Founder Note

Every Wednesday, we send out "the single best resource on technology for buildings", Nexus' Founder Note. Each issue includes a note from Nexus Labs Founder, James Dice, along with a podcast, featured speaker, an event list, and more. Sign up today.

Latest Articles

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Jamestown’s Approach to the Innovative Building

Natalie Patton

Carrie Denning Jackson gives the Nexus Pro Community a candid run-down of all her efforts across the forward-thinking organization.

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Case Study: Enhancing Cybersecurity and Speeding Up Remote Operations at BGO

Danielle Radden

In this case study, we explore how BGO successfully implemented a cybersecurity platform using the Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) framework and Zero Trust architecture.

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🎧 #154: Case Study: University of California Irvine overhauls BAS, adds FDD

Episode 154 features Joseph Fleshman from University of California, Irvine and Jim Meacham from Altura Associates and is our fourth episode in the Case Study series looking at real-life, large-scale deployments of smart building technologies. Joe and Jim talk in depth about the systematic overhaul of University of California Irvine’s building automation system, operational technology networking, and deploying fault detection and diagnostics software. Enjoy!

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🎧 #153: Case Study: Unpacking BGO's cybersecurity program

Episode 153 features Ben Cooper from BGO (BentallGreenOak) and is our third episode in the Case Study series looking at real-life, large-scale deployments of smart building technologies. Ben talks about the asset type due diligence and rate of adoption for their new infrastructure platform, the overall efficiencies created, and the future proofing abilities with a cloud connection application layer. Enjoy!

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August 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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The IoT Sensor Debate: Should Sensors Have Recurring Fees?

Natalie Patton

The August Pro member gathering doubled as Nexus Labs' second debate. See how Liam Bates, Tom Balme and David Sciarrino argued for and against recurring fees for IoT sensors.

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SME Workshop: The ROI of a Smart Building Solution

“The most effective form of return on investment (ROI) that is tangible and measurable is operational expenditure (Opex) savings”

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152
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🎧 #152: In The Field: Stacks+Joules Graduate Nathanseth Cruz

Episode 152 is the second episode in our new workforce series, In The Field. In The Field features people working boots on the ground in the built environment, giving real-life perspectives on their roles, backgrounds, and aspirations. Episode 152 features Stacks+Joules graduate and senior controls technician Nathanseth Cruz of Dual Fuel and Stacks+Joules Founder and Executive Director Michael Conway.

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🎧 #151: What we do @ Nexus Labs

Episode 151 dives into what James and Rosy do at Nexus Labs beyond the podcast. From the pro membership community, to the courses platform, partnerships, and the marketplace, this episode brings you up to speed on all things Nexus Labs.

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SME Workshop: Edge Cloud (Fog) Computing in Buildings

Danielle Radden

Edge cloud has the promise of both the benefits of full cloud, and all the benefits of staying on-premise. This is the middle ground—that Goldilocks sweet spot of not too big, not too small. Not too flat, not too on-prem. ‍

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The smart buildings shortcut I wish I had

James Dice

Today, I want to tell you a quick story about my career.This will help explain the changes I made 6 years ago that I credit for helping me make an impact in smart buildings industry—changes that might help others trying to find their feet as the industry blazes forward.

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There is no killer app

Here's something to ponder: Do we have any apps that 'assure the success' of smart buildings technology? Unfortunately, the answer is no.

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Case Study: Integrating FDD into Service Operations with LONG Building Technologies

James Dice

The story of a 5-year effort at LONG Building Technologies to integrate fault detection and diagnostics, or FDD, into their service operations.

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🎧 #150: Case Study: LONG Building Technologies on FDD

The 150th Nexus Podcast Episode! Episode 150 features LONG Building Technologies and is our second episode in the Case Study series looking at real-life, large-scale deployments of smart building technologies.

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July 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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The Integration Challenge of Smart Buildings

Tyrone Mawing joins our APAC/Australia Monthly Pro Member Gathering for a discussion on the integration challenge of smart buildings.

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The power of windshield time

James Dice

This edition of the Nexus Newsletter is brought to you by Butlr and Tietoa. Hey friends, When I was growing up, I loved road trips. Jumping in my mo

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Smart Building Success Stories and Lessons Learned for Municipalities

Natalie Patton

Mandy Omrani of Infrastructure Ontario tells the Nexus community what’s working and how.

