🎧 #083: QuadReal's quest for a Building OS with KODE Labs

“Stop talking, start doing. The tools are in place. The vendors exist. The folks that understand how to bring this stuff to life exist. So start doing it."
—Thano Lambrinos

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Episode 83 is a conversation with Thano Lambrinos, Senior Vice President of Digital Buildings, Experiences & Innovation at QuadReal Property Group. He's joined by Edi Demaj, co-founder at KODE Labs.

Summary

We talked about QuadReal's smart building strategy generally, then we took a deep dive into the concept of a building operating system and why QuadReal chose KODE Labs to be theirs.

This was a fascinating look at the next generation of software for buildings through the eyes of one of the leading building owners in our industry.

Without further ado, please enjoy the Nexus Podcast with QuadReal and KODE labs.

Mentions and Links

1. QuadReal (1:24)
2. KODE Labs (4:26)

You can find Thano and Edi on LinkedIn.

Enjoy!

Highlights

• QuadReal's smart building strategy (8:42)
• What is a Building Operating System? (17:30)
• Thano's "utopian state" (29:24)
• Why they say that the "operators love it"? (45:29)
• Command and control capabilities (59:29)

Music credit: Dream Big by Audiobinger—licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Full transcript

Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!

James Dice: hello friends, welcome to the nexus podcast. I'm your host James dice each week. I fire questions that the leaders of the smart buildings industry to try to figure out where we're headed and how we can get there faster without all the marketing fluff. I'm pushing my learning to the limit. And I'm so glad to have you here following along.

James Dice: This episode is a conversation with senior vice president of digital buildings, experiences and innovation at quad real property group. He just joined by Eddie Dimagi co-founder of KODE Labs. We talked about quad real smart building strategy generally. And then we took a deep dive into the concept of a building operating system and why quad real chose KODE Labs to be theirs. This was a fascinating look at the next generation of software for buildings [00:01:00] through the eyes of one of the leading building owners in our industry. Without further ado, please enjoy the next podcast with Quadreal and KODE Labs. Welcome to the show fan. How can you introduce yourself?

Thano Lambrinos: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Hey everyone. My name Dan Ahlam Breanna's. I am responsible for our digital buildings, customer experience and innovation practice at quad real property group. For those who aren't terribly familiar with the farm we currently manage just over 60 billion, just over $61 billion in assets.

A good majority of that being real estate split right now about 50 50 between Canada, where I am right now, here in Toronto across the country, as well as internationally throughout the U S. Asia and Australia and, and other parts of the world to give you some idea of the size of the organization from a real estate perspective that 60 ish billion dollars translates into around [00:02:00] 36 million square feet of office around 9 million feet of retail, almost 90 million feet of industrial space, 53,000 residential units and another 20,000 student housing units and growing every day.

I'm sure those numbers are out of date if they were even published this morning. So 1200 employees globally and responsible for the digital transformation strategy across the domestic Canadian and international portfolio. So thanks for having me. Absolutely.

James Dice: Thanks for coming on. So what were you doing before Quadro?

Can you give us a little summary of your,

Thano Lambrinos: your, yeah, for sure. I, I came from a non-traditional am I, my background is somewhat non-traditional and it's and how it came to be and land in, in real estate. And technology actually came from the sub-trades. I worked in uh, for electrical and mechanical contractors on the construction side and was exposed to technology through the public private partnership model of building and deploying infrastructure here in Canada.

We were [00:03:00] building hospitals, building courthouses and rail systems and things of that nature. And the reason that technology really started for me at those projects was because the the government at the time uh, infrastructure, Ontario, these other bodies, these other groups, had what they called a peace officer or project specific output specification that required what they, or outlined what they wanted the building to do.

In a hospital environment, allowing the patient to have a bedside terminal that gave them health records, but also entertainment. And also let them control the temperature and the blinds and the lighting in their room and call the nurses and things of that nature and pushed it down onto the consortium's to have them deliver it to.

There was a, you know, we're talking 2006, 2007, 2008, when this really started for me. And at the time it was just a whole lot of identifying software solutions and various different companies that could come together and integrators that could, they could make these solutions stand up. So, from that [00:04:00] introduction to it left the trades and went into general contracting work for a large firm here in Canada and was working with some real estate customers.

Quadrille being one of them. And they asked me to jump over the fence and, and run the digital strategy for them directly.

James Dice: Very cool.

Thano Lambrinos: Eddie,

James Dice: who are you? Introduce yourself and a little intro to KODE.

Edi Demaj: going on, James. Thanks for having me 30 damn. I am one of the co-founders here at KODE Labs. As far as what KODE Labs is in what we do our smart building platform that helps normalize, integrate, normalize, all building systems, including any IOT, you know, so it's not just core BMS, but it's any IOT or really any other system access cameras, whatever it may be integrating it into a single, single pane of glass.

To help visualize control and analyze using this holistic approach. So we're not stuck to any one area where [00:05:00] we're optimizing, we're doing any one thing based on just one, you know, one variable or two variables. The idea is that anything that has any means of communicating can be integrated into a platform, but can normalize that data and then use it to enable a variety of different use cases across in a scalable way across portfolios, not just, you know, one building or two buildings at a time.

Cool, great

James Dice: intro. So do me a little history on KODE Lab once you guys started and what's it, what's it grown up to today?

Edi Demaj: So Edward and I were the two co-founders he had. We both were in finance and around real estate space for awhile. Really I'd say our whole adult lives. Actually it was on the integration side, you know, bringing building systems together, that side of it.

And I come from the connectivity side, our co-founder company prior to KODE Labs called rocket fiber, where we were top [00:06:00] three fastest internet providers in north America for six years in a row. And what we did there is we essentially build that underlying infrastructure that enables everything to live on top of, right on.

We exited that in 2020, but 2017, Patrick and I were looking at the space and like I managed a bunch of real estate and we bought in and done real estate development. Prior to that, we'd always felt like everything we did in and around real estate was just really manual, very expensive. And in particular with regard to like building integrations, nobody could quantify like the deliverables.

It was always a, yeah, you could tie this, that, and the other, you would take, you know, 17 months to do cost millions of dollars. And then when you have to go to ownership and actually tell them that, Hey, like, this is a cool to have, but they want to know, is, am I generating more revenue? Are you lowering my costs?

Like, or is this just a nice to have kind of [00:07:00] a thing? And for a long time, for us, it's all like, it was one of those nice to have very hard things to pitch and we thought we could do it better. So we, then we started all the companies prior to this and in the software space as well. So what we did is we said, Hey, we have a team of people that have this variety of different experiences that if we could bring together, we could really build something cool.

That is a plug and play that I'm sure we'll get more into. So in 2017, late 2017, we started putting a team together. Some key people and started building this vision, this platform that started with us too, but really all the people that have been attached to it are just as much, you know, founding members of the company as is actually an I R and then they kind of took it over and then they've been building it.

