Structural monitoring is justified to the board not by a list of sensors, but by three things the board already counts: risk, the cost of downtime and decisions made in the dark, and the record you have if a dispute or inspection arises. Each argument has an owner - the chief financial officer (CFO), the chief operating officer (COO) and maintenance - and each one must be spoken in that owner’s language. The lowest-cost argument is a pilot on one asset.
In brief
- The board does not reject monitoring, only an expense that is described too vaguely. “We want to buy sensors” sounds like a cost; “we want to shorten the blind period between inspections to every 15 minutes by default, or more often, and have a record of what we knew and when” sounds like a decision.
- Three people, three languages: CFO - risk, total cost of ownership, insurance; COO or contract director - downtime, decision speed, accountability; maintenance - data instead of site visits.
- There is a counterargument to every argument. Write them down yourself and come with an answer and proof, rather than hearing them for the first time at the meeting.
- A business case fits on one page: problem, risk, three options (nothing / periodic / continuous), cost in three cooperation models, pilot, success metrics.
- Do not ask for “approval for monitoring”. Ask for approval for a pilot with criteria and a decision date. That turns a theory discussion into a results discussion.
Why good proposals lose at a board meeting
If you are preparing this proposal, you are probably afraid of one thing: that after twenty minutes you will hear “let’s come back to this next year” and the topic will die. That fear is justified, but it is rarely technical in nature. Proposals lose because they describe a tool, not a problem. The board reads “24 channels, reading every 15 minutes by default, or more often, online dashboard” and sees a cost line without an owner. Nobody at the table has “measurement channels” in their annual goals. Someone does, however, have no liquidated damages, hall availability, contract performance, lower claims exposure.
A structural monitoring business case is a document that links a specific business decision with a specific measurement: which decision we are making too slowly or too uncertainly today, and what we must know about the structure to make it better. If you cannot identify such a decision, the proposal is not ready, and it is better to find that out before the meeting than during it.
The rest of this text is a talk track: three perspectives every proposal will run into, the objections that will come up, and what is worth having in your hand when they do. What structural monitoring is, and how it differs from periodic measurement, is described in the complete SHM guide.
Talk track: five steps in ten minutes
A board meeting is not a lecture. You have a few minutes for the thesis and the rest of the time for questions. Order matters, because each of the five parts answers a question that will already be forming in the listener’s head before they ask it.
- Decision (one minute). Start with the decision, not with sensors: “Today we decide on snow removal on the roof from the forecast and by eye” or “we decide on the next excavation stage based on a reading from a week ago”.
- Blind period (one minute). Show the dates of the latest inspections for this asset and the time between them. Name it: “for these months the structure generates no information”.
- Three options (two minutes). Nothing beyond inspections, periodic measurement, continuous monitoring - with the table from the business case section. The board compares; do not leave it with one option to assess in a vacuum.
- Objections (four minutes). Let them come up and answer with evidence, not conviction. The three tables below are for this part.
- Ask (two minutes). Not “approval for monitoring”, but approval for a pilot on one asset, with success criteria and a date when you will return with results.
What this means for you: a proposal that starts with a decision and ends by asking for a pilot is hard to reject outright. The worst that can happen is a narrower scope.
CFO perspective: risk, total cost of ownership, insurance
The CFO does not need to know the difference between a vibrating wire sensor and MEMS. They need three answers: what risk this spend is buying, what it costs over the full life cycle, and whether it changes our position with the insurer.
Risk. Between inspections, the asset generates no information. If the inspection is once a year or, for large roofs, twice a year, the blind period lasts months; with a reading at the default 15-minute interval, it is a quarter of an hour. This is arithmetic, not a promise: compared with daily readings, information arrives 96 times more often; compared with weekly readings, 672 times more often; compared with quarterly readings, 8 640 times more often. The answer to “so what?” is this: earlier information turns an emergency expense (crew yesterday, site closure, contractual penalty) into a planned one (inspection, reinforcement in the schedule). The mechanism is set out in how much the lack of structural monitoring costs.
