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Episode 178 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Keilly Witman from Refrigerant Management Solutions.
Episode 178 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Keilly Witman from Refrigerant Management Solutions. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:36)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (4:50)
Building Performance and Controls (16:04)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (21:34 )
Workplace Experience (29:22)
Sign off (33:03)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S693404-16073.
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
James Dice: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes. And now let's go onto the podcast.
All right. Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have some friends here with me today. Uh, Rosie and Brad are here, but I also have Keely, Whitman, Keely. [00:01:00] We're gonna, we're gonna introduce you in just a second, but it's fun to have a full talk show here, kind of, sort of vibe this week. Um, we're gonna talk through as we have been, uh, the, the four, what we think are, um, surprising insights for people to get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus community over the last few weeks.
If you want to get the full experience rather than just these little tastes of each topic, um, go on over to our website subscriber to the Nexus newsletter. Um, that's how you avoid the fomo. So, um, let's jump right in. We got a lot to cover here today. Um, what's been going on in the Nexus community? Brad, you wanna kick us off?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so excited to announce that we just sent invites to our second monthly building owner meetup. The topic for this one is adoption of tech tools to help digitize and optimize maintenance. So the thought there is that. There's these technology tools like CMMS or like FDD, and they're great for your buildings, but they're only [00:02:00] great for your buildings if people actually use them and adopt them and want to work with them.
So, um, the kind of the style of this is the second time we've done it is we bring together just building owners. Everybody gets together and we have these small, intimate breakout rooms where you talk with your colleagues about what's worked, what hasn't worked, how you're doing things. It's really cool 'cause you get to make connections with people who are struggling with the same problems as you, but you've maybe never talked to about this.
Um, so the invites went out. It's May 7th at 10:00 AM Mountain time. If you're a building owner and you didn't get an invite, uh, let us know and we'll add you to the list so that you can be there. We're looking forward to it.
James Dice: And this one came about from, we did our RFI for CMMS software, and we, what we basically heard was that if you're a building owner and you're trying to implement a new CMMS software, your biggest fear probably is that your technicians aren't gonna adopt that thing.
Right. Um, and so this is what we're gonna, we're gonna talk all about how do you get more stakeholders involved? In the, in the [00:03:00] process. So looking forward to that one.
Rosy Khalife: Um, okay, I'll go next. We are gearing up for Nexus Con, which is happening in October, and we're super excited to see you all there.
Hopefully you'll be joining us. Um, one quick update on the exhibitor side is, as you know, we have a marketplace floor, which is a little bit different than other conferences. So when that marketplace floor is open, nothing else is going on. There's no content happening. And so it's really awesome because if you are attending as an exhibitor, I.
You get to attend all the content and all the sessions that are actually happening, which is different than other conferences. I wish people would take a page out of our playbook and do that because it's awesome. Um, but we only have about 12, uh, booth left and so if you are thinking of attending as an exhibitor and you want to have a booth, feel free to reach out.
Um, you can ping any of us and we'll relay it to the right person, but we're hopefully looking forward to having you there.
James Dice: No, it's not very many. It's so people probably just have a few months left, I think is the, the moral of the [00:04:00] story there.
Rosy Khalife: The message is there's a few months, so get to it. If you're Rosie, how
James Dice: many, how many booths, how many vendors came to us two weeks before last week's conference and said, I want a booth.
Rosy Khalife: Too many, way too many to the point where I just couldn't, we didn't have them, you know, we were at capacity, so Yeah, they had to,
Keilly Witman: so that's not gonna, oh,
Rosy Khalife: and another important point is you can't attend if you're not exhibiting. Like we don't have a bunch of vendors walking around that don't have boots that are just there.
Right? That wouldn't be fair to all the other exhibitors. And so if you're an exhibitor, if you're a vendor, I mean, that's how you get to attend the show.
James Dice: That's a key point. I feel like we're gonna be telling people in September, like, sorry, sorry. I don't know what to tell you. We told you. Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: we warned you.
Told you
James Dice: about this. Okay, cool. Let's jump into it. I think that's a good, good enough update for now. So let's start with our, um, operations and maintenance section. So this section, um, of our community is the facility managers, um, all of [00:05:00] the people that are in engineering groups, uh, service contractors. Um, we're talking about tech for them.
And this, this is where we bring our friend Keely in for the discussion here. So, Keely, can you, uh, introduce yourself please?
Keilly Witman: Uh, sure. My name is Keely Whitman and I'm the head of a company called Refrigerant Management Solutions. Uh, we help, um, we call them refrigerant end users. Um, try to move to more environmentally friendly refrigerants, uh, adopt advanced refrigeration technologies, reduce their remissions.
And basically a lot of our job right now is helping people understand compliance with all of the new refrigerant regulations. I got my start. I worked at the EPA, I'm the person who started the voluntary partnership at the EPA, that's called the The Green Show Partnership. I'm the founder of the [00:06:00]North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council.
I used to be the director of refrigerant management and sustainability at HEB. Which is a, a big, uh, supermarket company in the United States.
James Dice: You were like the OG of refrigerant management. And you say all these things, like, it took me 30 minutes when I was talking to you to understand like the fact that you worked on the billing owner side, you worked on the regulations side, and now you're helping all of these, you know, they're mostly grocery chains, right?
When you say refrigeration end users, it's mostly grocery chains.
Keilly Witman: Well, it, it's, uh. There's a huge group of refrigerant end users. My specialty is definitely on the food retail side. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's, it's pretty amazing, these regulations actually. It, it's even not just refrigerants, right? Like your asthma inhalers.
Um, oh, okay. Spray adhesives. Um, [00:07:00] uh. Fire explosion protection in bakeries, um, halo fire systems in the airplanes, you know, refrigerated trucking, right? So it, it extends so much beyond food retailers, but I, I kind of pick my lane and I, I try to stay in it. There's more than enough to take up five or six lifetimes just understanding refrigerant management for food retailers.
Yeah. Um, yeah, so that's, that's my main area. But frankly, especially when it comes to the regulations. The regulations are the regulations pretty much regardless of, of what your area of business is. If you use certain types of, of chemicals, you've gotta comply. Yeah.
James Dice: So, yeah, and we started, it's probably been two years since um, I had Tristan Coffin on the Nexus Podcast here, and we've been, I'd say since then.
More, more so recently sort of trying to [00:08:00] expand the smart buildings ecosystem to include the technologies related to re managing refrigerants, because it does feel like, it feels so important for grocery specifically, but it also feels like, I mean, we, we started in HVAC control. That's like the, the place where this all began.
All of the HVAC ref like systems that use. The same refrigerants that we're talking about on the grocery side, but also the need to electrify these systems over time. This is gonna start to apply to every sort to sort of building. And so that's why I kind of have, have dug into it as this total beginner.
'cause I feel like I'm sort of a beginner on this, on this refrigeration stuff, and it's been fascinating to sort of peel back the, the onion a little bit. Can you talk about Keely? Oh sorry, go ahead.
Keilly Witman: No, I was just gonna say it's, it's a good time to get interested in it, honestly. Um. I think for everybody involved, for several decades now, it has been just historically an [00:09:00] incredibly frustrating experience.
Mm-hmm. Because, um, the story of refrigerant management has been the government forcing people to move from, from one really bad refrigerant to a slightly less bad refrigerant. You pay for that entire technology transition, and then the government decides to regulate the one that they just told you to move to, right?
Mm-hmm. For the first time ever, there's really a, a, you know, an end to this, right? It's, it's a, the solution is out there. Ironically, it's to go back to the refrigerants that were used at the very beginning of refrigeration. Unfortunately, they were not used safely, which is why the chemical refrigerants came out right.
Um, but of course we have different safety standards now. All of these refrigerants can be used safely and, and, you know, they've been around forever. So if there are any environmental effects, we, we know about them. And, and pretty [00:10:00] much if you move to those refrigerants, you know, that's it. You can do away with this transition, you know, forever.
Right? Which is a new thing for us. So, um, welcome, welcome to the. The positive part of the solution. Right. Um, good time to get involved,
James Dice: but most, so can you read, can we just like, give people maybe just a five minute overview of where we're at today? So, um, I, I, I guess. Let's just start real quick. We wrote an article about this, the one that we, that you were not featured in, around what makes refrigeration management technology relevant to these refrigeration end users today.
