and grow-lighting load models) and data centres (cooling topology, PUE, ride-through and chip-power ceilings).

Three differences. Calculations are deterministic and versioned, so the same inputs always produce the same outputs and every figure carries provenance back to its source field. The methodology is published against a validation register of test cases with stated pass rates. And the output is structured for a credit committee, not just an engineering review — bankability scoring, exposure classification and stress testing sit on the same data as the physics.

No. It is decision-support that accelerates and structures professional work. Outputs are indicative and subject to data quality, and require validation through survey, metering or detailed engineering review. Statutory lodgements and certifications must still be issued by an appropriately accredited professional.

The free building scan converts one building's data into a structured energy, carbon and retrofit opportunity report. Provide the building type, location and floor area plus any energy data you have, and you receive an Energy Use Intensity benchmark, a CRREM stranding-year indication, prioritised retrofit opportunities and an indicative Green Premium. No credit card is required for the first building.

Building type, location and gross internal area are enough to produce a benchmarked baseline. Twelve months of electricity and fuel consumption materially improves accuracy. EPCs, BMS exports, half-hourly meter data, asset schedules and drawings each deepen the analysis further — the platform states the confidence level attached to whichever data you supplied.

Yes. Upload utility bills, EPCs, BMS exports, meter data, asset schedules, drawings or specifications and the ingestion engine classifies each document, extracts candidate field values with a confidence score and evidence reference, and presents them for your explicit approval before anything is written to the project. Nothing is committed to your data without confirmation.

An initial scan returns a structured result quickly once data is supplied; richer document-led analysis is typically returned within 48 hours. Detailed engineering modules — zone-level load calculations, dynamic simulation, CFD — run on demand and take longer in proportion to model complexity.

Heating, cooling and ventilation loads follow CIBSE Guide A, the ASHRAE Handbook of Fundamentals, BCO and regional codes, with the applicable standard resolved from the project's region rather than assumed. Calculations cover fabric heat loss, infiltration, solar gains, internal gains and ventilation, and every result records which standard, clause and climate dataset produced it.

Typical Meteorological Year datasets are resolved for the project location, together with derived climate zone, elevation and solar irradiance. Dynamic simulation runs against sub-hourly drivers rather than a single design day, so peak loads and part-load behaviour are both represented.

Yes. Calculated loads drive equipment selection from a catalogue of real manufacturer products — heat pumps, chillers, air handling units, VRF, fan coils and terminal units — returning sizing, efficiency ratings, embodied carbon, BIM objects and indicative pricing. Air handling unit design, coil selection, fan curves and duct and pipe sizing are handled in the mechanical calculation modules.

Yes. Building performance simulation provides zone-level dynamic thermal modelling, parametric studies and scenario comparison. The CFD module covers airflow, thermal comfort, natural ventilation and daylight analysis, with meshing controls, boundary conditions and post-processing to recognised outputs.

Accuracy is bounded by input data quality, and the platform is explicit about it: each project carries a confidence score, an assumptions register recording every value not taken from measured data, and an evidence register linking figures to their source documents. Modelled outputs should be validated against metered performance before being relied upon for capital commitment.

CRREM — the Carbon Risk Real Estate Monitor — sets science-based decarbonisation pathways aligned to the Paris Agreement. The platform compares your asset's carbon intensity against the applicable CRREM pathway to identify the stranding year: the point at which the asset exceeds its allowable intensity. That date is what converts an energy problem into a valuation and financing problem.

Yes. There are dedicated modules for EPC assessment covering UK non-domestic and residential methodologies including SAP, SBEM and DEC, plus Future Homes and Buildings Standard compliance checking. Official EPC register lookups can be used to compare a modelled result against the lodged certificate.

LEED, BREEAM, WELL, Estidama Pearl, Green Mark, NABERS, Fitwel and others. The certification workspace maps project parameters to prerequisites and credits, tracks evidence against each requirement, flags gaps and scores likely achievement — so the certification submission is assembled continuously rather than reconstructed at the end.

The W-EPC is a Wellness and Energy Performance Certificate — a combined rating that assesses indoor environmental quality alongside energy and carbon performance. It runs through a seven-stage certification workflow from registration and design review to installation verification, data validation, operational assessment, certification decision and continuous monitoring.

The standards database spans 195 countries and over 1,100 standards, with regional depth for the UK (Part L, EPC, DEC, CIBSE), the GCC (Estidama, GSAS, UAE Green Building Regulations, ASHRAE 90.1), the EU (EPBD and EN standards), the US and Canada (ASHRAE, IECC, NECB), Australia and New Zealand (NCC, NABERS) and Asia (BCA Green Mark, OTTV). Standards records are kept current through scheduled synchronisation.

