🎧 #176: FDD Insights, IoT Data Overwhelm, Tariff Optimization, and the Kilroy Matrix
February 4, 2025
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Episode 176 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Summary
Episode 176 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.
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (26:49)
Sign off (30:35)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S689712-16073.
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: [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.
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The links are below in the show notes. And now let's go on the podcast.
Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have Rosie and Brad here with me. Say, hi, guys.
Rosy Khalife: Hello.
James Dice: Hi. How's it going? [00:01:00] We're gonna walk through four, I'll call them surprising insights for you to get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus Labs community while you are walking your dog or commuting. And as usual, for the full experience, the best way to engage with us is to be subscribed to our newsletter where you'll find every piece of content we publish.
Stuff like this every week instead of every other week, and invites to all of our events, and that's basically how you avoid fomo. We have a lot going on in the community and if you're interested in smart buildings technology, that's the best way to, to keep up to date. So what have you guys been up to over the last two weeks?
Brad Bonavida: For me, the big thing has been nexus con call for abstracts. So for the last couple months we've been, uh, bantering or going after all of our community members about submitting, uh, their abstracts. And our goal was to get 80 abstracts. We thought that'd give us a good. Group or a good pool to pull the best from.
And we closed the [00:02:00] submissions on Friday of last week, and we have 134 abstracts, which is a, uh, beautiful problem to have. We have way too many, but that makes me feel really confident that our content is gonna kick butt at Nexus Con. Now it's this weird art slash analytical game of. What does our floor plan look like?
Who can speak, which ones go together and putting the pieces together. Um, so thank you if you submitted, and we will be spending probably the next month figuring that all out and we'll be in touch with people about, um, where they fit in late May.
James Dice: Yeah. And that's way over double what we got last year. And so I think the message, if you're listening to this and you submitted an abstract, you should be realizing that you're in pretty intense competition to get on stage.
If there aren't 134 slots, let's just, let's just point that out, right? Um, and so the best way to make sure you kind of, uh, stay in the queue is make sure you get your tickets. It, it doesn't give us the warm and [00:03:00] fuzzies if we pick a speaker that hasn't decided whether they're actually gonna come or not.
So you guys can signal to us that you plan to be there so that we can feel good about picking you as, as speakers.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's such a good point. I saw that you wrote that in the newsletter and I was thinking about it and I thought back to Nexus Con 2024, where at the last minute, you know, things happen.
Surely obviously lots of things happen. Uh, lots of things happen and people can drop out or, you know, travel plans change and so it's super important for us that you buy your ticket in the sense that it makes us feel like you're actually. A reliable person and so we could feel good about, you know, putting you on the agenda and talking about you and all that good stuff.
So that is definitely part of it. I think we need another check, like a checks and balance another process where we also see that you booked your travel that's like the next iteration of this to really feel good about it.
James Dice: It's tough 'cause the world's [00:04:00] under so much uncertainty right now. Um. And yeah, I feel like it's a signal that a lot of people are interested in coming, but, um, we haven't gotten a lot of signals about who's actually gonna come so people can help us out by actually telling us they're gonna come.
Um, and Brad, you're right, you said bantering. We've been badgering people. We've been, we've been,
Brad Bonavida: that's a better word,
James Dice: more than we normally would badgering people. And, um, I think it worked. We might have to badger people more often.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, and I think this, the way that we've decided to do our conference is through this abstract submission process in terms of how you can get on stage and other conferences don't take this approach, right?
They set together the agenda of what they want everyone to talk about, and then they kind of do it the other way around where they're like, Hey, we're looking for an IQ expert, or We're looking for this, right? Or, Hey, who's gonna be our. Sponsor, let them be on stage 'cause they can actually talk about this subject.
And so given that we [00:05:00] don't have any sponsors that have speaking opportunities, this makes our job a lot harder. And it ha you know, most companies have teams that are doing this and you know, you're kind of looking at it so. All
Brad Bonavida: of that. That's a really good point, Rosie, just real quick is like, what's really cool about um, receiving abstracts from building owners is that they're talking about what they want sessions to be about.
You know what I mean? It's not like, it's not like they're trying to, uh, sell something. They're bringing these abstracts to us. 'cause they're like, well, I want to hear how other building owners are doing this, or like, this is a problem we're trying to figure out. So we know that those ones are like at the core of what this community needs to hear, which is pretty cool to see.
James Dice: Building owner abstract submissions have a totally different vibe than the vendor's abstract submissions. It's so funny. Um, on that note, we, we've realized, this is what I've been thinking about over the last two weeks, and I know you guys have as well, but this is what I'd like to bring up, which is, um, what separates Nexus Con apart from other conferences is [00:06:00] the, like we have a 40% building owner target and we, we don't let that slip in our minds and.
It really felt like it was like building owners, talking to building owners in the breakout rooms, and obviously in the closed door sessions. So we wanted to bring that into the virtual environment. And so last week we hosted our first ever, ever, uh, virtual community event exclusively for, exclusively for building owners.
And it was on integrating smart buildings into the design and construction phase. And we had a great group there. Um, participation from RMR Group, Avalon Bay, BGO, Goldman Sachs, Wayne State, Kansas State, Northwestern Mutual, low Tide Properties. Lockheed Martin and I stopped putting the list together once I got to like 10.
It was a really good grid session, and I think what showed us the magic from Nexus Con that we could bring that into a Zoom environment was when the building owners started talking to each other, um, like. Stopped asking a question to the [00:07:00] moderator and just said directly, you know, tell me about the time when you did that.
And, and they're sharing the insights to each other. And so that's kind of what we're focusing on, kind of moving forward, is us being that place where they can have those more intimate conversations, um, and, and sort of bringing them together.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. Um, me, I've been thinking about all those things. In addition, I have somehow started a video series on LinkedIn.
I don't know how this quite happened, but here we are. Um, and it's, we're calling it Rosie's Rants for now, but I will also bring in. Positive things into the mix. But, uh, the goal is really to just highlight marketing things that I'm seeing in our industry or, you know, business related things that we could all do a better job at.
So the first video was talking about, um, when a company is going after a number of verticals or roles, how they just end up throwing the kitchen sink. The buyer, and it's like, hopefully you can [00:08:00] connect how we'll actually help you solve your problem instead of really being intentional about like, all right, who are we talking to?
How do we help them? Asking them questions first before jumping in. And so that video got quite a great response. There was over 1,300 people that watched it. 30 plus comments. Um, since then I've made another video about conferences. I made a video about bad demos. That's a whole thing. I get to watch a lot of demos.
Some of them are great, some of 'em aren't. Um, Daniel Radden from, who's the director of of growth@il.ai, had some other great tips to add to my list, so check out her comment. Um, and feel free to add your own, but Anyw who, I will keep doing those, so feel free to follow me on LinkedIn if you're interested in.
All the things rant related.
James Dice: There you go. Yeah. Marketers need to pay attention to Rosie's rants, I think. All right, so let's jump into the news. Let's start with digitizing operations and maintenance. I. So this is our beat for facility managers, service [00:09:00] providers, et cetera. Um, Brad, you published an article on this beat, uh, um, since the last time we did this podcast.