And it's been an incredible ride since then. And we're now about 74 or five people and adding every day. So, you know, not the numbers that Dana was talking about, but I, you know, live with 70, some [00:08:00] people I'm losing the numbers here by one or two every week. I fail and doing business in all over us, Canada, Australia, UK, and expanding around Europe as well.

James Dice: Cool. Yeah. This podcast will come out in early 20, 22 and quadrille we'll have more buildings and you guys will have more employees I'm sure. So we'll be out of date when it's published. But the impetus for this conversation was Stan as a presentation at real, which I very much enjoyed and uh, told him.

So, uh, when we met and uh, we thought Whiteville talk about it. Unpack it a little bit more in the context of this software layer that you guys are adding on at a, so why don't we start with what that, can you, can you give Fanno an overview of the quad real smart building strategy to give people some context?

Thano Lambrinos: Yeah, for sure. So we felt very early on that it was important to define what to Eddie's point. Promise of smart [00:09:00] buildings was actually going to deliver us as a real estate owner operator and what promise it was going to deliver to our tenants. So we spent, spent a bunch of time early on with various different stakeholders across the business, in leasing, in development and construction in property operations, in investment management and asset management and sustainability to identify what was important to them and what their key business drivers were.

And we came up with seven that we use as kind of, the decision-making points for any digital projects or any use cases we look to stand up in the built environment. The seven are all around reducing costs and improving productivity. Reducing energy consumption and lowering our carbon footprint talking about healthy buildings and wellness, which is extremely important because it was always extremely important, but is now especially important because of COVID, you know, talking as previous, as [00:10:00] previously mentioned about reducing energy and carbon, we've got some very ambitious net, zero targets as many do now that that we look and hope to realize uh, the reduction of risk both operational and cyber risk and the differentiation of experiences for the user being one of the more critical ones, as well as the opportunity to change the business model a bit and leverage technology to find new revenue streams.

So, so those were the drivers that we got started with. And from there we developed what we needed to develop in order to implement in a repeatable and a scalable way. And that is what we call our digital building playbook. So these playbook. Contain all of those aspirations. Use cases and user journeys, but also we've gone a step deeper and have actually written specifications and requirements of all of the technologies that are going to be required in the built form uh, whether operational back of house or whether front of [00:11:00] house customer facing to deliver on all of those use cases all the way through to standing up and commissioning.

And there's an audit trail back from the use cases through the specifications, the deployment of those specifications and the implementation of those specifications. We needed to do this because the current construction methodology, the current methodology of retrofitting buildings is not conducive to the economic deploy, economical deployment of technology in the built environment.

So by doing this, we've created a repeatable and standardized playbook that allows us to do these things at scale at a cost that we're able to deliver them. The next layer. If we look at it as a series of layers and probably the foundational layer is one of connectivity, any talked a little bit, a moment ago about what he did at rocket fiber and how that was an enabling layer to everything that sat on top.

So over the past, call it 18 months or so through COVID even we've deployed. [00:12:00] Fiber infrastructure converged building networks and have integrated our systems both from a, from a back of house, Santa front of house perspective at all of our commercial buildings across Canada, we've standardized it and are deploying it in all of our new developments.

And we're looking at retrofitting in our other asset classes as well. So that foundation was critical to connect systems, into expose data that we would then normalize normalized with groups like Eddie's a KODE to be able to surface it, visualize it, and be able to do more advanced analytics on.

So from the foundational layer, the next of connectivity, the next layer that was of critical importance was making the data available to us a bit more granular. So we started deploying a number of IOT sensors primarily in the space of occupancy and people counting because you know, we've had buildings for hundreds and hundreds of years.

But for the longest time, we've had no idea how those buildings were actually used, how those spaces were used, how people were traversing through the space and what they [00:13:00] were using them for. So that was a key use case to, to integrate with HVAC and lighting systems for comfort and energy, but also to integrate with security systems for obvious reasons, to understand where people are to optimize for cleaning and just really understand how people are using our spaces so that we can design them better.

In addition to that, there was a number of other IOT technologies. We deployed indoor environmental quality which as you know, is of critical importance. As I mentioned earlier, with the healthy buildings movement leak detection for loss reduction, floods are the new fire, unfortunately. And we're seeing this this get worse every day.

So being able to mitigate those issues are a huge importance consumable reduction, things like waste and toilet, paper and hand towels and hand sanitizer and things of that nature. So the less of it goes to the landfill. We use all of it. And we optimize the way that we clean and adding a layer of mobile access on top of all of our systems so that we create the credential.

The phone is [00:14:00] your credentials. So that's the best way for you to access a space physically or virtually couple more things, and then I'll stop rambling. But the, the layer on top of that, that before we get to KODE, I'll close out with our friends at KODE here. Uh, On top of that, that we built was our actually our own digital platform.

So everyone talks about. Tenant engagement and tenant experience. We canvas the entire market and realized that there were some good solutions out there, but they were pretty expensive. And when we looked at what we could do, based on the scale that we had and the cost, it would take for us to build these solutions out and the fact that we could control our own roadmap and our own destiny.

It became very, it became very appealing to start looking at doing this ourselves. We're not a software development house. All we've done is create a thin layer that allows fantastic services like KODE and like food and beverage services and like other systems to appropriately integrate them in so that we can surface them to the customer in a unified [00:15:00] way.

And then add over, add on top some other functionality, like event booking and and building information and communications and other things of that nature. So we created quad real plus for ourselves, which is now deployed across our commercial portfolio soon to be deployed across our residential portfolio as well.

And also we've created a thin layer of workplace digital workplace management that allows us to bridge the gap between landlord and tenant and enhance the services that we deliver to our office tenants. So those are two bespoke kind of customized solutions we've created within quadrille that we're utilizing on ourselves with our tenants and also with our joint venture partners.

And last but not least our friends at KODE that are part of that top layer kind of next to that customer platform layer, if you will, that allows us to bring in all of the. Building system data, visualize it, do command and control, eliminate a bunch of disparate headends save [00:16:00] costs there change the operating model.

Really look at the way that we operate our buildings and change that from a one building operator per 150,000 square feet. And maybe we can stretch that and maybe we can repurpose our people to manage larger portfolios if they're very highly, technically skilled. This also allows us to surface other services to customers and overlay analytics and machine learning and AI to drive efficiencies, to drive cost reduction but also drive the comfort in the health and wellness and the environment.

So that was a, a long diatribe, but that kind of at an, in a nutshell gives you a sense of what we're doing here at quadrille.

James Dice: The reason I like talking to you is because like we, the way that you just described that, like walking, like walked everyone through everything that. Could be like 12 hours worth of podcasts.

And I feel actually I got a really good overview just from the couple of minutes there. And you started with a business case then use cases and then you're [00:17:00] walking through infrastructure and then outcome, like are the actual technologies that sit on top of the infrastructure. And that aligns like so clearly with the way that we teach things on our foundations course.

So I

Thano Lambrinos: appreciate it. I was lucky enough to present to our board last week. And if I couldn't distill the message and the strategy and 10 minutes I'd have had a big problem. So yeah. So that's a, that's a learned in practice approach to describing digital and smart buildings to the real estate community.

