Underground and Overlooked: Why Your Car Park Is the Smartest Investment You’re Not Making

Think about the last time you arrived at a commercial building as a visitor.

Chances are, the experience didn’t begin at the reception desk. It began the moment you turned into the car park — searching for a bay, hoping the visitor section wasn’t full, wondering whether the space marked ‘reserved’ actually was.

For most people, that first few minutes underground shapes how they feel about everything that follows. And yet, for most facilities managers and building owners, those same minutes are completely invisible from an operational standpoint.

No data. No visibility. No way to manage what can’t be measured.

This article explores why the car park — one of the most heavily used and most expensive parts of any commercial building — has become the most overlooked operational layer in Australian property management, and what’s now possible when you finally bring it into view. thatsmyspot’s sister company, Parking Spotz, helps Australian buildings finally close that gap.

“The car park is where every building experience begins. It’s also where most operational data ends.”

The Hidden Cost of an Unmanaged Car Park

In property development, there’s a widely understood truth: getting out of the ground is the most expensive part of the build. Basement excavation, structural reinforcement and waterproofing combine to make subterranean construction one of the highest per-square-metre cost components in any commercial project.

But here’s the disconnect: once those basements are built, they are almost universally under-managed relative to the capital invested in them.

In dense urban developments, basement levels can account for 25 to 40 percent of total built floor area. Yet the revenue generated per square metre from parking is significantly lower than habitable space above ground — and crucially, even that lower revenue potential is rarely fully realised, because utilisation is almost never actively managed.

The result? Misused visitor bays in residential apartment buildings. Vacant allocated spaces sitting idle in commercial property while visitors circle the entry. Blocked EV charging stations. Tenant disputes with no data to resolve them. Daily friction that starts underground and ripples upward through the entire building experience. Whether it’s commercial parking management or residential parking management, the pain points are aligned. They impact user experience. They impact the bottom line ROI.

The opportunity isn’t to change what basements are. It’s to finally start managing what’s already there. You can explore how thatsmyspot approaches this challenge here.

Why Parking Data Has Been So Hard to Capture

If the opportunity is so clear, why has parking remained in the operational dark ages for so long?

The honest answer is a technical one: underground environments are genuinely hostile to the connectivity infrastructure that powers modern building management.

Wi-Fi signals degrade significantly below ground level. Mobile coverage is patchy at best in reinforced concrete environments. Standard IoT sensors and underground parking sensors that work reliably on floors 10, 20 or 30 of a building frequently fail at basement level

This isn’t a problem anyone has been ignoring — it’s a problem the industry has largely been unable to solve with conventional tools or parking management software. These include parking IoT, parking management software and parking sensors. However the parking and building management systems that track parking occupancy, energy, HVAC and occupancy above ground simply don’t extend into these underground environments effectively.

Which means that for years, the default position has been: accept the gap. Manage parking manually. React to problems rather than anticipate them.

That’s changing. And for asset owners and facilities managers who move early, the operational advantage is significant. 

And that’s exactly the shift we’ve undertaken for underground parking environments with the technology we’ve built under our sister brand Parking Spotz. 

“It’s not that no one cared about parking data. It’s that the infrastructure to capture it simply didn’t exist underground — until now.”

What Real-Time Parking Visibility Actually Looks Like

When bay-level visibility is introduced into an underground car park, the day-to-day experience of managing the asset changes in ways that are immediately practical — not abstract.

For facilities managers:

You can see, in real time, which bays are occupied and which are free. You know instantly if a visitor bay has been taken by a long-term tenant, if an EV charger is occupied by a non-EV vehicle, or if peak demand is building faster than expected on a given morning. Reactive parking management becomes proactive management.

For building owners and asset managers:

Parking data for asset managers becomes an input into asset performance reporting. Utilisation rates, peak demand patterns, turnover by bay type — this is the kind of operational evidence that supports leasing decisions, capital planning and investor reporting. It also feeds directly into sustainability reporting, particularly around EV charging infrastructure usage.

For tenants and visitors:

The experience of arriving at the building improves materially. Whether it’s commercial property or residential strata, guaranteed bay availability for priority users, seamless access via booking integration, and the elimination of the daily friction that makes parking one of the most complained-about aspects of commercial tenancy. Tenant parking experience is significantly uplifted and that impacts building performance and satisfaction.

thatsmyspot makes this level of visibility accessible for commercial assets of all sizes. See how it works for your building. And then if you want to take it up a level, to automate and integrate parking management to your building management system, then there’s also the Parking Spotz solution.

The Link Between Parking and Building ROI

There’s a compelling case to be made — and it’s increasingly being made in boardrooms, not just control rooms — that parking is an underperforming asset class hiding in plain sight. For property asset managers, facilities managers focused on smart parking asset management, commercial building parking optimisation starts below ground.

Research from Deloitte’s smart building studies suggests that integrating multiple operational data streams can improve building efficiency by up to 30 percent. Parking, as one of the last unconnected layers in most commercial assets, represents a significant slice of that potential.

But the ROI case for parking visibility isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about three interconnected value drivers:

The first is tenant retention. In competitive commercial leasing markets, the quality of the arrival and daily experience matters. Buildings that can offer guaranteed, hassle-free parking access through smart parking asset management have a tangible advantage in both attracting and retaining tenants.