Take it away.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. So, uh, it's called The Proactive Campus and we are focusing on how higher ed is, um, adopting fault detection and diagnostic software. Uh, they're commonly thought of as one of the, uh, building types or verticals that's actually has the most success with FDD thus far. So we're trying to get to the bottom of like.
Why is it successful? How, what is the recipe there? Um, and I talked to technology vendors, service providers and facility managers in this space, and I, the first question I asked 'em all is like. Which FDD projects have you been a part of On which campuses? And I added that all up and it was 34 universities and 514 million square feet of, uh, these projects, which is pretty cool.
It's like that's a big chunk of how they're doing it. Um, and if I were to just pull out like one nugget that was interesting. Um, usually the second question I asked was, okay, [00:10:00] so like, what do you see that's common around the universities? They're doing this successfully, and maybe it's surprising, it probably shouldn't be, but it's all, it was always the people first and that specifically the way that the, the, uh, higher ed facility management group was set up.
Um, the common things that. I continued to hear was this idea of like two key people. Um, there's like the champion, who's the person who can explain to the rest of the university why FDD is important. And then there's, uh, Lincoln from KW called it the Navy Seal, and that's like the person who's kind of like, uh, he or she's one of your top controls vendors or technicians, and they're able to take those early faults that are being detected by FDD in a pilot or something and get like quick wins to prove to the rest of the organization that.
Even though you've got this huge backlog of stuff that you need to do, if you can focus on these proactive things, it, it puts you a step above. So super fun article to write and, uh, I feel like I know the topic a heck of a lot better, so thanks to [00:11:00] everyone who interviewed on it.
James Dice: Yeah. And those 34 universities, those were, you know, customers of Clockworks building logics, KW engineering, is that it?
Brad Bonavida: Alura was part of it as well. And, and Bueno Analytics as well. Sorry. So there was, to, to summarize that was Clockworks kw, engineering Building Logics, Altera Associates, and Bueno Analytics. All of their, uh, techno, they all gave their opinion as well as their customers giving their opinions on the whole subject as well.
Rosy Khalife: That's awesome. Yeah. I feel like every time I speak to a building owner at a higher ed institution, it feels like FDD is is top of the list in a way where other verticals. Obviously everyone's aware of, of FDD, but it doesn't feel like it's as the number one thing on their list the same way it is for a higher ed.
And so I was trying to figure out like, has that always been the case? Is FDD having a moment in higher ed? Like what? What's going on here? Like how do [00:12:00] we wrap our heads around this?
James Dice: Well, I think it's easier to implement for a couple different reasons. Usually a campus has one to three building automation systems that they've deployed pretty heavily.
Whereas if you think about other verticals, you have a lot more distributed building types that maybe were acquired over time, and so you have a much different like patchwork of control systems. And so in higher ed it feels a lot easier to implement with a control system, and maybe that applies to 50 to a hundred buildings at once versus O other verticals where it's harder to do that.
They also have centralized o and M teams, right? That. Usually has a controls group within it. So it's just a lot easier to sort of take on this, this thing as an add-on to what they already have in higher ed. Brad, what did, what do you think?
Brad Bonavida: You, you hit it perfectly. I was just gonna say autonomy, like they have so much more autonomy over what's [00:13:00] happening in their buildings than a lot of different, uh, industries do.
They're all located in one place. They usually have their own in-house team, all those type of things. So that's one of the big reasons that this has been adopted early. And, um. But there's been a lot of unsuccessful adoptions too. I mean, it's not to say that this is just like an easy thing that, that all of these, um, experts that I interviewed had examples of, you know, some failed versions of this.
And, um, one of the common failures was if the person, you're champion, the person who's trying to implement this, who's either doing the pilot or introducing it to the group, um, if they're too far away from the ability to create the work order. Which actually happened quite a bit. So, um, I think it was Alex Grace from Clockworks who really brought this point home is like, you've got maybe an energy manager who wants FDD and they implement it and they're seeing these problems and they're like, okay, we need to go solve these proactive problems to make our buildings better.
They're not responsible for assigning work orders to technicians and like they have such a, you know, process [00:14:00] hurdle to get over to actually make any success with the, uh, implementation. So that was interesting too.
James Dice: Okay. And time limits up. People wanna know more about that. Go read Brad's article. Uh, that's all, that's all you get here on the podcast.
Um, you,
Rosy Khalife: you gotta start doing that every time.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. I like the buzzer.
Rosy Khalife: That was scary though. A little bit. Did you
James Dice: like that? You did? Yeah. That was great.
Rosy Khalife: No, I liked it was great. Alright,
James Dice: next we're gonna do workplace experience. So we're gonna talk about, um, an article that I published since the last podcast came out.
Um, I interviewed Kevin Sauer, who came to Nexus Con last year. He used to be in workplace at Amazon. And then I also interviewed, um, IOT sensor providers, air Things, Butler, interspace, R zero XY Sense. And then I interviewed another workplace on the owner side workplace team that I can't name. Um, but they all gave me insights that I synthesized together into this article.
And the thesis was basically [00:15:00] that workplace iot sensors were hot during the pandemic. For different reasons, right? Like on the occupancy side, you were trying to figure out how people were using the space in like this hybrid work environment. On the IAQ side, it was like, how can we create this and verify this space is healthy?
And so there's a, there's a growing sense of sort of data overwhelm and so people can go check out the article for like all of the insights that we, that we've like uncovered from all those interviews. But one of the things that I found was interesting was that. One of the takeaways was that IOT sensors, I feel like there's like one group in our industry that feels like they're all basic and are basically commoditized.
Like there's no difference between them. What we found was that that's not actually true. The sensors you choose determine the questions you can answer, and therefore the use cases you can enable from the sensor itself. And so you can't really assume that any sensor will meet your [00:16:00] needs, um, because you're gonna have a gotcha later on, right?
That if you try to do things like, um, figure out what people are doing in the space, which is one of the trends that's happening right now in workplace, I. You if you didn't select the right sensor, you might be limited in that, in the answers you can get from the data itself. And so, yeah, and I, we haven't really talked about the three of us talked about this article much.
What'd you guys think?
Rosy Khalife: Um, well, I loved it. First of all, I think it was really well written. And I think what's really fun about hearing all of the different perspectives is that even though the companies that you interviewed are IQ and occupancy companies, they're all coming at it in a different way, right?
Like, some are more hardware focused, some don't use any hardware. Like there's just, there's, from a tech standpoint, it's also interesting how they're all trying to solve this problem and coming at it from a d from a different kind of place. Um. A another thing to add to what you were saying [00:17:00] about Covid is obviously covid happened and everyone was sort of racing to put IQ sensors or occupancy sensors in their space and thinking that that just checked the box that they were doing what they needed to do at the time.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. And. Now that's just not enough. Like, yeah, of course I need an IQ sensor in the space that I'm sitting in, but if you're not actually taking any actions or deriving any insights from it, then what's the point of having it there? Like you could nearly have just a device that's on the wall that is not connected to anything that's like a bullshit device that has no batteries and no nothing and no power, and like.
