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Episode 179 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Andrew Rogers from ACE IoT Solutions.
Episode 179 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Andrew Rogers from ACE IoT 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 (1:23)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (7:05)
Workplace Experience (16:16)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (18:52)
Building Performance and Controls (22:44)
Sign off (30:02)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S697793-16073.
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 and a special guest. We're gonna walk through what's going on in the Nexus Labs community while [00:01:00] you're Yeah. Friends and a guest. Those are mutually exclusive groups. Yeah. Wow. Uh, we're gonna walk through what's going on in the next.
Slabs community while you can, you know, walk your dog or commute or whatever, if you want the full experience, this is just a preview. The best way to get the full experience is to go over to the Nexus newsletter where we have every piece of content and invites. To all of our events. Uh, let's start with at the Nexus, what's going on in the Nexus Labs community?
Um, I'll start. Um, we are sending out invites to what we're calling Nexus Con Supervisory Control, which is a. Fun take on a technology category, but it's basically a, a group of building owners that are gonna be reviewing the agenda and design of the conference and making sure it matches their day-to-day lives, essentially.
So it's, it's, it's a check on us of what we think is cool. They're gonna be coming in and saying, now this is actually [00:02:00] what we should be talking about at the conference this year. So it's grounded in, you know, real world stuff that building owners are, uh, thinking about and, uh, wondering about and problems they need to be, need to solve.
So that's an addition, uh, to the conference process this year that we're working on right now. And so, uh, invites to that have already been sent out and we should be putting that group together real soon. So. That'll be fun. Uh, Brad, what do you got?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so, uh, we had some marketplace success stories this week, which is pretty cool.
So if you're not aware, the Nexus Marketplace is this platform that we give access to building owners to help them find the service providers or technology solutions they need to do the work that they're trying to do. Um, this week we've had four requests. Come in where a consultant or a building owner has been browsing through the marketplace, found a vendor that they're interested in and said, Hey, I need an introduction to this vendor 'cause I need them for my situation that I'm in.
[00:03:00] So then that goes to us and we facilitate. We say, you know, we go to that technology vendor, service provider, say, Hey, someone's really interested in your your product. This is why. Here's who they are. You guys talk, make a deal happen. So it's just cool to see it go kind of full circle and complete exactly what it was supposed to do is, um, bring those two groups together.
James Dice: That's awesome. I'll, I'll say without saying names, we had a major, huge company, um, shut down one of their divisions and then come to the marketplace to find a new option because they shut down that division a new option. And a startup is who they, you know, ended up connecting with, which is a cool, you know.
Uh, progression to see, uh, Rosie, what about you? What's going on?
Rosy Khalife: I've been in Nexus, Conland and specifically around who's coming. Getting people registered. People need to keep moving it along in terms of registration. So, uh, that's what I've been up to and it's been really fun. Um, I've been talking to a lot of people that [00:04:00] came last year and that's obviously the people that are most excited and ready to come again, which is awesome.
And we are asking them for referrals. So my ask to the community, even though that's not what this is, is if you came last year and had a great time. We would love if you brought a friend or told a few people about it, and we can help facilitate that with you. So feel free to reach out.
James Dice: That's great. All right.
Time to bring in our friend and guest. It's not mutual elusive. Uh, we have Andrew Rogers here, co-founder of ACE iot. Andrew, what's going on in, in your world right now? Briefly.
Andrew Rogers: Oh man. Um. Honestly, a lot of vibe coding. Uh, like I, I kind of, are you fucking with
us?
Andrew Rogers: No, like, I really got on this train. Like, um, I would say the ent ai workflows in the last 60 to 90 days have really shifted.
Uh, it's [00:05:00] still like definitely a place where if you're not someone who understands, like if you're not a software developer and you go down this pathway, you're gonna hit a dead end pretty quick and it's gonna get really frustrating. But if you are a software developer, you can just build stuff really fast.
And so I. There were some things that, you know, we have this new product that we're launching Sentinel, that's all about, um, you know, uh, op operational technology, network monitoring and, and, and ev valid evaluation and validation. And there were these holes that we had found where like, people in the organizations running these things don't have.
Data models for some of the stuff they don't have the network architecture doc, you know, defined. Uh, no one is able to like share between IT and ot, like the network metrics that matter for OT networks. And so over, I would say the last two weeks I have just like, I don't know, a lot of hours and it's addictive because you can, like, you know, you put this challenge into the ai, you get it to write [00:06:00] some tests.
Get it to like implement the thing to fulfill the test, and then you have this thing that does something. It's really cool. Um, and so I put out, I think a LinkedIn post this weekend where I'd kind of like finally after this. Fugue state of just spinning out stuff, like trying to put it into a thoughtful, Hey, here's where I think the gaps are.
Here's how these different components we've been working on. Maybe fill some of those gaps. Uh, and then that'll, that'll evolve into like products that are, or, or features that are integrated into the Sentinel product. But, um, yeah, it's kind of wild. It is definitely. A different time in AI now than it was a year ago, um, for, for this stuff.
James Dice: Yeah, for sure. That's great. You'll have to, uh, to do some sort of demo. To these three non-programmers, non-software. Yeah, I got follow
Brad Bonavida: up questions that I'm holding, but yeah,
James Dice: we'll hold those for, for later. People are probably interested in, they're listening to this too. Alright, let's jump into what's going on in the, in [00:07:00] the community.
We, um, let's start with ot. Uh, it ot, uh, integrating, connecting and securing devices. We wrote a piece. We produced a piece, I wrote the piece on, uh, it's called a horizontal architecture with Limited Resources, three Options in Today's Marketplace. So, um, Andrew, you and I connected about this when this was just a fragment of an idea.
And so I think we wanted to have you come on to talk about it because you kind of helped me form like, what's going on with this article? How, how does this come into a, a legitimate story? And so first, thank you for that. Um, we, we kind of had a call and it was like. Let's explore this together, but basically where we landed was the, the concept of a horizontal architecture.
I'm looking up above my screen right now in my office, and it's, uh, 11 by 17, or maybe bigger than that, um, poster on my wall. The horizontal architecture came about, not, we didn't make it up, right? It, it was just we, we were interviewing people. [00:08:00] And just heard the theme over and over and over and over again and sort of said, okay, I'm hearing all of this.
Here's what you all are saying. Let me try to put some sort of, um, structure to what everyone's saying and have it be. Uh, so we're all speaking from the same sheet of music essentially. And that was four or five years ago, right? And so this piece that, that I wrote is about, um, the options. If you don't have an OT team, which most building owner organizations, I.
Don't really have dedicated OT resources, or they have very few that don't have the resources to like spin up a tech stack essentially. And so this, this piece is about basically the three options. One is, um, the actual, the, the OEMs are coming out with options for closing that gap with, you know, basically what we call unity from edge to cloud.
Um, there's a second option, which is OT infrastructure as a service. So if you're used to. As an IT [00:09:00] team buying these products as a service for different parts of the stack, you can now buy different ot. Um. Pieces of your OT infrastructure as a service, and then we have fully managed solutions. And so let's go into the third category, 'cause that's what you guys do at ACE iot.
Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that means?
Andrew Rogers: Yeah, and these concepts, like, we've been tracking this for a while because obviously when we started all this, you know, for us six, six and a half years ago now, um, it was very lonely. There weren't, you know, IDL wasn't really a term of art at that point.