Can you just sort of paint the picture of like, what's going on in the background around, um, I'll, I'll just lead you into this, uh, regulations, workforce shortages. Um. On and on and on, but, and sustainability I think as well. Um, can you just talk about sort of the [00:11:00] backdrop here?
Keilly Witman: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, well the first thing is that, uh, food retailers especially, they use, they use a lot of refrigerants as you can imagine.
Um, they also leak a lot of refrigerants. And when you take the environmental effect of those refrigerants, because they are incredibly potent greenhouse gases, your average, uh, supermarket actually. Um, leaks, enough refrigerant that those refrigerant leaks, uh, have a bigger impact on climate than their entire annual electricity consumption.
Right? So it's, it's a huge problem. On top of that, it costs an awful lot of money, right? So you take, the average retailer leaks about a thousand pounds of refrigerant a year. You know, take anywhere from 30 to $50 a pound. Um, you know, and then take that, um, you know, some of these supermarkets, uh, spend several million [00:12:00] dollars every year just on replacement refrigerant for what they leak.
So, uh, depending on your perspective, um, there's a lot of different. Uh, reasons why this is really, really important to people. Um, at the same time as a lot of the, the solutions are now becoming more prevalent, we're unfortunately faced with a situation where we don't have the workforce and the technical expertise to go out and implement the solution really well.
Um, and, you know, that's, that's a problem that has developed. For a lot of different reasons, right? It's, it's no different than any other trade, like, you know, plumbers, electricians, but what has been particular about this industry is that supermarket companies themselves have just driven, um, prices and, and kind of respect for this area of service technician.
And, you know, let's face it, who [00:13:00] wants to be called out at three o'clock in the morning on a Saturday? Or who wants to be on a roof in Texas in August for eight hours trying to fix something? Um, it's really hard to recruit people to be service technicians in this area, despite the fact that within two years or so you can be making six figures.
Um, it's not that you don't earn a lot, but um, it, you know. We're being confronted with regulatory overload. The EPA just put in a, a whole new set of regulations. Um, I, I work with. People in environmental departments who are responsible for compliance in all areas. And it's not uncommon for them to say, you know, I deal with hazardous waste.
I deal with asbestos. I've even dealt with a Superfund site. I have never experienced anything like refrigerant regulations. And they say the, the burden of these refrigerant [00:14:00] regulations outpaces everything else, all put together. People don't know that they live, they don't understand the regulations, so they don't even know that they're not complying and they don't understand the complexity.
So they're kind of living in ignorant bliss. You know, out there, a lot of times they, they talk to me and they sit there and they say. My God, I have the feeling I'm never going to be happy again. Like, I, I almost wish I hadn't met you because, you know, now I'm aware that I'm in really, really, really big trouble, like, with all of this.
Right. So, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of, you know, you look at it from all these different angles and you could talk about each one of those probably for hours and hours, so,
James Dice: yeah.
Keilly Witman: Yeah. But that's just a general overview.
James Dice: Yeah. And we're, we're gonna keep covering the sort of the. Intersection of all of that and the technology side.
Um, we've started it with two articles. One was written around sort of what's [00:15:00] driving investment, which kind of summarizes a lot of what you just said. And then the second piece, which we feasted a lot of your opinions in, which is talking about how grocery grocers and refrigeration end users are really just in a.
Tough situation with their current software tools in that they're siloed and fragmented and really are integrated together. And you, anyone can, will put that link to that in the show notes. Um, Keely really helped us like understand all the different tools that. These fms, well, there aren't, aren't really fms in grocery.
There's, uh, you know, you know, national groups who then rely on local maintenance people and local service providers. And this ecosystem, I think is what we're gonna dive into next. Um, but thank you Keely, for helping us like get started with this and start to understand Yeah. How this all, all works. So we'll, we'll be keeping you, uh, in, in the loop here as we, as we keep going.
Sure. Great. My pleasure. Alright, let's move on to building performance and controls. [00:16:00] This is for all of our energy managers and commissioning agents. Sometimes sustainability people if they actually want to get in the weeds rather than stay at the portfolio level reporting. No offense, uh, Brad, take us into this one.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so I just published an article, which was actually one of my favorite that I've written in quite some time. It was, it's called Cross System Energy Management, using technology to move beyond Improving Components in Isolation. So how this came about was we started interviewing energy managers and experts on energy management about how they're thinking about.
Like systems and systems of systems because you can just try to optimize your chiller or you could just try to optimize your air, or just your electricity or just your hot water loops and like, how do you think of all those pieces and how you can put 'em all together. Um, and the insights were fascinating.
So the, the, the, uh. The whole piece. The article starts [00:17:00] with like the basics. 'cause that's, it's like kind of chronological building on itself. So we have a really good interview with Insight intelligence, Matt Gilnet, about how they help their customers with the basics of like, are your set points right?
Are your schedules right? You think you have these ash rate 36 guidelines implemented, but are they actually working? Um, and then we get to like the ROI aspect of it. So we talked to KW engineering about how if you've got the basics and you're trying to do these capital projects, how you can work with the CFO and that, that group within your company to get like that buy-in.
That this is good for energy and for the financial budget if you're thinking ahead to like big energy projects. Then behind the paywall we go into some super awesome like real case studies of people who've made it that far. They've done the basics, they've figured out the capital projects and they've moved past that.
So one example is we talked with Weber State, uh, about their new system where they got rid of all of their gas boilers, they got rid of their central chiller plant, and they have hybrid VRF [00:18:00] throughout their whole campus. So. If you're like me and you didn't know what the hybrid in hybrid VRF means, this is actually a relevant segue to what Keely was talking about, is that they've got their, their refrigeration cycle very isolated and small, and then there's, uh, there's heat transfer to water systems that actually pipe all that hot water, cold water around the campus so that you've got this small, uh, consolidated refrigeration system that helps you with, you know, the leaks.
Um, so it was an awesome piece. Uh, really enjoyed everyone who helped with it. But the, the thing I wanted to bring up to you guys, the interesting point was I actually did those interviews kind of in reverse order. So I heard about all the cool flashy stuff, and then I kind of ended with like, okay, here's the basics.
And it just brought to my attention like. You know, it's really exciting to go listen to these amazing stories and like, it's probably inspiring for energy managers, but it can be a little bit of a distraction if you don't start with like the basics of all the stuff that you have to do to [00:19:00] even consider doing a capital project like Weber State did.
So, I don't know, it's kind of a question, it's kind of just a point of view, but what do you guys think about, like, we wanna, we wanna show the cool projects, but we don't wanna belittle all the like. Mundane or like real in the, in the weeds work that it takes to get there? I think it,
James Dice: yeah, I think you're right.
I think it speaks to energy management has to sort of be integrated in with these other workflows, right? So I. You were talking about the like basics, easy stuff, and to bring that down to the ground. What, what you mean is getting into where you are using FDD to monitor your performance of your building and make sure that it's optimized today and with what you have right now.
And then with the capital projects, you were talking about sort of integrating the long-term energy management plan into your capital planning. Right? Exactly. And so it's, it's, it's a little bit, to me it's about like, [00:20:00] um, I think. I think everyone in our industry has trouble being in a silo, right? And sort of being away from how actually stuff gets done.
But I think you, you had a really great piece, uh, of this article that's talking about, like, don't just go replace your chiller or don't just go replace your boiler. You should have a plan where you've thought about the system of systems and, and not just that individual piece of equipment. And so when that chiller or boiler fails.
What is your long-term plan? And I think the Weber State case study is a good example of, they've thought ahead and said that when that thing fails, here's what we're gonna do to replace it. Or when we build a new building, here's the system that plugs into the, the. Campus loop. Yeah. You
Brad Bonavida: know? Yeah. Justin Owen from Weber State, he was saying like, to your point on how far ahead they've thought about their capital projects, they've got a 2014 carbon goal, I think it's carbon neutrality by 2014.
Or sorry, excuse me, 2040. Oh, I was like, yeah. Carbon neutral.