The second is space optimisation. When you have data on how parking is actually being used, you can right-size allocations, identify underutilised bays for reallocation, and make evidence-based decisions about future parking provision — including EV charging infrastructure planning. Commercial building parking optimisation is an easy way to increase and optimise the parking ROI, which immediately increases overall asset ROI.

The third is risk reduction. Parking disputes, access control failures and EV charging conflicts are increasingly common sources of tenant friction and, in some cases, legal liability. Real-time visibility and documented access records change that risk profile significantly.

Together, these drivers make a compelling case that parking visibility isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s an asset management decision. 

Talk to the thatsmyspot team about your asset.

For commercial assets that need more than physical bay protection — where full software-driven management, real-time data dashboards and enterprise-level reporting are the goal — our sister company Parking Spotz delivers a purpose-built smart parking platform for Australian commercial buildings. Read more in their deep-dive guide: Smart Building Parking Data Visibility.

Reach out to the Parking Spotz team to learn more about how to optimise your residential and commercial property parking assets. 

EV Charging: The Urgency Multiplier

If there’s one trend that’s accelerating the need for parking visibility faster than any other, it’s the rapid uptake of electric vehicles in Australian commercial property — and with it, the growing urgency around EV charging management and EV parking bay management across Australian commercial assets.

EV charging bays are among the most contentious spaces in any commercial car park. They’re expensive to install, high in demand, frequently misused by non-EV vehicles, and almost impossible to manage fairly without real-time data.

Without visibility, EV charging management defaults to signage and enforcement — both of which are ineffective in practice. With real-time bay-level data, building managers can enforce access based on vehicle type, prioritise charging for tenants versus visitors, monitor utilisation patterns and plan future infrastructure investment with confidence.

As EV adoption continues to rise, the buildings that have data infrastructure in place today will be significantly better positioned to meet tenant demand — and regulatory requirements — in the years ahead.

Learn more about EV charging management with thatsmyspot: thatsmyspot.com.au/ev-charging

And for a more sophisticated solution, try Parking Spotz’ EV charging management.

The Building Starts Below Ground

Smart building technology has transformed what’s possible above the lobby. Energy efficiency, occupancy analytics, access control, air quality monitoring — the toolkit available to facilities managers and asset owners today would have seemed extraordinary a decade ago.

But for all that progress, the car park has remained largely untouched. Not because the opportunity isn’t there — it’s one of the most significant operational levers in the asset. But because, until recently, the connectivity infrastructure needed to unlock it simply didn’t exist in underground environments.

That barrier is now gone.

The question for facilities managers and asset owners is no longer whether parking data is possible. It’s whether your building can afford to be one of the last without it.

thatsmyspot is Australia’s trusted smart parking solution — a parking management system for commercial buildings of every scale, built practically and affordably for the Australian market. Get in touch to find out what’s possible for your asset.

And if you’re a commercial parking operator or just looking for that automated, optimsed and integrable parking solution to manage all types of your parking bays, have a look at our Parking Spotz solution.

This article comes from an editorial article written by Angelique Mentis and featured in FM Media’s May 2026 edition. It reflects current Australian parking insights to capture and optimise parking assets from challenging underground environments to enhance user experience and building ROI, across residential and commercial property assets, including hospital parking, university parking, shopping centre parking, commercial strata, residential strata, airports and EV charging.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is smart parking?

Smart parking refers to the use of sensors, connectivity and data platforms to monitor, manage and optimise parking bays in real time. In a commercial building context, smart parking gives facilities managers and asset owners visibility over which bays are occupied, by whom and for how long — replacing manual processes with automated, data-driven management. thatsmyspot delivers smart parking solutions designed specifically for Australian commercial buildings, including underground environments where standard connectivity typically fails.

How does parking data improve building ROI?

Parking data improves building ROI through three interconnected value drivers. First, it supports tenant retention by eliminating the daily friction of unmanaged car parks — a proven factor in commercial leasing decisions. Second, it enables space optimisation, ensuring every bay is allocated and used efficiently rather than sitting idle or misused. Third, it reduces risk by providing documented access records that resolve disputes and reduce legal exposure. Together, these drivers make parking visibility a material contributor to asset performance, not just an operational convenience.

Can parking sensors work underground?

Yes — but not all parking sensors are designed to handle the connectivity challenges of underground environments. Standard Wi-Fi and mobile signals degrade significantly in reinforced concrete basements, which is why conventional IoT sensors frequently fail at basement level. Parking Spotz technology is purpose-built for underground commercial car parks, using wireless connectivity infrastructure that performs reliably where standard solutions cannot.

What is bay-level parking visibility?

Bay-level parking visibility means knowing the real-time status of every individual parking bay in a car park — occupied or vacant, by whom, and for how long. Unlike zone-level or entry-count systems that only tell you how many cars are in a building, bay-level visibility gives you granular, actionable data: which specific bay is taken, whether an EV charger is in use by a non-EV vehicle, or whether a visitor bay has been occupied by a tenant. This level of detail transforms parking from a passive amenity into an actively managed building asset. It also enables you to see current, past and upcoming bookings in real-time.