Podcast

min read

James Dice

🎧 #197: Brendan Robinson on Chasing the Lowest Energy Use Intensity of Any Art Museum in the World

May 12, 2026

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Episode 197 is a conversation with Rosy Khalife and Brad Bonavida from Nexus Labs, as well as Brendan Robinson from the Glenstone Museum.

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Summary

This episode explores how Glenstone Museum is pursuing one of the lowest energy use intensities of any art museum in the world—without compromising the strict environmental conditions required to preserve artwork. Brendan Robinson shares how the team reduced the museum’s EUI from 85 to 42 through HVAC sequence optimization, floating setpoints, water-side efficiency improvements, and deep operational discipline. The conversation also dives into fault detection, advanced supervisory control, and why empowering multiple team members to edit BAS sequences has been critical to their success. Along the way, they reveal how energy efficiency and occupant/art preservation can work together instead of competing priorities. It’s a fascinating look at what’s possible when operational excellence, controls expertise, and sustainability goals all align.

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Mentions and Links

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Highlights

Introduction (0:00)

At the Nexus (1:55)

Rapid fire context-setting (7:58)

The hierarchy and where Glenstone sits on it (16:01)

Sequence optimization (23:31)

Democratizing Sequence writing capability (34:55)

Advanced supervisory control (40:23)

Closing (42:13)

Carve Outs (46:36)

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Music credits: There Is A Reality by Common Tiger—licensed under an Music Vine Limited Pro Standard License ID: S800157-16073.

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!

Brad Bonavida: [00:00:00] Okay. Welcome back to the Nexus Podcast. Uh, I've got Rosie and Brendan here with me today. We'll dive into that. This is where we talk about connected buildings and the playbooks behind them. This episode is specifically for energy managers who are focused on things like lowering their EUI, generating savings through energy programs.

Um, and today we're gonna dig into things like HVAC sequence optimization. We'll probably touch on fault detection and diagnostics for energy savings and advanced supervisory control as well. Uh, we're gonna talk about how those are being implemented in real connected buildings. This matters for energy teams because you're pressured to meet energy and sustainability goals all the time, but you're not always given the money and the resources you need to actually make those things happen.

And it doesn't stop there. This is really important for facility managers, too, 'cause they're trying to maintain equipment and keep tenants happy, and they're dealing with how the maintenance and occupant experience can be impacted by energy savings. A quick note, if you're trying to stay on top of this space without wading through all the vendor noise, we [00:01:00] write a short newsletter called "The Connected Buildings Briefing."

It's biweekly. Uh, it's about a five-minute breakdown of everything that we think is worth paying attention to. It's read by over 8,500 people every week now, or every other week. Uh, you can grab it in the show notes. We'll put the link there. My name is Brad Bonavita. I'm the head of product at Nexus Labs, and like I mentioned, I'm joined by Rosie, our COO.

Rosie, how you doing?

Rosy Khalife: Hello. Hi, everyone. Hi, Brad.

Brad Bonavida: And our guest today is Brendan Robinson, director of facilities at Glenstone Museum in Maryland. Brendan, how you doing?

Brendan Robinson: Doing great. Thank you guys for having me.

Brad Bonavida: Of course. We're excited to have you. We're gonna get into Glenstone Museum's journey to have the lowest EUI of any art museum in the world, that's the goal, and how Brendan is applying sequence optimization, supervisory control, FDD, and a lot of other things to get there.

Before we dive into that, although, we gotta do our At the Nexus, uh, 'cause we have quite a few updates, I think, since last time we did a podcast. So we gotta get into that [00:02:00] Um, so first, the last podcast was before Nexus Cast number two, which was our virtual conference, uh, half-day conference on condition-based maintenance.

And, uh, I would say it was a great success. It was awesome. We had a bunch of people there, five presentations, uh, seven different demos from technology vendors, and, you know, a lot of networking time and ability for people to get to know each other. Uh, if you're a Nexus Pro member, the recordings of all those presentations are on our website now, so you can watch them.

Um, and one of the biggest things that we've been talking about for a while that was coming out of Nexus Cast 2 was our condition-based maintenance playbook. So, uh, I think James and I have talked about this, like, two or three times on the podcast, but we've been trying to distill all the different condition-based maintenance stories we've heard about throughout the years at Nexus into, like, one process that we think people follow.

Uh, and we, I think, took into account over 60 different [00:03:00] condition-based maintenance programs at the end of the day, after all the stories we looked through, and that is published now. So there's a 13-step Nexus Labs condition-based maintenance playbook that you can download. It's free to download. We'll put that in the show notes, too.

We're really proud of it. It's, it was a long time coming, so check that out. Um, and now we're kind of, we're kind of turning the chapter. So Nexus Cast 3, uh, which is on June 17th, is on HVAC sequence optimization, and that's what we're looking to talk to Brendan about here. That's kind of what we've been focusing on, and we'll come out with a playbook on HVAC sequence optimization as well.

So, um, look forward to that. Sign up for Nexus Cast number 3 if you haven't yet. Um, and then we need to get into Nexus Con. So Rosie, help me out. Do you have any, uh, Nexus Con updates for us?

Rosy Khalife: Wow, okay. So, I mean, it feels like it's far away, but it's really right around the corner. I was just, uh, chatting with a couple of folks yesterday, and I realized, like, it's already May.

Nexus Con is in October. Like, it's just a, a few short months away. [00:04:00]So that's super exciting. But what that does mean is if you're listening and haven't Bought your ticket yet or haven't told us that you're coming or, you know, engaged with us, you should do that soon because we are planning a lot of great, uh, changes and activities and things based on obviously who's gonna be there.

And so we're taking that into account. Uh, we have a lot of great exhibitors that are coming, uh, from the sponsor side. We have a lot of great building owners that will be there. It's just really shaping up to be the best one yet, and obviously every year we're trying to uplevel and I, I do really feel like this is gonna be an uplevel, um, from year two and hopefully we will keep doing that year over year based on all the feedback that we get from all of you listening and all of you who attend.

