🎧 #191: Chris Lelle of Lincoln Property Company on the Keys to Successful FDD Deployment in CRE
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Episode 191 is a conversation with James Dice and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Lab, as well as Chris Lelle from Lincoln Property Company.
Summary
Episode 191 is a conversation with James Dice and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Lab, as well as Chris Lelle from Lincoln Property Company. 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.
Mentions and Links
- James’s podcast with Shannon of PointGaurd (31:51)
- Lincoln Property Company (1:52)
- Sign up for NexusCast #2 on Condition Based Maintenance (4:58)
- Chris’s NexusCon recording (8:05)
Highlights
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (2:02)
Bringing Chris into the Conversation (7:48)
Sign off (33:18)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S706971-16073.
Full transcript
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
James Dice: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
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The links are below in the show notes, and now let's go on the podcast.
Brad Bonavida: Welcome back to the Nexus Podcast. Everybody, uh, we've got kind of a special thing going on. I'm Brad, I'm hosting for you, but I do have James here with me. James, [00:01:00] uh, luckily is here because this is gonna be about FDD, and he's our FDD in-house expert. So how's it going, James?
James Dice: Great, great. Good to be here. I like how, I, like how it's lucky for me to be here.
That's funny.
Brad Bonavida: No, it's lucky for the, the audience to be that you're here 'cause you're the expert.
James Dice: I hope that people feel like they're lucky to have me, my voice in their car or headphones or whatever, but maybe not.
Brad Bonavida: I've, I've been told that, that they are So you're, you're in luck. They're in luck, I guess.
Anyway, so, uh, yeah, you've, you've heard the podcast before. Hopefully. Hopefully, if this is your first time, welcome for the full experience with Nexus Labs, uh, you should sign up for our newsletter. That is the number one way to keep up to date with what we've got going on. Um, so check that out. We'll put in the show notes.
Um, our guest today is Chris L, senior Operations Manager from Lincoln Property Company. How you doing, Chris? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Great. Of course. Uh, we're gonna jump into your presentation at Nexus Con, but [00:02:00] before we do that, we're gonna start with at the Nexus, which is what's going on within the Nexus Labs community.
Uh, the thing that's top of mind for me is that last week we just finished our first Nexus Cast virtual conference. This one was on OT device management. Uh, James, what was your highlight from that?
James Dice: Well, you know, I mean, I feel like sometimes in the podcast we give people the behind the scenes. I think just launching it.
From scratch and coming up with this new format, and now we're sort of in this iterating mode where we're like, how do we improve upon that? How do we give the, you know, the best version too, which we'll talk about in just a second. But for me it was more of the creative aspect. How do we. Bring building owners together, which we did, almost 50 building owner organizations, were there.
How do we, um, have case studies but also involve the vendors that we're presenting in a tasteful way? And how do we bring in all of our pro members who've been coming into our events? So [00:03:00] you can see we were trying to optimize for many different things. And I think obviously, Brad, you're the one that.
Brought all of this together, but for me it was more of the design aspect of it. How do we design this experience? And then how did it go and how do we evaluate that? And so the behind the scenes pieces, um, it's our attempt to, we've been talking about this over the last few months on the podcast, but how do you create a virtual experience that.
Mirrors as much as possible, what we all love about Nexus Con, knowing that that's impossible. And so how do you get as close as you can given that everyone's sitting on their computers. Right? So that's the fun part.
Brad Bonavida: Yep. Yep. I, I would say optimistically, uh. I think it went well and I know that we can do even way better.
So thanks everyone who was there for, the first one is gonna come back. One thing that was, um, a positive note for me is I thought that the, the virtual booths were really cool 'cause you could actually go into a sponsor's booth and like read [00:04:00] about them, watch videos, but then within that booth, there's actually a room that you enter and now you're in like a, a virtual meeting with those, that booth.
So you, you can go like, check out their resources and then when you're. Bought in or you liked their demo or whatever, you could go talk to them. And the conversations in those booths were pretty cool. You know, you have somebody come in and you can like really dive into how that service or product could, you know, work on your portfolio of buildings.
James Dice: So it was good. Yeah. And then what we noticed is, is all presenters or all everyone who had a booth, this won't be true in future ones, but everyone who had a booth also had one of their customers there speaking and those customers just organically went to the booth. That, that booth. And so if you went to that booth, you were not only talking to the vendor, you were also talking to their customer in the booth too, which was kind of cool.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah,
James Dice: I thought. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Yep, exactly. Um, our next Nexus cast is set for April 15th. Uh, you can actually register on our website now if you wanna check it out. The topic of this one is gonna be [00:05:00] condition-based maintenance, which is not far from the topic of today's conversation. Uh, we hope to see you there.
Like I said, you can register right now. Anything. James, I know you're, we're both talking about this one all day, so we're looking forward to it and how we're gonna reshape it.
James Dice: Yeah, so same, same setup. Pro members will be able to register for free, um, to all of our Nexus casts that we do. Um, vendors can.
Get a booth and demo same way they can at Nexus Con. So now is the time to start talking to us because those, those slots are limited. Uh, this one will be very popular on the vendor side because of all of the people doing FDD and all of the IOT sensors and everyone participating in maintenance. This will be a popular one.
So there will be limited slots, I'll say.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. One other at the Nexus thing I wanted to mention before we get into it is the, uh, I've been working on the building owner VIP process for Nexus Con [00:06:00] 2026. So. At Nexon 2025. The first night we did a building owner, VIP dinner where we brought a handful of building owners to like an exclusive dinner.
It was really cool. It was like, you know, leaders of different, uh, organizations sitting next to each other talking about their problems over a great dinner. We're changing the way that we're doing that a little bit this year, that we wanna make sure that the building owners who are most engaged with us at Nexus Con are the ones that get to come to that VIP dinner.
So when you register for Nexus Con. We'll be sending you kind of a series of emails as a building owner of how you can get more involved and participate. You know, things like submitting a case study, things like, uh, participating in a brainstorming session, inviting one of your colleagues to come. And we're just gonna look at the results, um, you know, as it gets posted to Nexus Con and realize which building owners have been supporting us building this conference the most.
And those are the people that we're gonna bring to the VIP dinner, uh, in Detroit on the night of October 5th, the fifth. The first night of the [00:07:00]conference, so I'm excited about that.
James Dice: And we'll obviously also have, among the VIPs there will be local building owners. So I'm, I'm, maybe you talked about this on the last episode, Brad, but Brad and I both went to Detroit in January and we're working on setting up sort of like co-hosting arrangements with the local building owners there.
And so, um. Um, we won't name names until we get their approval to, uh, talk about them, but the, the building owners that you would expect to be at our conference will be co-hosting that dinner and, and be with us, uh, throughout the experience. So any building owner like Chris, maybe that'll be traveling in from out of town.
They'll be there to sort of co-host with us.
Brad Bonavida: That's great. All right. Speaking of which, let's bring Chris into this. So Chris, you presented at Nexus Con 2025. Your presentation was titled Real World Results Driven by Fault Detection Software and Sequence of Operation Improvements. Um, [00:08:00] I just rewatched your presentation and I believe you get an award as the only.
Presenter who pointed out the physical HVAC characteristics of the room. During your presentation, you were commenting on the vicinity or proximity of the supply and return grills, and also I believe the color of them and how you could, uh, analyze, uh, how they were doing based on that. So. If anyone was curious if Chris is technically capable of speaking about building optimization, uh, I think he, I think you can confirm that.
Um, so with, so you're with Lincoln Property Company. Where I wanted to start is, can you just talk a little bit about. Who Lincoln Property is, what your portfolio looks like, and what your role within the company is.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, so Lincoln Property Company is a pretty large commercial real estate company portfolio of more than 600 million square feet.
It ranges from new developments at sports arenas and movie theaters, office [00:09:00] buildings, multifamily to third party managements. There's retail establishments, industrial. Office space and medical, really, whatever that's there in the commercial real estate world is an area that we will, uh, we'll work with.
Provides a lot of opportunity seeing, you know, really the full big picture. And working with a company like Lincoln, it's such an entrepreneurial piece, allows us to really dabble into what we're gonna talk about today.
Brad Bonavida: Awesome. And your role specifically at Lincoln.
Chris Lelle: So I kind of focus on that, uh, other duties as, uh, described, right?
Whatever you're supposed to do. But a lot of it's, uh, interior construction, renovation. I do energy audits. I work with our FDD and creating the strategies on energy efficiency across the board. I work with a team, you know, whenever it comes to advising on our standards and policies from the engineering and our training and how we're actually putting everything together to get it to work, uh, as a whole.