Total cost of ownership (TCO). The TCO of monitoring is the sum of sensors, installation, transmission, platform, maintenance and the work of people using the data, calculated over the whole operating period, not just the implementation year. The CFO values a proposal that breaks the cost into one-off and recurring components. Do not invent numbers. The only credible number is a quote for a specific asset. The cost structure is described in what structural monitoring costs consist of (TCO).
Insurance. Do not promise the CFO a lower premium. That is the insurer’s and broker’s decision, not the monitoring supplier’s. You can promise something else: after an incident, the company will have a continuous, dated record of structural behaviour instead of only the report from the latest inspection. That changes the quality of the discussion about causation. Whether it affects policy terms is a question for the broker, asked before the meeting, not after it.
CFO objections and answers
| Objection | Answer | Evidence worth showing |
|---|---|---|
| “Nothing has happened in 20 years, why now.” | No event is not the same as no change; we do not have data to distinguish those. The proposal is about getting that data. | Dates of the latest inspections and the interval between them - the length of this asset’s blind period. |
| “This is another fixed cost.” | Part of the cost is one-off (sensors, installation), part is recurring (platform, maintenance). In return, spending moves from emergency mode to planned mode. | TCO split into components and the table of three options from the business case section. |
| “Calculate the return for me.” | As with insurance: cost of one scenario (downtime, repair, penalty) multiplied by a probability estimate, compared with the monitoring cost. The numbers come from us, not the supplier. | One downtime scenario calculated on company data, marked as an example calculation. |
| “The insurer will pay anyway.” | They will pay after cause and liability have been established. Without data, that takes longer and is based on opinions; with data, it is based on a record. | A question to the broker about continuous documentation versus periodic reports; the text monitoring data as evidence in a dispute. |
What this means for you: a CFO who gets the blind period in days, the cost split into one-off and recurring, and the broker’s answer no longer asks “why” - they ask “which asset should we start with”.
COO and contract director perspective: downtime, decisions, accountability
Operations live by three questions: is the asset operating within safe parameters, do we need to restrict or stop something, and who is responsible. Without continuous data, every answer requires calls, photos, a spreadsheet and two days. With data, it needs a chart and a procedure.
Downtime. The most expensive downtime is the unplanned one. Closing a hall, stopping work in an excavation, restricting traffic on a bridge - each costs in lost production, in schedule impact and in penalties. Monitoring does not guarantee that downtime will never happen. It gives you the chance to act while a change is still a trend, not yet damage, and the chance to reopen an asset based on data, not on “I think it is fine now”.
Decisions. A contract director decides to stop works or move to the next excavation stage based on what they know. If they know only what the surveyor measured a week ago, the decision is a week late. What is bought is a shorter decision loop, not sensors. Imagine a contract manager who gets an SMS at 6:40 about a warning threshold being exceeded on a diaphragm wall and at 8:00 has a decision on the next excavation rate. Without monitoring, they would learn about it from the next reading, or from the neighbour with a crack in the wall.
In geotechnics, monitoring is often a project requirement rather than an option: for category II and III geotechnical objects, the geotechnical design must define the scope of necessary monitoring of the structure, neighbouring structures and the ground (§ 10 item 10 of the regulation of 25 April 2012 on determining geotechnical conditions for the founding of building structures). A contract director who has this in the design does not ask “whether”, only “how quickly the data will reach the desk”.
Accountability: what the regulations say and what the record changes
The owner or manager must maintain the structure in proper technical condition and ensure, with due care, safe use in the event of external factors such as strong winds or heavy rainfall (Article 61 of the Construction Law). They also have periodic inspection obligations: at least once a year, and for buildings with a building footprint over 2 000 m² and other structures with a roof area over 1 000 m² at least twice a year, by 31 May and by 30 November (Article 62(1)).
Failure to meet the obligations under Article 61 carries criminal liability (Article 91a), and damage caused to third parties carries civil liability: based on fault (Article 415 of the Civil Code) or, for enterprises set in motion by the forces of nature, which courts include construction companies, regardless of fault (Article 435 of the Civil Code). The regulations do not require continuous monitoring of structures in use; they require due care - and that is what becomes disputed after an incident.
