Founder Note

“In the beginning of their journey to a smart building, many of our clients are wondering what they need to buy to check the box. We've flippe

Longtime listeners to the Nexus podcast know my favorite question: Why is the technology in buildings so far behind? I love asking it because I keep getting different, but insightful answers, which help us understand the obstacles we need to collectively overcome to make smarter buildings. However, after asking it dozens of times, there’s still one answer I believe in but haven’t yet heard: Our industry is behind because we don’t yet have enough API-first companies.

“My 80/20 rule is that it's 20% of technology—and there are a lot of technologies in a smart building. And it's 80% about people and human engineer

Each month, the Nexus Pro community comes together for our member gathering. Think: dozens of smart buildings nerds networking on Zoom! 🤓At our June 2022 member gathering, Andrew Knueppel of Cushman Wakefield presented his thoughts on procuring vital master systems integrator (MSI) services for a client. This presentation resonated with lots of our members (including me!), and today I want to share Andrew's insights more broadly. As a reminder, there are no certifications or standards or minimum qualifications to be an MSI. You simply submit a bid on MSI work and if you win, you call yourself the MSI. For buildings owners, this can be confusing!

“I don't know as much as a tax consultant by a long shot, but for most cases with TurboTax, 90% of the cases, I was good. The 10% of the cases, I'm

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news. (Normally, these deep dives are exclusive to members of Nexus Pro. Enjoy!)For Volume 10, let's talk about Sparkfund's acquisition of EPX Group. This acquisition has not been previously publicly announced, meaning this is BREAKING NEWS brought to you by Nexus Labs! How exciting…Volume 10 post brings together our recent coverage of M&A activity in decarbonization software and continues our series on the growth and importance of platform business models in the digitization and decarbonization of the buildings industry.

> “Why isn't everybody that's using energy accurately collecting data on the source of their energy and also the use of their energy? And then saying,

A wide gap has grown between (1) what technology is capable of and (2) what the average building automation system (BAS) is capable of. Simultaneously, building owners are demanding better performance out of building systems—a level of performance that’s extremely rare, perhaps impossible, with the old technology. Consider a few use cases from recent conversations and projects:

> “Complacency is no longer a viable option. If you're looking around and you're seeing your third parties getting carte blanche access to your networ

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

We've been building up our Lore (a body of traditions and knowledge) on the subject of smart building technology for the last 2+ years. I know this because our (particularly) nerdy terms and acronyms—IDL, ASC, etc—are gaining steam and showing up in specifications, investor pitch decks, and conference agendas around the world.Part of my job as the founder of this amazing community is to help define and curate our Lore. So today, I'm sharing our white paper on the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, and in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.

> “I was building buildings. I was running a large portfolio. And the number one brick wall I kept running into was technology silos. There were 8 to

Hey friends, Last week, I asked my LinkedIn followers a difficult question: "What is a Building Operating System?" [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/

> “In 1973, the value proposition was to keep bad people out. If no one has been shot in your building, it's working. That still remains, but the indu

> “One perspective is I don't see wires anymore. Still, in the backend, there are lots of wires and there are lots of different wireless connectivity

“This framework is incredible for understanding the difference between technologies.” —Nexus Foundations student Hey friends, In Module 4 of the

> “The environment that we've been in for many years and that we are currently in and heading into is very relevant for what's going on in the space,

Today, we're wrapping up our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2!

> “As we draw down the operational carbon side of things, our embodied carbon piece of the pie is going to be closer to 50% of overall carbon emission

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2!

Hey friends, Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you ti

> "I like the buildings industry because it's a physical manifestation of our values. A building that is truly net zero, set up to have composting, el

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2! Let's jump into Part 8, the sexiest building block...

> “The reason why less than 10% of the commercial building market actually use building automation can be summarized by just one factor. I could show

Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore. Lore is never written by one person, so send us your feedback for v2! Let's jump into Part 7, our nerdiest building block...

> "Why would you get something that tracks consumption but doesn't include fault detection and diagnostics? Something that doesn't also include predic

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few words as possible. For past editions, check out Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, Vol. 7, and Vol. 8. For Volume 9, let's talk about Arcadia's acquisition of Urjanet.

