How retrofitting can modernize buildings for long-term resilience

Well-maintained buildings are safer, more energy-efficient and less expensive to operate.

Retrofitting isn’t just a sustainability measure; it’s an economic necessity. Studies show that modernizing ageing buildings could cut global energy demand by 12%, generating billions in savings while strengthening resilience against extreme weather, cyber threats and operational disruptions.

The question is no longer whether to modernize. Rather, it is how we can scale solutions that make buildings more resilient, efficient and cost-effective.

Ageing buildings worldwide present significant challenges and opportunities. In Europe, over 35% of buildings are more than 50 years old, with nearly 75% considered energy inefficient.

Similarly, many older structures in North America and Asia require modernization to meet current safety and sustainability standards. Meanwhile, occupants may face risks such as unexpected downtime and weakening structures or health hazards such as air quality or fire hazards.

Traditional efforts have largely been fragmented and opaque, with building owners taking a project-by-project approach with single-measure or single-system retrofits. While well-intentioned, these approaches are slow, costly and inefficient, taking years per building and generating isolated reports that make it challenging to develop long-term strategies.

Without integrated planning, building owners risk unnecessary capital expenditures by prematurely replacing equipment or missing opportunities to optimize energy systems at scale.

Modernizing buildings for greater resilience requires long-term, partnership-driven approaches tailored to the needs of owners and operators.

One of the most effective ways to enhance energy efficiency is retrofitting ageing buildings with modern equipment, control systems and smart technologies.

These systems improve asset visibility, empowering owners, operators and facility managers with real-time data, deeper insights and better decision-making for investments. They also provide sustainability managers with critical energy consumption information, helping advance net-zero goals.

Children’s of Alabama, the third-largest paediatric medical centre in the US, partnered with Johnson Controls to enhance its ageing digital campus infrastructure while maintaining patient and staff safety reliability.

As their 20-year partner, Johnson Controls helped the hospital meet and exceed efficiency goals by retrofitting equipment and modernizing controls.

Using software from Johnson Controls, the company designed, built and managed a new central utility plant, resulting in significant cost savings and energy efficiency improvements.

The company also retrofitted hospital equipment such as boilers, air handlers, heating coils and variable speed drive pumps. It replaced outdated control systems with its building automation system.

The project successfully addressed Children’s of Alabama’s goals:

Improved data and insights systems mean the hospital’s facility team can more easily substantiate funding requests. If the team is seeking funding to tie chilled water into other buildings, for example, they can demonstrate what the maintenance costs would be, the expected lifespan of equipment and how much they could save from retiring older equipment and relying on the plant.

Children’s of Alabama is building off these successes to explore new opportunities to use digital systems in critical care areas such as operating rooms, catheterization labs, neonatal intensive care units, post anaesthesia care units or stem cell units. Such systems can identify and correct any pressurization or airflow issues in real time.

The Children’s of Alabama modernization project has uncovered key success markers replicable across hospital networks, municipalities and educational campuses:

Implementing energy-efficient innovations ensures that ageing buildings and campuses can modernize without resorting to full-scale equipment replacement – saving costs that can be reinvested in future growth and essential services.

This article is part of Shaping Tomorrow: Responsible Innovation for a Brighter Future, a report by the Global Innovation and Impact Council that presents a framework of eight principles to guide the design, development, and scaling of responsible innovations.