So, I'm excited for that. We had abstracts that closed, you know, when you're listening to this, the ab- the abstracts have already closed. And so we've gotten a bunch of really good ones and we're excited. Um, Brad, anything you wanna share about the abstracts specifically [00:05:00] just as a teaser for folks?

Brad Bonavida: Yeah.

Well, on the, on the logistics of the closed thing, I've been kind of telling people the, the deadline has passed. The application is still up if you wanna submit. The, the way that we handle this is like our team now has s- has transitioned from, you know, going and requesting abstracts from people to now reviewing.

We have, you know, I, I think we have like over 70 now to go through reviewing those and seeing where they fit and seeing what we have. So like our, our job of curating the agenda has started. You can still submit. Your, your chances of getting in are lesser the longer you take because we're gonna start building that agenda now.

But yeah, I mean, please, if you're interested and haven't submitted yet, go ahead and do so or reach out to us and we can, you know, let you know how to do that. Um, but yeah, the, the, the job kind of changes for us. It's exciting. Now we get to go through all these with fine-tooth comb, figure out which ones fit together, you know, iterate with people and get to the, the, you know, solid agenda.

Um, the other thing that [00:06:00] I wanted to bring up on NextCon is we've got our hotel room blocks, so if you have registered, you should have received an email to, uh, reserve your hotel room. The word on the street is that Detroit is extremely busy that week. There's already a couple hotels that are sold out for that week, so I'm really trying to like really inspired people, go book it.

First of all- Yeah ... we've got the most convenient hotels, you know, 'cause they're, like, close to the venue. They're-- That's where everyone's gonna be. We also have better deals on those hotels than you can go get on your own. So, like, this is in your best interest to do this quickly so that it doesn't become a problem for you.

Um-

Rosy Khalife: We don't get anything if you book or don't book. Like, it doesn't, you know- No, it's

Brad Bonavida: like- We just

Rosy Khalife: want you to have

Brad Bonavida: a good experience ... we're

Rosy Khalife: looking

Brad Bonavida: out. Yeah. Like, please. I'm, I, I'm worried that, you know, if it sells out and someone doesn't do it and they're, they're getting their hotel the day before- Yeah

or the week before, they're gonna be Ubering from, like, the suburbs of Detroit to get to the venue or something. Totally. We don't want that. And they, they don't

Rosy Khalife: want that. Yeah. No, no, no. Uh, and then the last quick update, and then we'll get into this great conversation we have planned for today, is we do [00:07:00] have group tickets available, uh, for Nexus Con.

That is now up on the Nexus Con page. And so if you have a team of three or more that wants to attend, you'll get discounted tickets. They're, they're really discounted. I mean, they're nearly as much as, you know, if you bought them a couple months ago. Um, and so please do that. Get your team together. We really recommend thinking holistically of, like, who from the different departments do you want represented at Nexus Con and, and having those people come because that way you c- you all can collaborate during the conference and after the conference.

Um, so that's exciting, and that's up on our site now.

Brad Bonavida: Awesome. Okay. So without further ado, that's, that's our updates. Let's dive into what we've actually got here. So, uh, super excited to have Brendan on. Brendan spoke at Nexus Con in 2025. Brendan, that was genuinely one of my favorite presentations of the whole event.

It was super entertaining and fun to listen to. Um, to get things kicked off, I wanna do some rapid fire context setting. [00:08:00] I always say rapid fire 'cause Jamie's like, "We gotta get through this part to the, to the things people wanna hear about, so we gotta be fast." But

Rosy Khalife: Rosie- But I feel like this is important for this c- this one in specific, so maybe take a little bit of time.

Like, really, I don't think people who haven't been to the museum understand what we're talking about or know, like, if they don't live in this area, what, you know, how special it is. So maybe you could tee up, like, what is it, but take a second and, like, set the stage 'cause it's

Brad Bonavida: really special. And you, you can ask any, bring any rapid fire questions you, you have into this, Rosie.

We're here for it. So the, the most- Great ... obvious one, Brendan, what is Glenstone Museum?

Brendan Robinson: Well, thank you. Um, so Glenstone is a, it's an art museum. It's a contemporary art museum. Uh, we collect post-World War II works of art, and we're really focused on having a small but super high quality collection of, you know, the greatest art of our time that presents, you know, the major shifts in the way we think about and experience and understand art.

And from, from an [00:09:00] operations perspective, it seeks to completely reinvent the museum experience. So we're, we're free, uh, but ticketed, so only 300 people-ish are gonna be there at, at any given time Uh, across a whole campus, and, um, it w- creates a slow, unhurried, technology-free, uh, place where you can really just relax and connect with nature, connect with the architecture, and, uh, and with the art, of course.

So it's, it's a pretty special place.

Brad Bonavida: And what, what is like the campus look like? How big is it? How many buildings?

Brendan Robinson: Yeah. Yeah, so we're, we're in Potomac, Maryland, so right outside Washington, D.C., and, uh, so it's a residential rural area. We have, um, 10 buildings of about 300,000 square feet total, though our biggest building is 200,000 square feet.

And, uh, it's situated on just over 340 acres, so there's hiking trails, there's large monumental outdoor sculptures. [00:10:00] We have three art-related buildings, two food venues, and then the remainder of the buildings are, um, support. And, uh, it was originally built in 2006, so there's two sort of legacy 2006 buildings, and then we underwent a major expansion and opened as this free museum in, in 2018.

Brad Bonavida: Love it. I wanna go so bad. Yeah. Uh, so we mentioned you're the director of facilities, but, but what does that mean? Like, what is driving your daily work? What are your goals that your, you know, your team is counting on you to achieve?

Brendan Robinson: Uh, absolutely, yeah. You know, so I'm, I'm a senior member of our operations team, so security, facilities, technology, um, and engineering are, are all parts of my team.