Um. Horizontal architecture. I don't think you had published that stuff quite yet. Uh, and so we felt very alone, which is nice and you feel like you're early to a market, but it also is like, well, if we're having to try to convince everybody to do this, this is really hard. So now as we've, you know, more and more folks have shown up to the market, uh, with different offerings, kind of going to market different ways, like this is how we've been thinking [00:10:00] about our potential competitors.
Although I am still very adamant that like. The only competition we have in this market is doing nothing. Like there's so much room, so many buildings that need these solutions and for a building owner to find which one of these three flavors that we're talking about fits, like that's the most important thing.
And by having all of these three options, what we're doing, and like this piece, like I'm really excited about this piece you put out because by like really clearly defining this, it's basically saying, look, you have. It doesn't matter what you, your condition of your organization is, like what level of resources you can bring to the table.
You don't really have an excuse for not doing something to solve, like the acute problems you're experiencing that you're gonna solve on top of whatever this infrastructure is. So for us on this, you know, fully managed, like the way we think about this is. People need data. Um, that's, you know, for all kinds of things.
You all, y'all talk about [00:11:00] that better or more than anyone else. And a lot of times the existing value chain in the building is not very well oriented for data sharing collection. You know, so we go into a building, we deploy our platform, and we manage that platform and support it, including working through issues.
Um, when it's hard to get vendor support or OT networks aren't working correctly. Like we have that expertise on staff. So we're helping people solve those problems. So the data keeps flowing for whatever that higher value use case is. Whether it's a FDD, uh, you know, uh, reporting. Whatever. Um, even supervisory control.
We have, you know, clients that do supervisory control on top of our platform. So that's how we think about what we do is kind of different from some of the other, uh, platforms that are sort of just a platform that where you need those OT resources [00:12:00] or IT resources to step up and kinda learn one or the other enough to deploy and operate it for you.
Um, you know, we're, we're really focused on making it kind of turnkey for our customers.
James Dice: Mm-hmm. I was thinking about it like you guys are kind of like, you provide the tech, but then you also provide like a fractional OT staff. Um, that's right. Which is needed for sure.
Andrew Rogers: Uh, yeah, and I mean, our, our market that has been really good for us has been, you know, monitoring based commissioning, um.
Those folks are really smart, uh, really, you know, know the physics, they know the mechanical systems, you know, they can like smell, uh. Poorly tuned pi loop from across the parking lot. But when it comes to getting, you know, network access set up, going through security review with it, like they're, they hate it.
Like it's, it's like not a good use of their time. They're not good at it [00:13:00]and it just pisses everybody off. And so being able to kind of step in and help them deliver. You know, the kind of value they can deliver to the client, which is efficiency, reliability, like all of these things, they have all that knowledge, but they just need access to these systems in order to actually deliver it.
And being able to augment them and help them deliver that is really rewarding, actually.
James Dice: Anything to add?
Brad Bonavida: Rosie
James Dice: and Brad,
Brad Bonavida: I just like the point that you made Andrew, about like, or how you define yourself as, um. We talk about all these use cases for having a bunch of data and all those things that it unlocks, and you guys are like the bridge to be able to do that.
Like I'm picturing a building owner who sees all these great things that they could do with data deploys, be it monitoring based commissioning or occupancy sensors for space utilization, stuff that we're gonna talk about later, whatever, and then they're like, oh shit. Like this is really hard to actually get all the information I need into one place to actually do what I [00:14:00] expected.
To do, and that's the bridge that like you guys are able to put in there,
Andrew Rogers: or I get it done once and then, you know, one of my controller, uh, controllers is end of life to do a capital project to replace those because like, we don't want the risk of them being on our network. And now all those integrations just disappeared and I have to redo it.
Like, all of that, like ongoing stuff. It's not a, you know, I, I say this all the time, that. OT is not a, a cooling tower. You can't buy it, like hook it up to the water and walk away for 15 years and come back in 15 years and replace the fill. And in 30 years, you know it's rusted out and you buy a new one.
Right? Like that's not how OT works. You have to have some resource. And if that's not internal, it's gonna be external. And if it's gonna be external, you're either doing it one of two ways. You're either buying it by the hour. Which is expensive. Hard to plan for, hard to predict. And, [00:15:00] you know, one budget period is gonna be, you know, something happens and it's hugely expensive in the next budget period.
You're, you know, it's, there's no cost, but you just can't plan that stuff. Or you hire someone like us, which has more of this, I think, you know, I like this fractional OT staff. We're gonna take care of the stuff that's, that's. Broken over the course of our deployment. Yeah, you're gonna pay for it, but at least you know what you're paying for and you know that someone's there to backstop your staff when, when things get over, you know, over your head.
It's not like, oh, we were gonna do this thing. It was gonna be really easy. It didn't work. Now we're. Have to go through a procurement process to get an MSI to come in and we don't even know what we're asking them. You know? That's all that, you know, I used to say a lot this like mean meetings to integration.
I think that's, that's one of the things we were trying to drive down, right? Like if you've just got somebody that you can, it's on the hook, you know, they're, they're, they're the phone. You call [00:16:00] like you don't have to like, redo a new scope of work or we try to keep that stuff as minimal as possible so that.
When you need the data, you need, somebody's there to help you get it.
James Dice: Alright, time, time to move on. Um, our next piece is in the workplace experience. Uh, beat. We had a, a piece that we wrote on the ROI of IOT, um, it's called The Best Returns Coming from diving in, not Dipping Your Toe in the water. This, it has interesting story that's in that piece around Manulife.
Reducing food waste, which I thought was fascinating. We don't have a lot of food waste stories in our community, but basically they started counting the number of people in the office. This is very simple actually. I. Counting the number of people in the office and then around like 10:30 AM when they would start cooking lunch, they just figured out how many people were there and then use that to like correlate the number of people that were there to the number of people that were actually gonna show up to eat.
And I, I, I think it's a very simple [00:17:00] thing, but this piece walks through all these different business cases for people counting sensors and. I just thought this one was especially fascinating, like, why wouldn't every single cafeteria be doing this? Uh, it takes a people counter on, on each door in your office, and if you're a tenant, right, whatever floors you have, right?
Um, and you can immediately have, uh, you know, right size your, your food count and your, your food costs and even like your, like labor around your, your food as well. So fascinating, uh, piece. Anybody have anything to comment on that or should we move on?
Brad Bonavida: I just, I'll say quickly, it's such a quantifiable ROI use case for occupancy sensors, perhaps the most quantifiable I've ever seen.
And it seems like the more we talk about space utilization, it's like every month there's some new use case that we hear about. That's pretty cool. I, I compare this one a lot to, uh, the people using it for smart restrooms like, uh, cleaning, you know, you're planning your [00:18:00] janitorial schedules around it.
That one's, that one's great too, so Love it.
Andrew Rogers: Was this done on occupancy or on like, uh, access control data or both?
James Dice: This was done on people counting. They started with access control data and, um, I can't remember why they said that that wasn't enough, but they basically determined that that wasn't enough.
And so all of their ROI calculations were on. The sensors sort of on top of the base case, which is the data that they already have. Gotcha.