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Cybersecurity in Smart Buildings: Strategies for a Secure Future

Danielle Radden

Cybersecurity is critical to protect the confidentiality and integrity in the data from both our IT and OT systems. Mike MacMahon from Newcomb & Boyd tells us everything we need to know and where to find out more.

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LinkedIn's approach to smart buildings

Natalie Patton

June’s Nexus Pro Member Gathering featured a comprehensive breakdown of LinkedIn’s Smart Building program from leading engineers Cristal Ortiz and Andrew Knueppel

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Tech Integration part of Design and Construction? How and Why

Danielle Radden

Mahmoud Shouman from JB&B gives an insightful presentation about how to integrate smart building technology and data into the design and construction process and why it makes perfect sense.

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🎧 #149: Change My Mind: The Independent Data Layer

Join us for lively debates with Nexus Pro Members live in the audience. Engage in thought-provoking discussions on controversial topics within the world of smart buildings. Prepare to have your perspectives challenged and expanded! And of course we had to start with today’s ultimate debate: The Independent Data Layer!

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🎧 #148: Foundations: Intro to Horizontal Architectures

Immerse yourself in expert-led monologues focused on a single topic. We’ll share their wisdom and knowledge, giving you the tools to build a solid foundation in key areas of interest. This season, yours truly tackles The Horizontal Architecture.

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🎧 #147: Deep Dive: Audio/Visual Systems and The Role They Play

Dive into fascinating interviews with experts who explore the boundaries of "smart buildings." From cutting-edge to established technologies, we'll uncover the latest trends and innovations in the field. This season, we dive into the overlaps between Audio Visual Systems and smart buildings.

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🎧 #146: In The Field: Facility Manager Mary Gloven

Get ready for insightful boots-on-the-ground interviews with changemaking facility managers, technicians, and more. We're hitting the ground running with Mary Gloven, a phenomenal facility manager at The Alliance Center in Denver.

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🎧 #145: Early Stage: Waste Tracking with WATS

Discover the future of innovation as we chat with seed stage changemaking startup founders. This season, we're thrilled to feature WATS (Waste Administration and Tracking Software). Their vision will have you rethinking the way we handle waste in real estate.

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May Pro Member Gathering Recap: Interview with Jamestown's Becca Timms

Natalie Patton

This month’s Member Gathering featured a wide-ranging conversation with Becca Timms, Director of ESG at Jamestown. For this recap, we’re formatting it as a written interview to cover the topics discussed in chunks.

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🎧 #144: Case Study: How the University of Iowa integrated FDD into maintenance operations

Learn valuable lessons from buyers who have successfully deployed mature tech solutions at scale over multiple years. We dive deep into their experiences to uncover the insights and challenges faced throughout their transformative journeys. In this first episode, we hear from The University of Iowa on their 9-year effort to transform their maintenance operations around FDD software.

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🎧 #143: Updates + AMA

You asked for it, and we're delivering! Our Nexus Pro members will have the chance to ask Rosy and me anything. We'll be answering your burning questions, sharing our experiences, and providing hot takes.

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Case Study: The University of Iowa’s FDD Program Spanning 7 Million Square Feet

James Dice

The story of a 9-year effort at the University of Iowa to integrate fault detection and diagnostics, or FDD, into their maintenance operations.

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Applying and advancing Building Information Modeling (BIM)

Natalie Patton

Nexus Pro SME workshop hosted by Krigh Bachmann to the Nexus Pro community focusing on how to leverage BIM to improve smart buildings.

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April 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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June 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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Dream's Net Zero Target and the Technology Involved

James Dice

April's members-only SME Workshop was a master class in showing how a roadmap to Net Zero includes operational technologies.

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Quadreal's Quest for "The Operations of the Future"

James Dice

April’s members-only gathering was an honest and insightful take on Quadreal’s efforts rolling out “The Operations of the Future” across 55 buildings.

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Let's catch you up

James Dice

It’s been a week of celebration, as we hosted a successful happy hour event in Denver, Colorado, bringing together our team and community members for an evening of fun and networking.