Our, our goals, number one goals is experience. So we want our visitors, our staff, uh, and the artists that we collaborate to have an amazing experience. So we're kinda known for, um, really doing whatever an artist, one [00:11:00] of our partner artists wants to, to bring their vision to life. We'll take on- Mm-hmm

projects that other museums won't, and as a result, we have some pretty amazing sort of site-specific installations. And so experience is number one. We're all about that. Um, I have a duty to preserve and protect the art. Um, art museums are exceptionally demanding environments, right? So we have strict factors that don't go-- the art never goes home, so it's always the right temperature, the right humidity, the right light levels, the right indoor air quality, and those always have to be up, they always have to be right.

And so we, we work really hard to, to track these to make sure we're always getting it right. And then underpinning that is kind of the, you know, the core values of our organization, which is really dedicated to long-term thinking and, uh, sustainability, which is, you know, you know, with- through sequence optimization, the things we're gonna talk about today is what we've, we've tried to achieve.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. So you, you mentioned kind of the EUI journey in your NextCon presentation. I, I will, I will... I have some notes [00:12:00] here, but let me know if I get this right. So- Typical, uh, uh, EUI is energy use intensity for anyone who isn't familiar with that acronym. Uh, the typical art museum, you said, is around, like, 169 EUI, and you guys started as you opened at 85, so significantly below that.

Now you're somewhere around 42, which is significantly below that, and you're aiming- Yeah ... for 35 EUI, which would be, you believe, like, the best out of any art museum in the world. Yeah, is that right?

Brendan Robinson: Um, yeah, that tracks. There was, there was a study called Culture Over Carbon that was completed a few years ago, which kind of ranked all the various museum types by their EUI, and art museums were far and away the worst at that, uh, the average being 169.

Many are, are much higher than that. Um, so we were built, purpose-built. Um, we're gonna build into the earth, so in our main building is, is, is really super efficient. Other buildings are, are LEED Platinum. [00:13:00] Uh, so we were, we were built to be sustainable from the start and, and we did open with that 80 EUI. I think our design model was 120, but, you know, buildings generally always outperform those, those design models.

And, but it's through our kind of willingness to change, to innovate, and to keep driving lower that we've then cut that in half, and I think that, that last work bringing us down to 80 to, to about 43 right now is, uh, is the real work that was done and, and by the teams that were before me and, and by our team today, is kind of continuing that tradition and that, that culture of, of innovation and really pushing

Brad Bonavida: it.

Yeah. I, I think that most people wouldn't just assume that an art museum would be a extremely high EUI building compared to others, but the way you said it earlier, I mean, I imagine that the main reason for that is because your, quote-unquote, "occupants" are the pieces of art who never leave, so you pretty much are always in an occupied state.

Yeah.

Brendan Robinson: And [00:14:00] Maryland's a, a tough environment. We have the very humid summers and, and dry winters, and in an art museum, if you're always driving to that 70 degrees, 50% relative humidity, it's a lot of, uh, it's a lot of pushing the air around and, and changing it, which burns a lot of energy.

Brad Bonavida: Sure. Okay, last of my rapid-fire questions is what is the facilities and energy team look like?

What's the mix of in-house versus outsourced? How do you, how do you put together a team who actually takes care of these buildings?

Brendan Robinson: Uh, yeah. So on the engineering side, we're, we're very much insourced. Really, throughout the organization, we're pretty heavily insourced. So I have plumbing, HVAC, electrical, auto mechanic, and general building technicians on the, on the engineering team, and, and everyone is, uh, sort of extraordinarily, uh, cross-trained.

It gives us, you know, a lot of institutional knowledge, uh, and a lot of ability to be responsive to have someone on call to be there to make sure that we're achieving those things we want to do. [00:15:00] Uh, we certainly outside-- outsource, like, certain specialty services. Um, water treatment, fire, uh, elev- you know, we have giant elevators that we need contractors for and, and, and our chillers, uh, we work with a local firm here to, to service those as well, too.

Um, the biggest thing which I highlighted in Nexus Con is our partnership with Schneider Electric. So we do have a BAS technician on site one day a week. Uh, in the past, we actually had that in-house and then it's evolved into this strong sort of vendor partnership, uh, with Schneider Electric. We also have a fault detection technician who we have access-- who is remote, um, but has full access to our facility and we have access to their time.

And so, I highlighted that a lot in my Nexus Con presentation. We have a really strong relationship with them and, and they bring a lot to the table as far as being able to, to run our facilities and change things and, and troubleshoot things on a weekly basis.

Rosy Khalife: That's awesome. Very cool. [00:16:00]

Brad Bonavida: I, I especially liked how in your Nexus Con presentation, I think you just gave, like, a really, uh, comprehendible and simple roadmap of the way that you see your, uh, building technologies evolving as you become more sustainable.

So what I heard, what, you know, what I wrote down that you, you kind of did in this hierarchy is it starts with building design obviously, and trying to create a building that is efficient and, you know, good at its operations, which you guys obviously did. Um, and then you really focused in Nexus Con on getting your PMs in order, your preventative maintenance work orders, making sure that you're actually going and doing scheduled maintenance when it needs to be done before you guys layered on fault detection diagnostics.

Um, and then ne- you know, we'll get to the point that you're kind of looking at advanced supervisory control as, like, the next tier of that. Is that accurate? Is that kind of the evolution that you guys are on and, and where are you in that whole evolution?

Brendan Robinson: Yeah, [00:17:00] that, that's, uh, that's absolutely very accurate.

Um, yeah, I bel- I try to believe in, you know, the tried and true and marrying that with the cutting edge, and there's nothing more tried and true than a really strong preventative maintenance program. And, um, so when I started, I think the team was a lot more focused on corrective maintenance. They were doing the preventative maintenance, but we sort of weren't doing as great a job of tracking it and keeping score of it being on time.

And so we did go back, we've kind of fortified, as we like to call it here. We went back to basics and we updated our asset register, did a facility condition assessment, um, looked at every preventative maintenance schedule and kind of got the team on board, k- kept score, kept time and timeliness, and tracked all those things.

So we, so we got our preventative maintenance program above 90% on time Uh, tracking, you know, three to 400 preventative maintenance checks a month, and then, you [00:18:00] know, lo and behold, the corrective maintenance that we were tracking, uh, got done faster and, and the numbers of them came down. You know, that still fluctuates at time.

