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Episode 175 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Episode 175 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:50)
Building Performance and Controls (7:13)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (15:54)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (21:49)
Workplace Experience (27:13)
Sign off (32:17)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S685075-16073.
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: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes, and now let's go on the podcast.
James Dice (2): Welcome back to the Nexus Podcast. I'm James Deis, your host. I have my friends, Brad and Rosie here with me today. Hello. [00:01:00]
Brad Bonavida: Hey, how's it going?
James Dice (2): We're gonna talk through four things that happened over the last two weeks in the smart billings industry that you should know about, so that when you are walking your dog or.
Commuting. If people still commute, uh, you can get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus Labs community and in the smart buildings industry as a whole. Um, obviously, as we say, every time the best way to engage with us is probably not here. It's actually to be subscribed to the newsletter where you'll find all the news, not just one.
Piece in each category and you'll find our full take on each headline, everything we publish, all of our invites to all of our events. Um, this is really just a taste. And so if you want to not miss out on everything else, head on over to our website and subscribe to our in newsletter. Um, let's talk about what we've been up to a little bit.
Um, I've been kind of working with the two of you, as you guys know, but. People listening to this don't know is we've [00:02:00] had a lot of requests for, um, help with, uh, market research. And so it's been an interesting thought exercise. If we were to start to provide that, what would we do? Um, and how would we do it?
What's our take on it? Um, and so that's been something we've been tossing around. Um, building owners have been asking for it. OEMs have been asking for it. Startup vendors have been asking for it. So I guess I'll, I'll put a call out to those listening. Um, if you want some help with researching what's going on in the market, whether it be buyer demand or what's going on the vendor side, who your competitors are, what's the, what are the latest trends, where's this headed?
Um, let us know. Brad, what have you been up to?
Brad Bonavida: Speaking of market research, uh, nexus marketplace update, that's probably like our database of the most research that we've gathered as a team. Um, we just added something new in there. That's cool. Uh, we've always had pricing models as something [00:03:00] that's part of a vendor's profile, but it was limited to.
Are they charging recurring, you know, mandatory recurring fees, or are their recurring fees optional? What does their upfront cost look like? We've added another component to that, which is like more about how they're actually charging people. Uh, this matters a lot for like software companies. We've seen it a lot in our RFIs.
Are they charging based off of the number of users who are using the software? Are they charging based off of the number of data points that are in the software, the number of transactions that happen in the software, or the number of transactions that happen in the software? So, um, for vendors, you can give us that information and we'll put it in there and, you know, get your page more accurate For building owners, it's just another thing you can look at to try to like.
Really start to do some back of the napkin math about, Hey, if I was gonna install this type of software on my buildings, this application, like what would that look like? What would the pricing look like? How would I be charged? So hopefully that'll continue to fill out and be helpful to people.
James Dice (2): And is that a filter, Brad?
Like are you [00:04:00] changing how you're slicing and dicing what vendors show up in your results? Or how does that actually show up for the, the user of the marketplace?
Brad Bonavida: So right now you can compare users and see how their pricing models, uh, compare. So you can't necessarily filter for that particular property to see all the different options, but I could look at vendor A, B, and C next to each other and create a page that shows all of their different pricing models in one place.
So I can see how each of those three are pricing stuff.
James Dice (2): Got it. Yeah. This is cool because I remember we did one of the buyer's guides and we always ask all the vendors for pricing. Um. I think there were four different ways. Four different pricing models. Exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, so it's pretty, pretty hard for a building owner to be able to compare when they have four different pricing models.
Rosie, what have you been up to?
Rosy Khalife: Well, thanks for asking. Um, I recently started apparently a video series on LinkedIn. I've only done one, so I don't think the Word [00:05:00] series is really warranted quite yet, but I'm hoping we'll get there. Um, and it's all about the things that I'm seeing in the role that I sit in, which is, you know, talking to marketers.
CMOs, CEOs, et cetera. And then I'm also talking to building owners. And so I have this unique perspective where I get to hear from both sides, and it's gonna be kind of like a rosy rants, hopefully with some lessons in there. And I'll be posting, I. Maybe daily. We'll see. But, um, I posted yesterday and I got a lot of great comments and I wanna shout out one of the comments I got from, um, Joe Gasper from who's the COO of Montgomery Technologies.
He had such a great comment as I was reading it, I was actually feeling like, oh my God, I'm so seen. Um. He, it's long, but part of it said that too many smart building technology marketers make the mistake of running a playbook used in other industries. And that doesn't work. And I totally agree with him.
I was recently on a conversation with A CMO [00:06:00] that wanted to just take what he had done in a totally different industry and apply it to the smart building technology space and it just wasn't gonna work. And it, and it, you know, he'll go do that and then he'll end up coming back and, and reaching out. So.
We'll, we'll keep you guys posted on that, on what that guy does.
Brad Bonavida: I'm looking forward to these. I think it's gonna be really easy for you to make them, 'cause you do these in our meetings all the time, like when you get really passionate about something. So we're just gonna have to remind you. That's a Roy rant.
It needs to ro. Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: that's fair. Thanks Brad. Yeah,
James Dice (2): that's great. I think there's a, the people that have listened to this podcast for five years knows that there, there were originally rant style podcasts way back in the day, so people can go dig up the archive there. They, they were for members only because they got a little spicy, so you actually have to go to our website and log in as a member to listen to the rants.
Uh, but there, there were some good ones back in the day, back in the day.
Rosy Khalife: And just real [00:07:00] quick, I have heard some of those and it's sad that they still apply today.
James Dice (2): They're still, yeah, just think they still,
Rosy Khalife: yes.
James Dice (2): Yes. All right, let's jump into the news, um, what we got this week. Um, so we'll start with the building performance and controls.
This is our, um, our, our sections targeted towards energy managers, sustainability managers, controls folks, anyone trying to optimize the performance of the building. Um, and this one I published a new, uh, deep dive article called The Dirty Jobs of Energy Management, how Software Frees Up Energy Managers for High Value Projects.
This was a fun one. Um, basically the, the thesis is that, um, we talk a lot about visualization and analytics and all the stuff that's sort of like, it's not sexy because it's energy management, but it's, it's sexier features of the software, um, in the energy management world. This piece was all about sort of the dirty work, the dirty jobs, the stuff that energy managers [00:08:00] used to have to do.
Like when I was managing energy, this was in a spreadsheet somewhere, right? It was PDFs that you were managing. Um, you, you were creating reports and documents and all these things, and now the software providers kind of take that off of their plates. And I think my thesis is interesting in that if you're an energy manager, this is actually what helps you.
Get to doing real projects, right? Rather than getting bogged down in these sort of administrative tasks. So we're talking a a lot about, um, um, getting data, cleaning data, validating data, um, making sure you're on the right, um, utility rates, um, getting data into Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Um, so this article is all about how vendors are actually making that process.
Super, super easy and we won't summarize the whole thing. People should go check it out. Um, and yeah. Yeah. What did you guys think of it?
Brad Bonavida: Uh, yeah, you were just talking about [00:09:00] how it makes their job easier, energy manager's job easier. 'cause they're not just sorting through all that data. You had a stat at the beginning that you pulled from the World Economic Forum that 9% of companies have fully embraced software tools for managing energy and sustainability data, which means that.
91% of companies are. Downloading CSV, uploading CSV, copying, pasting, pivot table. Like it's crazy that in today, like that's not energy management. That's Excel sheet manipulation and that's not what they should be doing. So that's wild. Um, it's also wild that there's over 3000 utility companies throughout the United States.
Like if you have any sort of portfolio of buildings, you're dealing with multiple utility companies there who do it completely differently. And, um. Have their own ways of doing things and you're trusting that they're charging you the correct amount. And that reminded me, uh, I know you talked to Grid Dium for this, uh, for this article, and we did a demo, or we watched a demo of Grid [00:10:00] Dium, uh, last year.
And I remember within that demo that they, they had seen in 2023, just in California, they had found $5.5 million in energy savings for their customers just on. Getting the right, uh, rate change for, from the utility company, like looking at the data, processing it, realizing that the utility company is charging.