Andrew Rogers: Yeah.
James Dice: Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rogers: And that, well, I just want to go on the re Oh, sorry.
James Dice: Go
Andrew Rogers: ahead. I just wanna go on the. That I'm against food waste. So this is, yes, we,
Rosy Khalife: yeah. So are we, so we're, we're aligned there.
James Dice: Yes.
Rosy Khalife: That's awesome.
James Dice: Alright, and next one, um, digitizing operation as a maintenance. Uh, Brad, you have a little, uh, a nugget for lack of a better term to play.
Brad Bonavida: Pun intended. Uh, [00:19:00] so tomorrow we're having our building owner meet up for technology adoption. Um, what people are doing to help their technicians, their workplace adopt technology.
Um, this, this episode will come out after that, but it's gonna be a great event. Uh, so anyway, I've been diving through, like trying to do a bunch of research on what we've heard from building owners about increasing technology adoption. And I stumbled across, uh, Devon, Tracy at Nexus Con talking about the Golden Nugget program at, uh, Lockheed Martin.
So, without further ado, I'm just gonna play the clip, um, and then we can discuss it
and fixing what the, and so one way. Hold the technicians hand, meet with them weekly, and my team is the first pass at the data. We build a list of what looks like a potential problem and share it with the technicians. Now, as you can imagine, and I'm sure you've experienced, most of the technicians were not excited about this.
[00:20:00] They're like, ah, I don't wanna, that's, you're gonna, you know, put me in the hot seat. I don't want people to know about that. We tried to flip the script and we said, Hey, we're gonna make you the hero because now you found this thing that nobody knew about and we invented this term. There it is called the Golden Nugget, and I actually have one here because we have to mail it out to one of our new sites.
And, uh, this is something that the technicians actually now pass around to technicians who find, find a golden nugget and fix it. And it's, it sounds kind of dorky, but it's stuck. And we actually have vice president level golden nugget targets
Brad Bonavida: the golden nugget at Lockheed. What do you guys think?
Rosy Khalife: So cool.
James Dice: That's so cool. Uh. What's funny is she showed a slide there that they went and visited Google and then came back and did [00:21:00] FDD and I know from, you know, just talking to those two groups, is that actually Google's still learning from them? No. So there's like a little bit of a, a cycle of, of sharing between building owners, which is, which is great.
Um, I just wanted to circle back real quick on what you said about the event. So by the time this gets published. The event will have been last week, and not all of our community will get an invite to that because we just started doing closed doors. Building owner only. We invite a few, um, vendors to, um, talk just for three minutes each on what they're doing that's relevant to that, that month's topic.
But just so everyone knows, those are building owner only. If you're a building owner and you wanna share and talk to other building owners, that's what we created those for. It's kind of like an extension of the, what was called the buyer symposium at last year's Nexus Con. And we'll be continuing that online and in person at, at this year's Nexus Con.
Brad Bonavida: It's cool because you [00:22:00] imagine we didn't play that clip. What happens in these events is that Devon's sitting there with some other building owner who's like, ah, we got FD, D, but my technicians are struggling with it. And she says, oh, well we did the Golden Nugget, and like she introduces this idea. And those are the type of conversations we hear.
And then I just wanna say like, I love, we're gonna talk about this a lot more throughout the year, but like gamifying. All of these smart buildings tasks to do it. Just making it fun for the people involved I think goes a really long way. Uh, we've heard other stories like this of if you make smart buildings fun, you increase adoption for sure.
That's great.
James Dice: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. The Golden Nugget program is definitely a cool one. Um, all right, let's move on. Um, the last category we have here is energy management, building performance, and controls. Uh, Brad, you wrote a piece on this, so we'll, we'll talk about one of those areas from that piece.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so we did talk about the, uh, cross system energy management piece previously, um, but there's a couple [00:23:00] of big pieces within that that we didn't get to. Uh, and we want to introduce one of those concepts. So, uh, we, we. Titled the, the section of the piece, taking the energy management hands off, the proverbial steering wheel.
And it's this idea that there's, there's all these, you know, energy management related tech tools out there that help elevate the job of an energy manager. Um, but it requires some buy-in to, to elevate that energy manager. And one of the ways it requires buy-in is that they have to be comfortable taking their hands off the steering wheel and letting something else control portions of their building.
I pulled a quote from Mark Chung, the CEO of Verus, who was talking about this when I was interviewing for this. He said, there's such a need to feel in control, a very human need to feel in control and take these actions on your own. And what he is talking about is, I'm making up an example, but that plant operator who has been dialing in set points on the plant for the past, you know, 15 years [00:24:00] and they get value out of that, and they like doing that, but now we have.
Algorithms and automations and AI that can do that for them, probably better than them. But what we really want those people to understand or what this piece was a lot about is if, if people can, um, appreciate that and, and accept that now your position's elevated, you're no longer switching the dials, you're looking at the thing holistically and you get to make these bigger decisions about what else you can do for your system.
So, Andrew, James, Rosie, I'm sure you guys have a lot of thoughts about like. The adoption or taking the hands off the proverbial steering wheel. I like that. Uh, what do you guys think? Well, I think I'll just say
James Dice: real quick. Okay. Go ahead. Um, we published a piece of this piece about this in 2021. And it was all about this piece.
Like this was the major obstacle. And you know, four years later it seems like we're kind of still talking about it, but there are companies like Brainbox growing and getting acquired by Trane that seemed to [00:25:00] have figured out how to get through that obstacle. And so I think it's more like the choice for energy managers out there to say like.
Are we gonna take that? Other people have taken that jump. Are we gonna take that jump? Sorry Rosie, I interrupted you though.
Rosy Khalife: No, it's okay. I was just noticing that with these last two pieces that are, we're talking about two different roles. We're really just talking about change management. Like this is what it's coming down to of like, how are people.
Using their buildings. How are we actually gonna implement these technologies that we want to put in place or that we already have in place? How are we using them to the best of our ability and how are we really getting the people that are supposed to be using them really bought in and excited about it in like the golden nugget?
Or what Mark was saying. And so I think that's like, that is the overarching thing here that I feel like a lot of people are up against and it's not one solution. There's so many things that need to happen for that to really take effect. But we need, we, we, I feel like we need a session all about [00:26:00] change management and Nexus con.
That's, I vote for that.
James Dice: Andrew, you guys do this a little bit with. Enabling supervisory control from the cloud. What you got? Any, anything to add here?
Andrew Rogers: You know, it's funny though. My favorite story about this is from a buddy of mine in a completely different industry, and I think we've all heard people talk, you know, old, old, uh.
Old controls guys will talk about like disconnecting a thermostat in an office and like letting people run the wheel as much as they want and it doesn't do anything because you know, back when DDC was first rolling out, that sort of thing, but this one, to me, I don't know, for it was so visceral, like. My buddy was, uh, north American Quality Manager for the world's largest bakery, uh, BIM Bimbo bakeries.
And they were, you know, having these bread quality issues. And I mean, they had done, they like laser scanned the loaf shape as it goes into the oven. They had. You know, image analysis, this was 15 years ago, but this was in the industrial side. You can do all this stuff 'cause it's like one thing. You [00:27:00]have this very minimal scope, so like image analysis to make sure the lows were going in correctly, coming out the right color, all that.