James Dice: Totally. Well, we could probably do like an entire year's worth of nexus podcasts on everything. You just talked about organized zero in on just that one layer, which is, do you guys call it, you guys call it integrated operations platform? Is that what

Thano Lambrinos: you call it? Integrated building management. Okay.

James Dice: Integrated building management platform which is where KODE comes in. So Eddie, what is the, what does that mean to you? And I, I want to draw a parallel to that. The acronym that I see [00:18:00] in the industry a lot today, which is building operating system. It's not my favorite. I really don't like it very much.

Can we, can we try to define out what this thing is? Like, what, what is, what are you guys developing and what is a building operating system? It's not a very fair question, but we'll

Edi Demaj: go for it. That's fine. And I, I couldn't agree more with you with regard to use of acronyms in different terminologies.

I think, I think they know touched on it. I began a little bit. There's been a lot of talk about a lot of things for a long time. And the question now I think is what are we actually doing? And can we see touch it, feel it, and actually like stand behind what it is that we're, you know, especially for us, you know, vendors that are pitching the, you know, quad reels and screens and Oxfords and, you know, Cadillac, Fairview, whoever of the world can, can we see this thing?

Right? [00:19:00] Cause it's really easy to talk about use cases and so on. So our approach and the reason we call our core platform core to us, which is the operating system is because our definition of an operating system is something that. Allows for others to pull from and do whatever it is that they need to do, but also offers all these different applications to enable whatever use cases you want.

Quadrille has seven. There are other clients that have other things that need done. It needs to have the flexibility to allow for all those things to happen. Our approach. Again, the reason we've we haven't made a whole lot of noise until about 12, 14, 16 months ago is because we went out there and we were working with a bunch of different clients and getting our products deployed.

And we wanted to be able to show versus just talk. And, you know, our, our approach to talking with even, you know, potential clients or partners is always, let's just jump right into an [00:20:00] actual demo. So you can see it, touch it, feel it, play with this thing versus, you know, going through presentation slides.

It's just not, you know, we're talking about technology and yes, I mean in our industry, think it's taken a bit. I think we're, we're getting there with regard to like, we've had a lot of dreams, but like they actually bring them to life has been a bit challenging and, or costly and or both. And our approach is that once we deploy, like, you know, you get a lot of companies that say, Hey, we'd like to do a pilot.

And you know, our answer to that is that's great. But how about like, we do seven of them all at the same time and have your building turned around. And the next 14 days, literally all seven of them fully integrated data, normalized, give us whatever systems you have. You now have a platform where you're not piloting one building, but you're piloting this across seven or 10 or whatever you want.

And it always goes, what, like how's that even possible for a goal is not [00:21:00] that you always use KODE Lab. To deploy our platform are quite literally before this call, I was told that I think Dana, one of your buildings, you have people that are not really deploying the platform on their own. The idea. So sorry to go back to your beginning of this is, you know, it's, it's having a platform that could be taught that is simple enough to use and implement by anybody.

It could be your partners that you've used in your portfolio forever, or it could be your building engineers, or it could be whoever is operating the building, your property management, whoever it may be. They have the ability to take what's been deployed in one building and implemented across the whole portfolio by following a set of directions or talking to our client experience.

The implant accessing, which I say is, is, is the I, you know, of course I'm biased, but I think we have the best in class. And then last but not least, it's having internal to whoever owns [00:22:00] this operating system with being called, having a team that's structured in such a way where we talk about the year. A lot of like we do an hour on AI, we do energy savings.

We do X, Y, and Z. And it's like, well, let me just literally go on LinkedIn and look at the structure of your team. And you have to be able to like these things don't just happen by. You know, having, you know, one or two people, they could kinda kind of talk and touch all these things. The thing is our approach has been if, if, if we're pitching it, it needs to have a quantifiable return to owner or a manager of a building or portfolio.

It needs to like, they need to be able to like, see it, touch it, feel it in a scalable way and in a timely manner which helps, you know, be able to deliver this cost-effective solution. So that's, that's our definition of an operating system. Okay.

James Dice: So you're like, let's not try to define it. Let's just do a do it.[00:23:00]

Edi Demaj: There's been a lot again, like there's. Oh, there's been a lot of talk and there there's still is a lot of talk. And I think there's some phenomenal companies that are doing some amazing things in the space. I think our co-founder editor actually said it in one of the other podcasts. They're like, you know, 20, 22 will be the year of partnerships.

I think we'll see a lot of companies come together and partner actually realized that look like maybe we're not competing with you. You know, our view at cold labs is that we could work with anybody anywhere because the platform is built. Like if you, if you truly have an operating, so. You should not like we shouldn't have to pitch Badr on just like the one thing, Hey, they know, let me just optimize your AJC as an example.

Like, if that's all we're doing, then we're we're out because maybe he has something he's using, but it's being able to provide this holistic view and also be able to use data from all these different variables, which again has, has been talked about a lot. And I think there are some great optimization tools out there [00:24:00] that optimize, you know, one specific variable based on, you know, one or two different data points, but to be able to take this holistic view, I mean, they know touched on it a lot, a couple of minutes ago here, but.

No enabling an amazing experience and driving energy efficiency and, you know, reducing risk. Like those things get actually all happened together because they happen in all other industries. You know, integrating an API is not rocket science. Like there are companies that are literally flying rockets to like different planets, like immigrating in API happens every day, all day, you know, non-stop to do plug and play.

Once you integrate something, you shouldn't make that shouldn't be from their arm. Like you should be able to go and install 75, 70 5 million access points or, or where I can fancy sensors or whatever you're trying to install. And they should just come up. Like this happens in every other space, except for our space where it's just this crazy complicated thing that [00:25:00] people talk about.

We are in, we are in this to simplify it and make it quantifiable. That's it?

James Dice: So this concept is tough because it or not to where we have like the operating system in buildings. Yeah. Like a windows or apple operating system. Yeah.

Thano Lambrinos: But do

Edi Demaj: we have

James Dice: well, so. That's why I wanted to talk to you guys about it. So, but hear me out.

So this is where we've been in the industry so far is they have a bunch of people talking about operating systems, but I think the subtext is that we're not quite there yet, or, or what they were referring to an operating system as was not like the operating system on your computer. Then you have companies that are like doing, like you said energy, like, I'm just gonna throw lucid.

Now Atrius under the bus. They have the building LS, right? That's their patented name for their software, but it's energy bench. It's utility bill benchmarking. Right. That's not an operating system for a building. So what [00:26:00] I'm hearing from you, like if we try to define it and I'm always like trying to define acronyms for the industry, but like you're, you're connecting to all the siloed base building systems.

It sounds like. Two-way communication between them. Your not just doing that in one building, it's a portfolio approach. So site level systems like Niagara, for instance, that this differentiates that this from that basically like, you know, this is a cloud-based cloud first portfolio level approach.