And I also work with our data center group, especially really focused in the Atlanta [00:10:00] area, but on power acquisition and how we're working in the data center world.
Brad Bonavida: Got it. Okay. And just for a little more context, can you. Tell us a little bit about the technologies that you guys are using within your buildings.
You talked a lot at Nexon about the FDD applications you're using. Just walk us through some of the key technologies that you're using on a day-to-day basis in your buildings.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, so if there's a system we operate in the building from an engineering and operations perspective, we look at what technologies can be there to help leverage or maximize our efficiency, leverage the staff with it.
Big piece is the fall detection diagnostics. We work with point guard at a lot of locations for using the FDD. We get into irrigation control where we're using an analytics and actual machine learning programs and irrigation control to maximize water efficiency. We have leak detection companies that are there for water use monitoring and leak detection analysis that help us minimize risk and water use, uh, across the board.
We have indoor air quality sensors that we're working with companies that [00:11:00] help us maximize the, really, the, the indoor air quality environment through monitoring of the parameters. We also tie that into different certifications that we can help the different owners and properties, uh, achieve. Uh, additionally we're starting to now get into a little bit of the people counting software from a different perspectives of indoor air quality, but also from an asset management perspective and learning space utilization techniques in the leasing realm.
Where do people need to use space? When are they increasing their needs? Are they decreasing and how can we meet their leasing needs? So if there's a system and a way to do that, we'll evaluate the technology and how we can implement it. We've also done, as you mentioned a little bit, the commission-based maintenance.
We've been, we've been testing that out and piloting in several places as well, really getting into the predictive component. I mean, elevators have had that for a while, but we're now looking at it, you know, all of your HVAC equipment as to how do you do everything to really maximize your staffing efficiency.
Maintain the equipment and the best, manage best [00:12:00] condition and maximize the life of it.
James Dice: Chris, do you guys have, I don't know how you guys talk about this program internally, but is there like a smart buildings program and if so, is there like a group. That's focused. 'cause what you just named was like what, seven, eight different categories.
And so I can imagine all of the pilots and rollout plans and governance and standards and all the things that would sort of like, obviously we talk a lot about at on this podcast and at our events. Do you guys have like a, what you would call a program or is it more, um, focused on individual departments and you have just happened to get all of these tools over time?
Chris Lelle: That's a fun part. So we do have a sustainability team and a playbook that coincides with it. But the overall strategy we work with in the implementation makes this really easy with the individual systems to tailor those to each building's budgets, the ownership's goals, and how they work. So it's a little [00:13:00] bit broken up in that manner, but that's intentional from ease of implementation to meet everybody's needs.
James Dice: Because you have a bunch of different types of assets, right? But then you also have, I think you guys own some of the facilities, but then you also just manage some of the facilities. So it's kind of like you need, if I'm hearing you correctly, you need a playbook that you can apply to these different ownership structures and different facility types.
Is that what you're saying?
Chris Lelle: That's correct.
James Dice: Interesting.
Brad Bonavida: In, in your presentation, uh, the, the kind of really cool. Fact that you brought out that we wanted to talk to you about was you said that, uh, the responsibilities of the engineers at your facilities have gone from about 125,000 square feet per engineer.
To over 300,000 square feet per engineer. So that's more than double the amount of building space that a particular engineer is responsible for maintaining, operating, all those things. Um, maybe first question, [00:14:00] is that a, is that a Lincoln number? Like how did you come to that? Uh. Those metrics?
Chris Lelle: Metrics? No.
So some of it comes through different training and working with BOMA or other organizations and pulling our competitive sets. When we're looking at 'em, when we're looking through the staffing plans, what's happened, where the different properties and what are the impacts over the years. So there has been a big shift in technology.
I, and I'll say technology has been more reactive to this number. A lot of, you know, my perspective comes in and looking at it that you get a lot of the financial numbers. People always want to cut costs. Well, staff is a cost that's there, that's a, a component of it, but it's one that can be singled out as one of the larger line items in the budget.
So you can target that. So then we have to react to that. Well, what happens? You, you've got maintenance costs, you have to evaluate utility costs are the labor costs. How do you, how do you make this work? Let's factor in technology. Kind of look at it as doctors growing up for us, we had a general practitioner.
You could go there from stitches to a [00:15:00] cold and flu to a broken bone to your annual checkup. We're starting to bring in technology now where you need people that can understand fault detection. You can get into the automation system, sequences of operation and can computer programming. The same guys that are changing belts, squeezing pumps, bearings, you name it, and looking at it.
So does it, does it make sense to have the guy that can, you know, grease a bearing as your computer program or are you pay overpaying in one area and underpaying in another, not maximizing efficiency. So we're responding in that area and staffing at an, in a way that's strategic to maximize the efficiency.
The industry is shifting, I'll call it. There's a lot of bean counters out there that are just punching just the numbers in there. So how do we respond to that and make this work in a beneficial manner? So when we add in technologies across the board, in reality, there's no sense in wasting periods.
Whether it's water, whether it's electricity, it's gas, it doesn't make sense no matter what somebody's political views or how they are. So let's maximize that [00:16:00] efficiency. Let's create the healthiest environment for our tenants in the buildings, and let's create the an environment that our engineers and our property teams are learning, that they're loving where they're at, and they're really providing a benefit that's different where we're doing a service to everybody across the board.
Brad Bonavida: How would you describe the maturity of your FDD program? So you, you've talked about FDD has, you know, kind of got you past this lack of, or, you know, more square footage per engineer. Are you guys implementing that and mature across your portfolio? Do you feel like you're still growing? Where are you at with that?
Chris Lelle: So, I'll give a little background on it. So the FDD started for me going back to 2010 timeframe. I got brought in working with a venture capitalist who was creating this program to learn buildings, energy use profiles so that he could do commodities trading based on how much coal, natural gas, or whatever the, the, the, the fuel mix would be.
And he'd know, I'm gonna buy tr sell trade and work in this. Ultimately, you know, through that he is like, I've got all this statistical [00:17:00] analysis and it's telling me that this equipment's not working and this is there, and it's like, how does, what does this mean? So I was able to help them interpret the data and learn patterns and recognition through the buildings.
That program ended up going away. So, but I fast forward, you know, years and years in development through that, we came across, through just sitting through dozens of presentations and FDD programs. Point guard came across my table. And back in the 2019 timeframe, 2020, we really started diving in at that part with 'em and understanding this is really similar to what we had.
It's streamlined, it's built by engineers for engineers, very efficient way to do this. So by, you know, the end of 2020. COVID year. Here we are. Here's a lot of, you know, snake oil stuff that's out there in the market, across the board for you name it on a technology front for how we're operating buildings.
But I realize the benefits, this is an opportunity we can couple our sequences of operation that people aren't really using anywhere. They're really custom and streamlined approach. Adding the FDD with it and let's see what we can do [00:18:00] from that piece. So now we've got more than five years under the belt.
Buildings that are there, you know, where we're taking buildings that were energy efficient, low cost to begin with, and we're netting more than 20 cents a foot in savings for those, you know, extremely adding a lot of asset value to them, but we're also reducing 10 and HVAC complaints, 60 to 90%. Very first building.
We did. Before COVID, so 2019 and older, this, you know, not a five story, 135,000 foot building, you get 120 to 140 HVAC complaints a year. You think it's not too bad, maybe one every other day type of part. So engineers expect it that we can work with that. 2020 happened and we ended up with 40 for the entire year, so lower occupancy.
And so of course we saw the drastic reduction. So we think that's, you know, that's, that's a good year. Let's use 40 as our baseline. We installed the software at the end of 2020, all of 2021. We had four complaints for the year, right? So you go from pre there, pre [00:19:00] COVID, you know, 130 average, right to down to four.
Well, can we sustain this with what we're doing? Energy dropped because of occupancy, because of sequences. Go into 2021, or sorry, we move forward to 20 22, 20 23, and so on. Now we're still averaging maybe a dozen calls a year. Complaints one a month. From where we were previously and the energy numbers that we achieved with a reduction in the COVID years have stayed with the full re occupancy of the building and occupancy being, you know, in the mid eighties to nineties in the building.
So you say, oh yeah, we've been using it a while. Here's these results. They're super easy to do. Now, with that reduction in HVAC complaints, I can now reallocate the staff's time. As a reinvestment approach, strategy to how we budget it. I can now have them trained in other areas that provide maximum impact.