Each measure carries a capital cost, a modelled energy and carbon saving and an operational cost impact, built up from the load calculations rather than assumed percentages. From these the platform produces payback, IRR, NPV and whole-life cost, with tariff and emission factors resolved for the project's region and a sensitivity matrix showing how returns move as those assumptions change.

The Green Premium is the valuation uplift attributable to improved energy and carbon performance — through higher rent, reduced void, stronger tenant covenant and avoided stranding. The Green Asset Valuation module quantifies it from the asset's own performance improvement and market inputs you control, rather than applying a generic market multiplier.

It converts an engineering case into a lender-facing credit case: bankability scoring, exposure classification, covenant testing, stress testing and scenario analysis, with syndication tranches, a cashflow forecast and an ESG disclosure pack. Policy settings are sealed into dated epoch snapshots, so a historical decision can always be judged against the rules that were actually in force at the time.

Yes. A read-only lender portal can be granted to a named lender group for a defined period, disclosing only the selected sections — financial model, sensitivity, syndication, ESG, cashflow or audit gates. Grants are scoped, expiring, revocable and access-logged.

Yes. The funding module researches grants, loans, tax incentives and government schemes matched to your location, building type and proposed measures, tracks application status and can assemble supporting documentation for a submission.

Every project has a Trust Centre showing the six-step assessment journey, a confidence score, the standards each result was calculated against, an assumptions register and an evidence register linking figures to source documents. Nothing material appears without a traceable basis, which is what allows the output to survive third-party due diligence.

A published record of methodology test runs. The deterministic engines are executed against a suite of validation cases with known expected results, and each run records pass rate, maximum deviation and per-case detail against a stated engine version and methodology epoch. Published runs are visible rather than asserted.

Yes. The attestation register records third-party review of the methodology — auditor, registration, audit type, findings, explicitly stated limitations and expiry — tied to the specific validation run and engine version the attestation was granted against.

Performance drift detection compares metered and BMS telemetry against the governed modelled baseline for the same period, pro-rated and tolerance-banded. Material deviations raise a signal with severity, direction, data-quality flag and probable causes, which is then triaged to resolution or an accepted variance. Savings are verified rather than assumed.

Yes. The M&V module supports IPMVP-aligned baselines, adjustment for changed conditions, and reporting on verified rather than modelled savings — which is what a funder or an ESCO contract requires as evidence.

Access is enforced at the record level by the database, not just hidden in the interface. Project data is visible to its owner, explicitly invited collaborators and workspace administrators. Documents uploaded to project repositories are held in private storage and served through short-lived signed links rather than public URLs.

Yes. Sign-ins, record changes, document access, exports and administrative actions are recorded to an audit log with actor, timestamp, outcome and severity, and the document management module can export its access log for compliance review.

Google Drive, OneDrive and SharePoint for document repositories, Gmail for outbound mail, LinkedIn for marketing publication, and BMS integrations for operational telemetry. There is also an outbound sync API and a decision API for integrating platform results into your own systems.

Yes. Reports export as branded PDFs and structured HTML, calculation results and load schedules export to Excel and CSV, equipment selections export as BIM objects and schedules, and project field data can be exported wholesale. There is no lock-in on your own numbers.

Yes. Brand profiles, templates and document styles let consultancies issue reports and bid proposals under their own identity, with a brand fidelity check confirming the output matches the registered template before it is published to a client.

The first building scan is free. Beyond that the platform is modular — you activate only the modules a given project needs, drawing on a wallet balance, rather than buying an all-inclusive licence. Bundles and vertical-specific pricing are available, and team wallets allow an organisation to fund and control spend centrally.

Teams are supported properly rather than by password sharing. An organisation can have a hierarchy of teams with roles and permissions, a shared team wallet with spending limits and budget approval workflows, join requests with administrator approval, shared projects, comments and activity visibility across members.

Yes. The client portal gives external collaborators a clean, scoped view of a project — documents, milestones, variations, RAG status and published proposals — with per-item visibility control, so a guest sees exactly what you decided to disclose and nothing else.

Yes. The Bids module ingests a tender pack, extracts the compliance requirements, proposes the project topology, builds a fee model from rate cards and hours baselines, and produces a branded, revision-controlled proposal that can be published straight to the client portal with the fee total recorded against that revision.

Run the free scan on a single real building — ideally your worst performer or the one facing a compliance deadline. It takes minutes to submit, and the resulting report is the fastest way to judge whether the analysis is credible enough for your portfolio.