The Digital Building Logbook
A building logbook connects the building, its spaces, equipment and materials to their history: inspections, maintenance, repairs and changes of use. It helps the people responsible for the place find what was done, by whom, and what needs attention next. The record is maintained throughout the building's use.
Start from what exists — progressive enrichment
A building logbook does not require a building to be fully surveyed before it can start. An existing asset enters the logbook with only what is on hand: a tag, a location, a basic type, a photograph, the responsible organisation, or an identifier the asset already carries. This is the intended starting point, not a requirement for a completed survey or regulated passport.
From that minimal starting point, the record grows through routine work rather than through a dedicated data-collection exercise. Every inspection, repair, or maintenance visit that touches the asset adds to what is known about it — a passport reference, a fault record, a measurement, a replacement part — so people can update the record as part of their work. Measurements and linked source records still need review; the logbook does not establish their accuracy by collecting them.
Asset levels
A building logbook organises what it knows across a fixed hierarchy of asset levels, so an equipment record, a component record, and a product batch record all resolve back to the same building and space without ambiguity.
- Property — the site or parcel a building sits on.
- Building — one structure on that property.
- Space — a room, floor, or zone within the building.
- System — a building system serving that space, such as ventilation, heating, or electrical distribution.
- Equipment — one unit within a system, such as an air handling unit.
- Component — a part of that equipment, such as a filter housing or a fan motor.
- Product — an identified, passported product installed as or within a component.
- Material batch — the material a product is made of, tracked at the batch it came from.
Illustrative workflow: one ventilation unit, three visits
- Visit one, routine inspection. An inspector finds an air handling unit with no logbook entry yet. They tag it, note its location and space, photograph it, and record the responsible organisation. The unit now exists in the logbook at the equipment level, with nothing else known.
- Visit two, passport linked. A technician reads the unit's identifier from its nameplate and links it to its digital product passport, bringing in the manufacturer's declared specification and installation date without re-entering either.
- Visit three, fault and repair. A fault is reported, the technician's credential is checked before work starts, a filter component is replaced, and the repair, the replacement part, and a post-repair measurement are all logged against the equipment record — carrying the maintenance route forward for the next visit.
What you can use today
- Digital product passports
- Wallet credentials
- DID resolver
See Facts for the available record and identity foundations.
Related: real-estate maintenance for the work that fills a logbook in day to day, the digital product logbook for the equipment-level record on its own, and Veritas for how the evidence behind these records is kept.