You know, sometimes things break and, and it goes up again. But that was really it, getting the house in order and really prioritizing that, knowing that that's the unlock, uh, to doing all the other things. And so then I was fortunate we had a fault detection system in place, and it was pretty robust. It does, it does a number of things for us.

You know, it identifies faults, it, um, it has dashboarding, and it has all of our histories there. So it was really getting the team then into that tool and using that as a way to kind of force multiply and enhance the knowledge of the team by using fault detection so that we, we get in there every week and we look at it.

Um, we then get joined by our partners at Schneider who help us cull through that list and, and, and use it. [00:19:00] So they've helped us build compliance dashboards to, to prove that we're, uh, meeting those temperature and dew point histories all the time. And so that, that's that, you know, instead of a, "You didn't get this done," it's kind of a, a positive feedback for the team.

They, they try and push those numbers up, up higher. And, um, you know, we consolidated the lists to one. I'm a firm believer having, like, one force ranked list of faults in that fault detection sy- system, and when I started, we sort of had 20 different lists, so we've consolidated that into one, and then the team can really just focus on it, see what the fault detection system is telling us, and use that as a chance to learn and then go out in the field and try and, uh, see if those faults are real.

Brad Bonavida: Mm-hmm. I, I have to ask one question selfishly about the condition-based maintenance, uh, kind of journey you just described, because this was such a big part of Nexus Cast, was y- you mentioned getting the PMs in order first. That [00:20:00] was kind of the whole Travis Kriner of CBRE really, uh, honed in in his presentation on that and how people- Yeah

jump to FDD before they like, they're doing all these silly things without FDD that they need to get structured, right? My question is, did you guys find that you were uncovering scheduled maintenance that you guys were doing that was, like, not worth the value? And were you pulling out preventative maintenance things that you found weren't necessary?

Brendan Robinson: I think we went through a rollercoaster on that. So when the expanded museum first opened, we outsourced preventative maintenance for that first year as they hired up the team. And so I had this kind of robust document with that schedule, um, that they were supposedly following. And then I had what was in our system, and I compared the two, and then We were way short.

We were, uh, you know, there was a lot of stuff that was in that first-year document that wasn't in our system. So I ramped that way up. At one point, we [00:21:00] were doing 400 to 500, uh, PMs a month in there, and then we kind of collectively reviewed that as a team and then realized we were overkilling a few things and needed to- Mm-hmm

to right-size it back down. Gotcha. So that was kind of the full, the full rollercoaster, uh- Okay ... that we, we went through. And, um, you know, some things were skewed towards annuals versus quarterlies and things like that, and that, um, as you move those things around, it, it greatly affects the number of checks.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. So your hierarchy involves, you know, FDD and sequence operation in a way. When you're thinking about the outcomes that you're driving, do you separate the occupant experience and, like, the, the, um, uh, keeping the art happy from the energy? Like, are those all just kind of one set of outcomes? You're trying to make your occupants happy, keep your art stable, and lower your energy, or in your head, do you kind of split the energy side from the occupant and art satisfaction side?[00:22:00]

Brendan Robinson: So I came out of o- like, corporate offices prior, prior to being here, so I've, I've joked that, like, we don't care about the people anymore, it's just, it's just the art, 'cause I'm used to having, uh, you know, high, like, office occupant complaints. But we really are trying to, trying to get everyone. The, the art is, art is first and foremost.

The art kind of wants to be in a range that is, uh, comfortable for people as well, too, with that moderate humidity and, and moderate temperature and really high air quality. So thankfully, those things really don't, uh, play against each other. It, it is-- If you were to look at a, a healthy buildings strategy, it would match a healthy art strategy.

So I think there's a lot of- I was gonna ask ... synergies there as far as, or as far as bringing them together. So, so I joke, but it is really a great experience for both the occupants, uh- Yeah ... and the artworks.

Brad Bonavida: Cool.

Rosy Khalife: That's awesome. I love that. A little tidbit, a tangent real quick. My dad is an artist, Brandon, and, um, he, you know, has painted over 1,000 art, you know, very [00:23:00] prolific artist and, um, my house has a lot of art, and so whenever I go leave my house, he always reminds me, like, "Make sure you don't shut the HVAC off," you know.

Because, well, for, for many reasons, but als- especially for the artwork that I already have at home. So I'm always thinking about that, and so I was gonna ask you, like, how do you determine what the ideal environment is? But it sounds like pretty much a healthy building strategy is, is the one that you guys take.

Brendan Robinson: Absolutely.

Rosy Khalife: That's awesome. Cool.

Brad Bonavida: So I wanna dive into HVAC sequence optimization. First, I should probably clarify, like, what I mean by that, I think, 'cause I've been trying to make sure that it's clear what that means. Um, what, when we talk about HVAC sequence optimization, I think what we mean is that- There, there are so many buildings that are designed really well with a, a well-programmed system from the get-go, and then that just, like, over the years begins to drift, typically because it's not somebody's job to keep it operating [00:24:00] exactly, you know, optimized.

Schedules change, um, the way equipment actually ph-physically moves changes. Um, people override things because it, it's not working for a second, and now you've got it commanded to be on a, you know, manual override, and then no one knows what that override is for, so everyone's afraid to touch it. And you just have this drift, this entropy in your building.

So we're kind of not talking about, like, these big capital improvements of putting in new higher energy efficient stuff, but how do you just maintain the HVAC building automation system so that you're either improving the energy, uh, you know, or, or lowering the energy consumption that it's using, or at least keeping it stable throughout?

And, uh, when, Brandon, when we were preparing for this, you, you brought up, like, six different examples of, of things that you guys have done here. Um, and I would love to dive into these, but maybe kind of an overarching question is how in your position do-- Like, there's all these different things that you could go focus on to try to [00:25:00] optimize your energy usage.

H-How do you, like, how does your team prioritize that? How do you look at one of these options versus the other and try to make a decision of which one you should go after first?