In this way, but they are totally applicable to be charged in this other way, and it saves the customer that much money. So yeah, it's the wild West when it comes to how people are getting charged. And these companies make it a lot easier.
James Dice (2): Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, if you're not paying attention to what's happening in the utility space, you're not realizing that they're adding all of these rates.
They're adding these rates to incentivize the users to change their energy demand profile. Like, um, avoiding peak demand times when, you know, there's not much power on the grid and there's, um, there maybe they're incentivizing them to use renewables, things like that. Um, in California, this is sort of like a leading indicator of what [00:11:00] other states are gonna go through in the future, I think.
But, um, grid, dium and Arcadia, both, you know, two people that weighed in on this article, or two companies that weighed in this article. They both have built the ability to do this automatically. So like looking at your demand profile over a given day and see if you could have savings and, and that's a piece that, like if you're an energy manager and you had a hundred buildings on all these different accounts and you expected yourself to be able to do that manually or in Excel, it's just impossible.
It's completely impossible. Um, and so yeah, I, I would, uh,
Brad Bonavida: I would challenge anyone who hasn't seen this to just go to like sdg e or pg e's website for the utility company and just try to figure out what they would charge you if you were a certain type of building. I mean, there's like so many different versions of the time of use price.
This can't be done by a human anymore. It has to be done by an analytical system that can, yeah. You know, comprehend all that.
Rosy Khalife: Um, what I was thinking while you, you all were chatting about this is that obviously [00:12:00] not a ton, not enough building owners have adopted this way of, you know, managing their energy.
And so I was curious if you all had any thoughts, like, why not? It just seems like a no-brainer. Like obviously these tools are super helpful and a lot better than spreadsheets and PDFs and whatnot. Like, I just don't get why there's such a big gap.
James Dice (2): I thought this was one of the most deployed, if you consider this a smart billing technology.
I thought this was farther along on the adoption curve than the World Economic Forum stat of 9%, uh, embracing software tools. Um, like if you think about, um, some of the more mature startups in our space. Um, the, you know, I'm not gonna name names, but like the, all of them have a quite, quite a big customer base at this point.
Um, so I'm actually surprised that the of, of that number. Um, but I do think it's, um, there's a little bit of like, we've talked to universities that [00:13:00] have just now done it. There's a little bit of like, I am as an energy manager know my spreadsheet. And I know the ins and outs of it. And if I need to change something, um, like if a bill is missing, I know how I'm gonna fill that in and I have full control over how I fill that in.
If I wanna measure my savings and like calculate savings for my C-suite, I know and have full control over how I'm doing that report versus, so it's sort, sort of like giving up control, I think is the main thing. Um. I think what I'm seeing though is like, that seems to be such a shortsighted way to think about it.
Um, because of all the ways in which structuring your data properly as the software companies force you to do, um, kind of like con, you know, get confined to their data model. Their data model then enables you to automate and do so much more. And I think that's the piece that [00:14:00] once you, you know, sort of. Go down that road.
You can't, you can't really overlook that anymore as an energy manager.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. Makes sense. I think I was shocked to, I was talking to a building owner that actually has a bunch of buildings across states and so you would expect that obviously they have some sort of tool that they're using given their foot footprint and they didn't, and they're still using Excel spreadsheets, so it's pretty shocking.
James Dice (2): Another piece I was just completely blown away by, you know everybody that is in a, a city where they have benchmarking ordinances and energy performance laws. Then any company that requires you to report through GREs or, um, other, you know, third party sustainability reporting agencies, those are all pretty much all going through EnergyStar Portfolio Manager.
And the process to make that data import work is really, really difficult. And so, um, and it's causing a lot of confusion and you end up [00:15:00] having the wrong information. Then you're getting fined by the city or your sustainability reports wrong because of the way, the nuances of how portfolio managers set up.
Um, one of our partners said that you could spend, you know, a hundred hours in the FAQs and still not understand, uh, exactly whether you've done it right. And, um, I'll shout out to Backpack group for, for this, but they've, they showed in the article we have. A, a view of their flow chart, all the decisions they make in order to get the data right, all the decisions our product makes in order to get the data import into Energy Star portfolio mander, right?
And that it's just something that software's built for, to just do it the exact same way every time. Um, so yeah, everyone wants to go check that out. I'm proud of that article. It's been fun to sort of dig into that.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, let's move on. Alright, let's, let's move on though. Let's do it. Okay. So looking into the digitizing operation and maintenance news that's relevant for this week, uh, we talked [00:16:00] about a article from F Facilities Dive about how bad asset tags undermine facilities management.
Inadequate asset tags can lead to untracked equipment, increase maintenance costs and compliance risks in facilities management. Um, so just to level set, when we say asset tags, we're talking about. A glorified sticker that's on a lot of systems or pieces of equipment throughout buildings so that if somebody walks up to that, they can digitally scan that and figure out what that is.
That's air handler one. That's, um, chiller three, that's fire extinguisher four, whatever it may be. Um. This was pertinent to a lot of stuff that we've been doing. 'cause we just did an RFI on maintenance management and um, when we talked to building owners about maintenance management asset tags kept coming up.
Actually, this is something that like is hot with our building owners is how on earth do I keep track of all these things that are, you know, in my building that are tagged differently, that different people are going to. So building owners absolutely care about [00:17:00] this. They care on like the. Equipment system level.
I'm talking like HVAC equipment, lighting, things like that. But also just on like the, the standardized building asset level of tables and chairs. And I said fire extinguishers earlier, like they care on both of those. Um, but what I was interested in here is. When we asked in our maintenance management RFI about asset tagging, almost all of those technology vendors said, yeah, we can help with that.
We have a great QR code, or we have a great barcode that we'll put on there. And what I don't, I honestly don't know the answer to this is like, how proprietary or locked in are those tags themselves? Like if I go to vendor A, I'm like, great, you can do QR codes. I put those on all of my systems and then I don't like what vendor A has to offer me anymore.
Can I still use those QR codes or like, is that a whole, you know, swap out if I want to change? So I'm not sure. That's an interesting one that I'd love to talk to a building owner or a vendor about if they've had to deal with that in the [00:18:00] past. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What did you think, James?
James Dice (2): Um, I. I thought it was interesting.
I hadn't thought about, you know, everyone's seen just like go up to an air handler and see someone has taken a like thick sharpie and just written air handler a HU dash one on it. Like that's an asset tag, right? Um, but what this article was about was like, what materials should you be using so that over time that thing doesn't get worn off.
And then now you don't have an asset tag. So like a sharpie. Probably gets worn off or someone like crosses it out and writes Air handler one A at some point when, you know, like everybody's seen all of that. So they were talking about what materials they use. But I'm with you, Brad. I think the more interesting thing is how does that actually show up in your tech stack?
So that's a device layer, piece of your device that's, that you're, you're adding to the device so that you can better access the digital representation of that device somewhere else. But what you're saying, Brad, is interesting 'cause it [00:19:00]goes straight to the application layer. So if you use A-C-M-M-S provider and that takes you into the CMMS, that's great, but now you have to, when you change out your CMMS, which people rarely do, you would then need to, uh, change out all those QR codes, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, I think it gets back to what we talked about on the Buyer's Guide to Maintenance management software is at what point do building owners start to think about. Separating the data layer piece of your asset tagging from the application layer. And I think it's just a building, like we talked about this a few, uh, weeks ago.
It's a building owner by building owner discussion. How do I wanna set up my stack?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, you're definitely right. We're we're like. Moving up the tech stack and how you and I are talking about it. This article is a lot about like the actual materials that you use to get the right tag, which I have a lot of respect for.
'cause you know, you, I've been up to plenty of systems where it's been faded from eight years of getting hit by sunlight and [00:20:00] like how do you even explain to somebody what unit you're at then? So that's important. But then also, yeah, this whole conversation about how that translates into the rest of your tech stack is, is massive.
James Dice (2): I think thinking about all the different things that, all the different applications that need to use that asset information is interesting. So like, um, you know, next time we do this podcast we'll be talking about, um, the next article in the refrigeration leak detection series. And like you might need to view it, uh, you know, the asset to maintain it and change the filters.