Yay. This is the same thing if you're not actually doing anything with, with the data that you're deriving from it. Right? And so hopefully no one's doing that, but I'm sure some people are. Um, anyways, the, the other exciting thing that I thought was great from the article, I. Was that, um, some, some of the pieces around I AI and how these companies are trying to use AI to not necessarily solve all your [00:18:00] problems, but with the data that you're gathering, like, how is AI actually helping answer the right questions?
And so that goes back to before you select. The sensors you wanna deploy, like you as a person that's buying this, asking yourself, what are we trying to answer here? And then, then from there, going out and figuring out who's actually gonna help you answer those questions. Uh, so I, so I loved all that. And the other fun part is if you're not a pro member, you didn't get access to trends number four and five, which were in this article.
So if you're a pro member, you get access to everything. You're in the inner circle, you see it all, you're. You're here, and if you're not, you're only seeing kind of like surface level, you know, just the cherry on top, but not, not the whole thing. So, um, four and five were the best insights, so I'll just leave it at that.
In terms of the best insights,
Brad Bonavida: I, I, uh, I think I have a question for you on this one, James. You know, Rosie, you just said it as well of like, these workplace [00:19:00]teams need to know what they're going after a little bit beforehand. And James, you mentioned that. These devices aren't really commoditized because like certain ones unlock certain, you know, data that you can figure out, but it seems like there's also like.
This, this issue of what am I gonna get from my, my iot sensors? It's like, well, you don't know what you don't know yet. You're gonna find things and it's gonna make you change the way that you operate your building. So I'm curious, when you were talking to the building owner group, when they installed these sensors, did you get a feel of like they knew what they were after and therefore they chose this type of sensor?
Or were they in that like, we don't know what we don't know mode. So we're just gonna install something and see what we find out and how we can make our buildings better. Um, eh, next.
Rosy Khalife: Oh my goodness.
Brad Bonavida: Just kidding.
Rosy Khalife: Oh my goodness. It is so scary. You need to find a new sound. Like just a tweak,
James Dice: taboo, buzzer. We
Brad Bonavida: need one of those taboo buzz
James Dice: buzzers.
Yeah, we need one of those buzzers. [00:20:00] Oh
Rosy Khalife: my God.
James Dice: Let's just try to get this,
Rosy Khalife: my heart rate went up. It goes up every time. Whoever's listening right now, please tell me if you agree that that's a little intense when I hear what you have to say. Um, if we are moving along, I have one last thing to say about, are you, so you're not gonna answer Brad's question?
No, I'm gonna answer the question. Yeah, you can calm down. But you are the one who buzzed.
Brad Bonavida: We need to go. Yeah. You can't buzz and then answer the question. It was just a joke you guys.
James Dice: Um. It's all over the map. So some of them have done it and then retracted. So I heard from the one we can't name, they deployed a bunch of sensors and then actually started going back and pulling them out because they weren't driving business value.
Um, but what I heard a lot was on the occupancy side. They're viewing it in this, and this is starting to give away Rosie's trends, the four and five that are behind the paywall. You're, they're starting to view the sensors as a limited role where you [00:21:00] have, um, you know, traditional studies, more research studies, you have spot checks, right?
You, it, it's, it's like more like you have a multifaceted strategy for understanding what's going on in your space, and the sensors play this role and then it plays a very specific role. Like, here are the questions we're trying to answer. And they might choose different sensors based on the different research questions they have.
So. That's what I heard. Okay. Interesting.
Rosy Khalife: No, Brad, you even work on your second Wait. I have that, I have one la one last thing to say about this article. Honestly, it was a fantastic article. Truly, really one of the best. Um, the last sentence, which is also behind, which is only for pro members. So I'm giving you a sneak peek is kind of a summary of this whole thing.
And I'm gonna read it and it says in the end. Curing I OT. Data overwhelm is about closing the loop. So first you have the sensors that give you the insights that then you put into action, and [00:22:00] then the result is a better workplace. And I think that that is a perfect sentence to conclude. Err.
James Dice: All right, next.
Next we're going to building performance and controls. This is for all of our controls nerds, our energy managers, energy engineers. Um, this one was from another article I wrote a few weeks ago, and I just wanted to double click on the concept of tariff optimization algorithms and make sure that we fully appreciated like where technology was at.
We touched on it last podcast, but a double click is necessary. We're, we're creating these like really deep dive articles and there's a lot in them, and so I think it's important for us to pull back out some of the insights from them. And so I just wanted to point this out so Grid Dium can do this. Um, Arcadia can do this.
Um, I think that's it as far as like the ones I've seen, and it's pretty interesting what they can do. So they can take your meter data and compare your meter data [00:23:00] co, like the cost that you're gonna pay against all other potential tariffs that you could be on. Compare that and then model the cost if you switch.
So we have a really cool, um, graphic that grid provided us in that article that, um, on dirty jobs of energy management that show that they're doing this on hourly rate or on an hourly basis to basically show here's your cost if you switch, here's your current costs. It's gonna be more in the summer, but it's actually gonna be less throughout the whole year, or vice versa.
And it's actually really fascinating that they can do that now.
Brad Bonavida: It's so cool and it's probably underrated how difficult that is to do. Uh, this reminded me of when we were putting together the Buyer's Guide to Metering. We were talking about this point as well. And so I went to pg e's website, Pacific Gas and Electric from, uh, California, the utility company.
And I just as like a consumer tried to go look like, okay, so what are the rates that they're charging their [00:24:00] customers? And if I did my math right at that time, they had 104 different electrical. Rate schedules that, that you could get charged on. So I'm just pointing out like you couldn't just go do that on your own.
You couldn't just go compare if there's another price you could pay, like you need an analytics platform that's built to do this, to even have any chance of understanding what your options are there. So really cool.
James Dice: And this is something that consultants. Do today. Right? So there's a lot of consultants out there that that's their job.
And it, I think it's just cool. Not necessarily that we don't need consultants, but like, can we get the consultants to where they're working on more important shit you guys? And I think this is one of those things.
Rosy Khalife: Wow. So cool. Um, it, how is, so this is currently only being done through consultants, is that what I'm understanding?
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A consultant would do, you know, create a massive Excel workbook and they would. Like churn this out in a, in a long term study and what these software providers are saying, they can just do it in an ongoing way all the time. [00:25:00] This thing is just run in the background. So,
Rosy Khalife: and that's also taking into account any changes like the consultant would, there would be a manual step in that process if anything changes.
James Dice: Yeah, so like an Arcadia case, they have a database of all the. Current tariffs of all the utilities in the United States. And so new tariff gets added. They, they can immediately tell the customer whether they should be on that new tariff or not.
Rosy Khalife: It is amazing. I think what I'm still shocked about is that there are tons of energy managers out there that still are doing not this.