After an incident, the question is not “what happened”, but “could you have known earlier, and what did you do”. Monitoring with thresholds, alarms and acknowledgement of notifications creates a record: who reacted, when and to what. For a director, that is personal protection. The relationship between periodic inspections and continuous monitoring is discussed in the text about periodic inspections under Article 62 and continuous monitoring in halls.
COO objections and answers
| Objection | Answer | Evidence worth showing |
|---|---|---|
| “Is this even mandatory?” | For assets in use, the Construction Law requires periodic inspections and due care, not continuous monitoring. In geotechnics (categories II and III), the scope of monitoring is defined by the geotechnical design. The proposal is based on due care and downtime cost, not on a legal mandate. | Articles 61 and 62 of the Construction Law; § 10 item 10 of the 2012 regulation; the asset inspection calendar. |
| “We already have inspections, so that is enough.” | Inspections are mandatory and remain in place. Monitoring fills the time between them - an inspection is a point, monitoring is a line. | The asset inspection calendar with the periods marked where nobody measures anything. |
| “There will be more alarms and chaos.” | An alarm has a procedure: warning and alarm threshold, list of people, acknowledgement, who took over, silencing with a deadline. A poorly set threshold is an implementation problem, not a monitoring problem - thresholds are tuned against measurement history. | A one-page alarm procedure: who gets the SMS, who acknowledges, within what time, what they do. |
| “Who will operate it?” | Readings come in automatically, every 15 minutes by default, or more often. A person is needed to respond to alarms and review the trend periodically, not to collect data. | Role split in the pilot: who receives the alarm, who reviews the trend once a month. |
| “If something happens, it will still be our fault.” | Liability does not disappear, but its content changes: from “we did not know” to “we knew, we reacted, here is the record”. That is a different conversation with the inspector, insurer and court. | A hypothetical event timeline: reading -> alarm -> acknowledgement -> decision -> record. |
What this means for you: the COO does not buy sensors, only a shorter decision loop and a record of response. If you show them the timeline of one hypothetical event, they will fill in the rest themselves.
Maintenance perspective and engineer perspective: data instead of site visits
Maintenance is often omitted from this conversation, yet it is the group that decides whether the platform will still be used after a year. Its argument is the most practical one: fewer “just in case” site visits, less reactive work, a better priority list.
Periodic measurement means, in practice, a trip to the asset, downloading data from the logger, a spreadsheet, an email, and two weeks later the question: “what did it look like yesterday?”. The answer is: we do not know, the next measurement is in a month. Continuous monitoring reverses the sequence - data comes in automatically, and the site visit is a response to the data, not its source. The engineer sees inclination against temperature and can distinguish daily structural “breathing” from a lasting trend without a single visit.
There is also something maintenance rarely says out loud: fatigue from always being blamed. When a beam deflects, maintenance “missed it”. Data showing that the trend appeared yesterday, not six months ago, is protection for the team.
Maintenance objections and answers
| Objection | Answer | Evidence worth showing |
|---|---|---|
| “Another system to watch.” | The platform is meant to replace site visits and spreadsheets, not add to them. If after the pilot it does not reduce manual work, that is an argument for changing the supplier, not for giving up. | List of manual tasks today (travel, download, spreadsheet, report) and which ones disappear. |
| “Sensors will fail anyway, we will get NO_DATA.” | Missing data is a state the platform must report just as it reports threshold exceedance. Data completeness is a metric, not a surprise. | Data completeness as one of the pilot success criteria. |
| “We already have loggers, we do not want to replace everything.” | You do not have to. Existing sensors and loggers can be connected to the platform via HTTP/JSON, and the history from the current system can be sent through the same channel - the change is in how the data is viewed, not in the hardware. | Inventory of existing sensors and loggers with a question to the supplier: what can be connected. |
What this means for you: if maintenance is on your side before the meeting, nobody will ask “who will operate it?” during the meeting, because the answer is already at the table.
How to build a one-page business case
One page is not a shortcut, it is discipline. If you cannot fit it on one page, you do not yet know what you are asking for. The template has six sections.