You also might need to view it from a refrigeration standpoint and like. Those are two separate applications typically, that are sitting on top of this asset information. Um, so as a building owner, you gotta start to think through the stack in order to, you know, make the right decisions for yourself.
Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. It just feels like there's so much for them to think through as a building owner. Like do you get a vendor that all they do is this one thing asset tracking, [00:21:00] and like that's how they make their money and you know, you use them and then you integrate it into your other solutions? Or do you get, you know, or do you find a solution that actually has this as part of their features, like har Hard Decisions?
All of these.
Brad Bonavida: You, it's a, it's a leading indicator of how mature a building owner's data layer is too. Like if you walk up to something and it's got four different names or stickers or sharpies on it, that's probably a pretty good indicator that they've got some silos working, that all these applications are using different names.
Whereas if they have one, then okay, like either they're not using that many applications or their applications are all working off of that one name for this one device.
James Dice (2): I think it's a, it is interesting for the vendors to think about too. Uh, all right, next one for let's meet.
Rosy Khalife: Next one. Um, we're gonna be talking about, uh, an article that came out about Amazon.
It actually was published. By Amazon. Uh, and it's about Amazon leveraging, [00:22:00] um, their AWS tools to build their own smart building stack, which is pretty cool. Uh, it jumps into how they're developing AI driven building technologies, including flow ms, which is a water efficiency, um, solution, and then base building advanced.
Monitoring BBAM, uh, which is for HVAC optimization and refrigeration monitoring, uh, for energy efficiency and leak detection. So, pretty cool. Um, would love to hear you guys' take on it. James, why don't you go first?
James Dice (2): Yeah. What struck me about this one is like we've heard billing owners. Building their own tools before.
Um, we don't need to get into the, like, the pros and cons of that, I don't think here. But what struck me when I saw this is like, there, there, there's so many categories here. There's what, three, four categories here that they're developing. And my first thought was like. I think the vendors spend a lot of time trying to validate the business case for a lot of these categories.
And just to see a building owner investing [00:23:00] in their own, in it on their own, I think is a market signal that is important to pay attention to. Um, obviously the Amazons and the Googles of the world can build a lot of their stack using their own technologies, um, and it's good for them to do so and beneficial for them to do so that, so they can point to it for, you know.
You know, you basically telling everyone outside, we have the ability to create this. You could use our tools and create this too. Right? So it's a little bit of a marketing thing for them to build their own stuff. Um, I also think there's advancements in AI that are happening that are gonna allow building owners to have better access to build their own tools.
So I think we could see a lot more of this. Um, you know, you could build your own development team and start to use some of these tools that make it a lot easier. Um, so it's an interesting thing for the vendors to think about, like, how do you start to position yourself against, uh, a building owner, building their own thing with these, [00:24:00] these more democratized AI tools.
Um, I'm also excited to ask Colin Jel, uh, of Amazon who's gonna be at the conference this year, uh, about this, uh, and hear what he has to say.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, you, you said it Well, that, um, you know, these bigger companies, Amazon, Google, they're. Frequently building out their own tools and trying to figure out, like, what, what do other building owners learn from that?
Well, you can't always build out your own tools. Like that's something that just like the, you know, the, the top tech companies are doing, but you can see what they're finding efficiencies in by what they're building and how it's working for them. So I do think that there's. Value in other building owners being like, oh wow, Amazon, Google, they're investing in this on their own.
Like, can I figure out a way to do this without building it myself and going and finding that on the market, which I think is commonly possible. Um, you know, in this case it's kind of FDD, um, and, and one example that was in the article was. Uh, Amazon [00:25:00] found a building that was reporting, uh, five times energy usage and they're like, what's going on here?
And it was actually just the meters that were, uh, you know, reading the energy usage were wrong. And it reminded me of. When we were building the Buyer's Guide to Metering, uh, I interviewed HaBO Chen from Bueno Analytics and I was talking to him about metering and he went into a deep dive about the importance of accurate metering and how you can trust your meters for FDD, which is something I hadn't really thought about much, but like I.
So much of your fault detection diagnostics is based on what the meter's reporting. So if the meter's wrong, then everything else is wrong and he just, you know, he went into all the work that they do to make sure that they can trust their meters. And like the example of, okay, it might be easy to find a meter that's offline and it's alarmed and is saying that it's offline.
But if a meter breaks in a fashion that it's just reporting constant data. Like, do you have the capability of finding that too? So meters are ki It just reminded me that like for f, d, d meters are [00:26:00] like the leading edge of whether you're gonna get accurate data or not. And this is a pretty good, um, example of that.
James Dice (2): Well, what that makes me think of is like there, there used to be the advantage of the vendor. If a building owner's thinking about building their own thing, the advantage of the vendor would be they could build it once and a and spread it out across all their customers, right? So if you're a building owner, you're buying.
This innovation that you didn't have to pay for the whole thing in the innovation, but as the cost of developing software comes down with ai, like that, uh, decision gets a little bit more fine. Margined I think is interesting. Rosie, what do you think about from a marketing standpoint? I.
Rosy Khalife: I know, I was just thinking about that.
Um, I mean, I think it's pretty awesome that they are like, can, can sort of, um, use their own tools to create something that they will then, you know, use on a bigger level. And so I think that speaks volumes to, you know, who they are and what they're able, what their capabilities are. [00:27:00] So I think there's a really cool like brand story there that, you know, we built this and then we're building on top of it and we're leveraging our own technology.
Um, so I think it's pretty awesome.
James Dice (2): All right, last one. Let's go to workplace experience. Um, so by the time this article come or this podcast comes out, I will have written a new article and it's been interesting on workplace experience and it's been interesting kind of adding that as another topic that we're covering.
Um, because I'm beginning introduced to new, new people like I met, um, I. I haven't told you guys this yet, even I met LinkedIn's, uh, workplace Research head yesterday and so it's just been interesting kind of getting into that world and understanding how all the stuff that we talk about in the tech stack ends up showing up for tenants and occupiers.
So this, um, article was a research study published by Schneider Electric, I believe. Um, it's titled, new Study Finds Occupancy Based Control and Automation Solutions Cut [00:28:00] Energy Use. Um, in the office and carbon emissions by 22%. So they did a study where they looked at, I think four. They tried, they started off, I don't know how much you got into this, you guys, but they started off trying to study one conference room in an office.
And then they realized that that conference room was served by, um, a v, it's a VAV zone. HVAC zone that actually serves four conference rooms. So they, so then they expanded the study to four conference rooms so they could, you know, study the impact, uh, energy impact. Um, and they basically inter integrated occupancy counters, room booking, HVAC and lighting.
And then they measured the savings of what they could do with a setback period, basically. So when they, these rooms are unoccupied, they set back the temperature, I believe. Um. Turned off the lights and everything, and then they integrated with room booking because they could also say like, we wanted to prepare the room for occupancy, I think.[00:29:00]
Um, and so they found a two, two year payback period. Um, they didn't look at split incentives, which I think if you're, if you're a landlord or a tenant looking at this going, well, two year payback period for who? Right. Um, so I think that's, that's one thing that I would ask them to, to re-look at there. Um.
I think the fact that the Schneider Electric had to write a 16 page white paper says a lot about where our interest industry is. This seems like a little bit of a no-brainer. Like you should have all these things integrated together, but the fact that they had to publish this, I think says a ton about where we're at.
Um, what do you guys think?
Brad Bonavida: Totally. I, it's, it's so funny, like you said it like that the fact that they even had to publish this, like every, every building owner knows that this can save them money. Like this is so proven out that this saves energy, but people still are struggling to kind of figure out how to get it implemented [00:30:00] correctly.
Um, and I always like to kind of bring it down to the ground level of what they actually did. James, you, you brought this up. But they have, it's a setback. That's kind of the biggest thing. I think there's some lighting here, but if it's not occupied in the winter, what this, what this, uh, system was doing was it was setting back the set point in the room to, uh, 64 degrees so the room can get cold if there's no one in there.
