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LAX and Mapped Overcome Stakeholder Obstacles for Data Normalization
For LAX Airport, the technical challenge of integrating OT data across 20 million square feet of infrastructure is easier than internal organizational alignment. While the "micro-city" of LAX manages everything from 1960s-era analog meters to modern jet-bridge scheduling, the primary bottleneck in its data normalization project is aligning all the necessary stakeholders.
Shaun Cooley, co-founder of Mapped, noted that after thousands of deployments, the technical data-mapping and connectivity side is never the hardest part. Instead, projects frequently stall because IT departments only loosely understand their OT network configurations and requirements, such as outbound traffic filtering or port authentication.
Beyond the IT group's lack of prioritization is the Information Security group's outright denial. "We get told no, no, no all the time," Cooley said, referring to InfoSec teams whose job is often to default to a "no" for any new gateway on the network. InfoSec teams evaluate technology based on specific security standards and certifications to mitigate risk. Key vendor certifications, like ISO 27001 and SOC 2, Type 2, are critical but often not enough to persuade InfoSec to allow the project to move forward.
These delays are often compounded by incumbent OEMs who claim they can provide the same functionality, thereby slowing decision-making. For LAX, overcoming these hurdles is critical to replacing a manual data pipeline that still frequently relies on clipboards and email attachments with a centralized historian capable of tracking 1.2 million points.
When you finally align stakeholders and deploy an improvement to the data layer of a building portfolio, then the real clock starts ticking. “Time to value is the only thing that matters,” Cooley emphasized. “From when the data is live until the customer sees value is the only thing we find that drives expansion”. By overcoming the initial IT-OT friction, LAX aims to transition from monthly manual records to per-load energy and water targets.
Watch the full recording → https://www.nexuslabs.online/content/lax-is-building-a-campus-wide-data-layer-to-manage-environmental-compliance
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For LAX Airport, the technical challenge of integrating OT data across 20 million square feet of infrastructure is easier than internal organizational alignment. While the "micro-city" of LAX manages everything from 1960s-era analog meters to modern jet-bridge scheduling, the primary bottleneck in its data normalization project is aligning all the necessary stakeholders.
Shaun Cooley, co-founder of Mapped, noted that after thousands of deployments, the technical data-mapping and connectivity side is never the hardest part. Instead, projects frequently stall because IT departments only loosely understand their OT network configurations and requirements, such as outbound traffic filtering or port authentication.
Beyond the IT group's lack of prioritization is the Information Security group's outright denial. "We get told no, no, no all the time," Cooley said, referring to InfoSec teams whose job is often to default to a "no" for any new gateway on the network. InfoSec teams evaluate technology based on specific security standards and certifications to mitigate risk. Key vendor certifications, like ISO 27001 and SOC 2, Type 2, are critical but often not enough to persuade InfoSec to allow the project to move forward.
These delays are often compounded by incumbent OEMs who claim they can provide the same functionality, thereby slowing decision-making. For LAX, overcoming these hurdles is critical to replacing a manual data pipeline that still frequently relies on clipboards and email attachments with a centralized historian capable of tracking 1.2 million points.
When you finally align stakeholders and deploy an improvement to the data layer of a building portfolio, then the real clock starts ticking. “Time to value is the only thing that matters,” Cooley emphasized. “From when the data is live until the customer sees value is the only thing we find that drives expansion”. By overcoming the initial IT-OT friction, LAX aims to transition from monthly manual records to per-load energy and water targets.
Watch the full recording → https://www.nexuslabs.online/content/lax-is-building-a-campus-wide-data-layer-to-manage-environmental-compliance
Sign up for the newsletter to get 5 stories like this per week
This is a great piece!
I agree.