And it's built on providing applications for different people to accomplish different things. That sounds like, so it's not just, it's not just throw all of your data onto a dashboard and say, good luck. It sounds like it's beyond taking beyond that and actually integrating the data and the control capabilities into people's

actual

Thano Lambrinos: workflows.

I think what was important. Yeah. I think what was important for us as we looked at this, James is. To your point. It couldn't even [00:27:00] just be base building systems. We needed more than that. Right. We needed the ability to integrate all of the different IOT sensors that we were deploying. We haven't done this yet, admittedly, but very soon we'll start to look at enterprise solutions and bringing in various different enterprise solutions into the fold and seeing you know, what data points from our, whether it's leasing systems or financial systems or you know, HR systems or what have you, that could be relevant in here as well.

So we really needed a layer that was to, as you mentioned, could provide two way communication, command, and control, but also could bring in sources of data from anywhere make sure that it was repeatable and scalable to the point that I don't have to go to KODE every time we want to make changes, we can have our building operators.

In fact, once we get all of these API stood up. They could maybe do the next building themselves if they really wanted to. Right. So these are the types of, this is the type of flexibility that we're, that we specified in required in our documents. When we first started [00:28:00] doing RFPs in this space and where we befuddled much, much of the market, because, you know, to your point there their definition of a building operating system.

My operating system that you have to pay me X amount of dollars a year to use, but only I can really update it. And I kind of select the partners and the integrations. And if you want something, I'll let you know if we were going to put it on our roadmap or not, and so on and so forth. So, so that was, that was the key bit for us is identifying a solution that would allow us to satisfy these things that we could deliver at scale at a cost that I could go to asset management and investment management and build a case and tell them what we were looking to accomplish.

And when they looked at the figures, they were like, okay, that's a reasonable amount of money. We're not talking about millions of dollars per building a to stand a bunch of pieces of data, visualized very pretty with a lot of colors and charts for outcomes unknown. So I think that's, you know, that for us was it needed to be a [00:29:00] true, we need to look at it as a true O S a system that, you know, I can hire somebody to help me with, or I can do it myself, or we can have power users that can create applications on the platform to do interesting things or, you know, identify bang algorithms that I can overlay and run simulations.

And all of those types of things needed to be possible. And it said they're few and far between in the market, as it stands.

James Dice: Awesome. You mentioned the specifications layer or step to this, right? So when you and I met a couple of weeks ago, you talked about your utopian state. You basically said I'm putting this utopian state out, like who can meet these requirements.

Right. Can you talk a little bit more about what that process looks like?

Thano Lambrinos: Yeah, sure. So my background as mentioned was construction. So. I have a good lens on how projects are designed and procured and how as mentioned the existing supply chain is disincentivized to work together to stand [00:30:00] up these various technologies.

So the first thing we needed to do was change the way that we designed and procured systems and technologies in the built environment. Not only to make this economical, but just to make it possible because before it was, it was near impossible and the constructs that existed and if it was possible, it was just so painful that nobody wanted to do it.

So we, then, you know, when we started looking at the, the deployment methodology, the procurement methodology, the methodology and the execution methodology, you know, we started at the, in parallel, essentially building these sets of requirements. And to your point, I figured why. Y just go with traditional ways of doing things where we say, oh, let's use the building automation system and integrate lighting and a couple of other things.

And there you go. That's your, that's your smart building platform, where as any set earlier in other industries, they've taken things so much further and we've just. Back and watched every, [00:31:00] literally every industry blow by us from a technological advancement perspective and we've done nothing, right.

We've just kept building buildings the same way we always have kept retrofitting, kept operating the same way because it's worked and everyone's made money and has been and it's done pretty well with it, but, but we thought, you know, there's, there's an opportunity here to really change the game. So we created a set of requirements is 60, 70 some odd page document that I, you know, Took out the whip and made Eddie and his team respond to along with a whole bunch of other folks.

And and that included basically everything that I talked about, the ability to do command and control of all of these disparate systems, if command and control was appropriate, read, write, or read, depending on what made sense. On top of that, I wanted all these other IOT sensors to come in that were from all bunch of other different manufacturers, offering a number of other different solutions.

And I wanted the ability to integrate, you know, enterprise and more human generated data into the fold [00:32:00] at some point, so that we could start looking at what that would look like as well as work order information and kind of our whole operational enterprise and everything we did in the building into a single platform.

And by the way, I want you to be able to I want to be able to get rid of. Relatively quickly if I really need to. So the principles that this needs to be built on is, you know, open API APIs open licensing, open open maintenance and service ability just to just a foundation of openness.

And on top of that, you need to do for a cost that I can pay. Then I can afford like this, just because I paint this enormous picture. Doesn't mean you can charge us, you know, a dollar, a square foot for it. That's not going to fly. You can't charge us, you know, multiple dollars a square foot for implementation.

That's not going to fly either. As you remember from real. I put our numbers on the board. Right. And I had to, I told Eddie, I was going to do it. And he's like, huh, man. And I was like, look, we have to, we have to put this out there, like this, the, the industry needs to know what [00:33:00] these things cost and what they should cost.

And so, you know, to integrate a building at 16 cents to 25 cents a square foot upfront, unless you've got a whole bunch of other crazy spooled stuff you're dealing with, in which case that plays to another five to seven and a half cents a square foot for. And then ongoing, you're looking at four to 8 cents a square foot based on your points.

And if you can't make that business case work, then shame on you. Right? So that's, we had to make it real. We had to shoot for the moon and we had to find a partner that was willing to come along for the ride with us and understand that, sorry, you're not going to get your billion dollar valuation on one building multiplied by the, the, the, the dream of doing a thousand buildings in the same way.

So this way you're going to generate $500 million in revenue a year off of three customers not going to happen, at least not with us. So that's, you're going to get a small, reasonable amount fee per foot that makes the business case easy to justify. And it's up to you to scale it, KODE Labs or whoever, right?

So that's, [00:34:00] that's the way we put it together. Arrogant as it may sound, it seems to be it seems to be working out for us so far.

James Dice: Hey guys, just another quick note from our sponsor Nexus labs. And then we'll get back to the show. This episode is brought to you by nexus foundations, our introductory course on the smart buildings industry. If you're new to the industry, this course is for you. If you're an industry vet, but want to understand how technology is changing things.

This course is also for you. The alumni are raving about the content, which they say pulls it all together, and they also love getting to meet the other students on the weekly zoom calls and in the private chat room, you can find out more about the course@courses.nexus lab. Start online. All right, back to the interview

I want to come back to you and hear about the responses, but, but Eddie, what was it like to respond to this compared to other sort of RFPs?

Edi Demaj: there's the good and the bad, right?

The the, the good is that you have a potential client at the time. Who has, you know, a clear, [00:35:00] you know, vision and view into what they're trying to do. And frankly, it was very similar to why we started the company to begin with. So it wasn't like we had to do a whole lot of things to adapt to what they know quadrille team, you know, had envisioned, you know, to be able to do so, that part was, was great.