And then, um. It's like, it's one level of integration to say, okay, my occupancy sensor is going to control my HVAC and my lighting. That's like integration number one to make this happen. But they brought in kind of integration number two, which I think is really cool with the room booking too. Like if somebody is going to be there, which I know from my room booking, let's prepare for that person to be there.
So that's, that's kind of a, I almost looked that at that as another layer on top to make it even. More sophisticated. And then I just wanted to shout out R zero because they just did a occupancy based demand ventilation control webinar, I think like three weeks [00:31:00] ago where they were talking about this same thing.
I know they've been doing a ton of research and you know, explanations to their customers as well about how it works. So I think you can see that webinar as well on their website.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, I was just thinking about them, Brad. They've been really diving deep into this, this topic, and it's come up in a lot of conversations we've had on the building owner side.
So it's obviously one that everyone is sort of trying to figure out right now and, and make sure they're dedicating time and energy to
James Dice (2): Yeah, and I, I, I talked to Elizabeth Redmond about this as part of this workplace research that we're doing, and one of the things I thought she was, was interesting about what she said here is that you actually use.
The people count to change the ventilation control sequence, right? So if I have two people and the minimum on the VAV box was designed for four people, I can actually cut that. I. Ventilation airflow down. Um, but then they're using the IQ sensor there that's there as well to make sure that [00:32:00] that's not affecting the air quality.
Um, so it, it's like they're using both and they're in, then they're in tandem, essentially. Yeah. Which I thought was an interesting piece of this that I haven't heard, uh, before.
Rosy Khalife: That is awesome.
James Dice (2): Cool. Um, let's end it off, uh, with some carve outs. Um. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go first, so I'm going to Tokyo this summer and we just had one of our partners reach out and say, um, you know, do you know any smart building consultants in Tokyo?
And so I thought I'd just throw it out and see if there's anyone listening from Tokyo. They can reach out to us. We would love to hear about it, but also maybe we'll do a Tokyo happy hour while I'm there. I'm going. Ah, that'd be cool. Right? I'm going there for, with my soccer team. So we're going and playing a, a couple of different local soccer teams in Tokyo.
Um, it's supposed to be 85% humidity and like 85 degrees the whole time there, so that'll be interesting. [00:33:00] Um, I also wanted to shout out, this is related to Tokyo. There's this YouTube show that I just absolutely love. I don't know that I've talked to either of you about it. So this will be, I
Rosy Khalife: didn't even know you watched YouTube.
James Dice (2): This will be carve out for everybody, but also carve out for YouTube. It's called Dirt. I don't actually know if it's an acronym, but if you, if you look on YouTube, it's produced by Huckberry, which is a men's clothing store. Um, but it's capital DIRT. And what they do is they, it's like 30 minute episodes and they go to a country, like they did an episode on Tokyo and they go find a chef.
So they start the episode at that chef's place and then they travel around the country going collecting like. Um, local ingredients. They might go to a dairy farm in New Zealand, get milk and bring it back to the original chef, so they get all these ingredients from the country and bring it back to the original chef, and they make this huge meal together.
Um, and there's good music and good like [00:34:00] b-roll footage of this guy. Like, he might be in Japan snowboarding, or he might be in, you know, New Zealand mountain biking. And there's a, there's a Colorado episode, Brad. Uh. That's good. You've talked
Rosy Khalife: to me about this in Haven. I just to say something
Brad Bonavida: I haven't it.
Rosy Khalife: Go ahead.
Brad Bonavida: So, no, I was just gonna say, he's definitely mentioned this to us and I still haven't watched it, so I'm putting it back. Haven't just reminder
James Dice (2): then.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Um, it is a really good example of great marketing.
James Dice (2): It's, it's great marketing. You're right, because
Rosy Khalife: you already love that brand. And now I know that you're, you're talking about it on our podcast, like you just talked about the clothing brand.
You brought this up.
James Dice (2): Well, so yeah. And then everybody in the show, uh, you know, they're going around New Zealand and they're doing all this outdoor stuff. Of course, they're wearing all the clothes from Huckberry, right? So it's just, it's, it's really well done. Not salesy at all. You'll notice like they're not on the show talking about, uh, how good the pants are, right.
Rosy Khalife: But like, he's jumping up and down and like nothing's happening, and then he's like doing something crazy and the pants are on him and they look good. [00:35:00] But you
James Dice (2): wanna know where, where he got those pants. Right. And of course, you know, because you're watching this and it's produced by Huckberry. So I think, I think there's something there for marketers to think about.
There's
Rosy Khalife: clearly something there. We don't have to be so
James Dice (2): salesy. Yeah, you don't have to be so salesy.
Brad Bonavida: I love it.
Rosy Khalife: Brad, what about
Brad Bonavida: you? I, I was just gonna bring up that, uh, March Madness is happening right now, which is cool. I, I'm a, I'm a medium fan. I'm not an insane fan, but I, I do like it, it's fun. I filled out a bracket, my CSU Rams, my alma mater, uh, they lost to Maryland, but Maryland traveled, but it was, it was fun to watch that.
My CSU never makes it far, so it was exciting. But I love, I always like nerd out on the statistics related to March Madness. I don't know if you guys have like ever. Heard about all this, but, so it's 64 single elimination games that they play, and if you, you know, everybody fills out brackets to try to get 'em right.
I think there's already none, no perfect brackets left. There's 9.2 Quinn [00:36:00] trillion different ways that you can fill out a 60 14 bracket. So like, no one ever gets it right. It's impossible. Oh, okay. Like, it's, it's, it's insane. So, I don't know, I just, that always blows my mind. That's fun that you can play 64 teams play 65 games, and there's 9.2 Quin trillion different ways that that can end up.
Geez. Wow.
Rosy Khalife: Brad, that's really cool. That's interesting. My alma mater car is lost
James Dice (2): in the first round of the NIT St. Louis Billiken didn't make the tournaments. Pelicans, not pelicans. Bill.
Brad Bonavida: I was kidding. Bill, what's a billiken?
James Dice (2): A billiken is a little, um, I don't know. You just, people would Google it. Just Google it.
Brad Bonavida: I was gonna, I was immediately concerned that that St. Louis had pelicans as they like. I'm like, there's no public. It's even worse
Rosy Khalife: though, Brad. What's a pelican? It's like when one
James Dice (2): of the teams gets like acquired and then they move across the country and then their mascot makes no sense from where they're Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's true. The Utah chance. That's not, [00:37:00] that's
James Dice (2): not this. It's like a little good luck gnome thing. I don't even know how to describe it. Rosie, what's your carve out?
Rosy Khalife: Alright. I don't know if this qualifies as a carve out, but guess what? I don't care. Alright, I have to talk about this. So I recently got these, um.
Garlic, salty walnuts. They're so good.
James Dice: Oh my god,
James Dice (2): I hold up right now. Nice. I think that makes the cut. The fact that that makes the cut says a lot about you.
Rosy Khalife: I know. Oh my God. Um, they're so good though. Like on, on a real note, you all should try them. By them. They're, they're started by these two brothers, Caleb and Austin, and you gotta support 'em.
They're small business, so I don't
James Dice (2): have these at my local Whole Foods.
Rosy Khalife: Order them online.
James Dice (2): People are gonna have to order them online.
Rosy Khalife: They're really good. They're worth it. They're literally worth it.
James Dice (2): Sounds good.
Rosy Khalife: Okay. And then the last thing, which is more of a shout out than a carve out is, um, we, I had an awesome dinner last week with, um, Mandy and Lauren from our community, um, Lauren Long, and, um, man, it [00:38:00] was all.
Mandy Wheaten. Yeah. And it was, uh, such a great kind of dinner to bring people together in where I am, which is in the DC area, and, um, Darlene Pope was there. We had a bunch of great people. So we'll be doing that every so often. So feel free to reach out if you're in the DC area and wanna be included.
James Dice (2): Awesome. All right, let's close this off. See you all again in two weeks.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends, thank you for listening to this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
Make sure to tag us in the post so we can see it. Have a good one.