Brendan Robinson: Um, I think, you know, the easiest way to, to reference that is a, um, maybe an art world, uh, sort of reference, if you've heard of something called, called a close read.

Um, and we get to spend a lot of time with art here. So a close read is when you just look deeply at a painting or a work of art for a very long piece of time, and those little details, um, jump out at you. And I think we have a similar relationship with our smart building systems and our fault detection dashboards, um, our BAS dashboards, our, our alarms.

We, we have, uh, a significant number of alarms turned on that, that come to our emails. And so we're trying to look deeply at this information and really let the data, sub-metering is another great source of information. We [00:26:00] want to let the data guide us to where the opportunities are. And so we started with building a great system that has a lot of redundancy that can give the outcomes that we want, and we measure those outcomes.

We're delivering humidity, we're delivering temperature, we're delivering air quality in the zones that we want. And then we can start innovating, say, "How can we do that in a more efficient way? How can we do that using less energy?" And we're just letting the experience of our team and, and, and their knowledge be the guide, but also the data saying, "Hey, what is using the most energy?

Let's look at that. Let's spend time there thinking about those things." Awesome. So that's the, the overarching.

Brad Bonavida: What, what was that term again? I wasn't familiar

Brendan Robinson: with it Close, close read. A close read.

Brad Bonavida: Love it. Okay, cool. Um, so maybe we should-- I, I mean, you could kind of take your pick on which of these, uh, you wanna talk through, but I think it would, it would give some, you know, c- it would help to give the audience some concrete examples.

May-maybe to start I'll, I'll [00:27:00] recommend, um, floating set points. You talked about how, uh, museums are typically, you know, have fixed temperature and humidity, but you guys were able to kinda go beyond that. Can you explain what you did there?

Brendan Robinson: Uh, yeah, I think that's one of the more innovative things we did.

So when you're, when you're in an office space, uh, you can do a nighttime setback and, and the temperature can go way up. Um, in the art world, that's, that's just not possible. Um, there is some thinking out there. Um, there's something called the Bizot Green Protocol that says we can relax our standards and maybe humidity can go from 40% to 60%.

Um, we don't believe in that necessarily, that it can fluctuate that quickly. Um, we don't-- Our conservators want, uh... they don't mind if it's down closer to 40 or up higher to 60, they just don't want it diverging from set point quickly. So what we've done is have these floating set points. So in the winter, when it's dry outside and it's trying to warm, we will [00:28:00] slowly, slowly, one twelfth of a degree at a time, start dropping the target for humidity that it's, that it's going to, and that's all hard-coded in the sequence.

So if the conditions are that it's calling for that humidification, we're gonna slowly start bringing that down till we reach that bottom limit. And then it'll stay there for months until the weather starts changing and it gets humid outside and it starts calling for dehumidification, and then that will slowly, slowly step up.

And so the art remains very consistent- Mm-hmm ... in where it's at, and it very, very slowly moves up and slowly moves down. That has a profound, uh, impact on the amount of energy we use, 'cause we're not constantly bringing that humidity up or down to those, to those set points.

Brad Bonavida: Sure.

Brendan Robinson: And so there's some variations on this that people are doing, but that was a- an in-house innovation that our, uh, my predecessors had, had developed and has been hard-coded, and we've, we've maintained that in there today.

Brad Bonavida: Cool. That's [00:29:00] fascinating. So it's really not so much about the exact humidity number, but the, the acceleration of cha- the rate of change of your humidity. If, if the

Brendan Robinson: system wants, is calling for humidity, then we'll, we'll bring that down, and that, that program exists in each, um, you know, in, in each air handler and system.

So it, it could be implemented at different times in different locations, and we're not, we're not hooking up an API to some weather forecaster and, and, and trying to do it externally. It's all, you know, just native in the system there in the sequence.

Brad Bonavida: Cool. Are you able to- W- with any success, like try to isolate what kind of impact each one of these has on your EUI based on your submetering, or is there just too much going on that that's a, a fool's errand to try to-

Brendan Robinson: I don't have those histories of the submeter, so we haven't done-- I guess we, we haven't been as great at measurement and verification on that.

But, like, we started by getting it right with air quality, and every innovation and every [00:30:00] change we've made since then is expressly for the sole purso- purpose of getting it right while using less energy. Mm-hmm. Um, so I can say pretty confidently that sequence optimization has just been a huge part of our EUI strategy, but I can't necessarily attribute exact EUI improvements to any one intervention.

I'd say floating setpoints are the biggest one, along with, uh, steam plant optimization. Uh, we had an electric steam plant that was installed. It was sort of, uh, two, two-stage, uh, steam boilers that were not under control. They were not under the building automation system, and they were just cons- constantly chugging out 10 psi steam.

And when we looked at the submetering, we realized they were 50% of the load of our large building, and these-

Brad Bonavida: Wow ...

Brendan Robinson: tiny, unimpressive looking boilers were using a whole heck of a lot of e- energy. And so we interconnected them, brought them under the building automation system, and created a sequence to treat them like one four-stage [00:31:00] boiler.

And with our demand being lower, uh, we can, we can generally just run one of those four. So we know for a fact that that had a huge impact on, on lowering our, our EUI. There's another, another one- Cool ... and that was, that was data led. You know, the data led us to that, and then we, we thought of another way to do it.

Brad Bonavida: Re- really the story for all of these is the same, and it's just, like, finding something that you can incrementally modulate without impacting performance, and being able to run that variable up and down slowly to give yourself the, the performance you need while saving energy.

Brendan Robinson: Yeah.

Brad Bonavida: That's great.

Brendan Robinson: And a lot, lot of these sequences are not, not Earth Strat.

You know, they're either in ASHRAE 36 advanced sequences. So we, we, um, we have demand controlled ventilation and, you know, all of our fans were set at, to run for, uh, you know, max occupancy per code for cooling demand, and our actual occupancy is way less than that. So we've been able [00:32:00] to lower fan speeds, uh, throughout our facilities, knowing that we have, um, a CO2 sensor.