So he just keeps having quality issues. So he finally is like, all right, I'm gonna have to like stay in and just watch this happen in second shift. Like, or third, whatever it was. And like. These bakers who've been baking bread for 20, 30 years. Like they go to the thermal control where they've got this like precisely set recipe for the oven with, you know, the humidity taken into account, like everything possible, you know, accounted for in their modeling.
And this guy's just going over there every 10 minutes and like up two degrees, down four degrees, you know? And so eventually they just. They just disconnected that thermal controller because they would like, you can't do that, man. Like, we're getting inconsistent results. Like, you can't change it. Ah, but this is what we have to do to get it.
You know? So, you know, I think there's been this shift happen in industry over and over and over again, and it just takes a while to [00:28:00] trust the machinations that, that we're putting in place. Um, but you know, I think it's, it comes down to getting more deployments, which is happening now. And people seeing the stuff work.
And then I think this will kind of segue into some other topics we may talk about in a minute. As these things mature, like a lot of the horror stories on specifically AI driven, I. Supervi advanced supervisory control early, early in the, in this, this kind of, uh, evolution. You know, if you take an unbounded AI system and point it at real equipment and don't provide a lot of like guardrails and boundaries and, and that sort of stuff like.
Stuff will go wrong and it did. Um, and as the folks building the more novel innovation stuff, get more familiar with the actual constraints, which aren't just like, can the [00:29:00] machine do this thing? It's like, is it a good idea to do this because it's gonna have this effect on your building envelope after 10 years of letting the humidity go to 80% every night?
Well, you know, all of that stuff, it gets in, you know, codified. And this is where I think, uh, there's kind of another point we may talk about in a second where this like idea that these frameworks for codifying this stuff that are loosely, you know, mostly get lumped under this ontology work and this space, it's really about codifying all these constraints to these systems in a way that the hu the machines and the humans can understand them and that you can give a machine.
The flexibility to find the optimal solution while remaining confident that it's not going to, you know, color outside the line somewhere and really mess up your building or your systems.
James Dice: Alright, that's good advice. Next. Okay. Uh, that's it for our, our [00:30:00] categories. Let's end with carve outs. Um. So carve outs are, uh, anything that you'd like to share from your personal life just to let us get to know you better.
Rosy Khalife: So, my carve out for this episode is a book that I recently finished called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and it's an awesome one. If you haven't read it, I. Bought the, the actual book. And then I was driving and I was thinking, let me just see if there's an audio version. So I listened to that and he actually reads it himself, which I think is so much more powerful.
Anyhow, real quick on what it's about, um, we all have a, you know, the zone of genius within us, and then we have, we have our zone of genius and our zone of excellence, and it's basically like how do you tap into that next level of your superpower as a person? And it was great. So highly recommend. Who's next?
Brad, you're it.
Brad Bonavida: Uh, I did something cool this weekend that I didn't tell you guys about. So, uh, in July I'm going [00:31:00] on a llama assisted backpacking trip where these llamas can carry like 80 pounds of stuff for us so we don't have to carry, or they can carry more than we were gonna carry. So we're not bringing a guide.
So this last weekend I went and got my. Llama license to be able to take these llamas. So I went to the ranch, uh, my wife and I, and we met our three llamas that we're taking, we're taking Spock, hide and Drama. Drama. The llama figured out how to put their packs on, figured out how to feed 'em, how to tie 'em up, all those things.
So I'm llama certified now.
James Dice: Certified. That's,
Andrew Rogers: that's so much better than a forklift certified. You win. Yeah, you win. I don't have anything better than that. What, what?
James Dice: Um, alright. Oh man. I'll go, I'll go. Um, before we, before we make Andrew, we forced Andrew to go, um, we're, we've just been buying Andrew time here.
Um, I'm gonna get two. So one is the Champions League's still going on. All my soccer fans out there. Uh, by the time this comes out we'll know, but tomorrow Arsenal plays PSG and of course [00:32:00] we're all rooting for Arsenal. Of course, the second one I have is I'm signed up for in Boulder here. This is a very bolder thing, you guys, but I'm signed up for this conference called the Conscious Entrepreneurship Conference, and, um, I'm super excited about it.
It's about not like losing your mind as a, as an entrepreneur, and I think during this time I really, really need it. Um, specifically, there's a one day workshop with the author of a book called 10 X is Easier Than two X. And this is a book that I've read before and I'm extremely skeptical about. And so I'm excited to like be in the room nice and be a skeptic for once.
Um, normally I'm like all in on these things. I'm like, yeah, of course. But this time I'm like, I don't know if I agree with this guy. So I'm rereading the book and sort of go into spend time with him. Uh, we'll see. It'll be fun. I'll report back. Alright, Andrew, yours.
Andrew Rogers: Well, um, there's so many ways to take this.
I think one thing that, that, [00:33:00] uh, maybe y'all are encouraging me to talk about is, is, is smart buildings related. So I don't know that it counts as a carve out, so, um, that's fair. All right, well,
James Dice: well, I'll just, we'll just put it in the show notes. You wrote an article that is satirical around AI replacing consultants in our industry, and we'll link to it and so that you could just skip it.
So what's your, what's your personal one?
Andrew Rogers: Um, the personal one is that, uh, you know, in, in like intense vulnerability, like, um, some of you may have known, I think I may have talked about it at Nexus Con with people, but like I had planned on doing this like one year trip that was going to be this long road trip.
And maybe I had wrapped a little too much of my identity in like doing this thing, and the universe is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So, uh, the last four, four, four-ish months, I've been like kind of bouncing around a little bit because my [00:34:00] plan did not work out. My plan involved a van, the van. Involved an engine.
The engine involved being dead, uh, and then the second engine involved being dead. So we're like, in this, this space right now, where I'm at right now is, is the, like, what do you do about the third engine? Uh, but, uh, it's resulted in me like being in Austin, Texas for three months and, um, and visiting Brad.
Right. You know, maybe being visit. Yeah. Like I, I showed up on Brad's doorstep with a dead van in the middle of, you know, Colorado, which was, you know, fortunate. Uh, very graciously allowed. It was see him to use his front yard for a few days. Um, and then, uh, I am, uh, kind of planning out. But it's been a good season for me 'cause it's like forcing me to figure out, you know, who are you, where you're at, what does that mean?
Uh, can you kinda like, make it work wherever you're at. And, uh, it's been really fun to, like, I, [00:35:00] I'd say two things that, that really kind of big takeaways for me in this season has been like. The community that I, I have in Tennessee and Chattanooga where I've been for the last 15 years, and like how, how important that is.
And then like when I come, you know, when you go away and you're away for a while and then you come back to that, that like. That feeling of being wrapped up in a community. And I think that's a big part of what's exciting about Nexus, nexus Con, this community is that there is, that that sense of belonging for folks who are trying to make change in the built environment.
Um, you know, this is just such a. Authentic place and like this, like being a place where people feel comfortable talking about real stuff, real problems, um, you know, is, is I think, a big part of this community and why it has, uh, you know, so much value, uh, for the folks who, who are a part of it. Amen to that.
Woo.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to this [00:36:00] 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 179 is a conversation with James Dice, Rosy Khalife, and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Andrew Rogers from ACE IoT Solutions.