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Episode 175 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Episode 175 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:50)
Building Performance and Controls (7:13)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (15:54)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (21:49)
Workplace Experience (27:13)
Sign off (32:17)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S685075-16073.
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: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes, and now let's go on the podcast.
James Dice (2): Welcome back to the Nexus Podcast. I'm James Deis, your host. I have my friends, Brad and Rosie here with me today. Hello. [00:01:00]
Brad Bonavida: Hey, how's it going?
James Dice (2): We're gonna talk through four things that happened over the last two weeks in the smart billings industry that you should know about, so that when you are walking your dog or.
Commuting. If people still commute, uh, you can get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus Labs community and in the smart buildings industry as a whole. Um, obviously, as we say, every time the best way to engage with us is probably not here. It's actually to be subscribed to the newsletter where you'll find all the news, not just one.
Piece in each category and you'll find our full take on each headline, everything we publish, all of our invites to all of our events. Um, this is really just a taste. And so if you want to not miss out on everything else, head on over to our website and subscribe to our in newsletter. Um, let's talk about what we've been up to a little bit.
Um, I've been kind of working with the two of you, as you guys know, but. People listening to this don't know is we've [00:02:00] had a lot of requests for, um, help with, uh, market research. And so it's been an interesting thought exercise. If we were to start to provide that, what would we do? Um, and how would we do it?
What's our take on it? Um, and so that's been something we've been tossing around. Um, building owners have been asking for it. OEMs have been asking for it. Startup vendors have been asking for it. So I guess I'll, I'll put a call out to those listening. Um, if you want some help with researching what's going on in the market, whether it be buyer demand or what's going on the vendor side, who your competitors are, what's the, what are the latest trends, where's this headed?
Um, let us know. Brad, what have you been up to?
Brad Bonavida: Speaking of market research, uh, nexus marketplace update, that's probably like our database of the most research that we've gathered as a team. Um, we just added something new in there. That's cool. Uh, we've always had pricing models as something [00:03:00] that's part of a vendor's profile, but it was limited to.
Are they charging recurring, you know, mandatory recurring fees, or are their recurring fees optional? What does their upfront cost look like? We've added another component to that, which is like more about how they're actually charging people. Uh, this matters a lot for like software companies. We've seen it a lot in our RFIs.
Are they charging based off of the number of users who are using the software? Are they charging based off of the number of data points that are in the software, the number of transactions that happen in the software, or the number of transactions that happen in the software? So, um, for vendors, you can give us that information and we'll put it in there and, you know, get your page more accurate For building owners, it's just another thing you can look at to try to like.
Really start to do some back of the napkin math about, Hey, if I was gonna install this type of software on my buildings, this application, like what would that look like? What would the pricing look like? How would I be charged? So hopefully that'll continue to fill out and be helpful to people.
James Dice (2): And is that a filter, Brad?
Like are you [00:04:00] changing how you're slicing and dicing what vendors show up in your results? Or how does that actually show up for the, the user of the marketplace?
Brad Bonavida: So right now you can compare users and see how their pricing models, uh, compare. So you can't necessarily filter for that particular property to see all the different options, but I could look at vendor A, B, and C next to each other and create a page that shows all of their different pricing models in one place.
So I can see how each of those three are pricing stuff.
James Dice (2): Got it. Yeah. This is cool because I remember we did one of the buyer's guides and we always ask all the vendors for pricing. Um. I think there were four different ways. Four different pricing models. Exactly. Yeah. Um, yeah, so it's pretty, pretty hard for a building owner to be able to compare when they have four different pricing models.
Rosie, what have you been up to?
Rosy Khalife: Well, thanks for asking. Um, I recently started apparently a video series on LinkedIn. I've only done one, so I don't think the Word [00:05:00] series is really warranted quite yet, but I'm hoping we'll get there. Um, and it's all about the things that I'm seeing in the role that I sit in, which is, you know, talking to marketers.
CMOs, CEOs, et cetera. And then I'm also talking to building owners. And so I have this unique perspective where I get to hear from both sides, and it's gonna be kind of like a rosy rants, hopefully with some lessons in there. And I'll be posting, I. Maybe daily. We'll see. But, um, I posted yesterday and I got a lot of great comments and I wanna shout out one of the comments I got from, um, Joe Gasper from who's the COO of Montgomery Technologies.
He had such a great comment as I was reading it, I was actually feeling like, oh my God, I'm so seen. Um. He, it's long, but part of it said that too many smart building technology marketers make the mistake of running a playbook used in other industries. And that doesn't work. And I totally agree with him.
I was recently on a conversation with A CMO [00:06:00] that wanted to just take what he had done in a totally different industry and apply it to the smart building technology space and it just wasn't gonna work. And it, and it, you know, he'll go do that and then he'll end up coming back and, and reaching out. So.
We'll, we'll keep you guys posted on that, on what that guy does.
Brad Bonavida: I'm looking forward to these. I think it's gonna be really easy for you to make them, 'cause you do these in our meetings all the time, like when you get really passionate about something. So we're just gonna have to remind you. That's a Roy rant.
It needs to ro. Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: that's fair. Thanks Brad. Yeah,
James Dice (2): that's great. I think there's a, the people that have listened to this podcast for five years knows that there, there were originally rant style podcasts way back in the day, so people can go dig up the archive there. They, they were for members only because they got a little spicy, so you actually have to go to our website and log in as a member to listen to the rants.
Uh, but there, there were some good ones back in the day, back in the day.
Rosy Khalife: And just real [00:07:00] quick, I have heard some of those and it's sad that they still apply today.
James Dice (2): They're still, yeah, just think they still,
Rosy Khalife: yes.
James Dice (2): Yes. All right, let's jump into the news, um, what we got this week. Um, so we'll start with the building performance and controls.
This is our, um, our, our sections targeted towards energy managers, sustainability managers, controls folks, anyone trying to optimize the performance of the building. Um, and this one I published a new, uh, deep dive article called The Dirty Jobs of Energy Management, how Software Frees Up Energy Managers for High Value Projects.
This was a fun one. Um, basically the, the thesis is that, um, we talk a lot about visualization and analytics and all the stuff that's sort of like, it's not sexy because it's energy management, but it's, it's sexier features of the software, um, in the energy management world. This piece was all about sort of the dirty work, the dirty jobs, the stuff that energy managers [00:08:00] used to have to do.
Like when I was managing energy, this was in a spreadsheet somewhere, right? It was PDFs that you were managing. Um, you, you were creating reports and documents and all these things, and now the software providers kind of take that off of their plates. And I think my thesis is interesting in that if you're an energy manager, this is actually what helps you.
Get to doing real projects, right? Rather than getting bogged down in these sort of administrative tasks. So we're talking a a lot about, um, um, getting data, cleaning data, validating data, um, making sure you're on the right, um, utility rates, um, getting data into Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Um, so this article is all about how vendors are actually making that process.
Super, super easy and we won't summarize the whole thing. People should go check it out. Um, and yeah. Yeah. What did you guys think of it?
Brad Bonavida: Uh, yeah, you were just talking about [00:09:00] how it makes their job easier, energy manager's job easier. 'cause they're not just sorting through all that data. You had a stat at the beginning that you pulled from the World Economic Forum that 9% of companies have fully embraced software tools for managing energy and sustainability data, which means that.
91% of companies are. Downloading CSV, uploading CSV, copying, pasting, pivot table. Like it's crazy that in today, like that's not energy management. That's Excel sheet manipulation and that's not what they should be doing. So that's wild. Um, it's also wild that there's over 3000 utility companies throughout the United States.
Like if you have any sort of portfolio of buildings, you're dealing with multiple utility companies there who do it completely differently. And, um. Have their own ways of doing things and you're trusting that they're charging you the correct amount. And that reminded me, uh, I know you talked to Grid Dium for this, uh, for this article, and we did a demo, or we watched a demo of Grid [00:10:00] Dium, uh, last year.
And I remember within that demo that they, they had seen in 2023, just in California, they had found $5.5 million in energy savings for their customers just on. Getting the right, uh, rate change for, from the utility company, like looking at the data, processing it, realizing that the utility company is charging.
