Blog: A growing BEMS market needs a common language for delivery

Quarterly market figures rarely move in a straight line. What matters more is the direction of travel, and the latest data from BCIA suggests that the underlying direction of the UK Controls & BEMS market remains positive.

The latest BCIA Market Information Report (MIR) puts industry revenues at £225.9 million for Q2 2026. That represents a 3.8% reduction on an exceptionally strong first quarter, but revenues remain 10.4% higher than in Q2 last year.

Look beyond a single quarter and the picture becomes clearer. The rolling-year market has reached £878.2 million, an increase of 6.9%, but there is another story behind those figures. As demand for building controls develops, the industry needs to ensure that the quality and consistency of BEMS delivery remains to the high standard it is.

That’s the thinking behind BCIA's new BEMS Delivery Framework.

Looking beyond the quarterly movement

A 3.8% quarter-on-quarter fall inevitably attracts attention, but context matters. All three principal components of the market - Product, Installation Value Added and Service & Maintenance - recorded reductions during Q2. That followed particularly strong growth in Q1, however, and the longer-term figures provide little evidence of a change in the wider trajectory.

Installation Value Added is a good example. Q2 revenues fell 2.0% to £128.1 million, while its rolling-year value increased 7.1% to £482.3 million.

Service & Maintenance tells an equally interesting story. Revenue was down 4.9% during the quarter, but remained 2.9% above Q2 2025. Across the rolling year, it grew by 11.1% to £232.1 million.

This resilience reflects a market in which value is not confined to supplying controls equipment. Increasingly, it lies in installing, maintaining and optimising systems throughout a building's operational life.

The comparison with construction activity reinforces the point. While the Controls & BEMS market grew 6.9% on a rolling-year basis, construction output across the sectors most relevant to it was 0.5% lower.

The Q2 figures therefore look less like a reversal and more like a pause after a particularly strong opening quarter.

Growth brings a different challenge

A developing market creates opportunities, but it also exposes weaknesses. For BEMS, one of those weaknesses has long been inconsistency in how systems are described, specified and ultimately delivered.

Terms such as BMS, BEMS, integrated and smart building can cover very different levels of functionality. A client may have one expectation, the consultant another and the controls contractor a third. That ambiguity can have practical consequences.

If the required functionality is not sufficiently clear at specification and tender stage, contractors may be pricing different interpretations of ostensibly the same project. Expectations can change as the project progresses. Functionality can be reduced through value engineering. And the completed BEMS may technically satisfy a specification without delivering what the client originally thought they were buying.

As buildings become more connected and clients expect more from their data, analytics and controls, those differences become increasingly significant.

Creating a common language for BEMS

The new BCIA BEMS Delivery Framework has been developed to address that problem. It establishes six progressive Delivery Levels, from L0 to L5, providing a common, manufacturer-agnostic way of defining the level of BEMS functionality required by a project.

Rather than relying on broad descriptions of what constitutes a BEMS or smart building, clients and project teams can establish an agreed level of expectation much earlier.

 In practice, that should help:

• clients define more clearly what they need from their BEMS;

• consultants translate those requirements into more consistent specifications;

• contractors understand the expected scope and price it accordingly; and project teams establish a clearer reference point for delivery, commissioning and handover.

Importantly, the Framework is not about prescribing a particular manufacturer or technical solution. Its purpose is to provide clarity about the level of delivery expected. That distinction is important. Good specification should define the outcome without unnecessarily restricting how competent specialists achieve it.

From specification to performance

Building owners and occupiers are placing greater emphasis on energy efficiency, operational costs, data and demonstrable building performance. At the same time, BEMS are evolving beyond conventional plant control towards greater integration, analytics and increasingly intelligent operation.

 A controls specification that might once have been considered adequate can therefore leave too much open to interpretation.

Consider two projects both described as requiring an "integrated smart BEMS". One client may expect central HVAC control and monitoring; another may envisage third-party integration, structured data, dashboards, analytics and a platform capable of supporting future smart-building applications.

The description sounds similar. The expected outcome - and the cost of delivering it - is very different. Creating a shared language helps expose those differences before they become problems on site.

 Supporting the next stage of the market.

The latest MIR provides good reason for confidence. Quarterly fluctuations are inevitable, but a rolling-year market approaching £880 million, alongside particularly strong growth in Installation Value Added and Service & Maintenance, points to sustained demand for the expertise surrounding building controls.

Growth alone, however, should not be the industry's only measure of progress. As BEMS become more important to energy efficiency and operational performance, clients need greater certainty about what is being specified, and contractors need greater clarity about what they are expected to deliver.

BCIA's role is therefore broader than tracking the size of the market. Through initiatives such as the Market Information Report and the BEMS Delivery Framework, we can provide both the evidence needed to understand where the sector is heading and practical tools to help it develop professionally.

The BCIA BEMS Delivery Framework was originally authored and led by Christopher Kelly CEng BEng MCIBSE and is developed and maintained by the BCIA Technical Working Group.  Find out more about the BCIA BEMS Delivery Framework and how its Delivery Levels can support clearer BEMS specification, procurement and project delivery.