The other part is that, you know, thinking most, most other developers just don't move as fast. So now you have to, you know, get on, on a rocket ship and he has to go, okay, like you said, you could do this. You've been wanting to do this. You say, you're ready time to really prove that you're ready and you know, you're ready to go.

So now we're, again, we're, we're blessed that. Have, you know, the best team on planet earth and they are, you throw anything at them and then they take it as you know, this is their company, as much as it is an idiot ethic company. So it's not just structurally at the core. Like we think that like building [00:36:00] tech is one.

If you don't have the right culture, if you don't have that right. Vision mentality, kind of all, all the pieces coming together, it's really, really hard to, to, to go there. So yeah. You know, the, the, you know, is it, is it, is it easy? When you get somebody that comes in and what these guys did, they basically put us against some other people.

They didn't give us first time. They didn't give us the project. Then they gave us one and then we're like, okay, to us, it's it's art, it's competition. It's oh, S versus a less, let's see who really has an OSTP. And you know, we hit, we hit the ground running and that turned into, and I'm sure, you know, painter can touch into that more details there because he knows him better than I do.

But from our perspective, it was, Hey, we, we got one shot. We have to hit it out of the park. And at an incredible speed and quality, right? That really shows these guys that this can be done in the way that they really envisioned it. So that's what we did and that, you know, is, is open the doors to more. But [00:37:00] again, we're fully aware of the fact that tomorrow we could be somebody else, if we're not keeping up with it.

And that's you know, it's a fully transparent and open relationship. It is not, you know, we're not, we're not friends at the end of the day, we have to deliver, or you don't deliver you leave. But we also had to prove to a very technical group of people that they could actually remove KODE Labs and plug somebody else in at any one point in time.

And it can be a seamless process. So, you know, that part is hard. That's not, you know, you never, you just you're like, look, you're hiring me. But part of the requirements is that I show you how you can unplug me. Like that's actually kind of, you know, that's not, that's not what you're thinking of to, again, to, to the earlier point that was made of.

You know, value and growth and all these things. Right. But I think again, we started this to be an enabler, to simplify the space, to make it really truly plug and play, to make it a real data play. And we're [00:38:00] happy and ready publicly and otherwise to go out there, like when Dana talks about sharing pricing, I mean, we were talking internally with, with, and our team here and we're like, this is, you know, this is, this is next level stuff, but you signed up with a client who wants to quite literally change the industry and, you know, hopefully help others kind of come along with it.

So that's what we signed up for. We'll, we'll stand behind it, we'll live with it. And we're frankly, very excited to do it. And we're not looking to build a company on 10 buildings. We want. I like,

James Dice: I like the ability to unplug us as like the requirement for the operating system. Anyone that's like removed their OSTP from their machine and their life knows that that is a possibility, but that you can't do for most building software firms.

So that, what else did you, can you talk about the other responses? So you put this, this is just how I'm thinking of it. You put this impossible goal up there and said, who's going to come meet this. [00:39:00] What else did you get? I would just want to hear

Thano Lambrinos: about that. A lot of very expensive proposals is what we've got a lot of folks saying, no, no, no, you want to do it this way.

Trust me, look at what we can do. And, and we can build you a digital twin. And I'm like, that's exactly what we described. So what is your definition of a digital twin? If not the one that we've hacked together ourselves? So there was a lot. You know, tip and I, and I came from the, the, you know, sales and business development.

So I understand the, the idea of re-engineering the customer's vision to match the product that you've built, but that I wasn't having any of that. None of us were having any of it. Right. So we got, we got a lot of vendors in the community coming back and saying, look, you know, look at what we have, and this is you're asking for this, but this is kind of what you really should be asking for.

We've got some of that. And, and some of those folks couldn't even respond to the RFP that we put out because it was just beyond their capabilities. And then we had some folks that came back and said, okay, [00:40:00] like, we're, we're going to really give this a go. And they did. And there were some good responses, but at a cost that was, you know, four, five X on the capital and this similar multiplier on the ongoing recurrent.

To maybe have it work. I guess it's a bit of a swing to pay that much money to, to see if it's going to work. And and yeah, so that was really the, the, the, the kind of the two flavors of responses we got. We got either now this isn't what you want re-engineered to, to align with the product that we want to sell you.

Or we can't do it or I think we can do it and it's going to cost you an arm and a leg. And, you know, I I'll save the names of the other vendors and I'll save their costs for over beer conversations with friends. But what I will say is that you know, is that these gentlemen on the phone or the, the gentlemen on the phone, Eddie and his.

I managed to manage, to show up at a [00:41:00] cost that I budgeted for, which was scary because when you say you're going to deliver something for the price range that I said that I just mentioned that, you know, 16 to 25 cents a foot or four to 8 cents a foot on an ongoing, and it's going to do all of this stuff.

I would have looked like a goofball if if I didn't find, if these guys didn't show up and and, and, and manage to deliver for us. So, so yeah, so those were, that's what we got from the market.

James Dice: Let's talk about delivery. So first building, you guys did this song. Can you talk about like the process?

Is it network infrastructure, and then if I'm hearing you right. IOT sensors, and then building LS, is that kind of the roadmap?

Thano Lambrinos: Yeah. So I'll give you guys a bit of his outlet. Eddie talked to this as well from a deployment methodology perspective, but. in a retrofit environment, we had a couple of different projects going on in parallel.

We had a, had a retrofit building that we stood up and and then obviously a couple of net new construction buildings, one here in Canada at the [00:42:00] Vancouver post office, which is Amazon's head office. That's a million and a half square feet. And another with our partners at stream and river, south Austin, Texas which is 400,000 give or take square feet of office space more.

Now that we're changing some of the above ground parking levels into office, but that's neither here nor there. So we had that, those, those new projects, as well as the retrofit projects to speak to the retrofit project, it's exactly that. Connectivity infrastructure at the foundation and is the core of, of what we do without that.

There's not much you can do on top of it. IOT in parallel with systems being opened up and exposing that data over these over the infrastructure, whether wired or wireless that we've deployed. And then on top of that in this case, the KODE operating system platform that we put into place, construction's a little bit different just because of the deployment methodology, the fact that you're turning things on net new, there's a ton of vendor coordination that needs to happen.

The, the [00:43:00] actual nuts and bolts of it is still pretty similar, but just the way that you deploy, because it's a brand new building. The way that you interact with the vendors, because there's nothing existing, you've got a blank slate of which to make sure the data is appropriately structured to make sure that the devices the nomenclature and the metadata structures are appropriate, that we've got everything mapped out really, really well.

And, and out of the gate is, is less of a lift from KODE side and more of that's transferred back to the vendors as part of their delivery requirements for KODES so that they can consume it easily. But at the end of the day, it's pretty similar. Eddie. I don't know if you wanted to add on any of that.

Edi Demaj: I mean, I think it's, it's pretty, pretty well summed up in our, our view is always that if you get whatever company you're going to use KODE Labs or whoever involved sooner versus later, I think it helps just lay the foundation of like, Hey, like if these expectations are met, which a lot of times.