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March 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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Introducing: The Decarb Roadmap

James Dice

As an energy engineer for the first 10 years of my career, I always felt like I was doing important work. I loved studying mechanical rooms and putting together retrofit projects that helped my clients save money by saving energy. 

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The Founding Story

James Dice

Since the beginning, it’s felt like I’ve been pulled into creating Nexus. It felt like a calling. I’m simply answering the call—while each day trying to hone my listening skills (so I can interpret the call correctly) and remove my ego (so I can minimize getting in the way).

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Introducing “Who-Is, I-Am": our speaker database for conference organizers

James Dice

Today’s newsletter is a collaboration between Nexus Labs and our newest creator, Drew DePriest, Senior Director of Digital Facilities Management at CBRE. Drew and I are among the select few invited to speak at most smart buildings conferences.

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🎧 #142: Living buildings and where technology fits

James Dice

"The building industry can be the first to show the world what it looks like for an industry from within itself to transform itself in line with a sustainable future."​

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Insights → Operations

James Dice

Today, we’re kicking off a new monthly Nexus Labs column called Insights → Operations. We’ll explore best practices with leading building owners and our fault detection and diagnostics (FDD) category partners. 

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🎧 #141: CRE Market Talk #2 with Mandi Wedin and Joe Gaspardone

James Dice

"So many organizations are selling ESG solutions, but very few have their own ESG statements, goals, or positions. If you don't want it, why would I?"

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Launching our Partner Program!

James Dice

Today’s newsletter is part 5 in our series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem.

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February 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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🎧 #140: The value of occupancy data and reducing risks with leak detection

James Dice

"You can't just sell the data. It's got enormous value, but it needs to be manifested and taught in such a way that people can react to it." Episode 140 is a conversation with Bayron Lopez Pineda, Director of OT Operational Technology at Kilroy Realty and Mike Moran, Chief Markets Officer and Chief Risk & Sustainability Officer at MicroShare. We talked about Killroy Realty's Smart Buildings Program and got into the weeds on how they're thinking about occupancy data and leak detection, which are two topics we've discussed on the podcast, but not in detail.

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Announcing the “seller” ecosystem

James Dice

Today’s newsletter is part 4 in our series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem.

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🎧 #139: Q1 2023 M&A Roundup with J³

James Dice

Episode 139 is a conversation with Joe Aamidor of Aamidor Consulting and Jeanne Casey of Nuveen. If you add me in, you get J³. This is the fourth installment of our M&A Roundup series, recorded in February 2023 all about what's happening in the marketplace right now. We unpacked the most interesting recent mergers and acquisitions in the smart buildings industry and dove into why, our reaction to them, and other trends they’re related to.

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🎧 #138: The one where James gets interviewed

James Dice

Episode 138 is a special episode with Nexus Labs' new COO, Rosy Khalife. We introduce you to Rosy who, for the first time on the podcast, turns the tables on me and interviews me. We talk about my background before starting Nexus Labs, the founding story of the company, and the future. If you're looking for some background on Nexus Labs, this is definitely a good place to start.

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The Voice of the Customer

James Dice

Today’s newsletter is part 3 in our series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem: Voices of the buy personas. We have this saying in our industry: “every building is a snowflake.” Do you say it? It’s true… but we shouldn’t let that be an excuse for inaction or resisting change.

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🎧 #137: Jigar Shah wants to fund your Virtual Power Plant

James Dice

"We pay $10 billion per year for balancing the grid using natural gas, peaker plants, etc. when we could be paying that to households for those services instead."

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The humans of smart buildings: our "buyer" personas

James Dice

Today’s newsletter is part 2 in a series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem. Here’s a summary of the series: Part 1: The two sides of the ecosystem: buyers and sellers—where do you fit? (last week) Part 2: The humans of smart buildings: our "buyer" personas (today)

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🎧 #136: Innovation and case studies of grid-interactive efficient buildings

James Dice

Episode 136 is a conversation with Cindy Zhu, Director of Grid Services at Prescriptive Data. We primarily cover grid-interactive efficient buildings, or GEB, my second least favorite acronym in our industry (behind SPOG of course).

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January 2023 Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

James Dice

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

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The ecosystem: where do you fit?