Obviously, they can't necessarily do this much of a heavy load, but doing a lot of this themselves in an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a, um, I, I'm writing a new article that's coming out probably around when this podcast comes out, and I've been talking to a bunch of energy managers and they're talking about that exact thing that when you can automate, like capturing the data in ways like this, all of a sudden the energy managers.[00:26:00]
Job evolves to like, hmm, like how could we actually save energy? Because the ones that are behind, like they're not helping their company save energy. They're just trying to figure out what energy they're spending in all these ways. So it really elevates the job.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's cool about the grid case studies that we have in the article, uh, again, it's called Dirty Jobs of Energy Management Grid has a few case studies that we linked to in there where they not only freed up the energy manager, they actually took the savings.
So if you were gonna change to a different tariff and you were gonna save 50 grand a year, they took that and they funded the energy efficiency improvements in the, in the entire project. So they, that's awesome. Actually used that as a funding mechanism. Um, which is, which is really cool. All right, and next one, uh, this is our final one.
It's on integrating, connecting, and securing devices. It's for all of our OT nerds out there. Brad, what do we got?
Brad Bonavida: Okay, so, uh, we're going back into the Nexus Con 2024 [00:27:00] archives here, and we're gonna try to actually share if this works, some audio from, uh, one of those, one of those sessions that we had. And this is, uh, from Kilroy, uh, talking about their IT OT program.
Uh, we wanted to just explain the audience the way that they're doing it. So lemme see if I can queue this up and get the idea.
Rosy Khalife: And if you're a pro member, you have access to all of the Nexus Con recordings. Yep. Even if you were not at the conference. Which I think is pretty cool.
Brad Bonavida: Okay, here we go. I'm gonna play just a couple seconds of what Byron's saying about Kilroy's, ITOT set up here.
Hey, the budget comes from the building and they have to pay for it. So as you guys can see, you know, we, we've actually created a full structure and diagram list and, uh, what we call the kilroy matrix. We give that to our teams and say, these are the only devices that you can work with, uh, when you're deploying a camera.
These are the only switches that are allowed to be on your network. Uh, if you're running, you know, a point to point connection, it has to come between our sd-wan, so we actually manage our cloud solutions as well. So we work with a partner that has a cloud application. [00:28:00]
Brad Bonavida: All right. So, uh, that just was explaining the Kilroy matrix, which is super cool and something that people should be aspiring to with the way that they're doing their it OT specs.
Um, Byron goes on to explain kind of like the cool outcome from, so they have this matrix, right? And it, it's like very clear about what technology you can use when you're doing new installs and how that's going to, you know, um. Integrate with their existing networks. But what, what he went on to say even further on is that when they're building new retrofits or new construction, now their general contractors and their design engineers who are in charge of the construction, are so familiar with this matrix that when they're putting together these designs, they're like.
We're pretty sure that your IDF closet should be here and it should have these server racks and it should be networked this way and like they got it now. 'cause they put the recipe out there and it's not only making their, you know, their whole network more uniform, but it's making their job easier because all these other people are doing that design work [00:29:00] upfront because it's been well defined by, uh, Kilroy.
So I thought that was really cool. What do you guys think?
James Dice: I think this is a, a key skill. So, so Byron's one of our sort of more advanced, uh, program smart buildings, program managers in the community. It's a key skill for the program managers to be able to define standards across the portfolio. And it's not necessarily like we're gonna implement everything across the portfolio this way right now, but it, the point, the importance is, and this is what we teach in the smart buildings, um, strategist course is.
When a project happens in the future, you've already decided how they're gonna do that project in the future. And that's the piece that I feel like it's a hack, whether you're doing decarbonization or in this case, just cybersecurity and and network management. It's a piece that you have to do if you're gonna manage smart buildings at scale, like you have to do it like this, decide how it's gonna be so that when that tenant fit out happens, or that new building happens, or [00:30:00] the controls upgrade happens, there's already a precedent for how that project's gonna happen.
Brad Bonavida: Yep. Getting in front of the next one. Exactly.
James Dice: Okay. And that's it. I
Rosy Khalife: was waiting. Who's gonna do it
Brad Bonavida: next? I, I guess we should say that's the, uh, that's the it with an OT mindset, uh, nexus Con recording if you wanna watch the whole thing, pro members can see it on our, on our site.
James Dice: Next podcast. I commit to everyone to having a buzzer sound that we can play while we're talking.
I don't know how to do it. I know that the software we use can do it. I'll figure it out. Let's sign off. Um, let's do carve outs. My carve out is I'm wearing my Arsenal jersey. Whoever's watching this on YouTube Arsenal beat the Mighty Rail Madrid yesterday. Um, and it's just part one of two, so they still have to maintain the score next week.
By the time this come out, comes out, that will have happened, and so hopefully I'm, I'm happy, but my carve out is that everyone should go on YouTube and watch the two [00:31:00] goals that Declan Rice scored. In terms of like, you don't even have to be a soccer fan to watch these two goals. It's just the, the skill at which he kicked the ball twice in a row.
It's like he did it and then you're like, oh my God, that was the most amazing shot. And then 10 minutes later he did it again. And it was just like, even, even the Arsenal players and coaches, they were all just like, they could not believe what they had seen. Love it. So thi
Rosy Khalife: this makes me think of when we went and watched you play.
With your team, and I bet you a lot of the Nexus community would, would pay money to watch you play soccer. So there might be something there if you buy your Nexus Con ticket soon. Included in that ticket is a video of James playing soccer. Playing soccer. Okay. There you
Brad Bonavida: go. What? James, what was the guy's name?
James Dice: It's Delan Rice Rail Madrid. Uh, check it out.
Brad Bonavida: My carve out. I [00:32:00] was on a big road trip this weekend and so we had lots of car time, my wife and I, and we listened to this podcast called The Good Whale, and I was sure I wasn't going to like it, uh, because it's too like feel good Disney movie set up to me.
But it was awesome actually. Uh, it's about the whale from the movie Free Willie. Which was obviously like a captive whale. And then there was this big movement to let it become free because in the movie it's literally becoming free. So they did that. They like tried to reintroduce this killer whale into the wild and maybe I'll like try to not give too many.
Spoiler. Alert. Alert, no spoilers. The only thing I'll say, and this isn't a spoiler alert, is that there's like this mystery that the whale swims thousand miles in a month, uh, in the wild. And like nobody knows what it did for that month. Like it's, there's all these theories. So it's really good. I. People should listen to it right after this.
Okay? And after the goals and after the soccer goals, sorry, we got a lot of things to do online. Alright, what's yours?
Rosy Khalife: [00:33:00] Okay, so I am recently been redecorating a room in my home that I was doing construction project, whatever, la la, la. And so I've been obsessed with this podcast called Cherish, which is like chair CH.
A IR ish and it's a design podcast and it's just so well done and it's really good. And, um, the host interviews, interior designers and like just taste makers and it's, it's fantastic. So that's my latest thing. I've been working on design stuff, home design.
James Dice: Love it. We'll put that in the show notes.
Alright y'all. Yep. Have a good next two weeks, we'll see you in two weeks. Signing off, bringing on special guests onto our talk show 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 [00:34:00] listeners to share a link to their favorite N 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.
Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.
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Episode 176 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs.
Summary
Episode 176 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.
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (26:49)
Sign off (30:35)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S689712-16073.
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: [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.
Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have Rosie and Brad here with me. Say, hi, guys.
Rosy Khalife: Hello.
James Dice: Hi. How's it going? [00:01:00] We're gonna walk through four, I'll call them surprising insights for you to get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus Labs community while you are walking your dog or commuting. And as usual, for the full experience, the best way to engage with us is to be subscribed to our newsletter where you'll find every piece of content we publish.
Stuff like this every week instead of every other week, and invites to all of our events, and that's basically how you avoid fomo. We have a lot going on in the community and if you're interested in smart buildings technology, that's the best way to, to keep up to date. So what have you guys been up to over the last two weeks?
Brad Bonavida: For me, the big thing has been nexus con call for abstracts. So for the last couple months we've been, uh, bantering or going after all of our community members about submitting, uh, their abstracts. And our goal was to get 80 abstracts. We thought that'd give us a good. Group or a good pool to pull the best from.
And we closed the [00:02:00] submissions on Friday of last week, and we have 134 abstracts, which is a, uh, beautiful problem to have. We have way too many, but that makes me feel really confident that our content is gonna kick butt at Nexus Con. Now it's this weird art slash analytical game of. What does our floor plan look like?
Who can speak, which ones go together and putting the pieces together. Um, so thank you if you submitted, and we will be spending probably the next month figuring that all out and we'll be in touch with people about, um, where they fit in late May.
James Dice: Yeah. And that's way over double what we got last year. And so I think the message, if you're listening to this and you submitted an abstract, you should be realizing that you're in pretty intense competition to get on stage.
If there aren't 134 slots, let's just, let's just point that out, right? Um, and so the best way to make sure you kind of, uh, stay in the queue is make sure you get your tickets. It, it doesn't give us the warm and [00:03:00] fuzzies if we pick a speaker that hasn't decided whether they're actually gonna come or not.
So you guys can signal to us that you plan to be there so that we can feel good about picking you as, as speakers.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's such a good point. I saw that you wrote that in the newsletter and I was thinking about it and I thought back to Nexus Con 2024, where at the last minute, you know, things happen.
Surely obviously lots of things happen. Uh, lots of things happen and people can drop out or, you know, travel plans change and so it's super important for us that you buy your ticket in the sense that it makes us feel like you're actually. A reliable person and so we could feel good about, you know, putting you on the agenda and talking about you and all that good stuff.
So that is definitely part of it. I think we need another check, like a checks and balance another process where we also see that you booked your travel that's like the next iteration of this to really feel good about it.
James Dice: It's tough 'cause the world's [00:04:00] under so much uncertainty right now. Um. And yeah, I feel like it's a signal that a lot of people are interested in coming, but, um, we haven't gotten a lot of signals about who's actually gonna come so people can help us out by actually telling us they're gonna come.
Um, and Brad, you're right, you said bantering. We've been badgering people. We've been, we've been,
Brad Bonavida: that's a better word,
James Dice: more than we normally would badgering people. And, um, I think it worked. We might have to badger people more often.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, and I think this, the way that we've decided to do our conference is through this abstract submission process in terms of how you can get on stage and other conferences don't take this approach, right?
They set together the agenda of what they want everyone to talk about, and then they kind of do it the other way around where they're like, Hey, we're looking for an IQ expert, or We're looking for this, right? Or, Hey, who's gonna be our. Sponsor, let them be on stage 'cause they can actually talk about this subject.
And so given that we [00:05:00] don't have any sponsors that have speaking opportunities, this makes our job a lot harder. And it ha you know, most companies have teams that are doing this and you know, you're kind of looking at it so. All
Brad Bonavida: of that. That's a really good point, Rosie, just real quick is like, what's really cool about um, receiving abstracts from building owners is that they're talking about what they want sessions to be about.
You know what I mean? It's not like, it's not like they're trying to, uh, sell something. They're bringing these abstracts to us. 'cause they're like, well, I want to hear how other building owners are doing this, or like, this is a problem we're trying to figure out. So we know that those ones are like at the core of what this community needs to hear, which is pretty cool to see.
James Dice: Building owner abstract submissions have a totally different vibe than the vendor's abstract submissions. It's so funny. Um, on that note, we, we've realized, this is what I've been thinking about over the last two weeks, and I know you guys have as well, but this is what I'd like to bring up, which is, um, what separates Nexus Con apart from other conferences is [00:06:00] the, like we have a 40% building owner target and we, we don't let that slip in our minds and.
It really felt like it was like building owners, talking to building owners in the breakout rooms, and obviously in the closed door sessions. So we wanted to bring that into the virtual environment. And so last week we hosted our first ever, ever, uh, virtual community event exclusively for, exclusively for building owners.
And it was on integrating smart buildings into the design and construction phase. And we had a great group there. Um, participation from RMR Group, Avalon Bay, BGO, Goldman Sachs, Wayne State, Kansas State, Northwestern Mutual, low Tide Properties. Lockheed Martin and I stopped putting the list together once I got to like 10.
It was a really good grid session, and I think what showed us the magic from Nexus Con that we could bring that into a Zoom environment was when the building owners started talking to each other, um, like. Stopped asking a question to the [00:07:00] moderator and just said directly, you know, tell me about the time when you did that.
And, and they're sharing the insights to each other. And so that's kind of what we're focusing on, kind of moving forward, is us being that place where they can have those more intimate conversations, um, and, and sort of bringing them together.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah. Um, me, I've been thinking about all those things. In addition, I have somehow started a video series on LinkedIn.
I don't know how this quite happened, but here we are. Um, and it's, we're calling it Rosie's Rants for now, but I will also bring in. Positive things into the mix. But, uh, the goal is really to just highlight marketing things that I'm seeing in our industry or, you know, business related things that we could all do a better job at.
So the first video was talking about, um, when a company is going after a number of verticals or roles, how they just end up throwing the kitchen sink. The buyer, and it's like, hopefully you can [00:08:00] connect how we'll actually help you solve your problem instead of really being intentional about like, all right, who are we talking to?
How do we help them? Asking them questions first before jumping in. And so that video got quite a great response. There was over 1,300 people that watched it. 30 plus comments. Um, since then I've made another video about conferences. I made a video about bad demos. That's a whole thing. I get to watch a lot of demos.
Some of them are great, some of 'em aren't. Um, Daniel Radden from, who's the director of of growth@il.ai, had some other great tips to add to my list, so check out her comment. Um, and feel free to add your own, but Anyw who, I will keep doing those, so feel free to follow me on LinkedIn if you're interested in.
All the things rant related.
James Dice: There you go. Yeah. Marketers need to pay attention to Rosie's rants, I think. All right, so let's jump into the news. Let's start with digitizing operations and maintenance. I. So this is our beat for facility managers, service [00:09:00] providers, et cetera. Um, Brad, you published an article on this beat, uh, um, since the last time we did this podcast.