2014. Oh, [00:21:00] 2040.
Brad Bonavida: Carbon neutrality goal. And he just explained it as like they've gotten. Ahead of their capital projects in a way that that goal to them is like, it's a construction timeline. Like this is based on, uh, equipment that's available today.
They know how they're going to get there. It's like, how quickly can we do the construction to get there? So that's like the level of capital planning that they've gotten to where their energy management is so integrated into it that, uh, it's just how quickly can they make these things happen? Really?
James Dice: Okay. Let's move on to the next one. Um, the next one is. Integrating, integrating, connecting and securing devices. So this is our ot Cybersecurity Networking beat. Brad, take us away on this one.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so this is a Nexus Con recording that's live on our site for pro members. Uh, this is for the nerdiest of nerds.
It was in our practitioner section. I did rewatch this whole thing and I think I learned more from this one than any other one 'cause I am not an expert on ontologies and it's pretty awesome. It's got a ton of people who know a ton about these [00:22:00] subjects. You've got. Gabe Fiero from School of Mines, Perew from nist.
Brian Turner from OTI, Trevor Soar from MSIE. Josh Molen from Brainbox. Nick Ky from Clockworks. And then Andrew Rogers from Ace IOT is the moderator for the whole thing. Um, and it's, it's kind of split into three sections. So there's this great conversa, oh, there's also Richard Reed from Google. I missed that part.
But the first section is a conversation around UDMI. Which is not a protocol, but it stands for device management or no, universal Device management. Uh, interface.
James Dice: Can I just interrupt you and say that these people on this panel have forgotten more about integration and ontologies than any of us will ever know?
Like this is like a absolute expert panel. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: It is universal device management interface. Um, anyway, so that's the first part, which I didn't even know what that was when I started it. And then there's a segue to Josh Mullen from Brainbox AI [00:23:00] who gives. Probably one of the best high level explanations of how you can set your building up for advanced supervisory control that I've ever heard.
Like he brings it to ground with what building owners should think about. And then what I wanted to talk a little about, a little bit about here is the last section is a conversation around, uh, ontologies. So Andrew Rogers moderates. Um, and there's, you know, there's, uh, let's see who's part of that. We've got Nick Eski, who represents.
He's involved with Haystack Paris two was involved with Ashra 2 2 3 P and then Gabe Fierro is on the brick board as well. Um, and I just think I gotta give some credit to our friend Andrew Rogers, 'cause he does a great job kind of explaining the differences between all those ontologies. So I was actually just gonna share, it's two minutes long, but he gives his high level overview on all three of 'em, and it's like really solid.
So I'm gonna play it here.
So, uh, you know, there's, there's all these interconnections of these different ontologies. Um, [00:24:00] I think that my, here's my quick version and we'll let the panelists help, help teach me something and hopefully you all in the process. But, um, uh, brick is, uh, probably was the first to market with a complete ontology, a thing that could be defined as an ontology, which means that the concepts in it have requirements about what they are.
So in brick, you can have an air handler, and if it's an air handler. It has to have certain properties, or it's not air handler. Um, haystack was originally just a collection of tags that were standardized, that they had, you know, the, the tag itself had a standardized meaning, but any particular collection of tags wasn't necessarily standardized.
What's nice about Haystack is that it's very easy to query these really complex graphs with haystack tags, and they all can be correlated if you know what a, a. A piece of equipment is an air handler in brick, then you know what set of tags [00:25:00] are applied to that in haystack. And any decent, um, independent daily or or software application that's using these, these models can look at that and let the user query with a very simple tag-based language.
2, 2, 3, uh, which is Ash's effort goes. A level of abstraction deeper. And one of the things that that's missing, um, or it potentially is in brick, but maybe isn't, um, is that there's a lot of implied knowledge about our building systems that are in how they're connected to each other. That is not necessarily represented in the point names.
They're not represented in the device names necessarily. Um. And especially when you go to like advanced applications like Nix, um, where you're, where you're really doing deep analysis to determine if a piece of equipment's functioning correctly, you know, the length of the duct run. Just not just the fact that it's a duct run or that this air [00:26:00] handler is connected to this VAV, but the length of that duct run means a lot about pressure drop, expected pressure drop when the dampers at this position.
All of these things at the, the 2, 2, 3 effort kind of. Goes deeper still and allows you to encode all of that information about your system. And when Paris, you talks about the simulation and the representation, so you ha you can actually have enough information in your 2, 3, 3 P model to simulate the system.
Brad Bonavida: I just thought that was really cool because as someone who's not an expert on that mm-hmm. Um, I was always kind of confused about like. There's open source, different communities who are doing these different things. Are they competing against each other? Like how does this work? And the way he broke down how a building owner could benefit from at least all three of those I thought was pretty cool.
James Dice: Can I say two things real quick? One is if anyone's out there and they're a pro member watching our recordings, I've just started to watch them recently because we're kind of reusing them in our content. And I find it so funny when someone walks across the. [00:27:00] The camera. It's, it's like we're clearly filming this.
How are you walking your dome? Right across the, the middle of this video. It's hilarious to me. That's funny. So that one, shout out to Osmond who walked right, right through the, the middle. We love you of that video while Brad was playing it. Um, um, the second thing I wanna say is I, I hope the people that haven't gone to Nexus Con.
Realize that we get really nerdy. There's a section of our community that goes deep into the weeds, and we're gonna continue to lean into that. One of the pieces of feedback we've gotten is like, I wanna go deeper. And so we're gonna try to make that happen. Go even deeper this year for only a subset.
It's not the whole community, but there's gonna be a room you can be in that that, or a corner of the room that you can be in that is gonna get, get super nerdy. I just feel like everything that he's talking about, all these like industry efforts are moving so effing slow. Like Ashray 2 23 P has been P, which [00:28:00] is proposed for how long?
Ever since Nexus has existed, almost go
Rosy Khalife: off.
James Dice: Like at what point is this gonna, like the industry is moving on without this shit. That's how I feel. And someone can write me and tell me I'm wrong, but it, it almost feels like to me like, like these, these committees and these groups should come to us and tell us why this is relevant for us to include in Nexus Con this year.
That's what I said. I like it. That's what I said.
Brad Bonavida: Okay. It's awesome.
Rosy Khalife: Okay.
Brad Bonavida: It's
James Dice: moving too slow. Everyone's moving on. Everyone's out there building their products. And they're gonna keep building their products and not wait for this to happen.
Brad Bonavida: Is that a symptom of them being so communal and open source and not connected to anybody's actual revenue stream?
Is it's like they're an afterthought. No one really, you know, is seeing the profit from them moving forward?
James Dice: I don't know. I think it's tough. I dunno, either. I think we want to know. People will let us know. I think I have some opinions, but they're not [00:29:00] as informed. I'm not gonna stand behind them as as much as.
I think other people would, but tell, tell us why you have all the license. Everyone tell us why we should care about that. This anymore. All right, next, next one. Our last one is around, uh, workplace experience. So we had an article that we produced called Curing IO OT Data Overwhelm, how Workplace Pros Are Turning Raw Occupancy and IAQ Data into Actionable Insights.
Mm-hmm. Um, I, I think. The one thing we wanna bring up here this week is the role of data experts, and this is one thing that I found very fascinating when I dug into all the interviews around this. I think I did five or six interviews for this article, and I think I spent half the piece talking about how.
You really still need, like AI doesn't solve it, visualization doesn't solve it. You really still need this team of software to [00:30:00] help the expert user analyze the data that's coming off of the sensor. Um, and this is like, is this surprising to you guys? Would you think that in 2025 if you had occupancy and IAQ data, you'd be able to surface insights without.
A human digging into the data and telling you what the insights are, is that surprising to you? It's tough.
Brad Bonavida: I, I think that, I think back to a conversation I had with Kevin Sauer from Sour Strategy Works, who does exactly what you're talking about. He's that expert who like goes in and does that and how.
They, they had, they got back to the point of like having people walk floors and saying like, okay, we know people are here, but what are they actually doing? Like there's a conference room, it's always in use. Oh, it's one guy who likes to take Zoom calls in there and it's a 12 person conference room. So it's like, yes, with optical sensors.