If we're hiring a vendor that's a hundred twenty five, a hundred fifty, $200 an hour, I've got onsite staff that I can train to do the same work. They know the building, they're learning, [00:20:00] and it's really maximizing their skillset in the asset value.
James Dice: Fascinating. Can you, can we, can we just go back to that.
More square footage per engineer. I think what I, what I heard you say is it's, it was a separate trend from you guys weren't reacting with FDD so that you could respond to this trend. It's more of a background trend happening across real estate, which is more square footage per maintenance person. Right.
And what you've seen with FDD, if I'm hearing you correctly, Chris, is that you're able to sort of counteract that trend. As people get cut, you're able to then maintain the same level of, um, say maintenance performance, right. And tenant experience with less people because of FDD, can you, can you sort of explain what about FDD programs allow that to be true?
Chris Lelle: Yeah. I go into the simple term you look at as economic output per engineer on a GDP basis, right? If we [00:21:00] basically double the, the output that, that we're looking at. So think about that as a, you know, in any industry when you can really
Brad Bonavida: Oh, yeah.
Chris Lelle: Get that efficiency. So kind of the question is, how does FDD allow us to do that?
The tool that we're using has such a streamlined approach to it. In a matter of five minutes, I, I can look at a half a million square foot building, a million square foot building, and I can tell you every thermostat that's set outside of the ranges that I wanna look at, every piece of equipment that was not communicating over the last 24 hours, how much it wasn't communicating, uh, every temperature that was, or zone that was outside of the agreed upon ranges that we've set.
So now you've got your, your occupancy hours. I'm only gonna focus on that equipment that's running when it shouldn't, it's not communicating. It's set where it's not supposed to. So if I've got a thousand, uh, terminal units in a building or a thousand devices. I can spend less than five minutes on that million square foot building or that thousand devices, and I know that, hey, look, five of 'em are the problem.
Let me go target [00:22:00] my staff to go take care of those five devices. I'm not gonna be wasting their time walking around just checking a box somewhere or sitting down drinking, you know, 10 cups of coffee while they review every single page and every trend log in the automation system. 'cause we know that that's not really tapping and it's not efficient.
Anyways,
James Dice: this is fascinating. This is why, this is like the, the reason, or one of the reasons I would say that I, I just believe FDD is table stakes for operating commercial buildings, and it hasn't quite scaled that way, especially in commercial real estate. Um, but I do believe it's, it's, it's trending towards that way where it's just like, this is the way that buildings are operated in the modern, in the modern world.
Chris Lelle: What I find, you know, I look, look across the board, FDD in getting into that way, so we're looking at it. It's really telling you, is the building doing what it's been programmed to do? Yeah. There's one component to this that allows us to maximize that, and that is our custom sequences of operation. The piece that the industry is lagging behind right now [00:23:00] is a true understanding of tenant comfort and energy efficiency, and that correlation on how to do that in the most streamlined approach.
Where F DD is missing it or some of those, it, it's the overcomplicating it and bringing it in that, that there's some of the smartest programmers out there and we've got good operators, but there's not that, that communication, collaboration on how to bring those together in the easiest manner. I'll tell you, I never wanna see a person program a building again.
'cause that's about the worst thing we have. I don't like to see our operating teams operating buildings. They, I mean, it, it's fun right now to see these results and what we can achieve extremely fast with FD. D. But when I go into a building and I find that, you know, 50% of the points are overridden and they're running all of the time, like, how, how good was that?
We're doing ourselves a disservice in this industry. FTD ISS helping us fix this. But as operators, we're not making a great case for ourselves as an industry. I'm very fortunate to work with a team that we get to take these results and train, you know, our parts and, and kind [00:24:00] of look at it as a competitive advantage, but.
James Dice: It's almost like stop, stop operating. But, but I think the point we're, we're trying to make a little bit is that the FDD helps, um, sort of like not replace that institutional knowledge that the industry is losing, whether through retirements or staffing cuts like you're saying. But it helps. Sort of document what the building should be doing and then, and, and in the old world it was an expert operator that, like you said, had to understand sequences of operations and today's world that's just not realistic.
It seems like
Chris Lelle: that That's correct. And think about it, it, it completely is replaced and sped up and maximize efficiency of what it is. If I can look at a million square foot building in five minutes and tell you everything that didn't work correctly. I mean there, there's no way possible as a person, that you can scroll through and spend that amount of time and actually determine what's happening.
Brad Bonavida: I I have a question. So you guys obviously have a really mature FDD program. Uh, you've got amazing results, both based on, you know, [00:25:00] complaints as well as utility costs. Uh, but we've, we've talked to a bunch of people who've done this, and I know it's not like you just installed this at technology and then it happens.
So talk to us about like, what was your user adoption journey like? You come in, you implement this technology, how do you get people to buy in on it? You know, how do you make sure that it's like, you know, supporting your, your maintenance people's work orders and not complete competing against them. What was that journey like to get your team all bought in?
Chris Lelle: So this is kind of a fun one. I'll start back something. James, I heard you, you say at the, uh, at Nexus Con, and that is, we're, we're telling the C-Suite, we're telling leaders of a lot of companies. Here's this problem you have, you don't know you have it, but here's this problem and here's how we're solving for it and bringing this, this up, right?
So it, it makes this an interesting piece and discussion everywhere, because we don't do the FDD just for properties. We manage, it's open for anybody that wants to work with us on that and we'll train and work with 'em. There becomes a lot of, call it, it's a sales hat you have to wear at each of the [00:26:00] pro.
Each project or property where you're explaining to them that benefit of how you're gonna maximize their efficiency, their time, make their life easier, work through it. There are times you'll hear comments though of, Hey, why would I want to install this? It's going to, the computer's gonna get the credit for the work.
That I'm gonna do instead of the work as a person, right? So you get the adaptation. We're still early in technology adaptation with it. There's the reluctance to believing that's significant in results to say 69% HVAC reductions, and this is the manpower cost piece. Or you know, the, the total dollars savings that's attached to it.
So it is really a, you know, one-off approach. I wish it was simple. You say, Hey, every property we're just gonna go roll this out and, and move through with that. But it's a one-off. You get there and then you set up your calls. You work with the automation system providers, and you're, you're having to approach it like, but you guys are doing a great job because they really, there are a lot of programmers and people doing a great job.
But look, we've [00:27:00] got a tool that can do what people can't do. This is what we're gonna achieve as we work together through this part, because it still is a human interaction and interface between everything.
Brad Bonavida: What's, what's that timeline look like? Like where, when did you start this to get to where you're at now?
Chris Lelle: As far as, uh, I mean when we
Brad Bonavida: first, I guess there's two ways to answer the question. It's like, per building, how long is it taking you to get from like start to adoption, but then also just at a portfolio level? Like when did you start and how did you jump from property to property?
Chris Lelle: Got it. So over time it really was kind of a one owner, uh, might be the smallest thing, but I did a bunch of calculations behind the scenes on, Hey, if I install these variable frequency drives on your condenser water pumps, here's your savings.
And he is like, okay, you, you've explained to me my investment that I'm making in variable frequency drives. So then you give it several months and document and prove the results. And he said, okay, I will allow you to test out the FDD program. Kind of in a [00:28:00] look, this is my reputation on the line. I'm gonna prove this to you.
And so it's took time of picking up speed. I've got this first one. Now we go fast forward six months to a year. You get the next building and then you realize, oh, this is working. We've done it. So now two months later, you picked up the rest of that portfolio. So when you look at a portfolio port by portfolio basis, it can work really well when you have the larger portfolios, but each property, if you go at it from the first meetings and implementation, you know, it takes you a couple of weeks of getting the data, connecting to the automation system.
Extracting the data out of it. It's not as super complicated. And then the configuration. So within a month, you're collecting the data, you're running through the QA processes, and then before you get to month two, we've got the data, the reports are going where you're looking at weekly and daily reports and you're analyzing the data and making suggestions.
And then as you've onboarded a building, you've really gotten a chance to lift the hood and see exactly how that building's working. And you tie that together with the reports. You [00:29:00] start, uh, implementing the results within a three month period, you're already seeing the results of what's been done. As long as the onsite team acts on it, it becomes very good, very fast for getting that work to happen.
Brad Bonavida: Gotcha. The, the last question I wanted to ask about your presentation in particular was that you, we, we were talking about user adoption. You had some slides that were talking about like making the system less complex for your operators and you were showing some examples. Um, and I can add these screenshots, 'cause now we're talking about, I'm talking about images that people can't see, so I'll put it in the show notes.
But one of them was the dot based visualization graph. So I think you had, you had comfort score on one axi.
