How Smart Building Collective
Gained Weeks of Efficiency with SignWell
CUSTOMER STORY
With Nicholas White
Co-Founder,
Smart Building Collective
CUSTOMER STORY
With Nicholas White
Co-Founder,
Smart Building Collective
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Smart Building Certification, Technology, and Real Estate
The Smart Building Collective
The Smart Building Collective, co-founded by Nicholas White and headquartered in Amsterdam, is a global certification and community platform that shapes the future of intelligent infrastructure. The organization began as a research initiative and has grown into a multidisciplinary ecosystem that certifies buildings, solutions, and services. Through community collaboration, technical standards, and data-backed assessments, the Collective brings together thought leaders from real estate, energy, and urban design to define what “smart” really means in the built environment.
Operating as a small team, Smart Building Collective manages certifications, assessments, and community programming across dozens of international clients and partners. As demand increased, their document workflows began to show strain. Contracting was handled manually through static PDFs, often leading to incomplete submissions, lost documents, and inefficient communication.
After evaluating larger players like DocuSign, Adobe Sign, and PandaDoc, Smart Building Collective chose SignWell for its simplicity, affordability, and flexibility. In particular, SignWell’s required fields, checkbox logic, and automated reminders made it easy to deliver complete, professional contracts without the version confusion and delays that had plagued earlier processes. What used to take weeks to complete could now be finalized in hours.
Before SignWell, the Collective’s approach to contract generation and signing was slow and unreliable. Agreements were often shared via email chains as PDFs, resulting in version mismatches, missed signatures, and a lack of clarity regarding which certification modules had been selected. “We’d get contracts back that were half-complete—even after multiple reminders,” said White. “When you’re a small company managing complex work with enterprise clients, it’s just not sustainable.”
Beyond internal inefficiencies, there was also the client experience to consider. Printing and signing PDFs felt outdated, especially in a business centered on forward-thinking infrastructure. White realized that a more frictionless, modern workflow would reflect the professionalism and precision that Smart Building Collective represented in its mission.
SignWell offered the right balance of speed, usability, and startup-friendly pricing. It required no technical setup or training and was immediately accessible to every member of the team, as well as to clients of all sizes and technical abilities. With SignWell, the team could ensure that every field was filled out correctly before submitting a contract. “We use checkboxes within our contracts to allow clients to select modules,” White explained. “SignWell made that seamless, and ensured nothing was missed.”
The platform also provided a structure for follow-ups. Automated reminders eliminated the need to chase clients manually, and real-time visibility helped the team know exactly where a document stood in the process. This was especially important when working with large enterprise clients whose procurement processes could otherwise introduce delays.
Crucially, the pricing model was aligned with the needs of a company that processes a relatively small number of contracts each month, but still needs a full-featured, professional-grade solution. “Other tools just didn’t make sense for the volume we needed,” said White. “SignWell gave us exactly what we needed, at the right price point.”
Since adopting SignWell, Smart Building Collective has shortened its contracting process by weeks. Clients now complete contracts quickly and accurately, without the need for repeated outreach. Agreements are signed digitally, with proper version control and built-in verification, resulting in a more professional experience on both sides.
The team also benefits from centralized access to signed documents, streamlining their ability to store and retrieve contracts as needed. SignWell became their go-to source of truth, whether syncing with folders or integrating with Pipedrive.
Even more importantly, the professionalism SignWell brings has enhanced client trust. “When you show up with a system like this,” said White, “it shows you have your act together. It gives clients confidence.”
Looking ahead, Smart Building Collective is continuing to evolve toward a more modular, productized service model. As clients engage with new certification components more frequently, the team is preparing for an increase in contract volume and complexity. To support this, White is exploring deeper integrations with SignWell’s API, including advanced automation through tools like Zapier and Pipedrive.
The vision is to enable clients to self-select services, receive real-time pricing, and finalize contracts with a single digital interaction, possibly even generating invoices or payment links directly from a completed contract. “We want to shorten the path from selection to signature to payment,” said White. “SignWell is at the core of that vision.”
By enabling smooth digital workflows today, SignWell is helping Smart Building Collective lay the foundation for smarter, more scalable operations tomorrow.
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