I imagine it would be further, but also like it's just so complex. He brought up the [00:31:00] weather and how that affects when people are there and what they're doing and just. I, I guess I don't, the more I've do like dove into it, I'm not surprised. It's too complicated. Humans are complicated and there's too many things about their day-to-day that are going on that make the data like not tell the whole story.
James Dice: I do think the vendors are making inroads at it. Butler showed me one of the, one of the pieces of their product that they're, they're adding onto, they have a data analysis team, but they're also improving their products so that those analysts can do things like Mark a certain piece of the floor plan to tell you this is like, uh, a type, certain type of space.
And then you can take that and analyze those types of spaces across the portfolio. So it's like an update of the product. In conjunction with what the analyst needs, which I thought was interesting.
Rosy Khalife: Right. I think the other problem with all of these technologies is when you put it into your space, you are trying to make it as easy for the users, like the tenants of the space as possible.
So you don't [00:32:00] wanna ask them to do anything. You just wanna like put this thing over the door or in the room or whatever, and it's like. It's supposed to gather what it needs. But that's really hard because if you could ask those people for something like before that person walks into that conference room, if they had to access the conference room in some capacity and say like, I'm just one person.
I have this one call, then you wouldn't need the other person that's analyzing the data. 'cause you would've already clocked that and like knew what he was doing. Right. And so it's like a balance of you wanna put these sensors in and not bother anyone. But then you have to do all this other shit after the fact to actually make the data usable.
James Dice: You don't want the office worker thinking about any of this. Right. Maybe
Brad Bonavida: that's where the tenant engagement application comes in though. Like if they're really dependent on an app, because it helps them with room booking and scheduling and getting in. But it's also gonna tell you really well what they're doing.
Like maybe that's, you know, the bridge that can help the tenant actually tell you, the occupier actually tell you what they're spending their time doing. Totally. So [00:33:00] true.
James Dice: All right. Yeah. Uh, all right. That's all for our news today. Our talk show's over. Let's finish with some carve outs. All right, so how about you, Keely?
What's your carve out?
Keilly Witman: I'll tell you, this is the toughest part, I think, of the entire process because all I do is work. I have no life. I have no other interests. And so when you wrote, this is the section to talk about, like what else you've been doing. I thought. My God, I might have to like, quickly get interested in something so that I have something to talk about.
But I decided, um, I, I think the most interesting thing going on in my life is my battle with the koi ponds that I inherited. I moved into a, a house two years ago and the people before me, it was this wonderful, beautiful garden with this pond. Filled with these koi fish and I kind of looked at it and thought, wow, well, that's not really something I would've chosen for myself.
But right now I feel like every minute of my life outside of work is being taken up with [00:34:00] trying to save these COI fish. I'm battling a family of ducks and a giant Blue Heron has discovered by Pond
James Dice: wants do constantly
Keilly Witman: interrupting meetings and saying, wait a minute. I have to save my fish and I run out the door and I clap my arms around and I say, get away from my fish.
Stop eating my fish. Right? And I used to have about two them, but I think like less than, I mean probably the best. Fed her in, in, in North America. Um, and so, yeah, so that's what's going on in my life.
James Dice: That's awesome. That's a good one. You're gonna gonna beat all
Keilly Witman: of you. Beat us. That's great. I have a
James Dice: quick, I have a quick carve out to share about Keeley's company.
So everyone should go to their website and you're immediately hit with a picture that you don't see in any other companies, which is an entire team full of women.
Keilly Witman: Yes. All
James Dice: looking very proud to be a team full of women. And so I think that, that I, I enjoyed [00:35:00] going to your guys' website. That was great. Great.
Keilly Witman: Me too. That was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, and it's not that we have anything against hiring men. Um, it's, it has more to do with the fact that. Like, this isn't even a job when we try to post jobs. We don't even know what to call it. It's not like you're looking for an engineer or something. Right? Yeah.
We have
James Dice: the same problem.
Keilly Witman: Yeah. Yeah. So totally. Yeah. But it is, it's a great, it's a great atmosphere and those smiles that you see, they're, they're real. I mean, I can tell, we just walk around smiling at each other all the time because we're, you know, we love our jobs and, and we love the team.
Brad Bonavida: Brad, you're next.
I'm excited about mine, James. 'cause you don't know it and I think that you're gonna really like it because I haven't told you about this, but. One thing I'm good for is I'm always like a year late on trends, but I just finished watching Ted Lasso and it's fantastic. Yeah, it is really good. So the one thing I was gonna say [00:36:00] about it, the re like why is it so good, is because you could put a whole family or a whole group of friends in there and they thought so hard about satisfying every type of audience member, you know what I mean?
Like. There's this sports aspect for the jock, and then there's like romance, and then there's like this wholesome part and this like mental awareness part and good family stuff and comedy. It's like every different type of person likes a different piece of the show. So, sorry it took me so long, James, because it's like, and s favorite, but it's, yeah, it's cussing.
Yeah. Rosie loves
James Dice: it too. Uh, it And they, yeah, they have lots of cussing in there, which is needed for some parts of the family. Yeah. And thank God they're coming back for another season. Do you guys know that? Wait. Yes.
Rosy Khalife: I thought it was done.
James Dice: No, no, they're coming back.
Rosy Khalife: I wonder how that happened.
James Dice: Yeah. I don't know how that's
Brad Bonavida: gonna work, what the story's gonna be,
James Dice: but we'll see.
There's been a lot of protests in the United States lately. I think that was what there've been protesting.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's the old, that's it.
James Dice: Um, all right. Rosie. Rosie, what's yours? That was a joke.
Rosy Khalife: Alright. So as I [00:37:00] think of all the things I do outside of Nexus, one of the things that I've been doing lately.
Which is so random is I've been researching other parts of the country that I haven't been to and trying to get a sense, like I feel like we have a, the United States is a large country and there's so many places I haven't been to, and I've just been fascinated with some of the areas that nobody lives in.
Like there's plots of land that are a hundred acres just. There's nothing there. There's nothing going on. There's no one around. And it's so interesting. And so that is my car be
Brad Bonavida: as someone who lives west of the Mississippi. That's such an east coast thing to say, coast thing to say. So much land
James Dice: out there.
Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'll, I'll close this off. You're so weird, Rosie. Um, I. I'll close this off. Um, I had a great call with [00:38:00] one of our longtime awesome community members, uh, Joe Gasper yesterday, and he told me about the impact one of our articles had on him and the company. Um, the article, we'll put it in the show notes.
It's about the concept of anti fragility. And this concept is important, I think just as it was when I wrote it back in, in, um, COVID times. That article was probably written in May, 2020, something like that. And I was reading this book called Anti-Fragile by Nasem Nicholas eb, and I was trying to explain how Smart Buildings technology helps a building owner, um, be more antifragile in their operations.
And what Anti FRA Antifragility is, is when disorder is happening, an anti-fragile system actually gains from disorder. And it's a very counterintuitive. Concept. Um, but I would, I think there's a lot [00:39:00] of chaos and disorder going on in our economy right now and on, in the United States, obviously, and anyone that does business with the United States.
And so, um, I would just, uh, I, I'm revisiting that and reading, reading it for myself again, even though it's my own writing. Um. Joe's recommendation. So thank you Joe. And I recommend anybody that's struggling with the chaos that's going on right now to, uh, revisit that concept and sort of ask what you can do to set yourself up and your systems to be, uh, ride the wave rather than get crushed by it, basically.
Rosy Khalife: I love that. Cool. Shout out to Naim, who is Lebanese, so that's cool.
James Dice: He is an in individual thinker. Original thinker. That's awesome. Like, like most Lebanese that I know are All right, y'all. See you in two weeks. Sounds
Brad Bonavida: good. See you guys. Bye.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to [00:40:00] this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
Make sure to tag us in the post so we can see it. Have a good one.
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Episode 178 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Keilly Witman from Refrigerant Management Solutions.
Episode 178 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Keilly Witman from Refrigerant Management Solutions. In this episode of the Nexus Podcast, the Nexus Labs team breaks down the top stories relevant to energy managers, facility managers, IT/OT managers, and workplace managers.
