PBF 3:15 has applied since 1 January 2025, to existing buildings as well as new ones.
Chapter 3, Section 15 of the Swedish Planning and Building Ordinance (Plan- och byggförordningen, PBF 3:15) requires non-residential buildings with heating or cooling systems above 290 kW to have a building automation and control system. The duty took effect on 1 January 2025 and reaches back into the existing stock. Municipal building committees supervise it.
PBF 3:15 duty in force for systems above 290 kW
of 2024 completions were in apartment buildings
apartments owned by 325 municipal housing companies
What PBF 3:15 asks a building to do
The system must continuously monitor, log, analyse and allow adjustment of energy use, benchmark the building's efficiency, detect losses and inform the person responsible for the building, and communicate with the connected technical building systems.
Sweden is a compliance market, not a savings market. At around EUR 0.10 per kWh, the second-lowest commercial electricity price in the EU, no business case built on kWh alone survives a board meeting. The case that does survive is the obligation, the handover and the hours: meet the requirement, on a date, without a programming project.
Who is in scope
- Owners of non-residential buildings with heating, or combined heating and ventilation, above 290 kW
- Owners of buildings with cooling, or combined cooling and ventilation, above 290 kW
- Offices, schools, care and municipal buildings, retail and logistics, new and existing
- Municipal property companies with schools, offices and care buildings in their estate
Configured, not programmed.
Bisly removes the engineering step from building automation. The design goes into a configurator, the installer follows the app on site, and the building comes up configured and documented. Same functions, same standards, a fraction of the specialist hours.
What that means for your building
Speed and certainty
The engineering hours come out of the project, so the price and the schedule stop moving. Fewer specialist hours, shorter commissioning, fewer return visits.
One system for the whole building
HVAC, lighting, shading, access and metering in one system, with third-party equipment integrated at gateway level. The same configuration repeats on the next site.
Compliant and measured on handover day
An EN ISO 52120-1 BMS with the continuous monitoring, logging and reporting the regulation asks for. The building meets its obligation when it opens, not in a retrofit three years later.
Why the Swedish market suits a configured system
Sweden is structurally the cleanest fit for repeatable automation in Europe: 81.7% of 2024 completions were in apartment buildings, 40.1% of the population lives in blocks of ten or more units, 38% of heating is district heating, and 325 municipal housing companies own around 995,000 apartments and renovate roughly 15,100 of them a year.
In rental housing, varmhyra puts heating and often other utilities inside the rent. Every kilowatt-hour the building does not use is the landlord's, which makes metering and control a landlord decision rather than a tenant one. Heimstaden alone operates more than 46,000 homes in Sweden through one procurement function.
Meet PBF 3:15 without a programming project
Bisly delivers an EN ISO 52120-1 BMS with the monitoring, logging, benchmarking and fault detection PBF 3:15 describes, in one system covering HVAC, lighting, shading, access and metering. Third-party plant is integrated at gateway level, and the boundary is stated in writing before the order.
The engineering hours come out of the project. A Swedish installer configures the building from the app on site, and the documentation comes out of the same tool. For a municipal estate with thirty buildings, that means one configuration repeated thirty times, not thirty engineering jobs.
sites deployed across the Baltics, Poland and DACH
BMS functions in the base build, not as a later project
for HVAC, lighting, shading, access and metering
A phased path, starting with one building
You do not have to decide on a portfolio programme to discharge the obligation. Start with the building the deadline applies to.
- 01
Readiness assessment
We check what applies to your building, by which date, and what the system must be able to do. You get a written answer, not a brochure.
- 02
Metering and monitoring first
Continuous monitoring, logging, benchmarking and loss detection are the core of the requirement. A small decision that creates the measured baseline for everything after it.
- 03
Control where the numbers say it pays
Heating, ventilation, lighting and shading control are added building by building, configured on site by your installer rather than programmed by a specialist.
Check your building against PBF 3:15
A readiness assessment of one building: whether the duty applies, what the system must do, and how the requirement is met without holding up the schedule.
Other markets with a dated obligation
This page summarises national legislation for commercial orientation and is not legal advice. Thresholds, dates and exemptions should be confirmed against the official text and the competent authority for your building.