What is the difference between WiredScore and SmartScore?

They come from the same organisation, WiredScore, but they measure different things. WiredScore certification assesses a building's digital connectivity: internet service provision, mobile coverage, the telecoms infrastructure and its resilience, and readiness for future technology. SmartScore certification assesses smart building capability: the user experience the building's technology delivers and the technical foundations behind it, such as systems integration, cybersecurity and data management. A building can hold either, or both.

Both are best used as structured benchmarks and communication tools. The sensible order is to decide which questions you need answered and keep your own requirements in charge of the design, with the scorecard as a check.

What each one examines

According to WiredScore's published descriptions:

WiredScore's own FAQ puts the difference plainly. WiredScore focuses on the quality and resilience of digital connectivity, including mobile and Wi-Fi connectivity, telecommunications and risers; SmartScore recognises technologically advanced smart buildings, including smart building systems, cybersecurity and sustainability. Both use the same levels, which WiredScore lists as Pre-certified, Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum, based on minimum requirements and an assessment of the breadth and depth of what has been implemented.

The categories overlap a little, in digital services and sustainability technology for instance, but the emphasis differs. WiredScore is largely about the infrastructure tenants and residents depend on. SmartScore is largely about what the building's systems do, and how well they are integrated, secured and managed.

How they relate to other schemes

The RIBA Smart Building Overlay to the Plan of Work notes that general certifications such as BREEAM, LEED and WELL are incorporating smart building criteria, and that specialist schemes differ in approach. It describes SmartScore as a scorecard approach delivered by an accredited professional. At its publication in 2024 it also noted that no regulations mandated smart building certification beyond normal building compliance, and it does not recommend one scheme over another.

In the EU, the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI) is a separate, publicly defined scheme for rating a building's smart readiness. It is unconnected with WiredScore and answers a different question.

When each is worth the cost

WiredScore is most useful where connectivity is central to leasing or occupation: multi-tenant offices, residential buildings, and industrial or logistics buildings whose occupiers need reliable services from the first day. Its assessment areas amount to a structured checklist for telecoms rooms, risers, diverse entry routes and mobile coverage, all of which are expensive to put right later.

SmartScore comes into its own where an owner is making a significant investment in building systems and wants to benchmark it, or explain it to occupiers and investors. Its foundation categories of systems integration, cybersecurity and data management cover points that briefs often miss, such as an independent data layer and standardised metadata; WiredScore's description of its hotel scorecard, for example, lists both.

Pursuing both may make sense for a flagship office that will be marketed on its technology. For a single owner-occupied building, or one where neither leasing nor investor reporting is a driver, the cost and effort of certification may be better spent on the systems themselves.

Using a scorecard without designing to it

Certification criteria are a useful prompt, but they are not your requirements. The right sequence starts from outcomes: decide what the building must achieve for its users and operators, then check how the design scores, not the other way round. It also matters which scorecard you read. Criteria and versions change, so obtain the version that will apply to your assessment and check which items are prerequisites.

Timing is the other practical point. Connectivity items such as diverse fibre entry and riser capacity are cheap to plan at design stage and expensive to retrofit, and the RIBA overlay suggests discussing the choice of certification as soon as feasible after the decision to deliver a smart building.

Certification is an independent assessment of what has been designed or installed. It is not proof that the building performs in operation, so testing and post-occupancy evaluation still matter. Nor are claims in certification marketing about rental premiums or occupier preferences evidence for your particular building or market.

Before you commit

• What decision or audience will the certification serve: leasing, investor reporting, internal benchmarking?
• Which scorecard version and building type apply, and what are the prerequisites?
• What will certification cost, including the accredited professional's time and evidence preparation?
• Which criteria does your brief already meet, and which would require additional scope?