Newcastle Helix has begun testing AI-enabled tools designed to identify developing faults in commercial building systems before they cause failures or disrupt occupiers.

The trial covers The Core, The Spark and Newcastle University's Urban Sciences Building. Broadoak Asset Management, which acts as estate director for the Helix partnership, is working with the university and European partners on the project.

The tools are being tested against live building data. They are also intended to help managers avoid maintenance work where a system is continuing to perform normally.

The Helix pilot forms part of WILSON, a four-year Horizon Europe project which began in May 2024 and is due to end in April 2028. The European Commission has committed €4.08m to the programme, which has four large-scale pilot sites across Europe.

Broadoak Asset Management director Fergus Trim said: “We have reached the half-way stage of Project Wilson and the AI enabled tools developed over the last two years are now being put into action in a test bed scenario across multiple buildings at Helix.”

WILSON is developing software intended to work with existing building-management and digital-twin systems. The Newcastle pilot combines predictive maintenance with work on bringing data from different building systems together, according to the project's published programme.

Commercial-property operators typically maintain equipment through scheduled servicing and repairs after faults occur. Predictive maintenance uses performance data to determine when work is needed, rather than relying only on fixed schedules or failure call-outs.

The Urban Sciences Building gives the project an unusually data-rich setting. WILSON says the building has more than 1,000 sensors built into its structure.

WILSON aims across all four pilots to upgrade 200,000 square metres of buildings and reduce maintenance costs by up to 35 per cent. Those are project-wide objectives, not measured results from Newcastle Helix.

The test for the Helix trial will be whether it can show that the tools detect faults earlier, reduce unnecessary maintenance or cut downtime. The project expects a UK pilot demonstration report in its 46th month, around February 2028, ahead of its scheduled completion two months later.