People Dynamics in the Smart Building Transition: Designing Teams, Engaging Users, and Replacing Vendors

Welcome to our NexusCon 2024 event recordings! These recordings and slides are available for Nexus Pro Members only.

About NexusCon 

The industry needed a different type of conference, so we built it. NexusCon 2024 was full of sponsor-free content, real-world case studies, and most importantly, our community.

We heard from 109 speakers across 24 different sessions over a span of 3 days. Although nothing beats the in-person real-time learnings from NexusCon, we are excited to release the NexusCon session recordings to our Nexus Pro Community. We have over 40 hours of hot takes, knowledge bombs, collaborations, and disagreements among smart buildings industry experts to share with you.

About the Session

Smart Building programs can often resemble a revolving door with a continuous flow of people in and out. People change roles, organizations adjust their digitization and decarbonization goals, service contracts expire, new technology opportunities arise, etc.

The robust smart building program is one that can survive the unsteady flow in and out of program responsibility and stakeholders. Understanding how different teams work together, getting more people involved, and handling change management are processes that are just as important as the actual technology strategy.

This session focuses on the principles necessary to keep your smart building program afloat through the only thing that will be constant: change in people dynamics. In this session, we’ll hear from:

• Newcomb & Boyd and COPT Defense Properties on the organizational structure challenges, specifically between IT and facilities, and how defining an OT team can bridge the gap for more successful implementations.
• Infrastructure Ontario and BGIS on their change management playbook and how they were able to switch property service companies on 197 buildings in just 3 months with no impact on tenants.
• FPC Global on how commercial real estate portfolios can achieve scalable and standardized digital building deployments by aligning business objectives with a robust delivery framework.

After the presentations, we’ll facilitate breakout discussions so the audience can unpack the people dynamics of each case study. In the end, we’ll wrap it up with a speaker panel and moderated synthesis of breakout group findings, with the ultimate goal of converging on an answer to the question: Regardless of the technology we’re talking about, what do newcomers to smart buildings need to know about the crucial but often overlooked people component?

Preview

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To continue on and hear from Newcomb & Boyd, COPT Defense Properties, Infrastructure Ontario, BGIS, and FPC Global on the principles necessary to keep your smart building program afloat through a change in people dynamic, subscribe to Nexus Pro ⬇️

‍Organizational Structure for the Intelligent Building - The Cross-functional IT-Facilities Interaction

• Mike MacMahon, Operational Technology Director at Newcomb & Boyd
• Ryan Blanc, Director of IT Operations at COPT Defense Systems

Recording

Slides

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People, The Real Smart Building Vendor Transition at Scale with Infrastructure Ontario

• Mandy Omrani, Smart Buildings Manager at Infrastructure Ontario
• Obhishek Bhattacharjee, Director of Smart Buildings at BGIS

Recording ‍

Slides

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Digital Building Success: A Framework for Scale

• Brian Vaughn, Global Head of Technical Consulting at FPC Global

Recording‍

Slides

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Panel Discussion

• Max Shirley, Intelligent Buildings Studio Director at Newcomb & Boyd
• Mandy Omrani, Smart Buildings Manager at Infrastructure Ontario
• Ryan Blanc, Director of IT Operations at COPT Defense Systems
• Kathy Farrington, Senior Technical Program Manager at Google

Recording‍