Episode 179 features James Dice, Rosy and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Andrew Rogers from ACE IoT 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 (1:23)
Integrating, Connecting, and Securing Devices (7:05)
Workplace Experience (16:16)
Digitizing Operations & Maintenance (18:52)
Building Performance and Controls (22:44)
Sign off (30:02)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S697793-16073.
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 and a special guest. We're gonna walk through what's going on in the Nexus Labs community while [00:01:00] you're Yeah. Friends and a guest. Those are mutually exclusive groups. Yeah. Wow. Uh, we're gonna walk through what's going on in the next.
Slabs community while you can, you know, walk your dog or commute or whatever, if you want the full experience, this is just a preview. The best way to get the full experience is to go over to the Nexus newsletter where we have every piece of content and invites. To all of our events. Uh, let's start with at the Nexus, what's going on in the Nexus Labs community?
Um, I'll start. Um, we are sending out invites to what we're calling Nexus Con Supervisory Control, which is a. Fun take on a technology category, but it's basically a, a group of building owners that are gonna be reviewing the agenda and design of the conference and making sure it matches their day-to-day lives, essentially.
So it's, it's, it's a check on us of what we think is cool. They're gonna be coming in and saying, now this is actually [00:02:00] what we should be talking about at the conference this year. So it's grounded in, you know, real world stuff that building owners are, uh, thinking about and, uh, wondering about and problems they need to be, need to solve.
So that's an addition, uh, to the conference process this year that we're working on right now. And so, uh, invites to that have already been sent out and we should be putting that group together real soon. So. That'll be fun. Uh, Brad, what do you got?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so, uh, we had some marketplace success stories this week, which is pretty cool.
So if you're not aware, the Nexus Marketplace is this platform that we give access to building owners to help them find the service providers or technology solutions they need to do the work that they're trying to do. Um, this week we've had four requests. Come in where a consultant or a building owner has been browsing through the marketplace, found a vendor that they're interested in and said, Hey, I need an introduction to this vendor 'cause I need them for my situation that I'm in.
[00:03:00] So then that goes to us and we facilitate. We say, you know, we go to that technology vendor, service provider, say, Hey, someone's really interested in your your product. This is why. Here's who they are. You guys talk, make a deal happen. So it's just cool to see it go kind of full circle and complete exactly what it was supposed to do is, um, bring those two groups together.
James Dice: That's awesome. I'll, I'll say without saying names, we had a major, huge company, um, shut down one of their divisions and then come to the marketplace to find a new option because they shut down that division a new option. And a startup is who they, you know, ended up connecting with, which is a cool, you know.
Uh, progression to see, uh, Rosie, what about you? What's going on?
Rosy Khalife: I've been in Nexus, Conland and specifically around who's coming. Getting people registered. People need to keep moving it along in terms of registration. So, uh, that's what I've been up to and it's been really fun. Um, I've been talking to a lot of people that [00:04:00] came last year and that's obviously the people that are most excited and ready to come again, which is awesome.
And we are asking them for referrals. So my ask to the community, even though that's not what this is, is if you came last year and had a great time. We would love if you brought a friend or told a few people about it, and we can help facilitate that with you. So feel free to reach out.
James Dice: That's great. All right.
Time to bring in our friend and guest. It's not mutual elusive. Uh, we have Andrew Rogers here, co-founder of ACE iot. Andrew, what's going on in, in your world right now? Briefly.
Andrew Rogers: Oh man. Um. Honestly, a lot of vibe coding. Uh, like I, I kind of, are you fucking with
us?
Andrew Rogers: No, like, I really got on this train. Like, um, I would say the ent ai workflows in the last 60 to 90 days have really shifted.
Uh, it's [00:05:00] still like definitely a place where if you're not someone who understands, like if you're not a software developer and you go down this pathway, you're gonna hit a dead end pretty quick and it's gonna get really frustrating. But if you are a software developer, you can just build stuff really fast.
And so I. There were some things that, you know, we have this new product that we're launching Sentinel, that's all about, um, you know, uh, op operational technology, network monitoring and, and, and ev valid evaluation and validation. And there were these holes that we had found where like, people in the organizations running these things don't have.
Data models for some of the stuff they don't have the network architecture doc, you know, defined. Uh, no one is able to like share between IT and ot, like the network metrics that matter for OT networks. And so over, I would say the last two weeks I have just like, I don't know, a lot of hours and it's addictive because you can, like, you know, you put this challenge into the ai, you get it to write [00:06:00] some tests.
Get it to like implement the thing to fulfill the test, and then you have this thing that does something. It's really cool. Um, and so I put out, I think a LinkedIn post this weekend where I'd kind of like finally after this. Fugue state of just spinning out stuff, like trying to put it into a thoughtful, Hey, here's where I think the gaps are.
Here's how these different components we've been working on. Maybe fill some of those gaps. Uh, and then that'll, that'll evolve into like products that are, or, or features that are integrated into the Sentinel product. But, um, yeah, it's kind of wild. It is definitely. A different time in AI now than it was a year ago, um, for, for this stuff.
James Dice: Yeah, for sure. That's great. You'll have to, uh, to do some sort of demo. To these three non-programmers, non-software. Yeah, I got follow
Brad Bonavida: up questions that I'm holding, but yeah,
James Dice: we'll hold those for, for later. People are probably interested in, they're listening to this too. Alright, let's jump into what's going on in the, in [00:07:00] the community.
We, um, let's start with ot. Uh, it ot, uh, integrating, connecting and securing devices. We wrote a piece. We produced a piece, I wrote the piece on, uh, it's called a horizontal architecture with Limited Resources, three Options in Today's Marketplace. So, um, Andrew, you and I connected about this when this was just a fragment of an idea.
And so I think we wanted to have you come on to talk about it because you kind of helped me form like, what's going on with this article? How, how does this come into a, a legitimate story? And so first, thank you for that. Um, we, we kind of had a call and it was like. Let's explore this together, but basically where we landed was the, the concept of a horizontal architecture.
I'm looking up above my screen right now in my office, and it's, uh, 11 by 17, or maybe bigger than that, um, poster on my wall. The horizontal architecture came about, not, we didn't make it up, right? It, it was just we, we were interviewing people. [00:08:00] And just heard the theme over and over and over and over again and sort of said, okay, I'm hearing all of this.
Here's what you all are saying. Let me try to put some sort of, um, structure to what everyone's saying and have it be. Uh, so we're all speaking from the same sheet of music essentially. And that was four or five years ago, right? And so this piece that, that I wrote is about, um, the options. If you don't have an OT team, which most building owner organizations, I.
Don't really have dedicated OT resources, or they have very few that don't have the resources to like spin up a tech stack essentially. And so this, this piece is about basically the three options. One is, um, the actual, the, the OEMs are coming out with options for closing that gap with, you know, basically what we call unity from edge to cloud.
Um, there's a second option, which is OT infrastructure as a service. So if you're used to. As an IT [00:09:00] team buying these products as a service for different parts of the stack, you can now buy different ot. Um. Pieces of your OT infrastructure as a service, and then we have fully managed solutions. And so let's go into the third category, 'cause that's what you guys do at ACE iot.
Can you talk a little bit more about that and what that means?