James Dice: Real quick.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
James Dice: Anyone who's listening to this can literally watch Steve or or Chris's presentation. There you go. Just go to our website. That's
Brad Bonavida: better than the show notes.
James Dice: You can, you can, you can expense our pro membership and join Nexus Pro and literally watch the whole entire presentation and get the slide deck.[00:30:00]
That's, that's the best way to do it.
Chris Lelle: You get the full slide deck, you'll see the, uh, 40 minute presentation consolidated down a little bit. Right. Then you can dive in and we can
James Dice: talk about it. There you go.
Brad Bonavida: You were, you were fired at the end of it with just like. Tip after tip, after tip about how people should set up their building.
So yeah, it's, it's pretty, uh, it's got a lot in there. Um, but yeah, so you're right. I'll, I'll put in the show notes, the link to the video where you can see this, but the dot based visualization graph, I don't think I'd ever seen it exactly how huge screen had shown it. Comfort score on one Access and asset health on the other.
And then can you explain, like it allowed you to see each asset as a dot and it was like a quick visual way to focus on which ones. Your operators needed to go to next.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, that's my favorite tool to look at. How did the building operate, whether it was yesterday or the previous week. So as you mentioned, you want every one of the dots to be in the top right of the graph, right?
That the asset health and the comfort score are maximized. Comfort score is really simple. Are you within three degrees of temperature set [00:31:00] point during the occupied time? Right. So that it's able to actually differentiate that. 'cause I'm, I don't really care about after hours unless it's staying within my unoccupied, heating and cooling.
So let's focus on tenant comfort and then the secondary component. Asset health. Did it follow every one of the rules that we've set for it? Did the heat come on when it was supposed to, were the running hours correct? Did the airflow match what it was supposed to do? So about all of the different rules that you've set up to follow for that individual point.
Is the equipment following it? If it's not, it's gonna get a low asset health score. If it's not within three degrees, it gets a low comfort score, and by having that one visualization, you only focus where your problems are. It streamlines your efficiency and your approach to everything else.
James Dice: Fascinating.
I just want to give, bring us full circle here. It was about five years ago from when this episode came out that we interviewed Point Guard, CEO, Shannon Smith, so people could go back to that. And it's funny how little or how much has come true from that episode. I was just reading the [00:32:00] outline. We talked about the talent drain.
We talked about the focus on tenants, we talked about onboarding buildings, we talked about service contracts and integrating FDD. So a lot, A lot of this conversation was preempted by that one, five years ago. So,
Brad Bonavida: nice. That's awesome. Five years ago.
James Dice: Should we, should we
Brad Bonavida: bring it home
James Dice: here?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. But before we go to carve outs, I wanted to ask Chris, just zooming out, aside from your presentation, what was your favorite part of Nexus Con?
What did you enjoy?
Chris Lelle: Man, I had, I had a great time except for, uh, the high elevation hike that was, uh, that was great. Terrible at the same time for us that are at a elevation.
No, it was a great, great time there. Having just all the people, whether it's the owners or operators and the, the, the manufacturer with all of the different systems they're talking and collaborating. It, it's, it's a really good group that everyone's willing to share ideas, work together. It doesn't matter on the [00:33:00] competition piece.
We're not trying to keep secrets. We're all trying to advance the industry and make things better. That, that was one of the best parts about it. Challenging ideas. It's my favorite part too. Okay.
James Dice: We feel very seen.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, exactly.
James Dice: Alright, I'll start. So I'll start off. Yeah. Give, give us carve
Brad Bonavida: out. James.
James Dice: I was brought up as a man in the, the Midwest and I think I went to college and I, I carried a backpack and I just never really graduated from being a student up until the other day when I got myself a tote bag.
And it is a man purse. It's basically a man purse. It's a mes. But I feel like I've just like for the first time became a adult man because I just feel like I'm not no longer like a child carrying their backpack to school. So it's actually, if people are watching this on YouTube, it's right here. But it's basically just like I've, I've been carrying this bag and it's like.[00:34:00]
It's my purse. I don't care. I'll call it my purse, but it is changed my life. So, uh,
Brad Bonavida: does it have better utility? Like is it better than a backpack? Yeah,
James Dice: it's, so for me it's, it's, it's one thing I can literally, and all the women listening to this are just being like sitting there like, duh, right now. But you can just open it and you can see everything in it immediately.
Versus my backpack, it's like there's tons of pockets and just shit gets lost in there. I have to like clean it out every few months because I'm like. There's like crumbs and wrappers and all this stuff in the bottom of your backpack. This thing is just like you can see immediately, see water bottle, wallet, keys, notebook, laptop, whatever's in the bottom.
Like it's just all right there and it just like, I think I have a d, d and I just being able to see what I have packed. Is a game changer. If Rosie was here, she'd be making fun of me so hard.
Brad Bonavida: She'd be she'd well, she'd probably be proud of you. I, I'm not there yet. I, I'm still a student with a backpack. I can't
James Dice: user
Brad Bonavida: Maybe [00:35:00] someday.
Uh, mine quickly is the book I'm reading right now, which probably everyone's heard of, is Shoe Dog. The, the Nike, uh, Phil Knight autobiography story. Um, it's awesome. It's super, first of all, it's two things. I think it's super easy to read. Number two, I'm all, I'm super surprised or like impressed, I should say is a better word, with how well he remembers stuff.
I don't know how they put this book together, but like the attention to detail of like what happened in particular meetings for him like 40, 50 years ago. I just don't know. Like I couldn't do that. Um, and then for anyone who hasn't read it, uh, I don't think this is a spoiler, but it's just incredible.
Like, if you don't know much about Nike, you'd think it's like. Oh, there's this like, impressive story about these people who had all their shit together and made the world's best athletic company, but the amount of like u-turns and wrong ways and should have failed here. Yeah. And like, don't know what you're doing.
It's like, it's, it's inspirational to to [00:36:00] know that they made it that big with such a turbulent, uh, history. So it's really good.
James Dice: I'm like, uh, Chris,
Brad Bonavida: take us home. I'm
James Dice: like looking behind myself at Bookshelf right now. I think someone stole my copy of Shoe Dog. Like where is it? Maybe? Maybe that's the one I have.
I don't know. Maybe you stole it, Brad. Amazing book.
Chris Lelle: So I'd say yeah, actually, uh, call it little bit of a hobbyist. I've picked stuff from a homesteading perspective, live on a few acres in the further suburbs of Atlanta, have a small orchard vineyard. Big garden beekeeper. You know, that's one of the little fun parts to do on the weekends.
Uh, I actually also spend a lot of time, I get to use the, the math side of me and the long range shooting world doing, uh, my own reloading and learning how, you know, all of the shooting works together and being able to hit targets at very long distances together. You know, it's kind of a like
James Dice: how long, like how far?
Chris Lelle: So the [00:37:00] longest, the furthest shot that I've got is that it's on a two MOA target at 2,165 yards. So roughly a mile and a quarter. So if you're shooting and you're counting out the seconds and watching the time for the, for the round to hit it, and then you're waiting on the sound to come back from hitting the steel plates, it is a ton of fun, geez, to be able to go out.
James Dice: And that's like rotation of the earth type stuff, isn't it? Eh,
Chris Lelle: Coriolis is a component. It's an interesting part. So if you watch movies like Shooter that I've watched dozens of times, shooter, yeah. You start realizing olis is a little bit more, but now you start going, if you're shooting north, south, that's where Olis, east West, you still do have that.
If you shoot and the Earth's moving that the target, you're gonna be shooting and hoping the bullet hits where the target's gonna be at distance. So there's a lot of, uh, math pieces to it. You start getting into statistics there, standard deviations, extreme spreads of velocity, and building your consistency with it.
So.
Brad Bonavida: We,
James Dice: we
Brad Bonavida: started carve outs at, uh, accepting a man person ended at 1.25, [00:38:00] five miles away, hitting, hitting a target with a rifle. So, uh, same engineers come in all shapes and forms. That's what I gotta say. Same. Same. That's amazing. Alright, great. Well thank you so much Chris. Uh, we appreciate you being on and we'll see you Nexus.
Call next year.
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Episode 191 is a conversation with James Dice and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Lab, as well as Chris Lelle from Lincoln Property Company.
Summary
Episode 191 is a conversation with James Dice and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Lab, as well as Chris Lelle from Lincoln Property Company. 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.
Mentions and Links
- James’s podcast with Shannon of PointGaurd (31:51)
- Lincoln Property Company (1:52)
- Sign up for NexusCast #2 on Condition Based Maintenance (4:58)
- Chris’s NexusCon recording (8:05)
Highlights
Introduction (0:50)
At the Nexus (2:02)
Bringing Chris into the Conversation (7:48)
Sign off (33:18)
Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S706971-16073.