So if a crowd were to show up, they would, they would breathe, and those, those fans would ramp up to, to make them comfortable. Um, that was, I think- more cutting edge a few years ago when, when it was done, and now that's, it's a real standard practice that a lot of people are, are implementing. Yeah.

Brad Bonavida: I was gonna ask if, if that was based on CO2.

It-- does it also make an impact at all that you guys have that reservation system where you know that you're only gonna have 300 tickets out at a time?

Brendan Robinson: Uh, it, it does. It does, 'cause we, we, we were, you know, we're, we're socially distanced from the start. Yeah. We, um, we have just n- not a lot of demand, and it's pretty predictable about where people are gonna go and when, uh, at different times of the day.

So we're able to adjust cer- certain things, and we can ramp up in the office in the morning on the days that people are showing up to make sure they're [00:33:00] comfortable for a little bit, and in the middle of the day when we're at that peak occupancy in the museum building.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. Cool. One, one of the questions I was gonna ask you that I feel like, uh, and now it's very clear why it's not here, but I was gonna ask you why you didn't have in your list here, uh, like a start-stop schedule optimization of like ramp up and ramp down, but that's- Yeah

because you're not really ramping up and down very often, are you? You're keeping it relatively stable?

Brendan Robinson: We're not. Uh, although that's some of the innovations that, that I, that I've brought in more recently. So we are actually experimenting with a night setback, uh, of sorts, and it's really about outside air.

So we-- all of our outside air comes through, um... It's normally called a DOAS. We call it a DOAP, direct outdoor air processor. And, um, the fresh air is really about a healthy building and, and the people. And so at night when we're, we're, we're not occupied, um, we've been experimenting with [00:34:00] going back to, uh, 100% return air.

So the air in the space is, is of great quality for the art, and we can just sort of recycle that return air, and we don't have to-- It's even less heating, cooling, humidifying- Sure ... and dehumidifying that we have to do. So, and not all these things work, right? So that we, we started that, thought for sure it would be a winner, and, and our fan speeds went up at night, um, 'cause we created the return duct is, um, smaller than the outside air duct, so we created a building pressurization, uh, sort of challenge there as well too.

So we're fine-tuning that, uh, opening up the outside air a little bit at night and balancing that. So not all these things work right away, but again, we have that freedom, uh, amongst, and that culture amongst our team to try and experiment and get better. So, um, that's our version of a, a night setback close to that optimal-

Brad Bonavida: Cool

Brendan Robinson: start-stop that you asked

Brad Bonavida: about. I think that's a, a good segue. All those examples that you brought up, we're talking f- fairly [00:35:00] technically about how you guys are, you know, implementing them, but it's really the culture and the team that you've set up that's able to like focus on this and make, you know, changes.

And the, the way that it seemed like you were talking about at Nexus Con is this concept of democratizing sequence writing capability. So multiple people on your team have the ability to change this and improve it and feel empowered to do so. Can you just explain that? Like, how did you get there, and how does, how does that system work?

Brendan Robinson: Um, sure. So I, I think it's the first time I've been... You know, normally your, your BAS tech would do, would do the programming or you would rarely touch the programming, and I think a number of us are in that, um, a lot more often. And, you know, I think that really came from kind of our founding COO, uh, Tony Cervini on our, our team really created that culture when he started.

Steve Carrick was, uh, predecessor in my role. He's now our COO and, and my, my boss. And they, [00:36:00] they sat around a table and brainstormed and taught themselves and gave themselves permission to experiment, and we've expanded that out to the team. So I've been to, like, Schneider technician school with, with, um, as have, you know, our, our chief engineer, other members of our team.

Uh, and of course, we have our Schneider TechON weekly. And so if we wanna tweak something or implement a new COO, put in alarm delays to help with alarming, any, you know, tweak set points, we, we just go in there and we do it. We have kind of strict protocols for, um, you don't delete anything. You, you comment it out, so, and date and put your name of who made the change.

So we have just some, some practices that help us, uh, undo things later or understand why things were done in the code if we get it wrong. And, uh, it's, it's nerve-wracking, uh, when you do that the first time to see if you're gonna break anything. But it, but it's [00:37:00] also fun and allows us to experiment, learn, fail fast, and, and do that continuous improvement over time.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. That's awesome. So how do the sequences that you're running a- as you're optimizing this, are you getting pretty far away from design sequences that came in from construction, or you feel like you're always trying to get back to there?

Brendan Robinson: I think it's a mixture. It, you know, we, we know where we've diverted from design intents, and we know where we haven't.

So, um, we kind of keep track of, of w- where we've diverged and where we've stayed the same. Um- Yeah ... I, I don't know how to answer that any- Yeah ... any differently.

Brad Bonavida: Uh- Basically a combination. Like, you're, you're, you're staying there until, unless you see a specific upgrade that you can see on top of that, sounds like, to, to improve it.

Brendan Robinson: Absolutely.

Brad Bonavida: Uh, do you, uh, this is an art-specific question, but I was curious, when, when the [00:38:00] exhibit does get turned over, are you guys talking with the exhibit team about how that space needs to be maintained differently when, when the exhibit turns over?

Brendan Robinson: Yeah, so, uh, the exhibition design is embedded in, in operations, so I get the opportunity to work very closely with, uh, our designers and our registration and conservation teams as new exhibitions come in.

So we're there side to side, and not every exhibition design can, um, you know, afford a mechanical engineer. So we work closely to go through the exhibition, make sure, uh, we think there's a, a, you know, we understand the requirements of whatever artwork's being put in there, and make sure we think we have a successful plan to sort of meet the, meet those requirements.

Um, sometimes we're building walls, we're tearing them down. Those might have a thermostat or, you know, a, a sensor in them, so there's just the, the blocking and [00:39:00] tackling. Sometimes we build rooms within rooms. Sometimes we put neons and things that generate lots of heat in those rooms. So there, there are times when we need, uh, expert engineering design help.

