Foto by Freepic

The theme of smart building, has been evolving for decades: a long way from the now obsolete concept of “home automation”, which is marking time in favor of the term smart home, with elements of innovation often very relevant, as in the case of digital energy that enables to merge some of the features of the power grid with those of the building: smart building and smart grid converge, thanks to the interoperability of technologies, IoT and Edge computing.

But let’s widen our point of view: considering any building that can accommodate people (mainly, but not only) for different types of use, today when we talk about Intelligent Building we talk about Energy, Safety, Comfort at 360-degree. With all this convergence, it is therefore evident, and we would say inevitable, that the infrastructure of the building becomes a prerequisite for it to be considered “smart”: we are talking, of course, about an infrastructure that is integrated! Service infrastructure, starting with energy and telecommunications carriers – once again, the concept of system integration is an enabling condition and the technologies to be integrated are in fact enabling technologies.

The path towards the evolution of the Intelligent Building finds a milestone on which we place our attention here: the

European Code of Electronic Communications, established by Directive (EU) 2018/1972 of the European Parliament and of the Council (December 11, 2018), has been transposed in Italy by the LEGISLATIVE DECREE November 8, 2021, n. 207 , in force since 24-12-2021.

The salient concepts and aspects are:

– the concept of passive multi-service physical infrastructure: The digital infrastructure of buildings and multi-service facilities are the minimum essential equipment to enable occupants to take advantage of the relevant services;

– the reference to the concept of smart building, defined by Directive 844/2018 as a building “prepared for intelligence”, a performance that can be measured through the indicator introduced by the European Commission, the Smart Readiness Indicator (S.R.I.), which must necessarily be equipped with such multi-service physical infrastructure

– and, consequently, the very important new requirement: municipal technical offices will have to verify compliance with the obligations of digital infrastructure of the building, in the cases provided for, during the presentation of building projects.

From the third point, it can be seen that the new provisions make the already existing obligation of digital infrastructure of buildings even more binding (if this conceptually can be imagined) : in fact, this obligation had already been introduced by art. 6 ter, paragraph 2 of Law no. 164/2014, which inserted art. 135 bis in DPR 380/01. From a practical point of view, while the label “building prepared for ultra-broadband” was considered in the previous regulatory provision as optional and not binding (art. 135 bis c.3 ), now among the conditions to be verified for the characteristics of fitness of a property, i.e. the conditions of safety, hygiene, health, energy saving of buildings and systems installed in them, has been introduced the presence, in the documentation provided, of the certificate of “building prepared for ultra-wideband”, issued by a qualified technician for the systems referred to in Article 1, paragraph 2, letter b), of the Decree of the Minister of Economic Development of January 22, 2008, no. 37, and according to the provisions of the Guides of the Ministry of Economic Development. 37, and in accordance with the provisions of the Guides CEI 306-2, CEI 306-22 and 64-100/1, 2 and 3.

For further information, please read the following article written by Pasquale Capezzuto and published by Smart Building Italia

https://www.smartbuildingitalia.it/news/contributi/linfrastrutturazione-digitale-degli-edifici-e-il-nuovo-codice-delle-comunicazioni-elettroniche/