What Is SOMA?
What Is SOMA?
People occasionally ask where the ideas behind our work originate.
The short answer is SOMA™ is Operational Memory Architecture.
The longer answer is that SOMA did not begin as a software project or an artificial intelligence initiative. It emerged gradually from decades of observing how buildings, engineering organizations, and facility teams accumulate knowledge—and how much of that knowledge is unintentionally lost over time.
Commissioning verifies whether systems operate correctly at a particular point in time. Operations, however, continue for decades. During those years, organizations learn. Engineers discover better operating strategies. Technicians solve recurring problems. Operators develop practical insights that never appear on drawings or specifications. Yet much of this understanding disappears as people retire, projects conclude, and organizations change.
SOMA began with a simple question:
How might organizations preserve and continue building upon what they learn throughout the life of a facility?
Over time that question expanded beyond buildings into broader questions about organizational learning, operational memory, and the development of understanding itself.
Today, SOMA represents an architectural framework for preserving, organizing, and applying operational knowledge. It continues to evolve through ongoing research, observation, and practical application.
Readers of the Intelligent Building Initiative will notice that we rarely mention SOMA directly. That is intentional. We believe ideas should first stand on their own. The articles explore observations about buildings, organizations, and operational improvement. SOMA is simply the architecture that gradually emerged from those observations.
In that sense, SOMA is less a product than a continuing effort to understand how organizations learn—and how that understanding might be preserved for those who follow.
SOMA (Symbiotic Operations & Memory Architecture) is a foundational operational memory architecture that provides a principled framework for preserving, organizing, relating, and applying the knowledge organizations develop throughout the operational life of their facilities. It integrates authoritative information, operational experience, organizational learning, and historical understanding to support better decision-making, continuous improvement, and enduring organizational memory.
The Current Institute (TCI) conducts the research from which SOMA is derived. It develops the Foundation, explores emerging principles, and stewards the continuing evolution of the discipline.
Operational Building Intelligence (OBI) is a practical implementation of SOMA principles, enabling organizations to preserve operational knowledge, improve decision-making, and strengthen facility performance throughout the building lifecycle.