Bill Douglas, CEO of OpticWise, has observed a persistent and expensive blind spot in the commercial real estate industry: the confusion between Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). According to Douglas, most ownership groups treat these two distinct categories as one, handing OT decisions to IT managers who lack the training to manage building systems effectively.
IT manages organizational infrastructure like servers, email, identity management, and firewall policy—the layer that connects employees to tools and protects corporate data. OT, on the other hand, runs the building itself: HVAC systems, lighting controllers, access control, parking management, leak detection sensors, elevators, and the data they generate. OT is what makes a building function efficiently—or wastefully.
When ownership groups ask who is responsible for technology in their properties, IT managers often raise their hands because low-voltage wiring looks like their domain. Property managers also step in because the building is their responsibility, while asset managers remain focused on financial reports. The result is a vacuum where no one truly owns OT, and inefficiency thrives.
Douglas explains that when no one internally owns OT, vendors fill the gap. A general contractor finishes a building and hands technology decisions to an overstretched property manager, who then buys solutions at trade shows without a broader strategy. Over time, a typical 250,000-square-foot building ends up with over a dozen disconnected systems, redundant networks, and data scattered across vendor platforms inaccessible to the owner.
“They have strategies to build properties, to buy properties, to sell properties, to lease up, to increase rent roll,” Douglas said. “But they often just ignore the digital. So the vendors run the roost.” The consequence is not just inefficiency but a loss of data. Every system generates operational data that belongs to the property owner, but vendors managing the systems hold that data, leaving the owner paying for services without receiving the intelligence they produce.
Douglas emphasizes that property managers, IT managers, and asset managers are capable people but are being asked to do tasks outside their training. “We are asking the wrong people to do the right tasks,” he said. “A property manager’s job is to take care of tenants and lease up the building. Not to manage networks they never designed and probably cannot document.” He uses a sports analogy: you wouldn’t ask a pitcher to be a pinch hitter or a running back to play middle linebacker—they might stand in that position but won’t perform like a specialist.
OT management requires a digital strategy, a digital architect, and someone accountable for the data it produces. These roles can be external partners, but they must exist to fill the gap. The Peak Property Performance framework, developed by Douglas and OpticWise founder Drew Hall, provides owners with a structured process to audit their systems, connect them, collect data, and improve performance and profitability.
The cost of ignoring OT is clear: utility savings come from knowing when and how energy is consumed, not from instructing property managers to use less. Insurance rates drop when owners can document maintenance history and response protocols. Tenant experience improves when the building operates reliably and problems are caught early. When OT is unmanaged, lights stay on in empty buildings, water damage goes undetected, and systems run on default settings for years.
“You lose control of your expenses,” Douglas said. “And you lose the data you should be able to use to operate more efficiently and drive more revenue.” The data is already there, produced by systems the owner paid for. The question is whether anyone is positioned to use it. That is not an IT problem or a property management problem—it is a strategy problem that starts with recognizing OT as its own discipline with its own return.