In this way, but they are totally applicable to be charged in this other way, and it saves the customer that much money. So yeah, it's the wild West when it comes to how people are getting charged. And these companies make it a lot easier.
James Dice (2): Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, if you're not paying attention to what's happening in the utility space, you're not realizing that they're adding all of these rates.
They're adding these rates to incentivize the users to change their energy demand profile. Like, um, avoiding peak demand times when, you know, there's not much power on the grid and there's, um, there maybe they're incentivizing them to use renewables, things like that. Um, in California, this is sort of like a leading indicator of what [00:11:00] other states are gonna go through in the future, I think.
But, um, grid, dium and Arcadia, both, you know, two people that weighed in on this article, or two companies that weighed in this article. They both have built the ability to do this automatically. So like looking at your demand profile over a given day and see if you could have savings and, and that's a piece that, like if you're an energy manager and you had a hundred buildings on all these different accounts and you expected yourself to be able to do that manually or in Excel, it's just impossible.
It's completely impossible. Um, and so yeah, I, I would, uh,
Brad Bonavida: I would challenge anyone who hasn't seen this to just go to like sdg e or pg e's website for the utility company and just try to figure out what they would charge you if you were a certain type of building. I mean, there's like so many different versions of the time of use price.
This can't be done by a human anymore. It has to be done by an analytical system that can, yeah. You know, comprehend all that.
Rosy Khalife: Um, what I was thinking while you, you all were chatting about this is that obviously [00:12:00] not a ton, not enough building owners have adopted this way of, you know, managing their energy.
And so I was curious if you all had any thoughts, like, why not? It just seems like a no-brainer. Like obviously these tools are super helpful and a lot better than spreadsheets and PDFs and whatnot. Like, I just don't get why there's such a big gap.
James Dice (2): I thought this was one of the most deployed, if you consider this a smart billing technology.
I thought this was farther along on the adoption curve than the World Economic Forum stat of 9%, uh, embracing software tools. Um, like if you think about, um, some of the more mature startups in our space. Um, the, you know, I'm not gonna name names, but like the, all of them have a quite, quite a big customer base at this point.
Um, so I'm actually surprised that the of, of that number. Um, but I do think it's, um, there's a little bit of like, we've talked to universities that [00:13:00] have just now done it. There's a little bit of like, I am as an energy manager know my spreadsheet. And I know the ins and outs of it. And if I need to change something, um, like if a bill is missing, I know how I'm gonna fill that in and I have full control over how I fill that in.
If I wanna measure my savings and like calculate savings for my C-suite, I know and have full control over how I'm doing that report versus, so it's sort, sort of like giving up control, I think is the main thing. Um. I think what I'm seeing though is like, that seems to be such a shortsighted way to think about it.
Um, because of all the ways in which structuring your data properly as the software companies force you to do, um, kind of like con, you know, get confined to their data model. Their data model then enables you to automate and do so much more. And I think that's the piece that [00:14:00] once you, you know, sort of. Go down that road.
You can't, you can't really overlook that anymore as an energy manager.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. Makes sense. I think I was shocked to, I was talking to a building owner that actually has a bunch of buildings across states and so you would expect that obviously they have some sort of tool that they're using given their foot footprint and they didn't, and they're still using Excel spreadsheets, so it's pretty shocking.
James Dice (2): Another piece I was just completely blown away by, you know everybody that is in a, a city where they have benchmarking ordinances and energy performance laws. Then any company that requires you to report through GREs or, um, other, you know, third party sustainability reporting agencies, those are all pretty much all going through EnergyStar Portfolio Manager.
And the process to make that data import work is really, really difficult. And so, um, and it's causing a lot of confusion and you end up [00:15:00] having the wrong information. Then you're getting fined by the city or your sustainability reports wrong because of the way, the nuances of how portfolio managers set up.
Um, one of our partners said that you could spend, you know, a hundred hours in the FAQs and still not understand, uh, exactly whether you've done it right. And, um, I'll shout out to Backpack group for, for this, but they've, they showed in the article we have. A, a view of their flow chart, all the decisions they make in order to get the data right, all the decisions our product makes in order to get the data import into Energy Star portfolio mander, right?
And that it's just something that software's built for, to just do it the exact same way every time. Um, so yeah, everyone wants to go check that out. I'm proud of that article. It's been fun to sort of dig into that.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, let's move on. Alright, let's, let's move on though. Let's do it. Okay. So looking into the digitizing operation and maintenance news that's relevant for this week, uh, we talked [00:16:00] about a article from F Facilities Dive about how bad asset tags undermine facilities management.
Inadequate asset tags can lead to untracked equipment, increase maintenance costs and compliance risks in facilities management. Um, so just to level set, when we say asset tags, we're talking about. A glorified sticker that's on a lot of systems or pieces of equipment throughout buildings so that if somebody walks up to that, they can digitally scan that and figure out what that is.
That's air handler one. That's, um, chiller three, that's fire extinguisher four, whatever it may be. Um. This was pertinent to a lot of stuff that we've been doing. 'cause we just did an RFI on maintenance management and um, when we talked to building owners about maintenance management asset tags kept coming up.
Actually, this is something that like is hot with our building owners is how on earth do I keep track of all these things that are, you know, in my building that are tagged differently, that different people are going to. So building owners absolutely care about [00:17:00] this. They care on like the. Equipment system level.
I'm talking like HVAC equipment, lighting, things like that. But also just on like the, the standardized building asset level of tables and chairs. And I said fire extinguishers earlier, like they care on both of those. Um, but what I was interested in here is. When we asked in our maintenance management RFI about asset tagging, almost all of those technology vendors said, yeah, we can help with that.
We have a great QR code, or we have a great barcode that we'll put on there. And what I don't, I honestly don't know the answer to this is like, how proprietary or locked in are those tags themselves? Like if I go to vendor A, I'm like, great, you can do QR codes. I put those on all of my systems and then I don't like what vendor A has to offer me anymore.
Can I still use those QR codes or like, is that a whole, you know, swap out if I want to change? So I'm not sure. That's an interesting one that I'd love to talk to a building owner or a vendor about if they've had to deal with that in the [00:18:00] past. Mm-hmm. Yeah. What did you think, James?
James Dice (2): Um, I. I thought it was interesting.
I hadn't thought about, you know, everyone's seen just like go up to an air handler and see someone has taken a like thick sharpie and just written air handler a HU dash one on it. Like that's an asset tag, right? Um, but what this article was about was like, what materials should you be using so that over time that thing doesn't get worn off.
And then now you don't have an asset tag. So like a sharpie. Probably gets worn off or someone like crosses it out and writes Air handler one A at some point when, you know, like everybody's seen all of that. So they were talking about what materials they use. But I'm with you, Brad. I think the more interesting thing is how does that actually show up in your tech stack?
So that's a device layer, piece of your device that's, that you're, you're adding to the device so that you can better access the digital representation of that device somewhere else. But what you're saying, Brad, is interesting 'cause it [00:19:00]goes straight to the application layer. So if you use A-C-M-M-S provider and that takes you into the CMMS, that's great, but now you have to, when you change out your CMMS, which people rarely do, you would then need to, uh, change out all those QR codes, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, I think it gets back to what we talked about on the Buyer's Guide to Maintenance management software is at what point do building owners start to think about. Separating the data layer piece of your asset tagging from the application layer. And I think it's just a building, like we talked about this a few, uh, weeks ago.
It's a building owner by building owner discussion. How do I wanna set up my stack?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, you're definitely right. We're we're like. Moving up the tech stack and how you and I are talking about it. This article is a lot about like the actual materials that you use to get the right tag, which I have a lot of respect for.
'cause you know, you, I've been up to plenty of systems where it's been faded from eight years of getting hit by sunlight and [00:20:00] like how do you even explain to somebody what unit you're at then? So that's important. But then also, yeah, this whole conversation about how that translates into the rest of your tech stack is, is massive.
