A note on outsourcing and platform access

If you're outsourcing your building simulation modelling work to teams overseas on Better Building, this is a must reading. If you're not, carry on.

If that was a yes to that above, you're in a small yet growing minority of our clients who do this, and we want to be upfront: we're not opposed to outsourcing in principle.

For clarity, here's what we mean by outsourcing in this context. Outsourcing is where a licensed client passes building simulation modelling work to a third party, typically an individual or team located outside the client's organisation, who then accesses our platform and training materials to complete that work.

This includes freelancers, subcontractors, and offshore modelling teams, regardless of how the arrangement is structured commercially or whether the client's own login credentials are being used to facilitate it.

The Better Building platform was built to make building simulation modelling fast, and fast means you can turn models around in hours rather than days. Outsourcing was never really part of the value equation we designed for.

The problem is a practical one. When work is handed off to teams in Vietnam, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, or elsewhere, those teams are often accessing our platform and training materials without any corresponding licence or subscription. That's not something we can keep absorbing.

So, two things are changing.

1. First, our terms and conditions are being updated to make outsourcing restrictions explicit. If we detect that a client account is being accessed or used by third parties outside the licensed organisation, the account will be frozen for a minimum of 7 days. We know that sounds blunt, but clarity now is better than an awkward conversation later.

2. Second, we're implementing background monitoring for unusual access patterns, including activity outside normal business hours in your region. This will be reported to us daily. It's partly our protection, and honestly partly yours too, since off-hours account activity isn't always something you'd want either.

We'd genuinely prefer a world where none of this is necessary. But if outsourcing is part of your building simulation modelling workflow, the path forward is transparency: talk to us @ [e-mail], and we'll work out an arrangement where everyone is appropriately licensed and nobody is operating in a grey area. That's the outcome we're actually after.