There's other times that we c- we can handle it, but it's really about making sure, um, we have the sensors in the space and, and the airflow and are, are able to, to measure it, um, 'cause a lot of times we might create a, a microclimate within a portion of the room, uh, and we have to use, uh, we have actually a lot of handheld instruments, and we can walk through manually and, and check things, uh, that way.

Brad Bonavida: That's cool. Keeps it, keeps it fresh for you guys. You've got a- Yeah ... different building all the time. It's awesome.

Brendan Robinson: Yeah. We've, we, you know, I, I alluded to this in next time, but we, you know, we recently buried some sensors under art, which caused a lot of false readings in a microclimate. But we have a robust system with so many different HVAC zones, we were s- able to kind of, uh, work around that from the system side and not have to remove any art [00:40:00]from the wall in order to- Yeah

to move a, move a sensor. So things like that do happen, but the team, you know, works collaboratively to, to get through them. 'Cause we, we know we're bringing this artwork to life. We're doing whatever it takes to, to meet that artist's vision and, um, we've got to do whatever it takes to, to protect that art the same way too.

Yeah. And they're equally as important.

Brad Bonavida: So the next frontier, well, you will always be doing HVAC optimization, I imagine. That's not something that ever really ends. That's kind of a message that we're trying to get to our community as well. But the next frontier it sounds like that you're exploring is advanced supervisory control in your chiller plant, which I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, means that you're looking at using, uh, advanced algorithms that can continually change your chiller's discharge temperature set point to be ideal for that moment based on tons of variables.

Is that right?

Brendan Robinson: Yes. Yeah. So if you look at our, our fault detection [00:41:00] system, um, chiller, you know, chiller faults are kind of like the number, number one and two. Um, it always, you know, minimal chill water load or Low chill water loop delta temperature comes back. So, um, the fault detection system is screaming at us there's an, there's an opportunity to optimize our chill water plant.

So we are working with, uh, Facile, uh, AI to do an AI agent, um, chilled water temperature reset. I think they actually, it, um, reset the set point on the condenser water side, which in turn impacts the chilled water pressure is, is kind of how that works. And, uh, we were ready to launch it in the fall, and I didn't wanna do it-- It was getting cold.

I didn't wanna do it over the winter, so we, we've waited till now. And so the, the agent is live. We have their latest agent, and it's learning from our system, and probably about, uh, March 15th or May 15th of this year, in about 10 days, we will go ahead and, uh, turn over the [00:42:00] reins to the agent and see how, see how that does.

And hopefully that'll be another, you know, big energy-saving opportunity for us.

Rosy Khalife: Cool. That's so exciting.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. That's really cool. Awesome. Okay. Well, you-- I, we, I think we can say with confidence that you have a mature HVAC sequence optimization and FDD program compared to a lot of people in our community.

If you had a peer who was operating a similar set of buildings that, uh, you know, had, had a good building automation system but it didn't have FDD or advanced supervisory control and they wanted to, you know, learn from you, what, what, what's the first step? What's the biggest piece of advice for that person to get going on this journey?

Brendan Robinson: After joining Nexus Con?

Brad Bonavida: That's

Rosy Khalife: right. Nice. We didn't

Brendan Robinson: tell them to

Rosy Khalife: say that. Yeah, we did

Brad Bonavida: not. But that is an un- ... that's a unsponsored advertisement there.

Brendan Robinson: So I would say I would get really clear on how your engineering team, your facilities team [00:43:00] actually supports the mission of, of your organization. What, what processes do you run that are vital?

What services do you provide? And how can you measure the effectiveness of those things? Uh, and so that's a group conversation around a table, and then once you kind of are really sure of how you add value, then just match that up with the right technology, and then you can start having whatever vendor conversations you need to do that.

'Cause if you're, you know, if you're focused on asset life cycle, that's your CMMS. It's computerized maintenance management system. If you're focused on, you know, your equipment health and uptime, then, then that might be fault detection might be the right thing for you. And if you have some, like, super high performance and you need something non-human, you know, controlling your equipment to get that extreme performance or sustainability, then you may have to jump to that, um, you know, advanced supervisory control.

But there's basics and fundamentals and [00:44:00] building blocks and, and until you know how you add value to the organization- Uh, you can't have those technology discussions, and if you do know how you add value, like, your pitches internally for, for budget will go much better, and you won't waste your time or the vendor's time 'cause you'll know a lot better what, what kind of technology you need, uh, 'cause you'll really understand your internal processes.

So that, that would be my advice.

Brad Bonavida: That's great. I, I think my takeaway is also just how important culture is to organizations that have mature connected building programs. Like, we're talking about all these technical things that you did that, you know, anybody could implement. They're just technical feats.

But the culture of l- like you said, you ha- you guys have a goal of having the best EUI. You guys allow this democratization of sequence. You have a great relationship with your vendors and Schneider and all these people. You have this culture that allows people to, like, improve the buildings, which I think is, like, you know, key for a [00:45:00] building to s- or a portfolio of buildings to succeed at this level.

Rosy Khalife: it's great. Yeah. It's really cool. Brad, I have a quick question for you. That culture that Brad's talking about and that's so evident, it-- did that come from, like, the founders of the museum, like that vibe? Or is it from, like, h- w- how did you guys get here?

Brendan Robinson: Uh, it, it definitely came top-down from, from the founder.

So we have, um, a strong commitment, uh, so to improving performance and, um, you know, we are, our, our founder owns a, our founder, you know, owns a portfolio of, of many different companies and uses lots of processes to improve the performance and output of those, those companies. And so w- we are no different, uh, as a museum, so that culture definitely came, uh, from the, from the top down from the beginning.

Rosy Khalife: Cool. Yeah, I was wondering 'cause I know the, you know, it, it, it always is different from each company has a different sort of approach and, um, it's great to [00:46:00] hear how you guys embody that in so many different aspects. Yeah. It's really awesome.

Brad Bonavida: I'm, I'm gonna have, uh, I'm gonna have our podcast, I put a picture of the museum in the show notes here, too, 'cause I feel like seeing some of the images that you had in your s- presentation at Nexus Con really brings to life, like, how cool this, this museum is.