Full transcript
Note: transcript was created using an imperfect machine learning tool and lightly edited by a human (so you can get the gist). Please forgive errors!
James Dice: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you like the Nexus Podcast, the best way to continue the learning is to join our community. There are three ways to do that. First, you can join the Nexus Pro membership. It's our global community of smart Boeing professionals. We have monthly events, paywall, deep dive content, and a private chat room, and it's just $35 a month.
Second, you can upgrade from the pro membership to our courses offering. It's headlined by our flagship course, the Smart Building Strategist, and we're building a catalog of courses taught by world leading experts on each topic under the smart buildings umbrella. Third, and finally, our marketplace is how we connect leading vendors with buyers looking for their solutions.
The links are below in the show notes, and now let's go on the podcast.
Brad Bonavida: Welcome back to the Nexus Podcast. Everybody, uh, we've got kind of a special thing going on. I'm Brad, I'm hosting for you, but I do have James here with me. James, [00:01:00] uh, luckily is here because this is gonna be about FDD, and he's our FDD in-house expert. So how's it going, James?
James Dice: Great, great. Good to be here. I like how, I, like how it's lucky for me to be here.
That's funny.
Brad Bonavida: No, it's lucky for the, the audience to be that you're here 'cause you're the expert.
James Dice: I hope that people feel like they're lucky to have me, my voice in their car or headphones or whatever, but maybe not.
Brad Bonavida: I've, I've been told that, that they are So you're, you're in luck. They're in luck, I guess.
Anyway, so, uh, yeah, you've, you've heard the podcast before. Hopefully. Hopefully, if this is your first time, welcome for the full experience with Nexus Labs, uh, you should sign up for our newsletter. That is the number one way to keep up to date with what we've got going on. Um, so check that out. We'll put in the show notes.
Um, our guest today is Chris L, senior Operations Manager from Lincoln Property Company. How you doing, Chris? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Great. Of course. Uh, we're gonna jump into your presentation at Nexus Con, but [00:02:00] before we do that, we're gonna start with at the Nexus, which is what's going on within the Nexus Labs community.
Uh, the thing that's top of mind for me is that last week we just finished our first Nexus Cast virtual conference. This one was on OT device management. Uh, James, what was your highlight from that?
James Dice: Well, you know, I mean, I feel like sometimes in the podcast we give people the behind the scenes. I think just launching it.
From scratch and coming up with this new format, and now we're sort of in this iterating mode where we're like, how do we improve upon that? How do we give the, you know, the best version too, which we'll talk about in just a second. But for me it was more of the creative aspect. How do we. Bring building owners together, which we did, almost 50 building owner organizations, were there.
How do we, um, have case studies but also involve the vendors that we're presenting in a tasteful way? And how do we bring in all of our pro members who've been coming into our events? So [00:03:00] you can see we were trying to optimize for many different things. And I think obviously, Brad, you're the one that.
Brought all of this together, but for me it was more of the design aspect of it. How do we design this experience? And then how did it go and how do we evaluate that? And so the behind the scenes pieces, um, it's our attempt to, we've been talking about this over the last few months on the podcast, but how do you create a virtual experience that.
Mirrors as much as possible, what we all love about Nexus Con, knowing that that's impossible. And so how do you get as close as you can given that everyone's sitting on their computers. Right? So that's the fun part.
Brad Bonavida: Yep. Yep. I, I would say optimistically, uh. I think it went well and I know that we can do even way better.
So thanks everyone who was there for, the first one is gonna come back. One thing that was, um, a positive note for me is I thought that the, the virtual booths were really cool 'cause you could actually go into a sponsor's booth and like read [00:04:00] about them, watch videos, but then within that booth, there's actually a room that you enter and now you're in like a, a virtual meeting with those, that booth.
So you, you can go like, check out their resources and then when you're. Bought in or you liked their demo or whatever, you could go talk to them. And the conversations in those booths were pretty cool. You know, you have somebody come in and you can like really dive into how that service or product could, you know, work on your portfolio of buildings.
James Dice: So it was good. Yeah. And then what we noticed is, is all presenters or all everyone who had a booth, this won't be true in future ones, but everyone who had a booth also had one of their customers there speaking and those customers just organically went to the booth. That, that booth. And so if you went to that booth, you were not only talking to the vendor, you were also talking to their customer in the booth too, which was kind of cool.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah,
James Dice: I thought. Yeah.
Brad Bonavida: Yep, exactly. Um, our next Nexus cast is set for April 15th. Uh, you can actually register on our website now if you wanna check it out. The topic of this one is gonna be [00:05:00] condition-based maintenance, which is not far from the topic of today's conversation. Uh, we hope to see you there.
Like I said, you can register right now. Anything. James, I know you're, we're both talking about this one all day, so we're looking forward to it and how we're gonna reshape it.
James Dice: Yeah, so same, same setup. Pro members will be able to register for free, um, to all of our Nexus casts that we do. Um, vendors can.
Get a booth and demo same way they can at Nexus Con. So now is the time to start talking to us because those, those slots are limited. Uh, this one will be very popular on the vendor side because of all of the people doing FDD and all of the IOT sensors and everyone participating in maintenance. This will be a popular one.
So there will be limited slots, I'll say.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. One other at the Nexus thing I wanted to mention before we get into it is the, uh, I've been working on the building owner VIP process for Nexus Con [00:06:00] 2026. So. At Nexon 2025. The first night we did a building owner, VIP dinner where we brought a handful of building owners to like an exclusive dinner.
It was really cool. It was like, you know, leaders of different, uh, organizations sitting next to each other talking about their problems over a great dinner. We're changing the way that we're doing that a little bit this year, that we wanna make sure that the building owners who are most engaged with us at Nexus Con are the ones that get to come to that VIP dinner.
So when you register for Nexus Con. We'll be sending you kind of a series of emails as a building owner of how you can get more involved and participate. You know, things like submitting a case study, things like, uh, participating in a brainstorming session, inviting one of your colleagues to come. And we're just gonna look at the results, um, you know, as it gets posted to Nexus Con and realize which building owners have been supporting us building this conference the most.
And those are the people that we're gonna bring to the VIP dinner, uh, in Detroit on the night of October 5th, the fifth. The first night of the [00:07:00]conference, so I'm excited about that.
James Dice: And we'll obviously also have, among the VIPs there will be local building owners. So I'm, I'm, maybe you talked about this on the last episode, Brad, but Brad and I both went to Detroit in January and we're working on setting up sort of like co-hosting arrangements with the local building owners there.
And so, um. Um, we won't name names until we get their approval to, uh, talk about them, but the, the building owners that you would expect to be at our conference will be co-hosting that dinner and, and be with us, uh, throughout the experience. So any building owner like Chris, maybe that'll be traveling in from out of town.
They'll be there to sort of co-host with us.
Brad Bonavida: That's great. All right. Speaking of which, let's bring Chris into this. So Chris, you presented at Nexus Con 2025. Your presentation was titled Real World Results Driven by Fault Detection Software and Sequence of Operation Improvements. Um, [00:08:00] I just rewatched your presentation and I believe you get an award as the only.
Presenter who pointed out the physical HVAC characteristics of the room. During your presentation, you were commenting on the vicinity or proximity of the supply and return grills, and also I believe the color of them and how you could, uh, analyze, uh, how they were doing based on that. So. If anyone was curious if Chris is technically capable of speaking about building optimization, uh, I think he, I think you can confirm that.
Um, so with, so you're with Lincoln Property Company. Where I wanted to start is, can you just talk a little bit about. Who Lincoln Property is, what your portfolio looks like, and what your role within the company is.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, so Lincoln Property Company is a pretty large commercial real estate company portfolio of more than 600 million square feet.
It ranges from new developments at sports arenas and movie theaters, office [00:09:00] buildings, multifamily to third party managements. There's retail establishments, industrial. Office space and medical, really, whatever that's there in the commercial real estate world is an area that we will, uh, we'll work with.
Provides a lot of opportunity seeing, you know, really the full big picture. And working with a company like Lincoln, it's such an entrepreneurial piece, allows us to really dabble into what we're gonna talk about today.
Brad Bonavida: Awesome. And your role specifically at Lincoln.
Chris Lelle: So I kind of focus on that, uh, other duties as, uh, described, right?
