Community
Open Smart Buildings Need You
Join the effort to make building data work across systems, vendors, and lifecycles.
The built environment is full of valuable data, but that data is often locked away, fragmented, or incompatible. At the Coalition for Smarter Buildings (C4SB), we're creating open standards and tools to make building system data interoperable, useful, and climate-ready. This means owners, operators, designers, vendors, and software developers can finally speak the same language.
But we can’t do it without you.
We’re looking for contributors with real-world experience in buildings, engineering, or real estate, a passion for open systems and open data, and curiosity and a willingness to collaborate.
You don’t need to be a software developer. If you’ve ever dealt with being unable to see building info you need, naming mismatches between systems, confusing maintenance records, or siloed project data, you’re already one of us.
Ready to get involved? We’ll show you:
-
How open collaboration works
-
Where your expertise is needed
-
How to join a working group
-
Who to talk to and where to start
1. Understanding Open Source
What is open source?
Open source is a method of building software, standards, and tools collaboratively and transparently. Anyone can contribute, view the source materials, suggest changes, and use the resources. Work is done under licenses that support free use, modification, and sharing.
Open source originated with software, but at C4SB, we collaborate to build shared standards, models, terminology and processes to make building systems interoperable and open smarter building solutions more easily adoptable.
How does open source work in practice?
Most open source projects are organized around a few core ideas:
Transparency: Anyone can see the work being done - usually via GitHub or project wikis.
Collaboration: Contributions come from many places - users, vendors, owners, industry professionals.
Community Governance: Decisions are made openly, often by consensus or clear contributor roles.
Licensing: Open licenses (like Apache, MIT, or the Community Specification License) define how open source materials can be reused freely, allowing them to become commonly-understood backbones of many systems.
New contributors will be walked through the tools, processes, and culture of contributing to an open-source project.
Additional resources for learning about open-source:
-
Getting Started with Community Spec - A video discussion of the Community Specification License, used by C4SB projects
2. Understand Where You Can Help
C4SB has many active working groups that run on the volunteer input of our contributors. Browse our project list to understand where you can help the most.
3. Getting Set Up
To contribute to or view the work of most C4SB groups, you will need a GitHub account, and a Linux Foundation ID (which can be linked to a google account, a GitHub account, or an email address).
4. Join a Team
If you have a GitHub account and Linux Foundation ID, congratulations, you’re ready to start contributing to a C4SB working group. Please reach out to the moderator of a project you’re interested in.
Moderator contact info coming soon.
Stay connected with the latest from C4SB
By submitting this form, I consent to receive marketing emails from the LF and its projects regarding their events, training, research, developments, and related announcements. I understand I can unsubscribe at any time using the link provided in the footer of such communications. Privacy Policy. We do not sell your contact information to third parties.