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (1:36)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (4:50)
Building Performance and Controls (16:04)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (21:34 )
Workplace Experience (29:22)
Sign off (33:03)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S693404-16073.
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
James Dice: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes. And now let's go onto the podcast.
All right. Welcome back to the Nexus podcast. It's James. I have some friends here with me today. Uh, Rosie and Brad are here, but I also have Keely, Whitman, Keely. [00:01:00] We're gonna, we're gonna introduce you in just a second, but it's fun to have a full talk show here, kind of, sort of vibe this week. Um, we're gonna talk through as we have been, uh, the, the four, what we think are, um, surprising insights for people to get a taste of what's going on in the Nexus community over the last few weeks.
If you want to get the full experience rather than just these little tastes of each topic, um, go on over to our website subscriber to the Nexus newsletter. Um, that's how you avoid the fomo. So, um, let's jump right in. We got a lot to cover here today. Um, what's been going on in the Nexus community? Brad, you wanna kick us off?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so excited to announce that we just sent invites to our second monthly building owner meetup. The topic for this one is adoption of tech tools to help digitize and optimize maintenance. So the thought there is that. There's these technology tools like CMMS or like FDD, and they're great for your buildings, but they're only [00:02:00] great for your buildings if people actually use them and adopt them and want to work with them.
So, um, the kind of the style of this is the second time we've done it is we bring together just building owners. Everybody gets together and we have these small, intimate breakout rooms where you talk with your colleagues about what's worked, what hasn't worked, how you're doing things. It's really cool 'cause you get to make connections with people who are struggling with the same problems as you, but you've maybe never talked to about this.
Um, so the invites went out. It's May 7th at 10:00 AM Mountain time. If you're a building owner and you didn't get an invite, uh, let us know and we'll add you to the list so that you can be there. We're looking forward to it.
James Dice: And this one came about from, we did our RFI for CMMS software, and we, what we basically heard was that if you're a building owner and you're trying to implement a new CMMS software, your biggest fear probably is that your technicians aren't gonna adopt that thing.
Right. Um, and so this is what we're gonna, we're gonna talk all about how do you get more stakeholders involved? In the, in the [00:03:00] process. So looking forward to that one.
Rosy Khalife: Um, okay, I'll go next. We are gearing up for Nexus Con, which is happening in October, and we're super excited to see you all there.
Hopefully you'll be joining us. Um, one quick update on the exhibitor side is, as you know, we have a marketplace floor, which is a little bit different than other conferences. So when that marketplace floor is open, nothing else is going on. There's no content happening. And so it's really awesome because if you are attending as an exhibitor, I.
You get to attend all the content and all the sessions that are actually happening, which is different than other conferences. I wish people would take a page out of our playbook and do that because it's awesome. Um, but we only have about 12, uh, booth left and so if you are thinking of attending as an exhibitor and you want to have a booth, feel free to reach out.
Um, you can ping any of us and we'll relay it to the right person, but we're hopefully looking forward to having you there.
James Dice: No, it's not very many. It's so people probably just have a few months left, I think is the, the moral of the [00:04:00] story there.
Rosy Khalife: The message is there's a few months, so get to it. If you're Rosie, how
James Dice: many, how many booths, how many vendors came to us two weeks before last week's conference and said, I want a booth.
Rosy Khalife: Too many, way too many to the point where I just couldn't, we didn't have them, you know, we were at capacity, so Yeah, they had to,
Keilly Witman: so that's not gonna, oh,
Rosy Khalife: and another important point is you can't attend if you're not exhibiting. Like we don't have a bunch of vendors walking around that don't have boots that are just there.
Right? That wouldn't be fair to all the other exhibitors. And so if you're an exhibitor, if you're a vendor, I mean, that's how you get to attend the show.
James Dice: That's a key point. I feel like we're gonna be telling people in September, like, sorry, sorry. I don't know what to tell you. We told you. Yeah,
Rosy Khalife: we warned you.
Told you
James Dice: about this. Okay, cool. Let's jump into it. I think that's a good, good enough update for now. So let's start with our, um, operations and maintenance section. So this section, um, of our community is the facility managers, um, all of [00:05:00] the people that are in engineering groups, uh, service contractors. Um, we're talking about tech for them.
And this, this is where we bring our friend Keely in for the discussion here. So, Keely, can you, uh, introduce yourself please?
Keilly Witman: Uh, sure. My name is Keely Whitman and I'm the head of a company called Refrigerant Management Solutions. Uh, we help, um, we call them refrigerant end users. Um, try to move to more environmentally friendly refrigerants, uh, adopt advanced refrigeration technologies, reduce their remissions.
And basically a lot of our job right now is helping people understand compliance with all of the new refrigerant regulations. I got my start. I worked at the EPA, I'm the person who started the voluntary partnership at the EPA, that's called the The Green Show Partnership. I'm the founder of the [00:06:00]North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council.
I used to be the director of refrigerant management and sustainability at HEB. Which is a, a big, uh, supermarket company in the United States.
James Dice: You were like the OG of refrigerant management. And you say all these things, like, it took me 30 minutes when I was talking to you to understand like the fact that you worked on the billing owner side, you worked on the regulations side, and now you're helping all of these, you know, they're mostly grocery chains, right?
When you say refrigeration end users, it's mostly grocery chains.
Keilly Witman: Well, it, it's, uh. There's a huge group of refrigerant end users. My specialty is definitely on the food retail side. Mm-hmm. Um, but it's, it's pretty amazing, these regulations actually. It, it's even not just refrigerants, right? Like your asthma inhalers.
Um, oh, okay. Spray adhesives. Um, [00:07:00] uh. Fire explosion protection in bakeries, um, halo fire systems in the airplanes, you know, refrigerated trucking, right? So it, it extends so much beyond food retailers, but I, I kind of pick my lane and I, I try to stay in it. There's more than enough to take up five or six lifetimes just understanding refrigerant management for food retailers.
Yeah. Um, yeah, so that's, that's my main area. But frankly, especially when it comes to the regulations. The regulations are the regulations pretty much regardless of, of what your area of business is. If you use certain types of, of chemicals, you've gotta comply. Yeah.
James Dice: So, yeah, and we started, it's probably been two years since um, I had Tristan Coffin on the Nexus Podcast here, and we've been, I'd say since then.
More, more so recently sort of trying to [00:08:00] expand the smart buildings ecosystem to include the technologies related to re managing refrigerants, because it does feel like, it feels so important for grocery specifically, but it also feels like, I mean, we, we started in HVAC control. That's like the, the place where this all began.
All of the HVAC ref like systems that use. The same refrigerants that we're talking about on the grocery side, but also the need to electrify these systems over time. This is gonna start to apply to every sort to sort of building. And so that's why I kind of have, have dug into it as this total beginner.
'cause I feel like I'm sort of a beginner on this, on this refrigeration stuff, and it's been fascinating to sort of peel back the, the onion a little bit. Can you talk about Keely? Oh sorry, go ahead.
Keilly Witman: No, I was just gonna say it's, it's a good time to get interested in it, honestly. Um. I think for everybody involved, for several decades now, it has been just historically an [00:09:00] incredibly frustrating experience.
Mm-hmm. Because, um, the story of refrigerant management has been the government forcing people to move from, from one really bad refrigerant to a slightly less bad refrigerant. You pay for that entire technology transition, and then the government decides to regulate the one that they just told you to move to, right?
Mm-hmm. For the first time ever, there's really a, a, you know, an end to this, right? It's, it's a, the solution is out there. Ironically, it's to go back to the refrigerants that were used at the very beginning of refrigeration. Unfortunately, they were not used safely, which is why the chemical refrigerants came out right.
Um, but of course we have different safety standards now. All of these refrigerants can be used safely and, and, you know, they've been around forever. So if there are any environmental effects, we, we know about them. And, and pretty [00:10:00] much if you move to those refrigerants, you know, that's it. You can do away with this transition, you know, forever.