James Dice

Buildings (and the industry supporting them) are transformed by humans and organizations of humans. Today’s newsletter kicks off a series about the humans we wrap around the tech stack to form the smart buildings ecosystem. Here’s where we’re headed:

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🎧 #135: Transforming the market, with regulation and without

Episode 135 is a conversation with Cliff Majersik, Senior Advisor at the Institute for Market Transformation, a nonprofit that’s focused on regulatory and nonregulatory ways to push the economy toward decarbonization.

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Why we invested in WattCarbon

James Dice

Last fall, we launched the Nexus Labs Syndicate and started off with an investment in Xeal. Today, I’m excited to announce our second investment in WattCarbon!WattCarbon, led by Nexus Pro member McGee Young, allows energy consumers to offset their energy use on a time and locational basis from renewable energy projects, demand response dispatch, and electrification projects sourced from their own communities, turning local buildings into decarbonization assets.Our investment was part of WattCarbon’s $4.5 million seed round led by True Ventures, with participation from Village Global, Jetstream, Not Boring Capital, Keiki Capital, Greensoil PropTech Ventures, and others.

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🎧 #134: The building operator's role in decarbonization and digitization

James Dice

Episode 134 is a conversation with Comly Wilson, CMO at Enertiv. I enjoyed this one because I believe in a lot of what Comly was saying about workflows being the key to decarbonizing buildings. And not just decarbonization, really implementing any new technology or changing the way things are done in any way requires you to start with the way people work currently and meet them where they’re at.

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New white paper: The 5 Vital Roles

Our latest white paper summarizes the five vital roles that every smart building program needs on the team. We talk a lot about the flashy new technology required for smart buildings. But we must always remember that when we're changing how things are done, it's people that make it happen.

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🎧 #133: How the building automation supply chain works (and when it doesn't)

James Dice

Episode 133 is a conversation and history lesson with Leroy Walden, a veteran of the building automation system integrator ecosystem in Atlanta, Georgia. We unpacked how the building automation supply chain functions, including the roles of the manufacturers, distributors, and integrators responsible for controlling HVAC systems in major metropolitan areas. And of course, we talked about the downsides and opportunities of that status quo when it comes to implementing smart building technologies. And as we’ve talked about in the past HVAC controls are one silo in the building that operates similarly to the other silos, so the insights in this conversation are applicable to access control, lighting, electrical products, etc.

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Where we're headed in 2023

James Dice

First, we must acknowledge what I believe is the giant elephant in the room: ME.

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🎧 #132: Refrigerants: the Cinderella of the Decarbonization Movement

James Dice

Episode 132 is a conversation with Tristam Coffin, Co-Founder of Effecterra. We started, as usual with Tristam’s background which includes heavy experience in the grocery vertical. But our main focus here is on sustainable refrigerants. We’ve spent a long time covering how the buildings industry needs to decarbonize by electrifying heating systems using heat pumps, but we and the industry as a whole have overlooked the elephant in the room: the GWP of refrigerants themselves and how they contribute to climate change and every organization’s progress toward net zero. Or, as Tristam said, refrigerants are like Cinderella: they haven’t been invited to the decarbonization ball.

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Kickstart your learning this year

James Dice

I'm back after taking a few weeks off for R&R and some exploration off of my normal beaten path. I can't think about smart buildings 24/7/365, can I? Before we talk about smart buildings, I have some carveouts to share from my explorations:

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Nexus Labs' Year in Review

James Dice

2022 Review: As we celebrate the holidays and start to wind down the year, I'm reflecting on the progress we've made in accelerating the transition to digital and decarbonized buildings.

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The commissioning agent

James Dice

We need a coordinated and systematic approach to testing and verifying that all of a building's systems are working together properly. That’s where the commissioning (Cx) agent comes in.

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🎧 #131: Google's BOS Program & Creating Software-Defined Buildings

James Dice

Episode 131 is a conversation with Kathy Farrington, Digital Buildings Lead at Google. This is the 4th episode in our Google series, which unpacks different facets of their global smart buildings program and dates back to 2020. This one with Kathy is probably where we should have started because as she shares, she was involved from the beginning when it was just a side project she focused on with her 20% time.

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The Network Manager

James Dice

The Network Layer is a vital part of a smart building's infrastructure. It is: ...a dedicated layer with its own hardware, software, standard operating procedures, and key stakeholders who take responsibility for doing it right. It should be converged, monitored, maintained, and have redundancy.