Take it away.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. So, uh, it's called The Proactive Campus and we are focusing on how higher ed is, um, adopting fault detection and diagnostic software. Uh, they're commonly thought of as one of the, uh, building types or verticals that's actually has the most success with FDD thus far. So we're trying to get to the bottom of like.
Why is it successful? How, what is the recipe there? Um, and I talked to technology vendors, service providers and facility managers in this space, and I, the first question I asked 'em all is like. Which FDD projects have you been a part of On which campuses? And I added that all up and it was 34 universities and 514 million square feet of, uh, these projects, which is pretty cool.
It's like that's a big chunk of how they're doing it. Um, and if I were to just pull out like one nugget that was interesting. Um, usually the second question I asked was, okay, [00:10:00] so like, what do you see that's common around the universities? They're doing this successfully, and maybe it's surprising, it probably shouldn't be, but it's all, it was always the people first and that specifically the way that the, the, uh, higher ed facility management group was set up.
Um, the common things that. I continued to hear was this idea of like two key people. Um, there's like the champion, who's the person who can explain to the rest of the university why FDD is important. And then there's, uh, Lincoln from KW called it the Navy Seal, and that's like the person who's kind of like, uh, he or she's one of your top controls vendors or technicians, and they're able to take those early faults that are being detected by FDD in a pilot or something and get like quick wins to prove to the rest of the organization that.
Even though you've got this huge backlog of stuff that you need to do, if you can focus on these proactive things, it, it puts you a step above. So super fun article to write and, uh, I feel like I know the topic a heck of a lot better, so thanks to [00:11:00] everyone who interviewed on it.
James Dice: Yeah. And those 34 universities, those were, you know, customers of Clockworks building logics, KW engineering, is that it?
Brad Bonavida: Alura was part of it as well. And, and Bueno Analytics as well. Sorry. So there was, to, to summarize that was Clockworks kw, engineering Building Logics, Altera Associates, and Bueno Analytics. All of their, uh, techno, they all gave their opinion as well as their customers giving their opinions on the whole subject as well.
Rosy Khalife: That's awesome. Yeah. I feel like every time I speak to a building owner at a higher ed institution, it feels like FDD is is top of the list in a way where other verticals. Obviously everyone's aware of, of FDD, but it doesn't feel like it's as the number one thing on their list the same way it is for a higher ed.
And so I was trying to figure out like, has that always been the case? Is FDD having a moment in higher ed? Like what? What's going on here? Like how do [00:12:00] we wrap our heads around this?
James Dice: Well, I think it's easier to implement for a couple different reasons. Usually a campus has one to three building automation systems that they've deployed pretty heavily.
Whereas if you think about other verticals, you have a lot more distributed building types that maybe were acquired over time, and so you have a much different like patchwork of control systems. And so in higher ed it feels a lot easier to implement with a control system, and maybe that applies to 50 to a hundred buildings at once versus O other verticals where it's harder to do that.
They also have centralized o and M teams, right? That. Usually has a controls group within it. So it's just a lot easier to sort of take on this, this thing as an add-on to what they already have in higher ed. Brad, what did, what do you think?
Brad Bonavida: You, you hit it perfectly. I was just gonna say autonomy, like they have so much more autonomy over what's [00:13:00] happening in their buildings than a lot of different, uh, industries do.
They're all located in one place. They usually have their own in-house team, all those type of things. So that's one of the big reasons that this has been adopted early. And, um. But there's been a lot of unsuccessful adoptions too. I mean, it's not to say that this is just like an easy thing that, that all of these, um, experts that I interviewed had examples of, you know, some failed versions of this.
And, um, one of the common failures was if the person, you're champion, the person who's trying to implement this, who's either doing the pilot or introducing it to the group, um, if they're too far away from the ability to create the work order. Which actually happened quite a bit. So, um, I think it was Alex Grace from Clockworks who really brought this point home is like, you've got maybe an energy manager who wants FDD and they implement it and they're seeing these problems and they're like, okay, we need to go solve these proactive problems to make our buildings better.
They're not responsible for assigning work orders to technicians and like they have such a, you know, process [00:14:00] hurdle to get over to actually make any success with the, uh, implementation. So that was interesting too.
James Dice: Okay. And time limits up. People wanna know more about that. Go read Brad's article. Uh, that's all, that's all you get here on the podcast.
Um, you,
Rosy Khalife: you gotta start doing that every time.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. I like the buzzer.
Rosy Khalife: That was scary though. A little bit. Did you
James Dice: like that? You did? Yeah. That was great.
Rosy Khalife: No, I liked it was great. Alright,
James Dice: next we're gonna do workplace experience. So we're gonna talk about, um, an article that I published since the last podcast came out.
Um, I interviewed Kevin Sauer, who came to Nexus Con last year. He used to be in workplace at Amazon. And then I also interviewed, um, IOT sensor providers, air Things, Butler, interspace, R zero XY Sense. And then I interviewed another workplace on the owner side workplace team that I can't name. Um, but they all gave me insights that I synthesized together into this article.
And the thesis was basically [00:15:00] that workplace iot sensors were hot during the pandemic. For different reasons, right? Like on the occupancy side, you were trying to figure out how people were using the space in like this hybrid work environment. On the IAQ side, it was like, how can we create this and verify this space is healthy?
And so there's a, there's a growing sense of sort of data overwhelm and so people can go check out the article for like all of the insights that we, that we've like uncovered from all those interviews. But one of the things that I found was interesting was that. One of the takeaways was that IOT sensors, I feel like there's like one group in our industry that feels like they're all basic and are basically commoditized.
Like there's no difference between them. What we found was that that's not actually true. The sensors you choose determine the questions you can answer, and therefore the use cases you can enable from the sensor itself. And so you can't really assume that any sensor will meet your [00:16:00] needs, um, because you're gonna have a gotcha later on, right?
That if you try to do things like, um, figure out what people are doing in the space, which is one of the trends that's happening right now in workplace, I. You if you didn't select the right sensor, you might be limited in that, in the answers you can get from the data itself. And so, yeah, and I, we haven't really talked about the three of us talked about this article much.
What'd you guys think?
Rosy Khalife: Um, well, I loved it. First of all, I think it was really well written. And I think what's really fun about hearing all of the different perspectives is that even though the companies that you interviewed are IQ and occupancy companies, they're all coming at it in a different way, right?
Like, some are more hardware focused, some don't use any hardware. Like there's just, there's, from a tech standpoint, it's also interesting how they're all trying to solve this problem and coming at it from a d from a different kind of place. Um. A another thing to add to what you were saying [00:17:00] about Covid is obviously covid happened and everyone was sort of racing to put IQ sensors or occupancy sensors in their space and thinking that that just checked the box that they were doing what they needed to do at the time.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. And. Now that's just not enough. Like, yeah, of course I need an IQ sensor in the space that I'm sitting in, but if you're not actually taking any actions or deriving any insights from it, then what's the point of having it there? Like you could nearly have just a device that's on the wall that is not connected to anything that's like a bullshit device that has no batteries and no nothing and no power, and like.