1. Problem (2-3 sentences). Which decision are we making too slowly or too uncertainly today? Example: “We do not know how the hall roof behaves under snow between inspections; snow removal is decided from the forecast and by eye”.
2. Risk. What happens if we learn too late - human safety, continuity of operations, legal and financial liability. No scare tactics, one concrete scenario for this asset.
3. Options. Always three, because the board compares rather than judges in a vacuum.
| Option | What it gives | What it does not give | When it makes sense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nothing beyond mandatory inspections | Compliance with Article 62, zero additional cost | No information between inspections; after an incident only reports | Low-risk assets with a low downtime cost |
| Periodic measurement (surveying, manual reading) | Points on a timeline, comparison period to period | Blind periods equal to the interval; data after processing, with delay | Stable assets where change is slow and downtime is cheap |
| Continuous monitoring (sensors + thresholds + alarms + platform) | A line instead of points, alarm at the next reading, every 15 minutes by default, or more often, a record of decisions | Does not replace inspections or engineer assessment; requires a procedure | Assets where downtime cost, dispute exposure or liability are high |
4. Cost in three cooperation models - without numbers, with a quote on request. Turnkey monitoring (sensor selection, installation, platform) - highest upfront spend, least work on the company side. Platform only for existing sensors - connection takes a few days, cost is mainly the platform. Pilot on one asset - limited scope and duration, defined criteria. List the three models and mark which one you recommend and why. The numbers will come from the quote; the proposal should show structure, not pretend to be a price list.
5. Pilot. One asset, a few to a dozen channels, a defined duration, written end criteria. Details below.
6. Success metrics. Not “user satisfaction”, but things that can be counted after the pilot: time from threshold exceedance to notification acknowledgement; number of site visits compared with the previous period; data completeness in percent; false alarms versus valid alarms after threshold tuning; whether the data for the board report came from the dashboard, not from a manual spreadsheet. These numbers will be yours, from your asset - the only kind of numbers the board should trust.
What this means for you: one page with these six sections is both your meeting note and the appendix to the minutes - you do not need to write two documents.
A pilot as the lowest-cost way to persuade the board
A structural monitoring pilot is a time-limited, limited-scope deployment on one asset, intended to confirm the value of the data and procedures before a scale-up decision. For the board, it has one advantage over any presentation: it turns arguments into results. After a few weeks, the discussion is no longer about whether monitoring “makes sense”, but about what the chart from the hall roof or the diaphragm wall showed.
A good pilot has four features. An asset where the risk is real and the value of the data is easy to show - not the hardest and not the easiest. A scope that can be deployed quickly: if sensors already exist, a few days; with installation, from a few to a dozen weeks. Success criteria written before the start. And a person on the company side who receives alarms and looks at the trend once a month - without that, the pilot will only show that data arrives, not that anyone reacts to it.
A pilot also has value when no alarms trigger: the board gets documented peace of mind on one asset and a basis for directing monitoring where it is needed. That is also a result. The choice of asset and criteria is discussed in the text how to choose an asset for a structural monitoring pilot.
What this means for you: a pilot is the smallest decision the board can approve, and the only one after which you come back with results instead of arguments.
What it looks like at Inclify
The Inclify team has spent 15 years designing and maintaining measurement systems - from stadiums to hydraulic locks - and the pilot is one of three cooperation models, alongside turnkey monitoring and the platform only for existing sensors. The arguments in this text have concrete counterparts in the dashboard.
Blind period: loggers typically send readings every 15 minutes by default, or more often, and each channel has its own warning and alarm threshold with hysteresis (states OK / WARNING / ALARM / NO_DATA). Procedure: SMS and email notifications, acknowledgement of the notification with a record of who took it over and when, silencing always with a deadline, threshold proposals calculated from measurement history. A record of “what we knew and when”: measurement history stored in UTC without automatic deletion, history of alarm transitions and an audit trail of configuration changes with before and after values. Data instead of site visits: charts with inclination against temperature, data completeness reports (data SLA), 7/30 day risk assessments and alarm tuning, CSV export.