Andrew Rogers: Yeah, and these concepts, like, we've been tracking this for a while because obviously when we started all this, you know, for us six, six and a half years ago now, um, it was very lonely. There weren't, you know, IDL wasn't really a term of art at that point.
Um. Horizontal architecture. I don't think you had published that stuff quite yet. Uh, and so we felt very alone, which is nice and you feel like you're early to a market, but it also is like, well, if we're having to try to convince everybody to do this, this is really hard. So now as we've, you know, more and more folks have shown up to the market, uh, with different offerings, kind of going to market different ways, like this is how we've been thinking [00:10:00] about our potential competitors.
Although I am still very adamant that like. The only competition we have in this market is doing nothing. Like there's so much room, so many buildings that need these solutions and for a building owner to find which one of these three flavors that we're talking about fits, like that's the most important thing.
And by having all of these three options, what we're doing, and like this piece, like I'm really excited about this piece you put out because by like really clearly defining this, it's basically saying, look, you have. It doesn't matter what you, your condition of your organization is, like what level of resources you can bring to the table.
You don't really have an excuse for not doing something to solve, like the acute problems you're experiencing that you're gonna solve on top of whatever this infrastructure is. So for us on this, you know, fully managed, like the way we think about this is. People need data. Um, that's, you know, for all kinds of things.
You all, y'all talk about [00:11:00] that better or more than anyone else. And a lot of times the existing value chain in the building is not very well oriented for data sharing collection. You know, so we go into a building, we deploy our platform, and we manage that platform and support it, including working through issues.
Um, when it's hard to get vendor support or OT networks aren't working correctly. Like we have that expertise on staff. So we're helping people solve those problems. So the data keeps flowing for whatever that higher value use case is. Whether it's a FDD, uh, you know, uh, reporting. Whatever. Um, even supervisory control.
We have, you know, clients that do supervisory control on top of our platform. So that's how we think about what we do is kind of different from some of the other, uh, platforms that are sort of just a platform that where you need those OT resources [00:12:00] or IT resources to step up and kinda learn one or the other enough to deploy and operate it for you.
Um, you know, we're, we're really focused on making it kind of turnkey for our customers.
James Dice: Mm-hmm. I was thinking about it like you guys are kind of like, you provide the tech, but then you also provide like a fractional OT staff. Um, that's right. Which is needed for sure.
Andrew Rogers: Uh, yeah, and I mean, our, our market that has been really good for us has been, you know, monitoring based commissioning, um.
Those folks are really smart, uh, really, you know, know the physics, they know the mechanical systems, you know, they can like smell, uh. Poorly tuned pi loop from across the parking lot. But when it comes to getting, you know, network access set up, going through security review with it, like they're, they hate it.
Like it's, it's like not a good use of their time. They're not good at it [00:13:00]and it just pisses everybody off. And so being able to kind of step in and help them deliver. You know, the kind of value they can deliver to the client, which is efficiency, reliability, like all of these things, they have all that knowledge, but they just need access to these systems in order to actually deliver it.
And being able to augment them and help them deliver that is really rewarding, actually.
James Dice: Anything to add?
Brad Bonavida: Rosie
James Dice: and Brad,
Brad Bonavida: I just like the point that you made Andrew, about like, or how you define yourself as, um. We talk about all these use cases for having a bunch of data and all those things that it unlocks, and you guys are like the bridge to be able to do that.
Like I'm picturing a building owner who sees all these great things that they could do with data deploys, be it monitoring based commissioning or occupancy sensors for space utilization, stuff that we're gonna talk about later, whatever, and then they're like, oh shit. Like this is really hard to actually get all the information I need into one place to actually do what I [00:14:00] expected.
To do, and that's the bridge that like you guys are able to put in there,
Andrew Rogers: or I get it done once and then, you know, one of my controller, uh, controllers is end of life to do a capital project to replace those because like, we don't want the risk of them being on our network. And now all those integrations just disappeared and I have to redo it.
Like, all of that, like ongoing stuff. It's not a, you know, I, I say this all the time, that. OT is not a, a cooling tower. You can't buy it, like hook it up to the water and walk away for 15 years and come back in 15 years and replace the fill. And in 30 years, you know it's rusted out and you buy a new one.
Right? Like that's not how OT works. You have to have some resource. And if that's not internal, it's gonna be external. And if it's gonna be external, you're either doing it one of two ways. You're either buying it by the hour. Which is expensive. Hard to plan for, hard to predict. And, [00:15:00] you know, one budget period is gonna be, you know, something happens and it's hugely expensive in the next budget period.
You're, you know, it's, there's no cost, but you just can't plan that stuff. Or you hire someone like us, which has more of this, I think, you know, I like this fractional OT staff. We're gonna take care of the stuff that's, that's. Broken over the course of our deployment. Yeah, you're gonna pay for it, but at least you know what you're paying for and you know that someone's there to backstop your staff when, when things get over, you know, over your head.
It's not like, oh, we were gonna do this thing. It was gonna be really easy. It didn't work. Now we're. Have to go through a procurement process to get an MSI to come in and we don't even know what we're asking them. You know? That's all that, you know, I used to say a lot this like mean meetings to integration.
I think that's, that's one of the things we were trying to drive down, right? Like if you've just got somebody that you can, it's on the hook, you know, they're, they're, they're the phone. You call [00:16:00] like you don't have to like, redo a new scope of work or we try to keep that stuff as minimal as possible so that.
When you need the data, you need, somebody's there to help you get it.
James Dice: Alright, time, time to move on. Um, our next piece is in the workplace experience. Uh, beat. We had a, a piece that we wrote on the ROI of IOT, um, it's called The Best Returns Coming from diving in, not Dipping Your Toe in the water. This, it has interesting story that's in that piece around Manulife.
Reducing food waste, which I thought was fascinating. We don't have a lot of food waste stories in our community, but basically they started counting the number of people in the office. This is very simple actually. I. Counting the number of people in the office and then around like 10:30 AM when they would start cooking lunch, they just figured out how many people were there and then use that to like correlate the number of people that were there to the number of people that were actually gonna show up to eat.
And I, I, I think it's a very simple [00:17:00] thing, but this piece walks through all these different business cases for people counting sensors and. I just thought this one was especially fascinating, like, why wouldn't every single cafeteria be doing this? Uh, it takes a people counter on, on each door in your office, and if you're a tenant, right, whatever floors you have, right?
Um, and you can immediately have, uh, you know, right size your, your food count and your, your food costs and even like your, like labor around your, your food as well. So fascinating, uh, piece. Anybody have anything to comment on that or should we move on?
Brad Bonavida: I just, I'll say quickly, it's such a quantifiable ROI use case for occupancy sensors, perhaps the most quantifiable I've ever seen.
And it seems like the more we talk about space utilization, it's like every month there's some new use case that we hear about. That's pretty cool. I, I compare this one a lot to, uh, the people using it for smart restrooms like, uh, cleaning, you know, you're planning your [00:18:00] janitorial schedules around it.
That one's, that one's great too, so Love it.
Andrew Rogers: Was this done on occupancy or on like, uh, access control data or both?
James Dice: This was done on people counting. They started with access control data and, um, I can't remember why they said that that wasn't enough, but they basically determined that that wasn't enough.
And so all of their ROI calculations were on. The sensors sort of on top of the base case, which is the data that they already have. Gotcha.