Yay. This is the same thing if you're not actually doing anything with, with the data that you're deriving from it. Right? And so hopefully no one's doing that, but I'm sure some people are. Um, anyways, the, the other exciting thing that I thought was great from the article, I. Was that, um, some, some of the pieces around I AI and how these companies are trying to use AI to not necessarily solve all your [00:18:00] problems, but with the data that you're gathering, like, how is AI actually helping answer the right questions?
And so that goes back to before you select. The sensors you wanna deploy, like you as a person that's buying this, asking yourself, what are we trying to answer here? And then, then from there, going out and figuring out who's actually gonna help you answer those questions. Uh, so I, so I loved all that. And the other fun part is if you're not a pro member, you didn't get access to trends number four and five, which were in this article.
So if you're a pro member, you get access to everything. You're in the inner circle, you see it all, you're. You're here, and if you're not, you're only seeing kind of like surface level, you know, just the cherry on top, but not, not the whole thing. So, um, four and five were the best insights, so I'll just leave it at that.
In terms of the best insights,
Brad Bonavida: I, I, uh, I think I have a question for you on this one, James. You know, Rosie, you just said it as well of like, these workplace [00:19:00]teams need to know what they're going after a little bit beforehand. And James, you mentioned that. These devices aren't really commoditized because like certain ones unlock certain, you know, data that you can figure out, but it seems like there's also like.
This, this issue of what am I gonna get from my, my iot sensors? It's like, well, you don't know what you don't know yet. You're gonna find things and it's gonna make you change the way that you operate your building. So I'm curious, when you were talking to the building owner group, when they installed these sensors, did you get a feel of like they knew what they were after and therefore they chose this type of sensor?
Or were they in that like, we don't know what we don't know mode. So we're just gonna install something and see what we find out and how we can make our buildings better. Um, eh, next.
Rosy Khalife: Oh my goodness.
Brad Bonavida: Just kidding.
Rosy Khalife: Oh my goodness. It is so scary. You need to find a new sound. Like just a tweak,
James Dice: taboo, buzzer. We
Brad Bonavida: need one of those taboo buzz
James Dice: buzzers.
Yeah, we need one of those buzzers. [00:20:00] Oh
Rosy Khalife: my God.
James Dice: Let's just try to get this,
Rosy Khalife: my heart rate went up. It goes up every time. Whoever's listening right now, please tell me if you agree that that's a little intense when I hear what you have to say. Um, if we are moving along, I have one last thing to say about, are you, so you're not gonna answer Brad's question?
No, I'm gonna answer the question. Yeah, you can calm down. But you are the one who buzzed.
Brad Bonavida: We need to go. Yeah. You can't buzz and then answer the question. It was just a joke you guys.
James Dice: Um. It's all over the map. So some of them have done it and then retracted. So I heard from the one we can't name, they deployed a bunch of sensors and then actually started going back and pulling them out because they weren't driving business value.
Um, but what I heard a lot was on the occupancy side. They're viewing it in this, and this is starting to give away Rosie's trends, the four and five that are behind the paywall. You're, they're starting to view the sensors as a limited role where you [00:21:00] have, um, you know, traditional studies, more research studies, you have spot checks, right?
You, it, it's, it's like more like you have a multifaceted strategy for understanding what's going on in your space, and the sensors play this role and then it plays a very specific role. Like, here are the questions we're trying to answer. And they might choose different sensors based on the different research questions they have.
So. That's what I heard. Okay. Interesting.
Rosy Khalife: No, Brad, you even work on your second Wait. I have that, I have one la one last thing to say about this article. Honestly, it was a fantastic article. Truly, really one of the best. Um, the last sentence, which is also behind, which is only for pro members. So I'm giving you a sneak peek is kind of a summary of this whole thing.
And I'm gonna read it and it says in the end. Curing I OT. Data overwhelm is about closing the loop. So first you have the sensors that give you the insights that then you put into action, and [00:22:00] then the result is a better workplace. And I think that that is a perfect sentence to conclude. Err.
James Dice: All right, next.
Next we're going to building performance and controls. This is for all of our controls nerds, our energy managers, energy engineers. Um, this one was from another article I wrote a few weeks ago, and I just wanted to double click on the concept of tariff optimization algorithms and make sure that we fully appreciated like where technology was at.
We touched on it last podcast, but a double click is necessary. We're, we're creating these like really deep dive articles and there's a lot in them, and so I think it's important for us to pull back out some of the insights from them. And so I just wanted to point this out so Grid Dium can do this. Um, Arcadia can do this.
Um, I think that's it as far as like the ones I've seen, and it's pretty interesting what they can do. So they can take your meter data and compare your meter data [00:23:00] co, like the cost that you're gonna pay against all other potential tariffs that you could be on. Compare that and then model the cost if you switch.
So we have a really cool, um, graphic that grid provided us in that article that, um, on dirty jobs of energy management that show that they're doing this on hourly rate or on an hourly basis to basically show here's your cost if you switch, here's your current costs. It's gonna be more in the summer, but it's actually gonna be less throughout the whole year, or vice versa.
And it's actually really fascinating that they can do that now.
Brad Bonavida: It's so cool and it's probably underrated how difficult that is to do. Uh, this reminded me of when we were putting together the Buyer's Guide to Metering. We were talking about this point as well. And so I went to pg e's website, Pacific Gas and Electric from, uh, California, the utility company.
And I just as like a consumer tried to go look like, okay, so what are the rates that they're charging their [00:24:00] customers? And if I did my math right at that time, they had 104 different electrical. Rate schedules that, that you could get charged on. So I'm just pointing out like you couldn't just go do that on your own.
You couldn't just go compare if there's another price you could pay, like you need an analytics platform that's built to do this, to even have any chance of understanding what your options are there. So really cool.
James Dice: And this is something that consultants. Do today. Right? So there's a lot of consultants out there that that's their job.
And it, I think it's just cool. Not necessarily that we don't need consultants, but like, can we get the consultants to where they're working on more important shit you guys? And I think this is one of those things.
Rosy Khalife: Wow. So cool. Um, it, how is, so this is currently only being done through consultants, is that what I'm understanding?
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A consultant would do, you know, create a massive Excel workbook and they would. Like churn this out in a, in a long term study and what these software providers are saying, they can just do it in an ongoing way all the time. [00:25:00] This thing is just run in the background. So,
Rosy Khalife: and that's also taking into account any changes like the consultant would, there would be a manual step in that process if anything changes.
James Dice: Yeah, so like an Arcadia case, they have a database of all the. Current tariffs of all the utilities in the United States. And so new tariff gets added. They, they can immediately tell the customer whether they should be on that new tariff or not.
Rosy Khalife: It is amazing. I think what I'm still shocked about is that there are tons of energy managers out there that still are doing not this.
