Greasing the Wheels of the Stagnant Smart Buildings Program

Hey Friends,

James is out this week, celebrating his birthday and his love for the outdoors in an undisclosed location deep within the Rocky Mountains…

In the meantime, we thought we would share with you some of our progress on the content planning for NexusCon 2024.

We recently talked with a large commercial real estate buyer about their smart buildings program. Unfortunately, the frustration was palpable. They discussed the lack of clarity on budgets for their projects, the convoluted decision-making processes, employee turnover that’s halted progress in its tracks, and the endless sea of potential solutions that are “sure to be the perfect thing for their buildings” (a.k.a. the vendor swamp).

Despite our empathy for this particular buyer’s situation, we’re excited to help grease the wheels of smart building programs through the content-packed sessions of NexusCon 2024. One unique aspect of NexusCon is that we’ll be wrapping each session around a question posed by the emcee. Each room will need to work together as a community to solve the question at hand to help move the industry forward in some concrete way.

For the buyer mentioned above, we’re excited for them to attend session 3 of the Smart Buildings Champions Track: The Buyer’s Toolset, where the room will be challenged to develop structured answers around how buyers can actionably improve their buying process. Within this session, we’ll hear from:

• Carr Properties on how their Technology Innovation Lab has transformed how they think of pilots and the time and effort it takes to implement new technology.
• Seattle Children’s Hospital on the underdog story of surviving two smart building leadership transitions and applying Nexus Lab’s guidelines to vendor selection to find a dark horse FDD application that saved $135k of energy in 60 days.
• Tishman Speyer on how they funneled dozens of energy management software providers down to a few real candidates, and finally to the right one for their business.
• The Greater Toronto Airports Authority on how they overcame decentralized ownership of buildings, 50 distinct OT systems, and an endlessly complex list of stakeholders to build a robust cybersecurity program.

To keep the ideation fresh, we’ll follow each of these case studies with a fireside chat between the building owner and industry professionals. Each building owner will be paired with a consultant who wasn’t involved in the project but is an expert in supporting buyers through their smart building programs. They’ll work together and engage the audience to extract the themes other buyers should take away to add to their toolset.

Oh, and we’ll work in fun mindfulness exercises like Qigong to keep the audience mentally limber.

All in all, the session should look something like this:

Ready to participate in a community-driven, inspirational conference focusing on outcomes, not sales? Sign up here.

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– Brad, Carly, and Rosy