Whatever you're supposed to do. But a lot of it's, uh, interior construction, renovation. I do energy audits. I work with our FDD and creating the strategies on energy efficiency across the board. I work with a team, you know, whenever it comes to advising on our standards and policies from the engineering and our training and how we're actually putting everything together to get it to work, uh, as a whole.
And I also work with our data center group, especially really focused in the Atlanta [00:10:00] area, but on power acquisition and how we're working in the data center world.
Brad Bonavida: Got it. Okay. And just for a little more context, can you. Tell us a little bit about the technologies that you guys are using within your buildings.
You talked a lot at Nexon about the FDD applications you're using. Just walk us through some of the key technologies that you're using on a day-to-day basis in your buildings.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, so if there's a system we operate in the building from an engineering and operations perspective, we look at what technologies can be there to help leverage or maximize our efficiency, leverage the staff with it.
Big piece is the fall detection diagnostics. We work with point guard at a lot of locations for using the FDD. We get into irrigation control where we're using an analytics and actual machine learning programs and irrigation control to maximize water efficiency. We have leak detection companies that are there for water use monitoring and leak detection analysis that help us minimize risk and water use, uh, across the board.
We have indoor air quality sensors that we're working with companies that [00:11:00] help us maximize the, really, the, the indoor air quality environment through monitoring of the parameters. We also tie that into different certifications that we can help the different owners and properties, uh, achieve. Uh, additionally we're starting to now get into a little bit of the people counting software from a different perspectives of indoor air quality, but also from an asset management perspective and learning space utilization techniques in the leasing realm.
Where do people need to use space? When are they increasing their needs? Are they decreasing and how can we meet their leasing needs? So if there's a system and a way to do that, we'll evaluate the technology and how we can implement it. We've also done, as you mentioned a little bit, the commission-based maintenance.
We've been, we've been testing that out and piloting in several places as well, really getting into the predictive component. I mean, elevators have had that for a while, but we're now looking at it, you know, all of your HVAC equipment as to how do you do everything to really maximize your staffing efficiency.
Maintain the equipment and the best, manage best [00:12:00] condition and maximize the life of it.
James Dice: Chris, do you guys have, I don't know how you guys talk about this program internally, but is there like a smart buildings program and if so, is there like a group. That's focused. 'cause what you just named was like what, seven, eight different categories.
And so I can imagine all of the pilots and rollout plans and governance and standards and all the things that would sort of like, obviously we talk a lot about at on this podcast and at our events. Do you guys have like a, what you would call a program or is it more, um, focused on individual departments and you have just happened to get all of these tools over time?
Chris Lelle: That's a fun part. So we do have a sustainability team and a playbook that coincides with it. But the overall strategy we work with in the implementation makes this really easy with the individual systems to tailor those to each building's budgets, the ownership's goals, and how they work. So it's a little [00:13:00] bit broken up in that manner, but that's intentional from ease of implementation to meet everybody's needs.
James Dice: Because you have a bunch of different types of assets, right? But then you also have, I think you guys own some of the facilities, but then you also just manage some of the facilities. So it's kind of like you need, if I'm hearing you correctly, you need a playbook that you can apply to these different ownership structures and different facility types.
Is that what you're saying?
Chris Lelle: That's correct.
James Dice: Interesting.
Brad Bonavida: In, in your presentation, uh, the, the kind of really cool. Fact that you brought out that we wanted to talk to you about was you said that, uh, the responsibilities of the engineers at your facilities have gone from about 125,000 square feet per engineer.
To over 300,000 square feet per engineer. So that's more than double the amount of building space that a particular engineer is responsible for maintaining, operating, all those things. Um, maybe first question, [00:14:00] is that a, is that a Lincoln number? Like how did you come to that? Uh. Those metrics?
Chris Lelle: Metrics? No.
So some of it comes through different training and working with BOMA or other organizations and pulling our competitive sets. When we're looking at 'em, when we're looking through the staffing plans, what's happened, where the different properties and what are the impacts over the years. So there has been a big shift in technology.
I, and I'll say technology has been more reactive to this number. A lot of, you know, my perspective comes in and looking at it that you get a lot of the financial numbers. People always want to cut costs. Well, staff is a cost that's there, that's a, a component of it, but it's one that can be singled out as one of the larger line items in the budget.
So you can target that. So then we have to react to that. Well, what happens? You, you've got maintenance costs, you have to evaluate utility costs are the labor costs. How do you, how do you make this work? Let's factor in technology. Kind of look at it as doctors growing up for us, we had a general practitioner.
You could go there from stitches to a [00:15:00] cold and flu to a broken bone to your annual checkup. We're starting to bring in technology now where you need people that can understand fault detection. You can get into the automation system, sequences of operation and can computer programming. The same guys that are changing belts, squeezing pumps, bearings, you name it, and looking at it.
So does it, does it make sense to have the guy that can, you know, grease a bearing as your computer program or are you pay overpaying in one area and underpaying in another, not maximizing efficiency. So we're responding in that area and staffing at an, in a way that's strategic to maximize the efficiency.
The industry is shifting, I'll call it. There's a lot of bean counters out there that are just punching just the numbers in there. So how do we respond to that and make this work in a beneficial manner? So when we add in technologies across the board, in reality, there's no sense in wasting periods.
Whether it's water, whether it's electricity, it's gas, it doesn't make sense no matter what somebody's political views or how they are. So let's maximize that [00:16:00] efficiency. Let's create the healthiest environment for our tenants in the buildings, and let's create the an environment that our engineers and our property teams are learning, that they're loving where they're at, and they're really providing a benefit that's different where we're doing a service to everybody across the board.
Brad Bonavida: How would you describe the maturity of your FDD program? So you, you've talked about FDD has, you know, kind of got you past this lack of, or, you know, more square footage per engineer. Are you guys implementing that and mature across your portfolio? Do you feel like you're still growing? Where are you at with that?
Chris Lelle: So, I'll give a little background on it. So the FDD started for me going back to 2010 timeframe. I got brought in working with a venture capitalist who was creating this program to learn buildings, energy use profiles so that he could do commodities trading based on how much coal, natural gas, or whatever the, the, the, the fuel mix would be.
And he'd know, I'm gonna buy tr sell trade and work in this. Ultimately, you know, through that he is like, I've got all this statistical [00:17:00] analysis and it's telling me that this equipment's not working and this is there, and it's like, how does, what does this mean? So I was able to help them interpret the data and learn patterns and recognition through the buildings.
That program ended up going away. So, but I fast forward, you know, years and years in development through that, we came across, through just sitting through dozens of presentations and FDD programs. Point guard came across my table. And back in the 2019 timeframe, 2020, we really started diving in at that part with 'em and understanding this is really similar to what we had.
It's streamlined, it's built by engineers for engineers, very efficient way to do this. So by, you know, the end of 2020. COVID year. Here we are. Here's a lot of, you know, snake oil stuff that's out there in the market, across the board for you name it on a technology front for how we're operating buildings.
But I realize the benefits, this is an opportunity we can couple our sequences of operation that people aren't really using anywhere. They're really custom and streamlined approach. Adding the FDD with it and let's see what we can do [00:18:00] from that piece. So now we've got more than five years under the belt.
Buildings that are there, you know, where we're taking buildings that were energy efficient, low cost to begin with, and we're netting more than 20 cents a foot in savings for those, you know, extremely adding a lot of asset value to them, but we're also reducing 10 and HVAC complaints, 60 to 90%. Very first building.
We did. Before COVID, so 2019 and older, this, you know, not a five story, 135,000 foot building, you get 120 to 140 HVAC complaints a year. You think it's not too bad, maybe one every other day type of part. So engineers expect it that we can work with that. 2020 happened and we ended up with 40 for the entire year, so lower occupancy.
And so of course we saw the drastic reduction. So we think that's, you know, that's, that's a good year. Let's use 40 as our baseline. We installed the software at the end of 2020, all of 2021. We had four complaints for the year, right? So you go from pre there, pre [00:19:00] COVID, you know, 130 average, right to down to four.
Well, can we sustain this with what we're doing? Energy dropped because of occupancy, because of sequences. Go into 2021, or sorry, we move forward to 20 22, 20 23, and so on. Now we're still averaging maybe a dozen calls a year. Complaints one a month. From where we were previously and the energy numbers that we achieved with a reduction in the COVID years have stayed with the full re occupancy of the building and occupancy being, you know, in the mid eighties to nineties in the building.
So you say, oh yeah, we've been using it a while. Here's these results. They're super easy to do. Now, with that reduction in HVAC complaints, I can now reallocate the staff's time. As a reinvestment approach, strategy to how we budget it. I can now have them trained in other areas that provide maximum impact.