Right? Which is a new thing for us. So, um, welcome, welcome to the. The positive part of the solution. Right. Um, good time to get involved,
James Dice: but most, so can you read, can we just like, give people maybe just a five minute overview of where we're at today? So, um, I, I, I guess. Let's just start real quick. We wrote an article about this, the one that we, that you were not featured in, around what makes refrigeration management technology relevant to these refrigeration end users today.
Can you just sort of paint the picture of like, what's going on in the background around, um, I'll, I'll just lead you into this, uh, regulations, workforce shortages. Um. On and on and on, but, and sustainability I think as well. Um, can you just talk about sort of the [00:11:00] backdrop here?
Keilly Witman: Yeah. Yeah. So, um, well the first thing is that, uh, food retailers especially, they use, they use a lot of refrigerants as you can imagine.
Um, they also leak a lot of refrigerants. And when you take the environmental effect of those refrigerants, because they are incredibly potent greenhouse gases, your average, uh, supermarket actually. Um, leaks, enough refrigerant that those refrigerant leaks, uh, have a bigger impact on climate than their entire annual electricity consumption.
Right? So it's, it's a huge problem. On top of that, it costs an awful lot of money, right? So you take, the average retailer leaks about a thousand pounds of refrigerant a year. You know, take anywhere from 30 to $50 a pound. Um, you know, and then take that, um, you know, some of these supermarkets, uh, spend several million [00:12:00] dollars every year just on replacement refrigerant for what they leak.
So, uh, depending on your perspective, um, there's a lot of different. Uh, reasons why this is really, really important to people. Um, at the same time as a lot of the, the solutions are now becoming more prevalent, we're unfortunately faced with a situation where we don't have the workforce and the technical expertise to go out and implement the solution really well.
Um, and, you know, that's, that's a problem that has developed. For a lot of different reasons, right? It's, it's no different than any other trade, like, you know, plumbers, electricians, but what has been particular about this industry is that supermarket companies themselves have just driven, um, prices and, and kind of respect for this area of service technician.
And, you know, let's face it, who [00:13:00] wants to be called out at three o'clock in the morning on a Saturday? Or who wants to be on a roof in Texas in August for eight hours trying to fix something? Um, it's really hard to recruit people to be service technicians in this area, despite the fact that within two years or so you can be making six figures.
Um, it's not that you don't earn a lot, but um, it, you know. We're being confronted with regulatory overload. The EPA just put in a, a whole new set of regulations. Um, I, I work with. People in environmental departments who are responsible for compliance in all areas. And it's not uncommon for them to say, you know, I deal with hazardous waste.
I deal with asbestos. I've even dealt with a Superfund site. I have never experienced anything like refrigerant regulations. And they say the, the burden of these refrigerant [00:14:00] regulations outpaces everything else, all put together. People don't know that they live, they don't understand the regulations, so they don't even know that they're not complying and they don't understand the complexity.
So they're kind of living in ignorant bliss. You know, out there, a lot of times they, they talk to me and they sit there and they say. My God, I have the feeling I'm never going to be happy again. Like, I, I almost wish I hadn't met you because, you know, now I'm aware that I'm in really, really, really big trouble, like, with all of this.
Right. So, um, yeah, it's, it's kind of, you know, you look at it from all these different angles and you could talk about each one of those probably for hours and hours, so,
James Dice: yeah.
Keilly Witman: Yeah. But that's just a general overview.
James Dice: Yeah. And we're, we're gonna keep covering the sort of the. Intersection of all of that and the technology side.
Um, we've started it with two articles. One was written around sort of what's [00:15:00] driving investment, which kind of summarizes a lot of what you just said. And then the second piece, which we feasted a lot of your opinions in, which is talking about how grocery grocers and refrigeration end users are really just in a.
Tough situation with their current software tools in that they're siloed and fragmented and really are integrated together. And you, anyone can, will put that link to that in the show notes. Um, Keely really helped us like understand all the different tools that. These fms, well, there aren't, aren't really fms in grocery.
There's, uh, you know, you know, national groups who then rely on local maintenance people and local service providers. And this ecosystem, I think is what we're gonna dive into next. Um, but thank you Keely, for helping us like get started with this and start to understand Yeah. How this all, all works. So we'll, we'll be keeping you, uh, in, in the loop here as we, as we keep going.
Sure. Great. My pleasure. Alright, let's move on to building performance and controls. [00:16:00] This is for all of our energy managers and commissioning agents. Sometimes sustainability people if they actually want to get in the weeds rather than stay at the portfolio level reporting. No offense, uh, Brad, take us into this one.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so I just published an article, which was actually one of my favorite that I've written in quite some time. It was, it's called Cross System Energy Management, using technology to move beyond Improving Components in Isolation. So how this came about was we started interviewing energy managers and experts on energy management about how they're thinking about.
Like systems and systems of systems because you can just try to optimize your chiller or you could just try to optimize your air, or just your electricity or just your hot water loops and like, how do you think of all those pieces and how you can put 'em all together. Um, and the insights were fascinating.
So the, the, the, uh. The whole piece. The article starts [00:17:00] with like the basics. 'cause that's, it's like kind of chronological building on itself. So we have a really good interview with Insight intelligence, Matt Gilnet, about how they help their customers with the basics of like, are your set points right?
Are your schedules right? You think you have these ash rate 36 guidelines implemented, but are they actually working? Um, and then we get to like the ROI aspect of it. So we talked to KW engineering about how if you've got the basics and you're trying to do these capital projects, how you can work with the CFO and that, that group within your company to get like that buy-in.
That this is good for energy and for the financial budget if you're thinking ahead to like big energy projects. Then behind the paywall we go into some super awesome like real case studies of people who've made it that far. They've done the basics, they've figured out the capital projects and they've moved past that.
So one example is we talked with Weber State, uh, about their new system where they got rid of all of their gas boilers, they got rid of their central chiller plant, and they have hybrid VRF [00:18:00] throughout their whole campus. So. If you're like me and you didn't know what the hybrid in hybrid VRF means, this is actually a relevant segue to what Keely was talking about, is that they've got their, their refrigeration cycle very isolated and small, and then there's, uh, there's heat transfer to water systems that actually pipe all that hot water, cold water around the campus so that you've got this small, uh, consolidated refrigeration system that helps you with, you know, the leaks.
Um, so it was an awesome piece. Uh, really enjoyed everyone who helped with it. But the, the thing I wanted to bring up to you guys, the interesting point was I actually did those interviews kind of in reverse order. So I heard about all the cool flashy stuff, and then I kind of ended with like, okay, here's the basics.
And it just brought to my attention like. You know, it's really exciting to go listen to these amazing stories and like, it's probably inspiring for energy managers, but it can be a little bit of a distraction if you don't start with like the basics of all the stuff that you have to do to [00:19:00] even consider doing a capital project like Weber State did.
So, I don't know, it's kind of a question, it's kind of just a point of view, but what do you guys think about, like, we wanna, we wanna show the cool projects, but we don't wanna belittle all the like. Mundane or like real in the, in the weeds work that it takes to get there? I think it,
James Dice: yeah, I think you're right.
I think it speaks to energy management has to sort of be integrated in with these other workflows, right? So I. You were talking about the like basics, easy stuff, and to bring that down to the ground. What, what you mean is getting into where you are using FDD to monitor your performance of your building and make sure that it's optimized today and with what you have right now.
And then with the capital projects, you were talking about sort of integrating the long-term energy management plan into your capital planning. Right? Exactly. And so it's, it's, it's a little bit, to me it's about like, [00:20:00] um, I think. I think everyone in our industry has trouble being in a silo, right? And sort of being away from how actually stuff gets done.
But I think you, you had a really great piece, uh, of this article that's talking about, like, don't just go replace your chiller or don't just go replace your boiler. You should have a plan where you've thought about the system of systems and, and not just that individual piece of equipment. And so when that chiller or boiler fails.
What is your long-term plan? And I think the Weber State case study is a good example of, they've thought ahead and said that when that thing fails, here's what we're gonna do to replace it. Or when we build a new building, here's the system that plugs into the, the. Campus loop. Yeah. You
Brad Bonavida: know? Yeah. Justin Owen from Weber State, he was saying like, to your point on how far ahead they've thought about their capital projects, they've got a 2014 carbon goal, I think it's carbon neutrality by 2014.