James Dice (2): I think thinking about all the different things that, all the different applications that need to use that asset information is interesting. So like, um, you know, next time we do this podcast we'll be talking about, um, the next article in the refrigeration leak detection series. And like you might need to view it, uh, you know, the asset to maintain it and change the filters.
You also might need to view it from a refrigeration standpoint and like. Those are two separate applications typically, that are sitting on top of this asset information. Um, so as a building owner, you gotta start to think through the stack in order to, you know, make the right decisions for yourself.
Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. It just feels like there's so much for them to think through as a building owner. Like do you get a vendor that all they do is this one thing asset tracking, [00:21:00] and like that's how they make their money and you know, you use them and then you integrate it into your other solutions? Or do you get, you know, or do you find a solution that actually has this as part of their features, like har Hard Decisions?
All of these.
Brad Bonavida: You, it's a, it's a leading indicator of how mature a building owner's data layer is too. Like if you walk up to something and it's got four different names or stickers or sharpies on it, that's probably a pretty good indicator that they've got some silos working, that all these applications are using different names.
Whereas if they have one, then okay, like either they're not using that many applications or their applications are all working off of that one name for this one device.
James Dice (2): I think it's a, it is interesting for the vendors to think about too. Uh, all right, next one for let's meet.
Rosy Khalife: Next one. Um, we're gonna be talking about, uh, an article that came out about Amazon.
It actually was published. By Amazon. Uh, and it's about Amazon leveraging, [00:22:00] um, their AWS tools to build their own smart building stack, which is pretty cool. Uh, it jumps into how they're developing AI driven building technologies, including flow ms, which is a water efficiency, um, solution, and then base building advanced.
Monitoring BBAM, uh, which is for HVAC optimization and refrigeration monitoring, uh, for energy efficiency and leak detection. So, pretty cool. Um, would love to hear you guys' take on it. James, why don't you go first?
James Dice (2): Yeah. What struck me about this one is like we've heard billing owners. Building their own tools before.
Um, we don't need to get into the, like, the pros and cons of that, I don't think here. But what struck me when I saw this is like, there, there, there's so many categories here. There's what, three, four categories here that they're developing. And my first thought was like. I think the vendors spend a lot of time trying to validate the business case for a lot of these categories.
And just to see a building owner investing [00:23:00] in their own, in it on their own, I think is a market signal that is important to pay attention to. Um, obviously the Amazons and the Googles of the world can build a lot of their stack using their own technologies, um, and it's good for them to do so and beneficial for them to do so that, so they can point to it for, you know.
You know, you basically telling everyone outside, we have the ability to create this. You could use our tools and create this too. Right? So it's a little bit of a marketing thing for them to build their own stuff. Um, I also think there's advancements in AI that are happening that are gonna allow building owners to have better access to build their own tools.
So I think we could see a lot more of this. Um, you know, you could build your own development team and start to use some of these tools that make it a lot easier. Um, so it's an interesting thing for the vendors to think about, like, how do you start to position yourself against, uh, a building owner, building their own thing with these, [00:24:00] these more democratized AI tools.
Um, I'm also excited to ask Colin Jel, uh, of Amazon who's gonna be at the conference this year, uh, about this, uh, and hear what he has to say.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, you, you said it Well, that, um, you know, these bigger companies, Amazon, Google, they're. Frequently building out their own tools and trying to figure out, like, what, what do other building owners learn from that?
Well, you can't always build out your own tools. Like that's something that just like the, you know, the, the top tech companies are doing, but you can see what they're finding efficiencies in by what they're building and how it's working for them. So I do think that there's. Value in other building owners being like, oh wow, Amazon, Google, they're investing in this on their own.
Like, can I figure out a way to do this without building it myself and going and finding that on the market, which I think is commonly possible. Um, you know, in this case it's kind of FDD, um, and, and one example that was in the article was. Uh, Amazon [00:25:00] found a building that was reporting, uh, five times energy usage and they're like, what's going on here?
And it was actually just the meters that were, uh, you know, reading the energy usage were wrong. And it reminded me of. When we were building the Buyer's Guide to Metering, uh, I interviewed HaBO Chen from Bueno Analytics and I was talking to him about metering and he went into a deep dive about the importance of accurate metering and how you can trust your meters for FDD, which is something I hadn't really thought about much, but like I.
So much of your fault detection diagnostics is based on what the meter's reporting. So if the meter's wrong, then everything else is wrong and he just, you know, he went into all the work that they do to make sure that they can trust their meters. And like the example of, okay, it might be easy to find a meter that's offline and it's alarmed and is saying that it's offline.
But if a meter breaks in a fashion that it's just reporting constant data. Like, do you have the capability of finding that too? So meters are ki It just reminded me that like for f, d, d meters are [00:26:00] like the leading edge of whether you're gonna get accurate data or not. And this is a pretty good, um, example of that.
James Dice (2): Well, what that makes me think of is like there, there used to be the advantage of the vendor. If a building owner's thinking about building their own thing, the advantage of the vendor would be they could build it once and a and spread it out across all their customers, right? So if you're a building owner, you're buying.
This innovation that you didn't have to pay for the whole thing in the innovation, but as the cost of developing software comes down with ai, like that, uh, decision gets a little bit more fine. Margined I think is interesting. Rosie, what do you think about from a marketing standpoint? I.
Rosy Khalife: I know, I was just thinking about that.
Um, I mean, I think it's pretty awesome that they are like, can, can sort of, um, use their own tools to create something that they will then, you know, use on a bigger level. And so I think that speaks volumes to, you know, who they are and what they're able, what their capabilities are. [00:27:00] So I think there's a really cool like brand story there that, you know, we built this and then we're building on top of it and we're leveraging our own technology.
Um, so I think it's pretty awesome.
James Dice (2): All right, last one. Let's go to workplace experience. Um, so by the time this article come or this podcast comes out, I will have written a new article and it's been interesting on workplace experience and it's been interesting kind of adding that as another topic that we're covering.
Um, because I'm beginning introduced to new, new people like I met, um, I. I haven't told you guys this yet, even I met LinkedIn's, uh, workplace Research head yesterday and so it's just been interesting kind of getting into that world and understanding how all the stuff that we talk about in the tech stack ends up showing up for tenants and occupiers.
So this, um, article was a research study published by Schneider Electric, I believe. Um, it's titled, new Study Finds Occupancy Based Control and Automation Solutions Cut [00:28:00] Energy Use. Um, in the office and carbon emissions by 22%. So they did a study where they looked at, I think four. They tried, they started off, I don't know how much you got into this, you guys, but they started off trying to study one conference room in an office.
And then they realized that that conference room was served by, um, a v, it's a VAV zone. HVAC zone that actually serves four conference rooms. So they, so then they expanded the study to four conference rooms so they could, you know, study the impact, uh, energy impact. Um, and they basically inter integrated occupancy counters, room booking, HVAC and lighting.
And then they measured the savings of what they could do with a setback period, basically. So when they, these rooms are unoccupied, they set back the temperature, I believe. Um. Turned off the lights and everything, and then they integrated with room booking because they could also say like, we wanted to prepare the room for occupancy, I think.[00:29:00]
Um, and so they found a two, two year payback period. Um, they didn't look at split incentives, which I think if you're, if you're a landlord or a tenant looking at this going, well, two year payback period for who? Right. Um, so I think that's, that's one thing that I would ask them to, to re-look at there. Um.
I think the fact that the Schneider Electric had to write a 16 page white paper says a lot about where our interest industry is. This seems like a little bit of a no-brainer. Like you should have all these things integrated together, but the fact that they had to publish this, I think says a ton about where we're at.
Um, what do you guys think?
Brad Bonavida: Totally. I, it's, it's so funny, like you said it like that the fact that they even had to publish this, like every, every building owner knows that this can save them money. Like this is so proven out that this saves energy, but people still are struggling to kind of figure out how to get it implemented [00:30:00] correctly.
Um, and I always like to kind of bring it down to the ground level of what they actually did. James, you, you brought this up. But they have, it's a setback. That's kind of the biggest thing. I think there's some lighting here, but if it's not occupied in the winter, what this, what this, uh, system was doing was it was setting back the set point in the room to, uh, 64 degrees so the room can get cold if there's no one in there.
