There is a clear dividing line in how our clients talk about building automation: before 2020 and after 2020. Before, remote access to a BAS was a premium feature that sophisticated owners asked for. After, it is a baseline expectation that every client takes for granted, and the conversations that used to center on "can we add remote access" now center on "which remote access approach is most secure."
That shift happened fast, and it was not really about technology. The technology was already there. It was about circumstance forcing the adoption of capabilities that building operators had been putting off for years.
What Happened in 2020
When office buildings, schools, and commercial properties across the country went to minimal or zero occupancy in the spring of 2020, facility teams faced an immediate problem. Mechanical rooms still needed monitoring. HVAC systems still needed to run at minimum ventilation rates to protect buildings from humidity, mold, and freeze conditions in northern climates. Alarms still needed responses.
But the people responsible for those systems were told to work from home.
For buildings with modern BAS installations that included VPN-accessible front ends, the transition was manageable. Facility managers logged in remotely, put systems into unoccupied mode, dropped setpoints, and kept watch from their home offices. For buildings that relied on on-site access to proprietary front ends, the situation was much harder. Technicians still had to drive in for every adjustment, every alarm response, and every setpoint change.
That experience changed purchasing priorities in a permanent way. We started getting calls from building owners who had never asked about remote access before, wanting to understand what it would take to monitor their systems from anywhere.
Indoor Air Quality Became a Boardroom Topic
The second major shift was the prominence of indoor air quality. Before 2020, IAQ was primarily a compliance conversation in healthcare and schools. In the broader commercial market, it was rarely a priority for executive leadership.
That changed when ventilation rates, air filtration efficiency, and CO2 concentration levels started appearing in mainstream news coverage. Building owners who had never thought about MERV ratings or air changes per hour were suddenly fielding questions from tenants and employees about what was being done to improve the air in their buildings.
For controls contractors, this translated into a surge of requests for CO2 monitoring and demand-controlled ventilation. CO2 sensors that had been optional components became standard specifications. Economizer control sequences that had been programmed conservatively to minimize humidity risk started being reconfigured to maximize fresh air delivery when conditions allowed.
The controls consequence is real: demand-controlled ventilation went from being primarily an energy savings strategy to being a health and safety communication tool. Owners want the data. They want to show tenants a dashboard displaying real-time CO2 levels, not just tell them the ventilation rates are adequate.
Occupancy Patterns Changed, and Controls Had to Adapt
Hybrid work introduced a controls problem that nobody had designed for. Traditional HVAC scheduling is built around fixed occupancy: the building is occupied Monday through Friday from 7 AM to 6 PM, and the schedule reflects that. Equipment starts early to pre-condition the space, runs through the day, and shuts down in the evening.
Hybrid work patterns broke that model. A floor that was fully occupied five days a week might now be at 30% capacity on Mondays and Fridays and at 100% on Tuesdays through Thursdays. Or it might vary week to week depending on project deadlines and team schedules. A fixed time schedule running the same way every day wastes energy conditioning empty space and sometimes fails to keep occupied spaces comfortable.
The controls response has been a move toward occupancy-responsive scheduling rather than fixed scheduling. This means CO2-based demand-controlled ventilation that ramps up when people actually arrive rather than on a predetermined schedule, integration with building access control systems to identify actual occupancy, and more frequent use of occupancy sensors in conference rooms and private offices to detect real presence rather than assumed presence.
None of these approaches require new hardware that did not exist before 2020. But they were rarely deployed at scale before then. The urgency that hybrid work created accelerated their adoption significantly.
Remote Service Changed the Industry Geography
One consequence of the remote operations shift that does not get discussed enough is what it did to the service geography for specialized controls work.
Historically, if a building in a smaller market needed a qualified Niagara integrator, the options were limited to whoever was operating locally. If the local market did not have depth in Niagara programming, you either hired the best available option or brought someone in at significant travel cost.
Remote service has changed that calculation. A qualified Niagara programmer can connect to a VPN, access a building's front end, modify sequences, map new points, troubleshoot communication issues, and commission new hardware from anywhere in the country. The physical presence requirement now applies primarily to hardware installation and on-site sensor work. The programming and commissioning work that follows can happen remotely.
At Vertex, a meaningful portion of our Niagara programming and troubleshooting work is now done remotely for clients who are not in the immediate New Orleans area. We have worked on buildings across Louisiana and beyond without needing to be in the mechanical room for every step of the process. A local electrical contractor can pull the wire and mount the hardware; we handle the software side securely through a VPN connection.
What This Means for New BAS Installations
If you are planning a new BAS installation or a significant controls upgrade in 2026, the remote access and IAQ requirements should be built into the specification from the beginning, not added on afterward.
Specifically, new installations should include:
- Secure remote access by design. This means a VPN solution appropriate for your IT environment, web-based front ends that work through standard browsers without proprietary plugins, and user accounts with role-based permissions so that remote access is granted selectively.
- CO2 monitoring in occupied spaces. Not just in conference rooms but in any space where occupant density varies. The sensors are not expensive; the value in both energy optimization and tenant communication is real.
- Flexible scheduling architecture. Build your sequences around occupancy inputs rather than fixed time schedules where possible. This costs the same to program and performs significantly better in buildings with variable occupancy.
- Alarm management that works remotely. Email and SMS alarm notification, with escalation paths that account for after-hours coverage, should be configured and tested before the system goes live.
The buildings that adapted well after 2020 were the ones that had already invested in these capabilities. The buildings that struggled were the ones that had deferred them. The lesson is clear.