What we do not promise so as not to damage your credibility at the meeting: the platform does not import files - history from the current system is sent through the same HTTP/JSON channel; there are no trend alarms - the engineer assesses the trend on the chart and in the risk report; there are no one-click PDF reports - report data is taken from the dashboard (CSV, chart image). A multi-asset portfolio in one dashboard with roles and permissions will appear to the board after the pilot, when the question changes from “whether” to “where else”. Details: /platform/monitoring.
FAQ
Where should I start a structural monitoring proposal for the board?
Start with the decision, not with sensors. Identify one decision the company is making too slowly or too uncertainly today - roof snow removal, the next excavation stage, traffic restriction - and describe what must be known about the structure to make that decision better. Only then add risk, the three options, cost models, the pilot and the metrics. If you cannot name the decision, the proposal is not ready.
Does structural monitoring replace periodic inspections under Article 62?
No. The periodic inspections under Article 62(1) of the Construction Law remain the duty of the owner or manager - at least once a year, and for large buildings and roofs twice a year. Monitoring fills the time between them and changes the quality of the inspection - the inspector comes with a chart, not a blank sheet. In a discussion with the board, present it as a supplement, not a replacement. This text is not legal advice.
Will monitoring reduce the insurance premium?
No honest supplier promises that, because it is the insurer’s decision. Monitoring gives something else: a continuous, dated record of structural behaviour and the team’s response, which changes the quality of the discussion about causation and liability after an incident. Before you go to the board, ask the broker how such documentation is treated in your policy. The broker’s answer is a better argument than the supplier’s promise.
How do you calculate the return on monitoring if you do not know whether anything will happen?
The way you calculate insurance: the cost of one real scenario (downtime, emergency repair, contractual penalty, dispute) multiplied by a probability estimate, compared with the total cost of monitoring. The numbers must come from your company and be clearly marked as assumptions. The second part of the return is more certain: fewer site visits, less manual data work, faster decisions - that can be calculated after the pilot.
How long should a pilot last to convince the board?
Long enough to see at least one full cycle of the phenomenon you care about: for a hall roof, the winter season; for an excavation, the excavation stage; for an asset influenced by temperature, a few weeks with clear daily fluctuations. A shorter pilot will show that data arrives; a longer one will show that someone reacts to it and that a trend can be distinguished from noise. Write the end criteria before you start.
What should I do if the board rejects the proposal?
Ask directly what evidence was missing - numbers, procedure or example - and record the answer in the minutes. Then narrow the ask: instead of monitoring the portfolio, propose a pilot on one asset with criteria and a date to return to the topic. A rejected rollout proposal and an accepted pilot proposal are, by year end, the same decision, only made on data.
Sources and further reading
- Ustawa z dnia 7 lipca 1994 r. - Prawo budowlane (t.j.), art. 61, 62, 91a - isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU19940890414
- Ustawa z dnia 23 kwietnia 1964 r. - Kodeks cywilny, art. 415, 435 - isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU19640160093
- Wyrok Sądu Najwyższego z 17 marca 2022 r., II CSKP 482/22 (przedsiębiorstwo budowlane jako wprawiane w ruch siłami przyrody) - sn.pl
- Rozporządzenie Ministra Transportu, Budownictwa i Gospodarki Morskiej z dnia 25 kwietnia 2012 r. w sprawie ustalania geotechnicznych warunków posadawiania obiektów budowlanych (Dz.U. 2012 poz. 463), § 7 i § 10 - isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20120000463
- PN-EN 1997-1 Eurokod 7: Projektowanie geotechniczne - Część 1: Zasady ogólne (metoda obserwacyjna) - sklep.pkn.pl
Legal status of the cited regulations: August 2026.
What next
Write the business case according to the template in this text - one page, six sections - and choose an asset for the pilot. The best moment is before the phenomenon you want to observe: before winter for a hall roof (the Article 62 inspection by 30 November is a natural meeting date), before the next excavation stage for a diaphragm wall. If you want us to go through this template together, on your asset and with your success criteria, arrange a short conversation: let’s talk. We respond within 24 hours, quote on request. If the asset already has sensors and loggers, connection to the platform takes a few days; full implementation with installation - from a few to a dozen weeks.