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It's Time to Rethink Physical Access Control

Lee Odess

The access control industry is in the midst of a transformation. This transformation is the difference between a $10B industry, which focuses just on security, and a $100B+ total addressable market.

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🎧 #130: Allianz's smart buildings program and the importance of the BOS

"For us, it's simpler to work with applications that go on top of the BOS because we can control the information being accessed. Without the BOS, transparency is limited, which limits the number of use cases.By adding this data layer, we're dramatically increasing transparency and the possibilities of what else can easily be added on top."

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Your November Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

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The MSI

As we celebrate the holidays and start to wind down the year, I'm reflecting on the progress in our industry in 2022. One definite area of progress is defining the specialist roles needed to make smart buildings successful. In this series, we're summarizing five vital roles that every smart building program needs on the team.

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🎧 #129: Decarbonizing New York City through Local Law 97

James Dice

“The tools that have always been successful at instigating change are benchmarking and performance standards. Let's use those tools and evolve them to better fit the needs of today's definition of a high-performance building, which includes the carbon aspect, grid interactivity, and occupant responsiveness."

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The Design Consultant

One definite area of progress is defining the specialist roles needed to make smart buildings successful. In this series, we're summarizing five vital roles that every smart building program needs on the team. We talk a lot about the flashy new technology required for smart buildings. But we must always remember that when we're changing how things are done, it's people that make it happen. Here are the five roles we're going to cover:

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🎧 #128: James McGinniss on DER technology and the future of electricity consumption (Replay)

“The grid is starting to look a lot like the internet. These IOT devices are distributed, digital, user owned and operated nodes. They can buy from the grid, they can sell from the grid, they can respond dynamically.

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The Smart Building Champion

We talk a lot about the flashy new technology required for smart buildings. But we must always remember that when we're changing how things are done, it's people that make it happen. Here are the five roles we're going to cover: The Smart Building Champion The Design Consultant The Master Systems IntegratorThe Network ManagerThe Commissioning Agent

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🎧 #127: CRE Market Talk #1 with Mandi Wedin and Joe Gaspardone

“Don't spend your time with the laggards who don't yet see the need for (smart building technology). When they see it they'll find you. Go find owners with a need and then meet that need."

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Energy efficiency thinking is outdated

The word “decarbonization” was everywhere. The green building community is undergoing two shifts: (1) from valuing energy efficiency to valuing the amount of carbon emitted and (2) from valuing “green” materials to valuing the amount of carbon emitted to get them in the building. The decarbonization push is underway beyond that conference… It's industry wide. Let’s focus on the first shift today: What does it mean to shift from energy to carbon?

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🎧 #126: Decarbonization from the trenches

“There is another use case for smart building systems and for BAS, and it is critical input data for designing low-carbon systems for your building that if you don't have that data, you are not going to design your systems properly. They will probably be oversized and a lot more expensive than they need to be compared to as if you had good data to design on."

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Why we invested in Xeal

It's been a month since we launched the Nexus Labs Syndicate and I'm excited to announce our first investment!Xeal provides hardware and software to real estate owners looking to provide EV charging as an amenity for their tenants. We're honored to join Keyframe Capital, ArcTern Ventures, Moderne Ventures, and others in Xeal's $40M Series B round.

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🎧 #125: Sara Neff on the roadmap to absolute zero carbon

“A building can only run as efficiently as its engineer knows how to run it. Unless you have an engineer-first mindset, none of your energy efficiency efforts is ever really going to reap the rewards."

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12
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Your October Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

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10
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New funding for decarbonization

A big shift is happening in financing for decarbonization projects in the United States. In my private conversations with real estate sustainability and ESG leaders, I've learned this is one of the top things on their minds.

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🎧 #124: Tearle Whitson Tells the Inside Story of Microsoft's Smart Buildings Program

“We can have all the technology in the world but dropping it into a building doesn't magically transform it. It ultimately is a tool. Your people can be empowered by this tool but it will never do everything for you. You have to set objectives, lean in and embrace the technology. You have to train your people and build the organization in a structure that supports it."