Andrew Rogers: Yeah.
James Dice: Mm-hmm.
Andrew Rogers: And that, well, I just want to go on the re Oh, sorry.
James Dice: Go
Andrew Rogers: ahead. I just wanna go on the. That I'm against food waste. So this is, yes, we,
Rosy Khalife: yeah. So are we, so we're, we're aligned there.
James Dice: Yes.
Rosy Khalife: That's awesome.
James Dice: Alright, and next one, um, digitizing operation as a maintenance. Uh, Brad, you have a little, uh, a nugget for lack of a better term to play.
Brad Bonavida: Pun intended. Uh, [00:19:00] so tomorrow we're having our building owner meet up for technology adoption. Um, what people are doing to help their technicians, their workplace adopt technology.
Um, this, this episode will come out after that, but it's gonna be a great event. Uh, so anyway, I've been diving through, like trying to do a bunch of research on what we've heard from building owners about increasing technology adoption. And I stumbled across, uh, Devon, Tracy at Nexus Con talking about the Golden Nugget program at, uh, Lockheed Martin.
So, without further ado, I'm just gonna play the clip, um, and then we can discuss it
and fixing what the, and so one way. Hold the technicians hand, meet with them weekly, and my team is the first pass at the data. We build a list of what looks like a potential problem and share it with the technicians. Now, as you can imagine, and I'm sure you've experienced, most of the technicians were not excited about this.
[00:20:00] They're like, ah, I don't wanna, that's, you're gonna, you know, put me in the hot seat. I don't want people to know about that. We tried to flip the script and we said, Hey, we're gonna make you the hero because now you found this thing that nobody knew about and we invented this term. There it is called the Golden Nugget, and I actually have one here because we have to mail it out to one of our new sites.
And, uh, this is something that the technicians actually now pass around to technicians who find, find a golden nugget and fix it. And it's, it sounds kind of dorky, but it's stuck. And we actually have vice president level golden nugget targets
Brad Bonavida: the golden nugget at Lockheed. What do you guys think?
Rosy Khalife: So cool.
James Dice: That's so cool. Uh. What's funny is she showed a slide there that they went and visited Google and then came back and did [00:21:00] FDD and I know from, you know, just talking to those two groups, is that actually Google's still learning from them? No. So there's like a little bit of a, a cycle of, of sharing between building owners, which is, which is great.
Um, I just wanted to circle back real quick on what you said about the event. So by the time this gets published. The event will have been last week, and not all of our community will get an invite to that because we just started doing closed doors. Building owner only. We invite a few, um, vendors to, um, talk just for three minutes each on what they're doing that's relevant to that, that month's topic.
But just so everyone knows, those are building owner only. If you're a building owner and you wanna share and talk to other building owners, that's what we created those for. It's kind of like an extension of the, what was called the buyer symposium at last year's Nexus Con. And we'll be continuing that online and in person at, at this year's Nexus Con.
Brad Bonavida: It's cool because you [00:22:00] imagine we didn't play that clip. What happens in these events is that Devon's sitting there with some other building owner who's like, ah, we got FD, D, but my technicians are struggling with it. And she says, oh, well we did the Golden Nugget, and like she introduces this idea. And those are the type of conversations we hear.
And then I just wanna say like, I love, we're gonna talk about this a lot more throughout the year, but like gamifying. All of these smart buildings tasks to do it. Just making it fun for the people involved I think goes a really long way. Uh, we've heard other stories like this of if you make smart buildings fun, you increase adoption for sure.
That's great.
James Dice: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. The Golden Nugget program is definitely a cool one. Um, all right, let's move on. Um, the last category we have here is energy management, building performance, and controls. Uh, Brad, you wrote a piece on this, so we'll, we'll talk about one of those areas from that piece.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, so we did talk about the, uh, cross system energy management piece previously, um, but there's a couple [00:23:00] of big pieces within that that we didn't get to. Uh, and we want to introduce one of those concepts. So, uh, we, we. Titled the, the section of the piece, taking the energy management hands off, the proverbial steering wheel.
And it's this idea that there's, there's all these, you know, energy management related tech tools out there that help elevate the job of an energy manager. Um, but it requires some buy-in to, to elevate that energy manager. And one of the ways it requires buy-in is that they have to be comfortable taking their hands off the steering wheel and letting something else control portions of their building.
I pulled a quote from Mark Chung, the CEO of Verus, who was talking about this when I was interviewing for this. He said, there's such a need to feel in control, a very human need to feel in control and take these actions on your own. And what he is talking about is, I'm making up an example, but that plant operator who has been dialing in set points on the plant for the past, you know, 15 years [00:24:00] and they get value out of that, and they like doing that, but now we have.
Algorithms and automations and AI that can do that for them, probably better than them. But what we really want those people to understand or what this piece was a lot about is if, if people can, um, appreciate that and, and accept that now your position's elevated, you're no longer switching the dials, you're looking at the thing holistically and you get to make these bigger decisions about what else you can do for your system.
So, Andrew, James, Rosie, I'm sure you guys have a lot of thoughts about like. The adoption or taking the hands off the proverbial steering wheel. I like that. Uh, what do you guys think? Well, I think I'll just say
James Dice: real quick. Okay. Go ahead. Um, we published a piece of this piece about this in 2021. And it was all about this piece.
Like this was the major obstacle. And you know, four years later it seems like we're kind of still talking about it, but there are companies like Brainbox growing and getting acquired by Trane that seemed to [00:25:00] have figured out how to get through that obstacle. And so I think it's more like the choice for energy managers out there to say like.
Are we gonna take that? Other people have taken that jump. Are we gonna take that jump? Sorry Rosie, I interrupted you though.
Rosy Khalife: No, it's okay. I was just noticing that with these last two pieces that are, we're talking about two different roles. We're really just talking about change management. Like this is what it's coming down to of like, how are people.
Using their buildings. How are we actually gonna implement these technologies that we want to put in place or that we already have in place? How are we using them to the best of our ability and how are we really getting the people that are supposed to be using them really bought in and excited about it in like the golden nugget?
Or what Mark was saying. And so I think that's like, that is the overarching thing here that I feel like a lot of people are up against and it's not one solution. There's so many things that need to happen for that to really take effect. But we need, we, we, I feel like we need a session all about [00:26:00] change management and Nexus con.
That's, I vote for that.
James Dice: Andrew, you guys do this a little bit with. Enabling supervisory control from the cloud. What you got? Any, anything to add here?
Andrew Rogers: You know, it's funny though. My favorite story about this is from a buddy of mine in a completely different industry, and I think we've all heard people talk, you know, old, old, uh.
Old controls guys will talk about like disconnecting a thermostat in an office and like letting people run the wheel as much as they want and it doesn't do anything because you know, back when DDC was first rolling out, that sort of thing, but this one, to me, I don't know, for it was so visceral, like. My buddy was, uh, north American Quality Manager for the world's largest bakery, uh, BIM Bimbo bakeries.
And they were, you know, having these bread quality issues. And I mean, they had done, they like laser scanned the loaf shape as it goes into the oven. They had. You know, image analysis, this was 15 years ago, but this was in the industrial side. You can do all this stuff 'cause it's like one thing. You [00:27:00]have this very minimal scope, so like image analysis to make sure the lows were going in correctly, coming out the right color, all that.