Or sorry, excuse me, 2040. Oh, I was like, yeah. Carbon neutral.
2014. Oh, [00:21:00] 2040.
Brad Bonavida: Carbon neutrality goal. And he just explained it as like they've gotten. Ahead of their capital projects in a way that that goal to them is like, it's a construction timeline. Like this is based on, uh, equipment that's available today.
They know how they're going to get there. It's like, how quickly can we do the construction to get there? So that's like the level of capital planning that they've gotten to where their energy management is so integrated into it that, uh, it's just how quickly can they make these things happen? Really?
James Dice: Okay. Let's move on to the next one. Um, the next one is. Integrating, integrating, connecting and securing devices. So this is our ot Cybersecurity Networking beat. Brad, take us away on this one.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so this is a Nexus Con recording that's live on our site for pro members. Uh, this is for the nerdiest of nerds.
It was in our practitioner section. I did rewatch this whole thing and I think I learned more from this one than any other one 'cause I am not an expert on ontologies and it's pretty awesome. It's got a ton of people who know a ton about these [00:22:00] subjects. You've got. Gabe Fiero from School of Mines, Perew from nist.
Brian Turner from OTI, Trevor Soar from MSIE. Josh Molen from Brainbox. Nick Ky from Clockworks. And then Andrew Rogers from Ace IOT is the moderator for the whole thing. Um, and it's, it's kind of split into three sections. So there's this great conversa, oh, there's also Richard Reed from Google. I missed that part.
But the first section is a conversation around UDMI. Which is not a protocol, but it stands for device management or no, universal Device management. Uh, interface.
James Dice: Can I just interrupt you and say that these people on this panel have forgotten more about integration and ontologies than any of us will ever know?
Like this is like a absolute expert panel. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: It is universal device management interface. Um, anyway, so that's the first part, which I didn't even know what that was when I started it. And then there's a segue to Josh Mullen from Brainbox AI [00:23:00] who gives. Probably one of the best high level explanations of how you can set your building up for advanced supervisory control that I've ever heard.
Like he brings it to ground with what building owners should think about. And then what I wanted to talk a little about, a little bit about here is the last section is a conversation around, uh, ontologies. So Andrew Rogers moderates. Um, and there's, you know, there's, uh, let's see who's part of that. We've got Nick Eski, who represents.
He's involved with Haystack Paris two was involved with Ashra 2 2 3 P and then Gabe Fierro is on the brick board as well. Um, and I just think I gotta give some credit to our friend Andrew Rogers, 'cause he does a great job kind of explaining the differences between all those ontologies. So I was actually just gonna share, it's two minutes long, but he gives his high level overview on all three of 'em, and it's like really solid.
So I'm gonna play it here.
So, uh, you know, there's, there's all these interconnections of these different ontologies. Um, [00:24:00] I think that my, here's my quick version and we'll let the panelists help, help teach me something and hopefully you all in the process. But, um, uh, brick is, uh, probably was the first to market with a complete ontology, a thing that could be defined as an ontology, which means that the concepts in it have requirements about what they are.
So in brick, you can have an air handler, and if it's an air handler. It has to have certain properties, or it's not air handler. Um, haystack was originally just a collection of tags that were standardized, that they had, you know, the, the tag itself had a standardized meaning, but any particular collection of tags wasn't necessarily standardized.
What's nice about Haystack is that it's very easy to query these really complex graphs with haystack tags, and they all can be correlated if you know what a, a. A piece of equipment is an air handler in brick, then you know what set of tags [00:25:00] are applied to that in haystack. And any decent, um, independent daily or or software application that's using these, these models can look at that and let the user query with a very simple tag-based language.
2, 2, 3, uh, which is Ash's effort goes. A level of abstraction deeper. And one of the things that that's missing, um, or it potentially is in brick, but maybe isn't, um, is that there's a lot of implied knowledge about our building systems that are in how they're connected to each other. That is not necessarily represented in the point names.
They're not represented in the device names necessarily. Um. And especially when you go to like advanced applications like Nix, um, where you're, where you're really doing deep analysis to determine if a piece of equipment's functioning correctly, you know, the length of the duct run. Just not just the fact that it's a duct run or that this air [00:26:00] handler is connected to this VAV, but the length of that duct run means a lot about pressure drop, expected pressure drop when the dampers at this position.
All of these things at the, the 2, 2, 3 effort kind of. Goes deeper still and allows you to encode all of that information about your system. And when Paris, you talks about the simulation and the representation, so you ha you can actually have enough information in your 2, 3, 3 P model to simulate the system.
Brad Bonavida: I just thought that was really cool because as someone who's not an expert on that mm-hmm. Um, I was always kind of confused about like. There's open source, different communities who are doing these different things. Are they competing against each other? Like how does this work? And the way he broke down how a building owner could benefit from at least all three of those I thought was pretty cool.
James Dice: Can I say two things real quick? One is if anyone's out there and they're a pro member watching our recordings, I've just started to watch them recently because we're kind of reusing them in our content. And I find it so funny when someone walks across the. [00:27:00] The camera. It's, it's like we're clearly filming this.
How are you walking your dome? Right across the, the middle of this video. It's hilarious to me. That's funny. So that one, shout out to Osmond who walked right, right through the, the middle. We love you of that video while Brad was playing it. Um, um, the second thing I wanna say is I, I hope the people that haven't gone to Nexus Con.
Realize that we get really nerdy. There's a section of our community that goes deep into the weeds, and we're gonna continue to lean into that. One of the pieces of feedback we've gotten is like, I wanna go deeper. And so we're gonna try to make that happen. Go even deeper this year for only a subset.
It's not the whole community, but there's gonna be a room you can be in that that, or a corner of the room that you can be in that is gonna get, get super nerdy. I just feel like everything that he's talking about, all these like industry efforts are moving so effing slow. Like Ashray 2 23 P has been P, which [00:28:00] is proposed for how long?
Ever since Nexus has existed, almost go
Rosy Khalife: off.
James Dice: Like at what point is this gonna, like the industry is moving on without this shit. That's how I feel. And someone can write me and tell me I'm wrong, but it, it almost feels like to me like, like these, these committees and these groups should come to us and tell us why this is relevant for us to include in Nexus Con this year.
That's what I said. I like it. That's what I said.
Brad Bonavida: Okay. It's awesome.
Rosy Khalife: Okay.
Brad Bonavida: It's
James Dice: moving too slow. Everyone's moving on. Everyone's out there building their products. And they're gonna keep building their products and not wait for this to happen.
Brad Bonavida: Is that a symptom of them being so communal and open source and not connected to anybody's actual revenue stream?
Is it's like they're an afterthought. No one really, you know, is seeing the profit from them moving forward?
James Dice: I don't know. I think it's tough. I dunno, either. I think we want to know. People will let us know. I think I have some opinions, but they're not [00:29:00] as informed. I'm not gonna stand behind them as as much as.
I think other people would, but tell, tell us why you have all the license. Everyone tell us why we should care about that. This anymore. All right, next, next one. Our last one is around, uh, workplace experience. So we had an article that we produced called Curing IO OT Data Overwhelm, how Workplace Pros Are Turning Raw Occupancy and IAQ Data into Actionable Insights.
Mm-hmm. Um, I, I think. The one thing we wanna bring up here this week is the role of data experts, and this is one thing that I found very fascinating when I dug into all the interviews around this. I think I did five or six interviews for this article, and I think I spent half the piece talking about how.
You really still need, like AI doesn't solve it, visualization doesn't solve it. You really still need this team of software to [00:30:00] help the expert user analyze the data that's coming off of the sensor. Um, and this is like, is this surprising to you guys? Would you think that in 2025 if you had occupancy and IAQ data, you'd be able to surface insights without.
A human digging into the data and telling you what the insights are, is that surprising to you? It's tough.
Brad Bonavida: I, I think that, I think back to a conversation I had with Kevin Sauer from Sour Strategy Works, who does exactly what you're talking about. He's that expert who like goes in and does that and how.
They, they had, they got back to the point of like having people walk floors and saying like, okay, we know people are here, but what are they actually doing? Like there's a conference room, it's always in use. Oh, it's one guy who likes to take Zoom calls in there and it's a 12 person conference room. So it's like, yes, with optical sensors.