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Why you're underestimating M&A

So I decided to seek out some expert guidance from outside the core Nexus audience—what might people be missing by dismissing M&A as a transformational force? Enter: Proptech Bankers. They believe consolidation is inevitable; it will play a key role in fixing the current technology fragmentation in the smart building market; and any landlord or proptech company not currently in consolidation conversations is missing an important opportunity to control their destiny.Their answer as to why M&A will be key in fixing fragmentation is at the link below, along with feedback on what's happening around M&A in the current market and what startups should expect in the near and distant future.Why M&A will be key in fixing fragmentation

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Thought Leader: Why M&A will fix fragmentation in Smart Buildings

TL;DR: We spoke to Proptech Bankers about the current state of proptech M&A. They believe consolidation is inevitable; it will play a key role in fixi

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🎧 #123: October 2022 M&A Roundup with J³

“There's definitely still venture capital money out there looking for great companies, especially in the smart building space. As long as you have a clear thesis and value proposition and your tech addresses a need of a building owner/operator, you're going to pass this deeper diligence with flying colors."

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The Lens: Measurabl + Wegowise

Hey gamechangers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few words as poss

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How can analytics go mainstream?

“It’s not first to market that wins, it’s the first to cross the chasm.”—Geoffrey Moore

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🎧 #122: Matt Ellis on The New Business Case for Decarbonization and Why Platforms are Vital

"Real estate owners buy and sell assets and drive yield. So we needed to reframe little "e", the discussion on electrons, and expand into big "E", environmental social governance. Doing so helped the real estate owner understand not commodities, but yield and risk in return."

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🎧 #121: Stacy Smedley on the Road to Zero Carbon Construction and Where Technology Fits

“Step one (of 3) on reducing embodied carbon emissions is to start thinking about if we have to build a building at all. So if we just stopped building right now, there's plenty of empty space for us to put all that square footage into that we say we need. And beyond that, we have more than we need."

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The most important data for smarter buildings

What's the most important type of data for creating smarter buildings?I'd argue that for every type of building except data centers, it's occupancy data.

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Your August & September Member Digest [Nexus Pro]

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.Enjoy.

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🎧 #120: Fixing Offsets and Decarbonizing Buildings with McGee Young

Disclosure: Nexus Labs Syndicate is an investor in WattCarbon. “They're doing the same thing they did last year, but now it's called decarbonization. But the reality is, is that they are decarbonizing buildings. The work that we've been doing for 20 years is the right work to be doing we just don't have a metric to measure ourselves against and a way to value that work."

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Introducing: the Nexus Labs Syndicate

Today we're launching a new project here at Nexus Labs. Some of you will say, "What took you so long???". Others will say, "WTF?". This newsletter answers both of those questions, plus it invites you to participate in the fun. Commercial buildings owners are now required to digitize, decarbonize, protect the health of occupants, and provide those occupants with a great user experience—all while realizing the business results of each of the stakeholders involved. And all of this change is only happening faster and faster. 🤯They need to level up.

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🎧 #119: How service robots fit into the smart building ecosystem

“We see an expansion of robots doing 80% of a job in the service sector, allowing humans to do what's complex." —Greg Scott Welcome to Ne

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The future of metering

Before I shut down my consulting practice earlier this year, I had the opportunity to support one last building in Manhattan. This building has more submeters per square foot, per floor, per system, and per tenant than any building I've ever seen. AND, perhaps predictably, all that data is barely being used. We've talked before (most recently here) about how important utility data is for decarbonization and ESG goals. Figuring out how much carbon you emit today is the vital first step on the road to emitting zero.

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🎧 #118: Simplifying decarbonization with Aaron Block

“There's a lot of complexity that goes into building a technology that simplifies things for people." —Aaron Block Welcome to Nexus, a ne

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The 8 GEB enablers

This edition of the Nexus Newsletter is brought to you by enVerid Systems and Montgomery Technologies. Hey friends, "Grid-interactive efficient buil

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🎧 #117: 4 Steps to Sustainable Indoor Air Quality

“We can accomplish both sustainability and IAQ, but we need to think holistically. And we need to think in terms of layered strategies and framewor

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The IDL's role in simplifying 'smart'

As Passive Logic's CEO Troy Harvey said recently, buildings are the most complex things humans make. Complexity is one of the reasons why the intelligence of buildings lags behind more simple objects.

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