If we're hiring a vendor that's a hundred twenty five, a hundred fifty, $200 an hour, I've got onsite staff that I can train to do the same work. They know the building, they're learning, [00:20:00] and it's really maximizing their skillset in the asset value.
James Dice: Fascinating. Can you, can we, can we just go back to that.
More square footage per engineer. I think what I, what I heard you say is it's, it was a separate trend from you guys weren't reacting with FDD so that you could respond to this trend. It's more of a background trend happening across real estate, which is more square footage per maintenance person. Right.
And what you've seen with FDD, if I'm hearing you correctly, Chris, is that you're able to sort of counteract that trend. As people get cut, you're able to then maintain the same level of, um, say maintenance performance, right. And tenant experience with less people because of FDD, can you, can you sort of explain what about FDD programs allow that to be true?
Chris Lelle: Yeah. I go into the simple term you look at as economic output per engineer on a GDP basis, right? If we [00:21:00] basically double the, the output that, that we're looking at. So think about that as a, you know, in any industry when you can really
Brad Bonavida: Oh, yeah.
Chris Lelle: Get that efficiency. So kind of the question is, how does FDD allow us to do that?
The tool that we're using has such a streamlined approach to it. In a matter of five minutes, I, I can look at a half a million square foot building, a million square foot building, and I can tell you every thermostat that's set outside of the ranges that I wanna look at, every piece of equipment that was not communicating over the last 24 hours, how much it wasn't communicating, uh, every temperature that was, or zone that was outside of the agreed upon ranges that we've set.
So now you've got your, your occupancy hours. I'm only gonna focus on that equipment that's running when it shouldn't, it's not communicating. It's set where it's not supposed to. So if I've got a thousand, uh, terminal units in a building or a thousand devices. I can spend less than five minutes on that million square foot building or that thousand devices, and I know that, hey, look, five of 'em are the problem.
Let me go target [00:22:00] my staff to go take care of those five devices. I'm not gonna be wasting their time walking around just checking a box somewhere or sitting down drinking, you know, 10 cups of coffee while they review every single page and every trend log in the automation system. 'cause we know that that's not really tapping and it's not efficient.
Anyways,
James Dice: this is fascinating. This is why, this is like the, the reason, or one of the reasons I would say that I, I just believe FDD is table stakes for operating commercial buildings, and it hasn't quite scaled that way, especially in commercial real estate. Um, but I do believe it's, it's, it's trending towards that way where it's just like, this is the way that buildings are operated in the modern, in the modern world.
Chris Lelle: What I find, you know, I look, look across the board, FDD in getting into that way, so we're looking at it. It's really telling you, is the building doing what it's been programmed to do? Yeah. There's one component to this that allows us to maximize that, and that is our custom sequences of operation. The piece that the industry is lagging behind right now [00:23:00] is a true understanding of tenant comfort and energy efficiency, and that correlation on how to do that in the most streamlined approach.
Where F DD is missing it or some of those, it, it's the overcomplicating it and bringing it in that, that there's some of the smartest programmers out there and we've got good operators, but there's not that, that communication, collaboration on how to bring those together in the easiest manner. I'll tell you, I never wanna see a person program a building again.
'cause that's about the worst thing we have. I don't like to see our operating teams operating buildings. They, I mean, it, it's fun right now to see these results and what we can achieve extremely fast with FD. D. But when I go into a building and I find that, you know, 50% of the points are overridden and they're running all of the time, like, how, how good was that?
We're doing ourselves a disservice in this industry. FTD ISS helping us fix this. But as operators, we're not making a great case for ourselves as an industry. I'm very fortunate to work with a team that we get to take these results and train, you know, our parts and, and kind [00:24:00] of look at it as a competitive advantage, but.
James Dice: It's almost like stop, stop operating. But, but I think the point we're, we're trying to make a little bit is that the FDD helps, um, sort of like not replace that institutional knowledge that the industry is losing, whether through retirements or staffing cuts like you're saying. But it helps. Sort of document what the building should be doing and then, and, and in the old world it was an expert operator that, like you said, had to understand sequences of operations and today's world that's just not realistic.
It seems like
Chris Lelle: that That's correct. And think about it, it, it completely is replaced and sped up and maximize efficiency of what it is. If I can look at a million square foot building in five minutes and tell you everything that didn't work correctly. I mean there, there's no way possible as a person, that you can scroll through and spend that amount of time and actually determine what's happening.
Brad Bonavida: I I have a question. So you guys obviously have a really mature FDD program. Uh, you've got amazing results, both based on, you know, [00:25:00] complaints as well as utility costs. Uh, but we've, we've talked to a bunch of people who've done this, and I know it's not like you just installed this at technology and then it happens.
So talk to us about like, what was your user adoption journey like? You come in, you implement this technology, how do you get people to buy in on it? You know, how do you make sure that it's like, you know, supporting your, your maintenance people's work orders and not complete competing against them. What was that journey like to get your team all bought in?
Chris Lelle: So this is kind of a fun one. I'll start back something. James, I heard you, you say at the, uh, at Nexus Con, and that is, we're, we're telling the C-Suite, we're telling leaders of a lot of companies. Here's this problem you have, you don't know you have it, but here's this problem and here's how we're solving for it and bringing this, this up, right?
So it, it makes this an interesting piece and discussion everywhere, because we don't do the FDD just for properties. We manage, it's open for anybody that wants to work with us on that and we'll train and work with 'em. There becomes a lot of, call it, it's a sales hat you have to wear at each of the [00:26:00] pro.
Each project or property where you're explaining to them that benefit of how you're gonna maximize their efficiency, their time, make their life easier, work through it. There are times you'll hear comments though of, Hey, why would I want to install this? It's going to, the computer's gonna get the credit for the work.
That I'm gonna do instead of the work as a person, right? So you get the adaptation. We're still early in technology adaptation with it. There's the reluctance to believing that's significant in results to say 69% HVAC reductions, and this is the manpower cost piece. Or you know, the, the total dollars savings that's attached to it.
So it is really a, you know, one-off approach. I wish it was simple. You say, Hey, every property we're just gonna go roll this out and, and move through with that. But it's a one-off. You get there and then you set up your calls. You work with the automation system providers, and you're, you're having to approach it like, but you guys are doing a great job because they really, there are a lot of programmers and people doing a great job.
But look, we've [00:27:00] got a tool that can do what people can't do. This is what we're gonna achieve as we work together through this part, because it still is a human interaction and interface between everything.
Brad Bonavida: What's, what's that timeline look like? Like where, when did you start this to get to where you're at now?
Chris Lelle: As far as, uh, I mean when we
Brad Bonavida: first, I guess there's two ways to answer the question. It's like, per building, how long is it taking you to get from like start to adoption, but then also just at a portfolio level? Like when did you start and how did you jump from property to property?
Chris Lelle: Got it. So over time it really was kind of a one owner, uh, might be the smallest thing, but I did a bunch of calculations behind the scenes on, Hey, if I install these variable frequency drives on your condenser water pumps, here's your savings.
And he is like, okay, you, you've explained to me my investment that I'm making in variable frequency drives. So then you give it several months and document and prove the results. And he said, okay, I will allow you to test out the FDD program. Kind of in a [00:28:00] look, this is my reputation on the line. I'm gonna prove this to you.
And so it's took time of picking up speed. I've got this first one. Now we go fast forward six months to a year. You get the next building and then you realize, oh, this is working. We've done it. So now two months later, you picked up the rest of that portfolio. So when you look at a portfolio port by portfolio basis, it can work really well when you have the larger portfolios, but each property, if you go at it from the first meetings and implementation, you know, it takes you a couple of weeks of getting the data, connecting to the automation system.
Extracting the data out of it. It's not as super complicated. And then the configuration. So within a month, you're collecting the data, you're running through the QA processes, and then before you get to month two, we've got the data, the reports are going where you're looking at weekly and daily reports and you're analyzing the data and making suggestions.
And then as you've onboarded a building, you've really gotten a chance to lift the hood and see exactly how that building's working. And you tie that together with the reports. You [00:29:00] start, uh, implementing the results within a three month period, you're already seeing the results of what's been done. As long as the onsite team acts on it, it becomes very good, very fast for getting that work to happen.
Brad Bonavida: Gotcha. The, the last question I wanted to ask about your presentation in particular was that you, we, we were talking about user adoption. You had some slides that were talking about like making the system less complex for your operators and you were showing some examples. Um, and I can add these screenshots, 'cause now we're talking about, I'm talking about images that people can't see, so I'll put it in the show notes.
