The L&T Museum attracted national interest for its architecture and immersive visitor experience. Behind the galleries and structural detailing, another system operated in parallel. Karishma Mandal, CTO of Shree Commercial Interiors, led the development of Fluid, a real-time infrastructure monitoring platform created during the museum build to observe building systems and anticipate maintenance needs. The project paired physical infrastructure with a software layer that allows facilities teams to maintain stable conditions and respond before disruptions occur. Documentation describes Fluid as an enterprise monitoring system that consolidates infrastructure metrics into a unified operational view.
Fluid arose from operational necessity. Large public facilities depend on uninterrupted temperature regulation, electrical stability, and environmental safeguards to protect visitors and collections. During the museum project, Mandal and her team built a system that unified operational visibility while forecasting maintenance cycles. Their aim remained practical. Facilities teams needed early insight rather than reactive repairs.
In conversation with TechRound, Mandal explained how the platform took shape, why predictive monitoring matters in complex structures, and what the deployment revealed about embedding intelligence into the built environment.
Building a System That Sees What Humans Miss
We had a conversation with Karishma, here’s what she had to say.
TechRound: How did the idea for Fluid take form?
Karishma Mandal: Facilities teams often respond after failures occur. We wanted to change that pattern. We built Fluid to observe infrastructure continuously and signal when intervention is approaching rather than waiting for disruption.
She explained that large systems generate fragmented streams of data. Mechanical equipment, environmental sensors, and network controls often run on separate tools, limiting a unified view. Her team consolidated these signals into a single monitoring layer so operators could see performance in real time.
TechRound: Why did predictive capability matter in a museum setting?
Mandal: Museums protect sensitive collections. Variations in temperature, humidity, and air quality can damage artefacts long before a mechanical fault becomes visible. Predictive monitoring protects the collection as much as the infrastructure.
Her team analysed trends and time-sensitive information to recognise patterns, anticipate capacity strain, and detect irregular behaviour before service disruption occurs. They schedule maintenance during planned windows, which reduces emergency shutdowns and limits operational disruption.
Architecture Beneath the Surface
Fluid’s structure reflects the demands of continuous monitoring. Lightweight collectors gather metrics from servers, environmental systems, and network equipment. Processing pipelines stream, normalise, aggregate, and evaluate data to detect anomalies.
TechRound: What guided your technical decisions?
Mandal: Reliability under stress guided every decision. Infrastructure systems do not pause for upgrades or experiments. We built redundancy, buffering, and failover into each layer so monitoring continues during network interruptions.
From Building Management to Intelligent Infrastructure
The museum deployment signalled a move away from reactive maintenance toward continuous operational insight. Facilities teams access dashboards displaying real-time metrics, alert histories, and trend analysis. Automated escalation workflows send notifications through multiple channels so teams respond quickly without constant manual oversight.
TechRound: What did the deployment teach you about infrastructure intelligence?
Mandal: Technology must remain unobtrusive. When monitoring works well, teams gain clarity without distraction. They focus on decisions rather than chasing data across systems.
Fluid connects with third-party tools through APIs, allowing facilities managers to link incident management and analytics platforms. This interoperability reduces operational silos and simplifies coordination across teams.
Local media recognised the platform, and the museum earned praise for its visitor experience and design. These outcomes reflect a growing reliance on software layers that support building operations and maintain stable conditions.
Mandal views Fluid as part of a broader change in infrastructure thinking. Buildings no longer function as static assets. They operate as responsive systems whose health teams measure, interpret, and protect through continuous observation. She believes predictive insight changes how teams assess risk, shifting maintenance from emergency repair to planned intervention.
Her work on Fluid reflects an expanding understanding that architecture includes software and data flows alongside physical construction. The museum stands as a public landmark, while the system beneath it provides a framework for foresight that organisations can apply across large facilities worldwide.