What we run into is, is they get a bit over [00:44:00] complicated at times. Cause it's, it's almost like a hard concept. Imagine everything coming together and being able to communicate. What do you mean? You just hand off an API to my tenant app and then I can just pull whatever data you want. Like it just, it was, it's just been a crazy complicated process.

And like I said earlier, the way we've attacked, that is by bringing people that have been building software at scale. Before, you know, before we started KODE Labs to just allow for these things to be simple we're not, we don't want to be in the business of being in a building for, you know, two years, every time we need to deploy.

So we want to go fast and we want to rock and roll and we're not in the business of, you know, putting us and trademark in it. And, you know, then thinking that's real all or filing some patent on some other thing. And maybe that's not the game we're in we're we're in this because we think this should be an open space that helps, you know, deliver a better experience and a better world, quite frankly.

We know the impact of, of real estate and just our planet and everything else that's happening. So, that's our approach. [00:45:00] That's what we do. And then the last thing I'll say is that we have a lot of, you see a lot of companies that come out and raise a ton of money and then they're able to go and make some, you know, run some pilots and do some cool things for some interesting prices.

Before you price before places then kind of go skyrocket. We were not, you haven't seen KODE Labs in the news about raising anything. That's not where this is a self-sufficient motor here, there just goes and delivers.

James Dice: Fascinating. All right. So you guys have said a couple things about this that kind of strike me as surprising.

So you're talking about, I think Santa, when you and I talked, you said operators are loving it. And then this time, this time you've said like the ease of use, but what both of you have said ease of use many, many times. And those two things are not typically. Common. Right. So it's difficult to get a building operator to use new software.

Right. That I think that's just a neutral statement. That building [00:46:00] operator, if I think about it or a facility manager, they're used to a building management system, however hard it is to use and it's like their thing. Right. And you know, you're going to pry it out of their cold dead fingers. Right.

So how did, how did you make something? I guess, Dan, let's start with you. How did you onboard, you know, building operators and facility managers into this new way of thinking about operating the building and then we'll go to you, Eddie on how you actually built a software that use makes it easy to

Thano Lambrinos: use.

Yeah. Number one, they were part of the process. Right. So, you know, when we were doing some of those early RFPs for some of the quadrille managed buildings here in camp, We brought the operators in to look at some of the other solutions that were out there and what they thought. And, and they were really impressed with a few different solutions, but again, we're sitting here with KODE for a reason.

So they were part of the early process. They also helped define the requirements when we started to deploy, to [00:47:00] deploy what was important to them. And the thing that I will say. About KODE and the reason we've been successful as the time has been spent with the people that are using the platform, not with me, frankly, because I'm not the one running the building every day.

I need to see a set of reports. And I want to understand what things look at from a holistic perspective at a high level, but I'm not using it every day. Right. So. The weekly, if not more frequently, daily, at some cases, touch points with the operators. When they say, Hey, I need to see this piece of information.

This one can go away. We don't really need to see that. And I let's structure it like this. And then the turnaround time and their response to that, to have that stood up for them. And then moreover, the opera and what he was referring to earlier, when he said, I found out a few minutes ago, I found out a few minutes ago too, that one of our operators is going around.

Changing the layout of all of the lighting devices on the floor plans to exactly where they exist on the floor plan. And he's doing that himself because he wants to be able [00:48:00] to not just get indicatively in this space or in this room roughly where the lights are. He wants to be able to kind of pinpoint exactly where these lights are.

So when they do command and control or when they have issues with with operations, they know exactly where stuff is and what they're touching on the screen is exactly represented in the physical environment. And that that's what we're able to do with the, with the solution. And that's what one of the main requirements was.

So, you know, how do we get them to like it and how do we get them to move away from what they're used to. Number one, make them involved in the process. Number two, actually present them with a solution. That's going to make their lives easier than the one that they have, which I think they've realized. You know, even things as simple as I can walk around with my mobile device and I can look at a platform and see every system, some of the building automation systems beforehand had some mobile capabilities, but that didn't mean they could see lighting security.

That didn't mean they could see all the IOT that didn't mean they could see these, this, this layer [00:49:00] of analytics while they were in the field staring at a piece of equipment. I think that, you know, if you're really going to make their lives easier, it's, it's not so difficult to sell. And then on top of that, if you make it so that the keen operators, which we're very lucky in that our front lines are extremely sophisticated and passionate about what they do.

So they're in this elbows deep in these platforms saying, you know, moving lights around and changing the widgets that are on their dashboards, because this is the way that they like to see them and they can do that. Right. And that's, what's important. That's, that's what drives adoption is making these solutions.

You know, first of all, they were part of the selection. Second of all it's actually solving problems and making their lives easy. And third of all, it's simple for them to customize, to use and to change to the, the way that they see the best way to operate their building. And that may be different depending on the folks that that are actually running the buildings and what their specialties are.

So those are, those are the key things for us

James Dice: [00:50:00] any well, what is it like from your perspective? And let me add real quick, making a software layer like this self service is extremely, extremely rare. So I I'd add that piece of it, but then the second piece of it is it's a true signal. So much noise in our industry, true signal to have someone like a building operator, moving lights around digitally.

I just wanna like from, from all the work that I do, that is a pretty impressive story.

Thano Lambrinos: So how did you guys. It's super simple. I just want to add one more point. Like it's a, it's an impressive story. Most people are saying and be like, who cares? You can move the lights around wa I can move, you know, icons around on my desktop and rearrange them.

It's not the same when you're talking about IOT, the bridge between physical and digital, which is the reason that traditional it organizations in real estate have a tough time figuring this out. And unless you understand that physical and digital bridge, the fact that just because you put a sensor in the ceiling and then you turn on your computer doesn't mean.

ADA sensors [00:51:00] working the way you need to be able to understand and commission that sensor in the physical environment, you need to commission it in the virtual environment and then you need to connect those things. It's not something that typically people, you know, regular technologists have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.

So yeah, but for your listeners, moving the lights around on the floor on a floor plan has a really cool story. As, as benign as it may sound,

James Dice: People are like, are you crazy, James? No, no, I'm not saying that is a crazy thing.

Edi Demaj: to answer your question from my perspective. Yeah, when we started building the platform, the intent was that this thing would be a self-serve platform. Otherwise we're in, and we're not like this. Wasn't a thing of like start building something that kind of looks like this other thing. And then somebody asks for it and then we'd go back and restructure and rebuild.

Like it's never been the case. And again, like I keep saying this time, and again, I tell people this [00:52:00] all the time, like what we're talking about it at any one point in time. We are happy to show it quite literally to everybody on planet earth, because we think that the more of us out there, the faster these buildings get automated and the faster we're able to reach these goals that everybody's talking about reaching.

And I think really genuinely wants to reach. So when we started, you know, when you think UI UX, right? Like to me, it starts with like the layer of look, you can build any one thing for any one space. If you don't understand the space thoroughly. So understanding the space thoroughly means you understand how it operates.