I, I seriously wanna go so bad. Or, like, a

Rosy Khalife: video. We need to, we need to post a video on LinkedIn 'cause, 'cause I think that'll be, like, it's really-

Brad Bonavida: Yeah. Okay ... cool to look

Rosy Khalife: around.

Brad Bonavida: I'm sure there's-- You guys probably have, like, a good YouTube video that goes around. We have tons of stuff,

Brendan Robinson: yeah. I can, I can, uh- Cool

help you guys find the right content.

Brad Bonavida: Nice. Yeah, I'd love to, 'cause I think that helps a lot. Okay, cool. All right. Well, let's wrap. Let's do some carve-outs here. Um, I, I will start us off. So my carve-out is I am reading a book called "The Indifferent Stars Above" right now, which is about, uh, the Donner Party, which I knew basically nothing about.

But the Donner Party was, uh, on the Oregon Trail from Illinois and then decided to divert towards California instead [00:47:00] of Oregon, and were basically unaware of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Like, I mean, they were aware of them, but they did not realize how intense that was gonna be, and they get trapped before they can get across in winter, and it's this crazy survival story.

And two quick takeaways. First of all, it just always blows my mind, like, this is, like, three to four generations of people ago, people ago. Like, it's so close that things were so different and difficult. And then the second one is they're on-- I won't give anything away, but they're on this, like, a smaller group of them is on this journey to try to, you know, save them, and it's about a dozen people.

All the women are great and, like, okay, and all the men are dying or, like, near death. Like, seriously, there's like six women and six men, and the women are surviving much better. They're handling the elements better, which I thought was interesting. Hmm. And I don't know if cool is the right word, but girl power, Rosie.

Rosy Khalife: Interesting. Yeah, girl power. I like that, Brad. Yeah. You haven't

Brendan Robinson: finished-

Rosy Khalife: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know why exactly that is, but [00:48:00] like, you know, I'm sure there's a bunch of theories of why. Yeah. But it's interesting. Yeah.

Brad Bonavida: Brandon, what, did you, did you ask if I know how it ends?

Brendan Robinson: you know how, do you know where this, this is like a Titanic situation or do you know how the book ends?

Brad Bonavida: I, I'm not done with the book. I, I, I mean, I guess I, I don't wanna give anything away. Not everyone lives, but not everyone dies. Let's just leave it there. So, um- He's just asking

Rosy Khalife: do you know what- You know ... do you know the

Brad Bonavida: ending? I, I know quite a bit. I, like, I haven't- Okay ... physically finished the book. I still have- Yeah, yeah, yeah

like 40 pages left, so I don't, like, literally know the end, but I've got a pretty good concept of how- Okay ... this is wrapping up,

Rosy Khalife: so. I think they made it into a TV show or something. Did they? Does that ring a bell for anyone? No?

Brad Bonavida: I don't know. I- I'll have to look that up ... I was totally clueless about this whole subject and people were talking- Oh, were you?

Okay ... but yeah, so.

Rosy Khalife: Okay.

Brad Bonavida: Just schooled up. All right, Brandon, you're up.

Brendan Robinson: All right. Um, so I've also been reading this book I brought, um, called "The Maintenance of Everything" by Stewart Brand. He wrote a different book called, uh, "How Buildings Learn." And, uh, so it just, it just dropped recently, and it's all about maintenance, [00:49:00] um, talking about people sailing around the world and car...

You know, cars and just how you can set up systems to be sort of super precise or super simple. And, um, it, it just gives me a lot of good, like, stories and fodder for the team or ways of- Nice ... thinking about how we, how we set stuff up so it can be maintained over time. And, uh, he's written a couple really, really good books that, that I- Enjoy professionally

Brad Bonavida: Our audience is gonna love that book.

We're definitely gonna have to add that to the show notes as well.

Rosy Khalife: That's great. I feel like we need a library, like a Nexus li- there's so many good books- Yeah ... that somehow, some way, some system, there's just so many good books that we always share.

Brad Bonavida: Um- I'm

Rosy Khalife: gonna

Brad Bonavida: ask Claude if it can tell me every book recommendation that we've gotten on the podcast and see if I can make that list.

Oh,

Rosy Khalife: that's a great idea. Yep. Yeah. That's a good one. Um, okay. Uh, such a good question. I always love this one. It's so fun. Um, what's been up for me? I've [00:50:00] been, you know, getting more into crafting lately. I know that sounds really funny, but like, not crafting, more like DIY-ing. I just feel like there's so many projects that I've always wanted to do where it feels like, oh, I'll get to that at some point, but then like, when is that some point?

What does that even mean? Like, I'm not retiring anytime soon, so what is that? Where's the end? And so I've been just starting to plug away at different things, and I got a laser, um, you know, a laser, and that's been helping me, like, hang things, and it's just so helpful. So the call-out is if you don't own a laser, which probably a bunch, uh, most of you already do, but if you don't, you should get one, because it is life-changing, and it makes everything way easier.

Brad Bonavida: You mean like a, a laser leveler so that you can- Yes ... get... Yeah. Right. Okay. I don't own one. Yeah, we just

Rosy Khalife: call it laser le- You don't own one? No. It's amazing.

Brad Bonavida: I own a, a manual leveler, not a laser one.

Rosy Khalife: Yeah. It, it just, it, it doesn't just help with hanging things. It just helps you, like, the whole, whatever you're do- I mean, it is hanging [00:51:00]something on a wall, but it just helps make the whole thing a lot easier.

So I'm sure- Okay ... they have a bunch at the museum probably.

Brad Bonavida: Yeah, I bet they do.

Brendan Robinson: We got 'em.

Brad Bonavida: We got 'em. That's great. All right. Well, this has been fun. Brendan, your program's awesome. If you are around the area, people should go to the Gladstone Museum. Uh, I will be going sometime soon. Um, yeah, thanks for being on the pod.

Brendan Robinson: Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Rosy Khalife: Thank you. 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.

‍

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