But one of them was the dot based visualization graph. So I think you had, you had comfort score on one axi.
James Dice: Real quick.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah.
James Dice: Anyone who's listening to this can literally watch Steve or or Chris's presentation. There you go. Just go to our website. That's
Brad Bonavida: better than the show notes.
James Dice: You can, you can, you can expense our pro membership and join Nexus Pro and literally watch the whole entire presentation and get the slide deck.[00:30:00]
That's, that's the best way to do it.
Chris Lelle: You get the full slide deck, you'll see the, uh, 40 minute presentation consolidated down a little bit. Right. Then you can dive in and we can
James Dice: talk about it. There you go.
Brad Bonavida: You were, you were fired at the end of it with just like. Tip after tip, after tip about how people should set up their building.
So yeah, it's, it's pretty, uh, it's got a lot in there. Um, but yeah, so you're right. I'll, I'll put in the show notes, the link to the video where you can see this, but the dot based visualization graph, I don't think I'd ever seen it exactly how huge screen had shown it. Comfort score on one Access and asset health on the other.
And then can you explain, like it allowed you to see each asset as a dot and it was like a quick visual way to focus on which ones. Your operators needed to go to next.
Chris Lelle: Yeah, that's my favorite tool to look at. How did the building operate, whether it was yesterday or the previous week. So as you mentioned, you want every one of the dots to be in the top right of the graph, right?
That the asset health and the comfort score are maximized. Comfort score is really simple. Are you within three degrees of temperature set [00:31:00] point during the occupied time? Right. So that it's able to actually differentiate that. 'cause I'm, I don't really care about after hours unless it's staying within my unoccupied, heating and cooling.
So let's focus on tenant comfort and then the secondary component. Asset health. Did it follow every one of the rules that we've set for it? Did the heat come on when it was supposed to, were the running hours correct? Did the airflow match what it was supposed to do? So about all of the different rules that you've set up to follow for that individual point.
Is the equipment following it? If it's not, it's gonna get a low asset health score. If it's not within three degrees, it gets a low comfort score, and by having that one visualization, you only focus where your problems are. It streamlines your efficiency and your approach to everything else.
James Dice: Fascinating.
I just want to give, bring us full circle here. It was about five years ago from when this episode came out that we interviewed Point Guard, CEO, Shannon Smith, so people could go back to that. And it's funny how little or how much has come true from that episode. I was just reading the [00:32:00] outline. We talked about the talent drain.
We talked about the focus on tenants, we talked about onboarding buildings, we talked about service contracts and integrating FDD. So a lot, A lot of this conversation was preempted by that one, five years ago. So,
Brad Bonavida: nice. That's awesome. Five years ago.
James Dice: Should we, should we
Brad Bonavida: bring it home
James Dice: here?
Brad Bonavida: Yeah. But before we go to carve outs, I wanted to ask Chris, just zooming out, aside from your presentation, what was your favorite part of Nexus Con?
What did you enjoy?
Chris Lelle: Man, I had, I had a great time except for, uh, the high elevation hike that was, uh, that was great. Terrible at the same time for us that are at a elevation.
No, it was a great, great time there. Having just all the people, whether it's the owners or operators and the, the, the manufacturer with all of the different systems they're talking and collaborating. It, it's, it's a really good group that everyone's willing to share ideas, work together. It doesn't matter on the [00:33:00] competition piece.
We're not trying to keep secrets. We're all trying to advance the industry and make things better. That, that was one of the best parts about it. Challenging ideas. It's my favorite part too. Okay.
James Dice: We feel very seen.
Brad Bonavida: Yeah, exactly.
James Dice: Alright, I'll start. So I'll start off. Yeah. Give, give us carve
Brad Bonavida: out. James.
James Dice: I was brought up as a man in the, the Midwest and I think I went to college and I, I carried a backpack and I just never really graduated from being a student up until the other day when I got myself a tote bag.
And it is a man purse. It's basically a man purse. It's a mes. But I feel like I've just like for the first time became a adult man because I just feel like I'm not no longer like a child carrying their backpack to school. So it's actually, if people are watching this on YouTube, it's right here. But it's basically just like I've, I've been carrying this bag and it's like.[00:34:00]
It's my purse. I don't care. I'll call it my purse, but it is changed my life. So, uh,
Brad Bonavida: does it have better utility? Like is it better than a backpack? Yeah,
James Dice: it's, so for me it's, it's, it's one thing I can literally, and all the women listening to this are just being like sitting there like, duh, right now. But you can just open it and you can see everything in it immediately.
Versus my backpack, it's like there's tons of pockets and just shit gets lost in there. I have to like clean it out every few months because I'm like. There's like crumbs and wrappers and all this stuff in the bottom of your backpack. This thing is just like you can see immediately, see water bottle, wallet, keys, notebook, laptop, whatever's in the bottom.
Like it's just all right there and it just like, I think I have a d, d and I just being able to see what I have packed. Is a game changer. If Rosie was here, she'd be making fun of me so hard.
Brad Bonavida: She'd be she'd well, she'd probably be proud of you. I, I'm not there yet. I, I'm still a student with a backpack. I can't
James Dice: user
Brad Bonavida: Maybe [00:35:00] someday.
Uh, mine quickly is the book I'm reading right now, which probably everyone's heard of, is Shoe Dog. The, the Nike, uh, Phil Knight autobiography story. Um, it's awesome. It's super, first of all, it's two things. I think it's super easy to read. Number two, I'm all, I'm super surprised or like impressed, I should say is a better word, with how well he remembers stuff.
I don't know how they put this book together, but like the attention to detail of like what happened in particular meetings for him like 40, 50 years ago. I just don't know. Like I couldn't do that. Um, and then for anyone who hasn't read it, uh, I don't think this is a spoiler, but it's just incredible.
Like, if you don't know much about Nike, you'd think it's like. Oh, there's this like, impressive story about these people who had all their shit together and made the world's best athletic company, but the amount of like u-turns and wrong ways and should have failed here. Yeah. And like, don't know what you're doing.
It's like, it's, it's inspirational to to [00:36:00] know that they made it that big with such a turbulent, uh, history. So it's really good.
James Dice: I'm like, uh, Chris,
Brad Bonavida: take us home. I'm
James Dice: like looking behind myself at Bookshelf right now. I think someone stole my copy of Shoe Dog. Like where is it? Maybe? Maybe that's the one I have.
I don't know. Maybe you stole it, Brad. Amazing book.
Chris Lelle: So I'd say yeah, actually, uh, call it little bit of a hobbyist. I've picked stuff from a homesteading perspective, live on a few acres in the further suburbs of Atlanta, have a small orchard vineyard. Big garden beekeeper. You know, that's one of the little fun parts to do on the weekends.
Uh, I actually also spend a lot of time, I get to use the, the math side of me and the long range shooting world doing, uh, my own reloading and learning how, you know, all of the shooting works together and being able to hit targets at very long distances together. You know, it's kind of a like
James Dice: how long, like how far?
Chris Lelle: So the [00:37:00] longest, the furthest shot that I've got is that it's on a two MOA target at 2,165 yards. So roughly a mile and a quarter. So if you're shooting and you're counting out the seconds and watching the time for the, for the round to hit it, and then you're waiting on the sound to come back from hitting the steel plates, it is a ton of fun, geez, to be able to go out.
James Dice: And that's like rotation of the earth type stuff, isn't it? Eh,
Chris Lelle: Coriolis is a component. It's an interesting part. So if you watch movies like Shooter that I've watched dozens of times, shooter, yeah. You start realizing olis is a little bit more, but now you start going, if you're shooting north, south, that's where Olis, east West, you still do have that.
If you shoot and the Earth's moving that the target, you're gonna be shooting and hoping the bullet hits where the target's gonna be at distance. So there's a lot of, uh, math pieces to it. You start getting into statistics there, standard deviations, extreme spreads of velocity, and building your consistency with it.
So.
Brad Bonavida: We,
James Dice: we
Brad Bonavida: started carve outs at, uh, accepting a man person ended at 1.25, [00:38:00] five miles away, hitting, hitting a target with a rifle. So, uh, same engineers come in all shapes and forms. That's what I gotta say. Same. Same. That's amazing. Alright, great. Well thank you so much Chris. Uh, we appreciate you being on and we'll see you Nexus.
Call next year.
Rosy Khalife: Okay friends. Thank you for listening to this episode. As we continue to grow our global community of change makers, we need your help. For the next couple of months, we're challenging our 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.
This is a great piece!
I agree.