You understand the impact. It has the visitor to a tenant, to somebody that lives there, depending on its use to somebody that works there, understand the financials of it. What impacts one, how that works, what goes to cam? What goes to the landlord? What, you know, what's taught. There's just a lot that in the space.

That you need to [00:53:00] understand before you start building something that you're going to call an operating system, that food to help you operate your portfolio. Like that is like, that's a huge statement. Like we were fully aware of that, which is why, again, you didn't get to hear a whole lot of noise from KODE Labs until 12, 14 months ago, we have a platform that is true to try.

And one, a hundred percent over a client base. 100%, not 99.9, 100% of our client base is available to speak to about our platform, you know, happens to be on this one, but literally anybody that has ever used their platform continues to use and skill with it. So, but again, it goes back to step one is what are you trying to do and why we didn't set out to do this thing.

So we could get stuck in a quad real portfolio for the rest of our lives. Like as much as we love quad is great. Yeah. If we can enable their people to go do what they need to do and take this on and go do more with this. And we have channel partners that [00:54:00] take our platform that worked with the $10 clients, take our platform and they are the servicing arm of appliance portfolio.

They're able to do this self-serve on their own. And when they do have an issue, it is about that offering that experience that, you know, Theano touched on, which is that we have a team that dedicated to nothing, but making sure that the people using this on in the front lines are heard every day, response time, 15 minutes, not 60, not 45, not 30, 15 minute.

Response time. And that's a level of service that our whole team expects from, from ourselves first and foremost. Right. So that's, that's, what's led to, I think people loving the platform and again, an operating system is, should be one that you shouldn't want to, you know, just step out of, which is why they, you know, they have a hard time stepping out of the ones they're in today to your point, right.

Because bad as it may be, I'm used to this, I feel like deliver by a thousand X better to get them to come [00:55:00] onto your operating system and then keep them there means that you have to, you know, continue to push the limit base. So, we're just, again, we're just fortunate that I think we, we, when we started, we started with the right thing in mind.

At least it's, it seems that way. And it's proven over time when we have a team that just really understands how to build software and, you know, 20 that's, 20 21, 20 22 now, and now. Oh, continue to build on the same old graphics. Like I can't, I can have a whole conversation about crafts. I'm sure.

James Dice: I'm sure.

Well, that's fascinating that you said that from the get go, let's make this self-service, let's make this able, you know, anybody can operate it. That speaks to one of the business cases that you talked about earlier, which is leverage building operators across more square footage. You also talked to me, I think, personally, about service contracts.

Can you talk about how this software layer maybe makes service contracts in that process

Thano Lambrinos: more efficient? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's [00:56:00] no surprise that anyone who's operated a building or a portfolio of buildings of any size requires. Mechanics requires electricians requires service people to come and maintain pieces of equipment on a set schedule or on a time and material as needed basis when things don't work so well.

We relied on this model forever and there's been no real catalyst to, to make a change. We've. More advanced systems now in building automation that gives us some visibility into how things are operating, but a lot of it's reactive. So we feel that if we have at scale, a better understanding of how our pieces of equipment are operating across a portfolio, that we can change the methodology in which we engage in service.

So now. On a schedule it's based on what the data is telling us from those devices on how they're operating run through a machine [00:57:00] learning or AI algorithm that has modeled it's operation based on a million pumps that are exactly the same, that are all 25 horsepower that all operate this way to identify anomalies so that we can identify when services required before it's required and our service contracts or traditional maintenance every month service contracts go away.

And they're driven by data, which means. You know, require more frequent visits or ideally the hypothesis is that the free, the visits will be as needed. And by being as needed, we'll extend the life of the devices and delay the capital deployment required to replace them. So there is a significant change in which we can engage with our service providers based on this data at scale understanding devices at scale.

So not just how this one pump, how this one fan coil, how this one VAV box operates in this [00:58:00] building, but how this manufacturer of fan coil operates across our entire estate and what that means to us. So there's lots of opportunities there from a purchasing perspective, moving forward, having a better understanding and an inventory of all of the devices that we have across the portfolio.

And then the last bit that I'll share is at some point when you've got enough scale in a, in a region. Maybe the model starts to change where you insource some of these services, you don't just have to continually outsource services to, to service providers when you've got enough scale. And you have enough information to understand that, you know, if we hire one or two kind of technicians of whatever skill set you'd like to name, we can bring those folks in and we can actually save money and have them focus on our portfolio, leverage this information to either deliver service or maintenance or a repair type of requests, because we understand the scale in which they're coming in.

And we understand it [00:59:00] stand the scale in which we have, and we've moved from you know, operate this building next door to this building as if they weren't. In different countries to operate these two buildings next to each other as if they were next to each other and share inventory and share resources and share information.

So that's one of the, and granted, you know, again, this week we talk about what's real and what isn't, that's not real just yet. But we do have a path towards it because of all the things that we've talked about. So. Fascinating.

James Dice: All right. We're running out of time a little bit. So I want to zoom in on just some, you mentioned command and control, right?

Okay. A lot of people say command and control, like it's crazy futuristic thing. I want to demystify that a little bit. So what I've heard when you, when you guys say command and control and when you talked about it, fan out a real calm, it sounds like it's functional testing of equipment, right? So the ability for, instead of commissioning agent taking the controls contractor out, and they both, you know, override things through a [01:00:00] whole sequence, you just run the whole sequence remotely from, from the operating system.

Right. So that's one, it sounds like, optimized start. It sounds like, and scheduling that kind of thing. So standardizing that. Oh, the building systems, but then across the portfolio as well. What else are those? The two main use cases for command and control? Can you talk about

Thano Lambrinos: more? Yeah. I mean, from, from a, from an enhanced command and controls, for sure.

But even from its most bay in its most basic form you know, when we look at how we procure these systems, now we're not procuring a whole bunch of different disparate software packages. We're not because we don't need to We do have redundancy in place from a risk mitigation perspective. You know, if anyone blew up the redundant data centers, that KODE hosted their cloud platform in, and we lost the platform, we still have enough functionality that building operators can go into the systems individually and make sure the building still runs and operates.

But there's no use for us to buy. Multiple different [01:01:00] graphics packages with a whole bunch of whizzbang capabilities in, in all of these different siloed systems and pay for licensing and pay for upgrades and pay for this and pay for that if we don't need to. So it is at its core and most basic command and control is just that commanding and controlling the devices that we have regardless of the system.

They are. In a single platform, but also having the fallback capability of going locally, if we need to, if we lose connectivity or if there's some sort of issue. And then to your point beyond that, those are the big use cases is being able to command and control multiple systems from a single platform in relationship to one another autonomous leader realize those outcomes.

So whether it's enhancing the way that we commission buildings on substantial completion or commissioned them every day, if we want really to run these sequences and make sure that they're working the way that they're supposed to be working optimize the buildings based on data, coming from the weather based on system information, based on occupancy of how many people [01:02:00] are there and change the startup time of a building every day to make sure we hit the set points in the lease.