And then, um. It's like, it's one level of integration to say, okay, my occupancy sensor is going to control my HVAC and my lighting. That's like integration number one to make this happen. But they brought in kind of integration number two, which I think is really cool with the room booking too. Like if somebody is going to be there, which I know from my room booking, let's prepare for that person to be there.
So that's, that's kind of a, I almost looked that at that as another layer on top to make it even. More sophisticated. And then I just wanted to shout out R zero because they just did a occupancy based demand ventilation control webinar, I think like three weeks [00:31:00] ago where they were talking about this same thing.
I know they've been doing a ton of research and you know, explanations to their customers as well about how it works. So I think you can see that webinar as well on their website.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, I was just thinking about them, Brad. They've been really diving deep into this, this topic, and it's come up in a lot of conversations we've had on the building owner side.
So it's obviously one that everyone is sort of trying to figure out right now and, and make sure they're dedicating time and energy to
James Dice (2): Yeah, and I, I, I talked to Elizabeth Redmond about this as part of this workplace research that we're doing, and one of the things I thought she was, was interesting about what she said here is that you actually use.
The people count to change the ventilation control sequence, right? So if I have two people and the minimum on the VAV box was designed for four people, I can actually cut that. I. Ventilation airflow down. Um, but then they're using the IQ sensor there that's there as well to make sure that [00:32:00] that's not affecting the air quality.
Um, so it, it's like they're using both and they're in, then they're in tandem, essentially. Yeah. Which I thought was an interesting piece of this that I haven't heard, uh, before.
Rosy Khalife: That is awesome.
James Dice (2): Cool. Um, let's end it off, uh, with some carve outs. Um. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go first, so I'm going to Tokyo this summer and we just had one of our partners reach out and say, um, you know, do you know any smart building consultants in Tokyo?
And so I thought I'd just throw it out and see if there's anyone listening from Tokyo. They can reach out to us. We would love to hear about it, but also maybe we'll do a Tokyo happy hour while I'm there. I'm going. Ah, that'd be cool. Right? I'm going there for, with my soccer team. So we're going and playing a, a couple of different local soccer teams in Tokyo.
Um, it's supposed to be 85% humidity and like 85 degrees the whole time there, so that'll be interesting. [00:33:00] Um, I also wanted to shout out, this is related to Tokyo. There's this YouTube show that I just absolutely love. I don't know that I've talked to either of you about it. So this will be, I
Rosy Khalife: didn't even know you watched YouTube.
James Dice (2): This will be carve out for everybody, but also carve out for YouTube. It's called Dirt. I don't actually know if it's an acronym, but if you, if you look on YouTube, it's produced by Huckberry, which is a men's clothing store. Um, but it's capital DIRT. And what they do is they, it's like 30 minute episodes and they go to a country, like they did an episode on Tokyo and they go find a chef.
So they start the episode at that chef's place and then they travel around the country going collecting like. Um, local ingredients. They might go to a dairy farm in New Zealand, get milk and bring it back to the original chef, so they get all these ingredients from the country and bring it back to the original chef, and they make this huge meal together.
Um, and there's good music and good like [00:34:00] b-roll footage of this guy. Like, he might be in Japan snowboarding, or he might be in, you know, New Zealand mountain biking. And there's a, there's a Colorado episode, Brad. Uh. That's good. You've talked
Rosy Khalife: to me about this in Haven. I just to say something
Brad Bonavida: I haven't it.
Rosy Khalife: Go ahead.
Brad Bonavida: So, no, I was just gonna say, he's definitely mentioned this to us and I still haven't watched it, so I'm putting it back. Haven't just reminder
James Dice (2): then.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Um, it is a really good example of great marketing.
James Dice (2): It's, it's great marketing. You're right, because
Rosy Khalife: you already love that brand. And now I know that you're, you're talking about it on our podcast, like you just talked about the clothing brand.
You brought this up.
James Dice (2): Well, so yeah. And then everybody in the show, uh, you know, they're going around New Zealand and they're doing all this outdoor stuff. Of course, they're wearing all the clothes from Huckberry, right? So it's just, it's, it's really well done. Not salesy at all. You'll notice like they're not on the show talking about, uh, how good the pants are, right.
Rosy Khalife: But like, he's jumping up and down and like nothing's happening, and then he's like doing something crazy and the pants are on him and they look good. [00:35:00] But you
James Dice (2): wanna know where, where he got those pants. Right. And of course, you know, because you're watching this and it's produced by Huckberry. So I think, I think there's something there for marketers to think about.
There's
Rosy Khalife: clearly something there. We don't have to be so
James Dice (2): salesy. Yeah, you don't have to be so salesy.
Brad Bonavida: I love it.
Rosy Khalife: Brad, what about
Brad Bonavida: you? I, I was just gonna bring up that, uh, March Madness is happening right now, which is cool. I, I'm a, I'm a medium fan. I'm not an insane fan, but I, I do like it, it's fun. I filled out a bracket, my CSU Rams, my alma mater, uh, they lost to Maryland, but Maryland traveled, but it was, it was fun to watch that.
My CSU never makes it far, so it was exciting. But I love, I always like nerd out on the statistics related to March Madness. I don't know if you guys have like ever. Heard about all this, but, so it's 64 single elimination games that they play, and if you, you know, everybody fills out brackets to try to get 'em right.
I think there's already none, no perfect brackets left. There's 9.2 Quinn [00:36:00] trillion different ways that you can fill out a 60 14 bracket. So like, no one ever gets it right. It's impossible. Oh, okay. Like, it's, it's, it's insane. So, I don't know, I just, that always blows my mind. That's fun that you can play 64 teams play 65 games, and there's 9.2 Quin trillion different ways that that can end up.
Geez. Wow.
Rosy Khalife: Brad, that's really cool. That's interesting. My alma mater car is lost
James Dice (2): in the first round of the NIT St. Louis Billiken didn't make the tournaments. Pelicans, not pelicans. Bill.
Brad Bonavida: I was kidding. Bill, what's a billiken?
James Dice (2): A billiken is a little, um, I don't know. You just, people would Google it. Just Google it.
Brad Bonavida: I was gonna, I was immediately concerned that that St. Louis had pelicans as they like. I'm like, there's no public. It's even worse
Rosy Khalife: though, Brad. What's a pelican? It's like when one
James Dice (2): of the teams gets like acquired and then they move across the country and then their mascot makes no sense from where they're Yeah.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's true. The Utah chance. That's not, [00:37:00] that's
James Dice (2): not this. It's like a little good luck gnome thing. I don't even know how to describe it. Rosie, what's your carve out?
Rosy Khalife: Alright. I don't know if this qualifies as a carve out, but guess what? I don't care. Alright, I have to talk about this. So I recently got these, um.
Garlic, salty walnuts. They're so good.
James Dice: Oh my god,
James Dice (2): I hold up right now. Nice. I think that makes the cut. The fact that that makes the cut says a lot about you.
Rosy Khalife: I know. Oh my God. Um, they're so good though. Like on, on a real note, you all should try them. By them. They're, they're started by these two brothers, Caleb and Austin, and you gotta support 'em.
They're small business, so I don't
James Dice (2): have these at my local Whole Foods.
Rosy Khalife: Order them online.
James Dice (2): People are gonna have to order them online.
Rosy Khalife: They're really good. They're worth it. They're literally worth it.
James Dice (2): Sounds good.
Rosy Khalife: Okay. And then the last thing, which is more of a shout out than a carve out is, um, we, I had an awesome dinner last week with, um, Mandy and Lauren from our community, um, Lauren Long, and, um, man, it [00:38:00] was all.
Mandy Wheaten. Yeah. And it was, uh, such a great kind of dinner to bring people together in where I am, which is in the DC area, and, um, Darlene Pope was there. We had a bunch of great people. So we'll be doing that every so often. So feel free to reach out if you're in the DC area and wanna be included.
James Dice (2): Awesome. All right, let's close this off. See you all again in two weeks.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends, thank you for listening to this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
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