So he just keeps having quality issues. So he finally is like, all right, I'm gonna have to like stay in and just watch this happen in second shift. Like, or third, whatever it was. And like. These bakers who've been baking bread for 20, 30 years. Like they go to the thermal control where they've got this like precisely set recipe for the oven with, you know, the humidity taken into account, like everything possible, you know, accounted for in their modeling.
And this guy's just going over there every 10 minutes and like up two degrees, down four degrees, you know? And so eventually they just. They just disconnected that thermal controller because they would like, you can't do that, man. Like, we're getting inconsistent results. Like, you can't change it. Ah, but this is what we have to do to get it.
You know? So, you know, I think there's been this shift happen in industry over and over and over again, and it just takes a while to [00:28:00] trust the machinations that, that we're putting in place. Um, but you know, I think it's, it comes down to getting more deployments, which is happening now. And people seeing the stuff work.
And then I think this will kind of segue into some other topics we may talk about in a minute. As these things mature, like a lot of the horror stories on specifically AI driven, I. Supervi advanced supervisory control early, early in the, in this, this kind of, uh, evolution. You know, if you take an unbounded AI system and point it at real equipment and don't provide a lot of like guardrails and boundaries and, and that sort of stuff like.
Stuff will go wrong and it did. Um, and as the folks building the more novel innovation stuff, get more familiar with the actual constraints, which aren't just like, can the [00:29:00] machine do this thing? It's like, is it a good idea to do this because it's gonna have this effect on your building envelope after 10 years of letting the humidity go to 80% every night?
Well, you know, all of that stuff, it gets in, you know, codified. And this is where I think, uh, there's kind of another point we may talk about in a second where this like idea that these frameworks for codifying this stuff that are loosely, you know, mostly get lumped under this ontology work and this space, it's really about codifying all these constraints to these systems in a way that the hu the machines and the humans can understand them and that you can give a machine.
The flexibility to find the optimal solution while remaining confident that it's not going to, you know, color outside the line somewhere and really mess up your building or your systems.
James Dice: Alright, that's good advice. Next. Okay. Uh, that's it for our, our [00:30:00] categories. Let's end with carve outs. Um. So carve outs are, uh, anything that you'd like to share from your personal life just to let us get to know you better.
Rosy Khalife: So, my carve out for this episode is a book that I recently finished called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, and it's an awesome one. If you haven't read it, I. Bought the, the actual book. And then I was driving and I was thinking, let me just see if there's an audio version. So I listened to that and he actually reads it himself, which I think is so much more powerful.
Anyhow, real quick on what it's about, um, we all have a, you know, the zone of genius within us, and then we have, we have our zone of genius and our zone of excellence, and it's basically like how do you tap into that next level of your superpower as a person? And it was great. So highly recommend. Who's next?
Brad, you're it.
Brad Bonavida: Uh, I did something cool this weekend that I didn't tell you guys about. So, uh, in July I'm going [00:31:00] on a llama assisted backpacking trip where these llamas can carry like 80 pounds of stuff for us so we don't have to carry, or they can carry more than we were gonna carry. So we're not bringing a guide.
So this last weekend I went and got my. Llama license to be able to take these llamas. So I went to the ranch, uh, my wife and I, and we met our three llamas that we're taking, we're taking Spock, hide and Drama. Drama. The llama figured out how to put their packs on, figured out how to feed 'em, how to tie 'em up, all those things.
So I'm llama certified now.
James Dice: Certified. That's,
Andrew Rogers: that's so much better than a forklift certified. You win. Yeah, you win. I don't have anything better than that. What, what?
James Dice: Um, alright. Oh man. I'll go, I'll go. Um, before we, before we make Andrew, we forced Andrew to go, um, we're, we've just been buying Andrew time here.
Um, I'm gonna get two. So one is the Champions League's still going on. All my soccer fans out there. Uh, by the time this comes out we'll know, but tomorrow Arsenal plays PSG and of course [00:32:00] we're all rooting for Arsenal. Of course, the second one I have is I'm signed up for in Boulder here. This is a very bolder thing, you guys, but I'm signed up for this conference called the Conscious Entrepreneurship Conference, and, um, I'm super excited about it.
It's about not like losing your mind as a, as an entrepreneur, and I think during this time I really, really need it. Um, specifically, there's a one day workshop with the author of a book called 10 X is Easier Than two X. And this is a book that I've read before and I'm extremely skeptical about. And so I'm excited to like be in the room nice and be a skeptic for once.
Um, normally I'm like all in on these things. I'm like, yeah, of course. But this time I'm like, I don't know if I agree with this guy. So I'm rereading the book and sort of go into spend time with him. Uh, we'll see. It'll be fun. I'll report back. Alright, Andrew, yours.
Andrew Rogers: Well, um, there's so many ways to take this.
I think one thing that, that, [00:33:00] uh, maybe y'all are encouraging me to talk about is, is, is smart buildings related. So I don't know that it counts as a carve out, so, um, that's fair. All right, well,
James Dice: well, I'll just, we'll just put it in the show notes. You wrote an article that is satirical around AI replacing consultants in our industry, and we'll link to it and so that you could just skip it.
So what's your, what's your personal one?
Andrew Rogers: Um, the personal one is that, uh, you know, in, in like intense vulnerability, like, um, some of you may have known, I think I may have talked about it at Nexus Con with people, but like I had planned on doing this like one year trip that was going to be this long road trip.
And maybe I had wrapped a little too much of my identity in like doing this thing, and the universe is like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So, uh, the last four, four, four-ish months, I've been like kind of bouncing around a little bit because my [00:34:00] plan did not work out. My plan involved a van, the van. Involved an engine.
The engine involved being dead, uh, and then the second engine involved being dead. So we're like, in this, this space right now, where I'm at right now is, is the, like, what do you do about the third engine? Uh, but, uh, it's resulted in me like being in Austin, Texas for three months and, um, and visiting Brad.
Right. You know, maybe being visit. Yeah. Like I, I showed up on Brad's doorstep with a dead van in the middle of, you know, Colorado, which was, you know, fortunate. Uh, very graciously allowed. It was see him to use his front yard for a few days. Um, and then, uh, I am, uh, kind of planning out. But it's been a good season for me 'cause it's like forcing me to figure out, you know, who are you, where you're at, what does that mean?
Uh, can you kinda like, make it work wherever you're at. And, uh, it's been really fun to, like, I, [00:35:00] I'd say two things that, that really kind of big takeaways for me in this season has been like. The community that I, I have in Tennessee and Chattanooga where I've been for the last 15 years, and like how, how important that is.
And then like when I come, you know, when you go away and you're away for a while and then you come back to that, that like. That feeling of being wrapped up in a community. And I think that's a big part of what's exciting about Nexus, nexus Con, this community is that there is, that that sense of belonging for folks who are trying to make change in the built environment.
Um, you know, this is just such a. Authentic place and like this, like being a place where people feel comfortable talking about real stuff, real problems, um, you know, is, is I think, a big part of this community and why it has, uh, you know, so much value, uh, for the folks who, who are a part of it. Amen to that.
Woo.
Rosy Khalife: Okay, friends. Thank you for listening to this [00:36:00] 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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