But maybe we start talking to the, and again, something that hasn't happened yet, but may, and we'd like to drive towards that, talking to the tenants and saying, Hey, you know, we've got. Requirements in your lease to hit certain temperatures or to start up at this time. But why don't we look at doing it based on occupancy and see what that saves you, because you're all, sub-metered, everyone gets their own utility bill every month.

Let's see what that means. If we look at some more data parameters to drive comfort in your space, but also occupancy and, and carbon reduction. So command and control is it, you know, means some very basic things and it can mean a lot more complicated or I shouldn't say complicated, but more sophisticated things as well.

Totally. And Eddie,

James Dice: what are you seeing across your whole client base in terms of this,

Edi Demaj: this space? In addition to what you guys touched on already for us? You know, it's command and control. It goes way beyond just the building based systems that [01:03:00] were, again, this is traditionally, we've heard, you know, FTT and FDD and OSS and all that, and it's great and extremely useful tools and ones we also provide.

But it goes beyond that. Now we talk about creating these experiences where you feel. And we'll talk about the metaverse, right? Like I'm in it, but I don't even know I'm in it. Like it needs to be like this seamless experience and that's, that's what we're driving towards. You know, we talk about, we have you know, like forever south I'll touch on that since that was the building that when know, wanted the smartest building here, but there are a multitude of different buildings will, you know, Quadro, but others now as well, where command, command and control.

So it could mean access. Like, you know, when I scan into the garage, I want to know, and I think have, have that communicate to the elevator. So that there's an elevator already heading down. I'm not sitting around waiting for four minutes, you know, on the elevator so that they just, the building itself is more efficient with regard to how people move.

So there's, you know, there's a ton of other use cases like that, you know, command and [01:04:00] control. If you have a good application where you can send people, you know, a You can push notification that says, are you coming to work tomorrow? And what time do you plan on being at work tomorrow or, or in the morning?

And depending on the answer that triggers a whole lot of things downstream, like the temperatures, like the systems on like the, you know, making sure your parking is saved, doing a project in the planet that is not quite a related project for a huge corporation, their headquarters, that's a use case that gets enabled for the using wise.

So I just want to make sure when we talk about again, an operating system or what go to us is, you know, yes, it is the operators tool to operate the building, but it is so much more than that. It is that data hub. It is that, you know, ability to deliver data to any one place. And if you want it to work autonomously, you have the ability to do that by literally coding in an ADI.

You guys talked about lighting and moving lighting around it big. That is something that, to me, that's [01:05:00] like the, really the whole KODE biopsy that is like the simplest thing on planet earth. Because so you have occupancy sensors and now you have 75 other buildings that you want to install them on. And you've tied the API, like, like just go plug the occupancy sensor, open up your app and literally plop it where you needed to go.

And then it starts generating and delivering data. Like as long as the hardware itself, this is why ed KODE Labs. We are strong believers that there are some phenomenal hardware companies starting with the big guys or Siemens or JCI. Everybody else. They go to hardware. But they, they solve for is just not really been their specialty.

And while sure. You know, you're a big, big company, you can go on an acquisition mode and you can acquire and try and kind of patch it together. Like that's like, they make great, great hardware, but their interests are not aligned with you. The owner with regard to allowing you the openness and the scalability that we've been talking about today.

And it's talked about all the time you ask [01:06:00] owners, you know, idea, they talk about, I won't open this open bat and then you ask who they work with. And you're like, yeah, no, that really sounds like it's very open and you're going to deliver on all these things. The last thing I want to touch on, which is really, really important.

And I think, I actually think it's the most important piece from an educational standpoint in our space. And that is that you, the owner need to see beyond. Just well, tenants are responsible for energy. So why don't I like spending a bunch of money? Like you have a fiduciary duty to your tenants to actually make sure that their spaces are efficient, by the way, if you use that data correctly with some shall not mention the name or using you can use that data to now pitch your building against the building across the street as look, yes, I may charge you a dollar, a dollar 50 more a foot, but your overall net costs are actually going to be lower [01:07:00] and you can use the space.

You talked about attracting talent and all these things. So I just think there's, this is this piece of like what I, as an owner of a building have, you know, to do versus like, well, you know, like you should be doing everything and anything you can to deliver the amazing experiences and efficiency. To your tenants, because if used correctly, you can generate more revenue.

And we have a real life use case that will go actually public here soon, where there's a building that is generating over 20% more than what the rate that the building was underwritten net, because it is a fully autonomous smart building with all of these amazing use cases and efficiencies in place.

And it's been pitched in that, you know, in that white, this, these are the things that I don't think are talked about enough. And, [01:08:00] but again, to us, this is how you quantify what you're delivering. Like don't, you don't need to listen to KODE Labs ever go talk to any one of our clients. Here's real case studies.

And here's the things that you can touch and feel. So.

James Dice: Awesome. That's a good place to end up. I like that little sermon at the end there. Thanks Eddie. Stand out. Any, any last closing remarks in the same day?

Thano Lambrinos: Less than, I don't know if I can follow that up and articulated as well as Eddie did, it was almost, you know, it was inspirational, you know, guy, a guy at the platform addressing the masses type of type of close out.

But what I will say is that this stuff is real. Like I said, on the stage at real com we know what it costs. We know what it can deliver. And now it's a matter of getting the industry's head wrapped around actually doing it with folks and vendors, because it takes a village. It's not just KODE it's KODE and the partners and the other systems that are integrating in the IOT and the [01:09:00] other various platforms that deliver on unique value propositions that are required to stand up these solutions and then go do it and stop talking about it because we've been listening to the same story.

You know, since I started focusing on smart buildings, I dunno, however many years ago, it's always been, you know, that story that Eddie told the elevator comes down and greets you because it knows that you're in the parking lot. Has maybe we've been talking about that forever and you know, who's done it zero people up until very recently.

So stop talking, start doing the tools are in place. The vendors exist. The, the, the folks that understand how to bring this stuff to bear exist so start doing it. Don't let the community make it sound more complicated than it needs to be is that he was talking about earlier. This stuff's not rocket science, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, and I've managed to figure it out, which says quite a bit.

So, you know, if I can do it, anybody can do it. So to [01:10:00] sort of thing. But, but yeah, it's it's, it's just some simple process. It's, it's a few folks in the right seats on the bus and you'll be able to get to the same outcomes that we've been talking about for some time, but actually deliver on them and demonstrate measurable results.

James Dice: Awesome. Well, thank you too, for coming on the show. I learned a lot and I

Edi Demaj: really appreciate it. Thanks.

James Dice: All right friends, thanks for listening to this episode of the Nexus Podcast. For more episodes like this and to get the weekly Nexus Newsletter, which by the way, readers have said is the best way to stay up to date on the future of the smart building industry, please subscribe at nexuslabs.online. You can find the show notes for this conversation there as well. Have a great day.