I imagine it would be further, but also like it's just so complex. He brought up the [00:31:00] weather and how that affects when people are there and what they're doing and just. I, I guess I don't, the more I've do like dove into it, I'm not surprised. It's too complicated. Humans are complicated and there's too many things about their day-to-day that are going on that make the data like not tell the whole story.
James Dice: I do think the vendors are making inroads at it. Butler showed me one of the, one of the pieces of their product that they're, they're adding onto, they have a data analysis team, but they're also improving their products so that those analysts can do things like Mark a certain piece of the floor plan to tell you this is like, uh, a type, certain type of space.
And then you can take that and analyze those types of spaces across the portfolio. So it's like an update of the product. In conjunction with what the analyst needs, which I thought was interesting.
Rosy Khalife: Right. I think the other problem with all of these technologies is when you put it into your space, you are trying to make it as easy for the users, like the tenants of the space as possible.
So you don't [00:32:00] wanna ask them to do anything. You just wanna like put this thing over the door or in the room or whatever, and it's like. It's supposed to gather what it needs. But that's really hard because if you could ask those people for something like before that person walks into that conference room, if they had to access the conference room in some capacity and say like, I'm just one person.
I have this one call, then you wouldn't need the other person that's analyzing the data. 'cause you would've already clocked that and like knew what he was doing. Right. And so it's like a balance of you wanna put these sensors in and not bother anyone. But then you have to do all this other shit after the fact to actually make the data usable.
James Dice: You don't want the office worker thinking about any of this. Right. Maybe
Brad Bonavida: that's where the tenant engagement application comes in though. Like if they're really dependent on an app, because it helps them with room booking and scheduling and getting in. But it's also gonna tell you really well what they're doing.
Like maybe that's, you know, the bridge that can help the tenant actually tell you, the occupier actually tell you what they're spending their time doing. Totally. So [00:33:00] true.
James Dice: All right. Yeah. Uh, all right. That's all for our news today. Our talk show's over. Let's finish with some carve outs. All right, so how about you, Keely?
What's your carve out?
Keilly Witman: I'll tell you, this is the toughest part, I think, of the entire process because all I do is work. I have no life. I have no other interests. And so when you wrote, this is the section to talk about, like what else you've been doing. I thought. My God, I might have to like, quickly get interested in something so that I have something to talk about.
But I decided, um, I, I think the most interesting thing going on in my life is my battle with the koi ponds that I inherited. I moved into a, a house two years ago and the people before me, it was this wonderful, beautiful garden with this pond. Filled with these koi fish and I kind of looked at it and thought, wow, well, that's not really something I would've chosen for myself.
But right now I feel like every minute of my life outside of work is being taken up with [00:34:00] trying to save these COI fish. I'm battling a family of ducks and a giant Blue Heron has discovered by Pond
James Dice: wants do constantly
Keilly Witman: interrupting meetings and saying, wait a minute. I have to save my fish and I run out the door and I clap my arms around and I say, get away from my fish.
Stop eating my fish. Right? And I used to have about two them, but I think like less than, I mean probably the best. Fed her in, in, in North America. Um, and so, yeah, so that's what's going on in my life.
James Dice: That's awesome. That's a good one. You're gonna gonna beat all
Keilly Witman: of you. Beat us. That's great. I have a
James Dice: quick, I have a quick carve out to share about Keeley's company.
So everyone should go to their website and you're immediately hit with a picture that you don't see in any other companies, which is an entire team full of women.
Keilly Witman: Yes. All
James Dice: looking very proud to be a team full of women. And so I think that, that I, I enjoyed [00:35:00] going to your guys' website. That was great. Great.
Keilly Witman: Me too. That was awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, and it's not that we have anything against hiring men. Um, it's, it has more to do with the fact that. Like, this isn't even a job when we try to post jobs. We don't even know what to call it. It's not like you're looking for an engineer or something. Right? Yeah.
We have
James Dice: the same problem.
Keilly Witman: Yeah. Yeah. So totally. Yeah. But it is, it's a great, it's a great atmosphere and those smiles that you see, they're, they're real. I mean, I can tell, we just walk around smiling at each other all the time because we're, you know, we love our jobs and, and we love the team.
Brad Bonavida: Brad, you're next.
I'm excited about mine, James. 'cause you don't know it and I think that you're gonna really like it because I haven't told you about this, but. One thing I'm good for is I'm always like a year late on trends, but I just finished watching Ted Lasso and it's fantastic. Yeah, it is really good. So the one thing I was gonna say [00:36:00] about it, the re like why is it so good, is because you could put a whole family or a whole group of friends in there and they thought so hard about satisfying every type of audience member, you know what I mean?
Like. There's this sports aspect for the jock, and then there's like romance, and then there's like this wholesome part and this like mental awareness part and good family stuff and comedy. It's like every different type of person likes a different piece of the show. So, sorry it took me so long, James, because it's like, and s favorite, but it's, yeah, it's cussing.
Yeah. Rosie loves
James Dice: it too. Uh, it And they, yeah, they have lots of cussing in there, which is needed for some parts of the family. Yeah. And thank God they're coming back for another season. Do you guys know that? Wait. Yes.
Rosy Khalife: I thought it was done.
James Dice: No, no, they're coming back.
Rosy Khalife: I wonder how that happened.
James Dice: Yeah. I don't know how that's
Brad Bonavida: gonna work, what the story's gonna be,
James Dice: but we'll see.
There's been a lot of protests in the United States lately. I think that was what there've been protesting.
Rosy Khalife: Yeah, that's the old, that's it.
James Dice: Um, all right. Rosie. Rosie, what's yours? That was a joke.
Rosy Khalife: Alright. So as I [00:37:00] think of all the things I do outside of Nexus, one of the things that I've been doing lately.
Which is so random is I've been researching other parts of the country that I haven't been to and trying to get a sense, like I feel like we have a, the United States is a large country and there's so many places I haven't been to, and I've just been fascinated with some of the areas that nobody lives in.
Like there's plots of land that are a hundred acres just. There's nothing there. There's nothing going on. There's no one around. And it's so interesting. And so that is my car be
Brad Bonavida: as someone who lives west of the Mississippi. That's such an east coast thing to say, coast thing to say. So much land
James Dice: out there.
Yeah. Yeah. All right, I'll, I'll close this off. You're so weird, Rosie. Um, I. I'll close this off. Um, I had a great call with [00:38:00] one of our longtime awesome community members, uh, Joe Gasper yesterday, and he told me about the impact one of our articles had on him and the company. Um, the article, we'll put it in the show notes.
It's about the concept of anti fragility. And this concept is important, I think just as it was when I wrote it back in, in, um, COVID times. That article was probably written in May, 2020, something like that. And I was reading this book called Anti-Fragile by Nasem Nicholas eb, and I was trying to explain how Smart Buildings technology helps a building owner, um, be more antifragile in their operations.
And what Anti FRA Antifragility is, is when disorder is happening, an anti-fragile system actually gains from disorder. And it's a very counterintuitive. Concept. Um, but I would, I think there's a lot [00:39:00] of chaos and disorder going on in our economy right now and on, in the United States, obviously, and anyone that does business with the United States.
And so, um, I would just, uh, I, I'm revisiting that and reading, reading it for myself again, even though it's my own writing. Um. Joe's recommendation. So thank you Joe. And I recommend anybody that's struggling with the chaos that's going on right now to, uh, revisit that concept and sort of ask what you can do to set yourself up and your systems to be, uh, ride the wave rather than get crushed by it, basically.
Rosy Khalife: I love that. Cool. Shout out to Naim, who is Lebanese, so that's cool.
James Dice: He is an in individual thinker. Original thinker. That's awesome. Like, like most Lebanese that I know are All right, y'all. See you in two weeks. Sounds
Brad Bonavida: good. See you guys. Bye.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to [00:40:00] this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our listeners to share a link to their favorite Nexus episode on LinkedIn with a short post about why you listen. It would really, really help us out.
Make sure to tag us in the post so we can see it. Have a good one.
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