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Honeywell Forge Cognition: What the New AI Platform Means for Indian Smart Buildings

Smart City Bot

On 14 October 2026, Honeywell Technologies announced Forge Cognition, a new addition to its Honeywell Forge platform. The company calls it a self-contained agentic AI and simulation platform for facility operations, and it was built with technology from NVIDIA and Dell Technologies. Its aim is a familiar problem for anyone who runs a large building: operators drowning in alarms and equipment data, with too little time to work out what actually needs attention.

Rather than asking owners to rip out what they already have, Forge Cognition is designed to sit on top of existing customer deployments. It pairs real-time digital twins with AI agents that can read the state of a facility, test “what if” scenarios and help coordinate actions across connected systems.

What’s new in Forge Cognition

Honeywell says the platform builds a structured knowledge base from its own domain expertise and from a site’s asset and system data. AI agents then use that context to understand how equipment behaves and how different systems relate to each other. The launch focuses on three uses:

  • Smarter alarm management: agents classify and verify building management system (BMS) alarms, so operators can focus on real events and see fewer false positives. A “True Alarm” agent learns from operator feedback.
  • Predictive asset health: agents watch live HVAC data to spot developing equipment faults and guide maintenance before a breakdown disrupts operations.
  • Energy intelligence: digital twin simulations let teams try out operating changes and find ways to cut energy use without hurting occupant comfort.

Under the hood, NVIDIA Nemotron open models power the agents, NVIDIA Omniverse libraries handle physically accurate simulation, and NVIDIA Cosmos models with the Metropolis VSS Blueprint let vision AI agents search and summarise live or recorded sensor data. Dell supplies the compute and storage through the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA, including PowerEdge XE servers and Dell’s cyber resiliency solutions.

Importantly, the platform can run in manual, semi-autonomous or autonomous modes, and operators can override it at any time. In an interview with Fortune, Honeywell CTO Suresh Venkatarayalu said the autonomous mode has not been opened up yet and that people will stay in the loop for now.

Early pilot results

Pilots are under way at NVIDIA’s Voyager building in Santa Clara, the Fairmont Hotel in Dubai, NEX Mall in Singapore, Vanderbilt University, and Honeywell’s own campuses in Bangalore and Richardson, Texas. Only the Voyager pilot has published results so far: up to a 90% average reduction in unnecessary alerts, up to 10% potential reduction in energy and utility use, and a comfort score kept above 95%. The energy figure is an identified opportunity rather than a metered saving, and Honeywell has not announced pricing. Customers can start scoping deployments with Honeywell now.

Why it matters for Indian smart buildings and smart cities

The Bangalore pilot is a useful signal that this technology is being tested in Indian operating conditions, not just in Silicon Valley. Here is where it could help building owners, facility managers and city teams in India.

Energy savings in a hot, power-hungry climate. In Indian commercial buildings, HVAC is usually the biggest energy load. Being able to simulate setpoint and schedule changes on a digital twin before trying them on a live building lowers the risk of experimenting, and supports the push towards better Energy Performance Index (EPI) figures and green building ratings.

Predictive maintenance instead of firefighting. Many Indian facility teams still work on breakdown or calendar-based maintenance. Early warnings on chillers, AHUs and pumps can cut unplanned downtime in hospitals, IT parks, malls, airports and data centres, where an outage is costly.

Less alarm fatigue in control rooms. Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) under the Smart Cities Mission, and large campus control rooms, receive thousands of events a day. Filtering out nuisance BMS alarms means operators can respond faster to the ones that matter. We have written before about the evolving role of control rooms in modern cities, and AI-assisted triage is a natural next step.

Integration across systems. Honeywell describes Forge Cognition as open and interoperable, bringing IT and OT together, and its vision AI agents can work with sensor data. For Indian sites, the real value will come from connecting BMS, fire alarm, CCTV and access control into one operational picture. Owners should check with the vendor exactly which existing systems are supported at launch, since the first applications focus on BMS alarms and HVAC.

Cyber security has to come first. Connecting more building systems to AI platforms widens the attack surface. Indian operators, especially government bodies working under CERT-In guidelines, should insist on network segmentation, strong access control and audit trails, and keep operators in charge of any automated action. Our earlier piece on navigating the cyber risks of smart buildings covers the basics.

“Forge Cognition is a welcome step towards practical AI in building operations, and with a pilot already running in Bangalore, it can help Indian building operators cut alarm noise, save energy and plan maintenance with more confidence.” — Senior BMS Consultant at Trisim

Talk to Trisim

Planning a smart building, an ICCC, or an upgrade that brings fire alarm, CCTV, access control and BMS together securely? Talk to Trisim Global Solutions about design, integration and cyber security for your next project.

Sources

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