Obviously, they can't necessarily do this much of a heavy load, but doing a lot of this themselves in an Excel spreadsheet. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's, that's a, that's a, um, I, I'm writing a new article that's coming out probably around when this podcast comes out, and I've been talking to a bunch of energy managers and they're talking about that exact thing that when you can automate, like capturing the data in ways like this, all of a sudden the energy managers.[00:26:00]
Job evolves to like, hmm, like how could we actually save energy? Because the ones that are behind, like they're not helping their company save energy. They're just trying to figure out what energy they're spending in all these ways. So it really elevates the job.
James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think what's cool about the grid case studies that we have in the article, uh, again, it's called Dirty Jobs of Energy Management Grid has a few case studies that we linked to in there where they not only freed up the energy manager, they actually took the savings.
So if you were gonna change to a different tariff and you were gonna save 50 grand a year, they took that and they funded the energy efficiency improvements in the, in the entire project. So they, that's awesome. Actually used that as a funding mechanism. Um, which is, which is really cool. All right, and next one, uh, this is our final one.
It's on integrating, connecting, and securing devices. It's for all of our OT nerds out there. Brad, what do we got?
Brad Bonavida: Okay, so, uh, we're going back into the Nexus Con 2024 [00:27:00] archives here, and we're gonna try to actually share if this works, some audio from, uh, one of those, one of those sessions that we had. And this is, uh, from Kilroy, uh, talking about their IT OT program.
Uh, we wanted to just explain the audience the way that they're doing it. So lemme see if I can queue this up and get the idea.
Rosy Khalife: And if you're a pro member, you have access to all of the Nexus Con recordings. Yep. Even if you were not at the conference. Which I think is pretty cool.
Brad Bonavida: Okay, here we go. I'm gonna play just a couple seconds of what Byron's saying about Kilroy's, ITOT set up here.
Hey, the budget comes from the building and they have to pay for it. So as you guys can see, you know, we, we've actually created a full structure and diagram list and, uh, what we call the kilroy matrix. We give that to our teams and say, these are the only devices that you can work with, uh, when you're deploying a camera.
These are the only switches that are allowed to be on your network. Uh, if you're running, you know, a point to point connection, it has to come between our sd-wan, so we actually manage our cloud solutions as well. So we work with a partner that has a cloud application. [00:28:00]
Brad Bonavida: All right. So, uh, that just was explaining the Kilroy matrix, which is super cool and something that people should be aspiring to with the way that they're doing their it OT specs.
Um, Byron goes on to explain kind of like the cool outcome from, so they have this matrix, right? And it, it's like very clear about what technology you can use when you're doing new installs and how that's going to, you know, um. Integrate with their existing networks. But what, what he went on to say even further on is that when they're building new retrofits or new construction, now their general contractors and their design engineers who are in charge of the construction, are so familiar with this matrix that when they're putting together these designs, they're like.
We're pretty sure that your IDF closet should be here and it should have these server racks and it should be networked this way and like they got it now. 'cause they put the recipe out there and it's not only making their, you know, their whole network more uniform, but it's making their job easier because all these other people are doing that design work [00:29:00] upfront because it's been well defined by, uh, Kilroy.
So I thought that was really cool. What do you guys think?
James Dice: I think this is a, a key skill. So, so Byron's one of our sort of more advanced, uh, program smart buildings, program managers in the community. It's a key skill for the program managers to be able to define standards across the portfolio. And it's not necessarily like we're gonna implement everything across the portfolio this way right now, but it, the point, the importance is, and this is what we teach in the smart buildings, um, strategist course is.
When a project happens in the future, you've already decided how they're gonna do that project in the future. And that's the piece that I feel like it's a hack, whether you're doing decarbonization or in this case, just cybersecurity and and network management. It's a piece that you have to do if you're gonna manage smart buildings at scale, like you have to do it like this, decide how it's gonna be so that when that tenant fit out happens, or that new building happens, or [00:30:00] the controls upgrade happens, there's already a precedent for how that project's gonna happen.
Brad Bonavida: Yep. Getting in front of the next one. Exactly.
James Dice: Okay. And that's it. I
Rosy Khalife: was waiting. Who's gonna do it
Brad Bonavida: next? I, I guess we should say that's the, uh, that's the it with an OT mindset, uh, nexus Con recording if you wanna watch the whole thing, pro members can see it on our, on our site.
James Dice: Next podcast. I commit to everyone to having a buzzer sound that we can play while we're talking.
I don't know how to do it. I know that the software we use can do it. I'll figure it out. Let's sign off. Um, let's do carve outs. My carve out is I'm wearing my Arsenal jersey. Whoever's watching this on YouTube Arsenal beat the Mighty Rail Madrid yesterday. Um, and it's just part one of two, so they still have to maintain the score next week.
By the time this come out, comes out, that will have happened, and so hopefully I'm, I'm happy, but my carve out is that everyone should go on YouTube and watch the two [00:31:00] goals that Declan Rice scored. In terms of like, you don't even have to be a soccer fan to watch these two goals. It's just the, the skill at which he kicked the ball twice in a row.
It's like he did it and then you're like, oh my God, that was the most amazing shot. And then 10 minutes later he did it again. And it was just like, even, even the Arsenal players and coaches, they were all just like, they could not believe what they had seen. Love it. So thi
Rosy Khalife: this makes me think of when we went and watched you play.
With your team, and I bet you a lot of the Nexus community would, would pay money to watch you play soccer. So there might be something there if you buy your Nexus Con ticket soon. Included in that ticket is a video of James playing soccer. Playing soccer. Okay. There you
Brad Bonavida: go. What? James, what was the guy's name?
James Dice: It's Delan Rice Rail Madrid. Uh, check it out.
Brad Bonavida: My carve out. I [00:32:00] was on a big road trip this weekend and so we had lots of car time, my wife and I, and we listened to this podcast called The Good Whale, and I was sure I wasn't going to like it, uh, because it's too like feel good Disney movie set up to me.
But it was awesome actually. Uh, it's about the whale from the movie Free Willie. Which was obviously like a captive whale. And then there was this big movement to let it become free because in the movie it's literally becoming free. So they did that. They like tried to reintroduce this killer whale into the wild and maybe I'll like try to not give too many.
Spoiler. Alert. Alert, no spoilers. The only thing I'll say, and this isn't a spoiler alert, is that there's like this mystery that the whale swims thousand miles in a month, uh, in the wild. And like nobody knows what it did for that month. Like it's, there's all these theories. So it's really good. I. People should listen to it right after this.
Okay? And after the goals and after the soccer goals, sorry, we got a lot of things to do online. Alright, what's yours?
Rosy Khalife: [00:33:00] Okay, so I am recently been redecorating a room in my home that I was doing construction project, whatever, la la, la. And so I've been obsessed with this podcast called Cherish, which is like chair CH.
A IR ish and it's a design podcast and it's just so well done and it's really good. And, um, the host interviews, interior designers and like just taste makers and it's, it's fantastic. So that's my latest thing. I've been working on design stuff, home design.
James Dice: Love it. We'll put that in the show notes.
Alright y'all. Yep. Have a good next two weeks, we'll see you in two weeks. Signing off, bringing on special guests onto our talk show 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 [00:34:00] listeners to share a link to their favorite N 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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