Hey friends, Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcas

> “In the landscape of proptech there is such a lack of data and lack of access to our own data and our potential ability to make better investment an

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Hey friends, Today, we're continuing our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcas

> “One of the things that COVID showed us is that so many people's buildings are not responsive to occupancy. So no matter how well you designed the b

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

> "Virtual engineering is an inevitability. It's not a, 'there may be a breakup of this vertically integrated stack, this monolithic stack that everyb

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom. If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points as possible. For past editions, check out Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5, Vol. 6, and Vol. 7.For Volume 8, let's talk about Measurabl's acquisition of Hatch Data.

> “The current state of climate reporting is a bit like choose your own adventure, but also grade your own paper." —Tegan Keele Welcome to Nexus

Let's continue our series on Nexus Lore: the core concepts that come up again and again in this newsletter, on the Nexus podcast, in the Nexus Foundations course, in Nexus Pro gatherings, and in the community chatroom.If you want to start at the beginning, check out our white paper with all 10 parts: Nexus Lore.

> “When I ask my team to put together an energy efficiency project, it's their job to get off the energy island and go get integrated into the other c

The Oxford Dictionary defines 'Lore' as: "A body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth."We, the Nexus community, are a particular group. That might be the understatement of the year...

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Since around 2015, I’ve been keeping an Evernote notebook of smart building vendors’ products. Whenever I see a new startup, an event that seems to occur on a weekly basis, I throw it on the list. When one company buys another, I update the notebook. When I see a product demonstration, I create a page in my notebook and add screenshots, capabilities, strengths, weaknesses.The list has been growing and growing—there are now 100+ vendors! And since we’re mostly focused with building optimization and performance at Nexus, this only includes a small portion of everything underneath the broad and ambiguous “smart buildings” umbrella.

> “I read a great quote last night, 'Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.'" —Louise Monger Welcome to N

I love online courses—and not just because I teach one. I'm also an avid student. With our world moving so fast, I see online courses as the best way to learn frameworks that help us make sense of all this change. Right now, I'm taking the Platform Strategy Sprint by Section4.

> “Joe Allen made this very clear business case around cognitive function that any real estate sales person with a pulse could pick up and say, 'Hey,

Last week, the Nexus Pro community came together for a subject matter expert workshop hosted by Pro member Mike Brown, Co-Founder and CEO of LogCheck, a company acquired last year by Building Engines which was then acquired by JLL. After watching it (and chatting with Mike while I was in NYC), I felt like the lessons buried in LogCheck's story should be shared more widely. They're applicable to the whole industry—even if you think maintenance is boring. Especially if you think maintenance is boring. Let's jump in.

> “The big caveat is that it's a fully vertically integrated stack, but it's composable and open." —Corey Clarke Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter

In last week's newsletter, I shared an article titled “Give it away, give it away, give it away now”. That same day, I serendipitously met the author, Rick Zullo of Equal Ventures, at a happy hour in NYC.Because I have a knack for saying awkward things at social gatherings, I told Rick the article wasn't funny (as he had hoped) but it was damn sure insightful. If you haven't read it, allow me to quickly summarize...

> “Just knowing about real estate in the real estate industry is now necessary but it's not sufficient, because fundamentally the industry is moving f

Hey friends, Greetings from NYC! I'll be doing some sightseeing while I'm here and one of the sights I was most looking forward to was... you guesse

> “Carbon neutrality is a big lift and technology is a cornerstone of that. The way we look at our assets now is from a supply and demand perspective.

Welcome to the Nexus Pro member digest… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss.These digests are designed to save you time and allow you to catch up on the whole month. Then you can dive deeper wherever you’d like.

Hey friends, Over the past few months, I've had a front row seat to an inspiring trend: there's an exodus of folks leaving big tech to focus on clima

In our Nexus Live series, we host industry-shifting conversations in front of a live audience. These sessions are education-driven, they cut through t

Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice [https://www.nexuslabs.online/jame

Hey friends, Our industry has been talking about digitizing maintenance for a few decades now. Whether we call it predictive, condition-based, data-

> “We realized that we needed to go out to tender nationally for our BMS and HVAC service contracts. We needed to transition these contracts from what

Hey friends, We have all these computers running our buildings—many panes of glass. The 'rolling chair integration'Not to mention all the software,

> “Our mission is to make the built environment people-aware. Our vision is to replace passive infrared. That, by definition, is a horizontal vision.

> This is possible. Yes, it is heroic. Yes, the timeline is now. A good climate outcome is, we do this in 15 to 20 years, a terrible climate outcome i

TL;DR: Read on to learn all about the course. We're currently closed for enrollment. To get notified when the next Cohort opens, sign up here: New

Hey changemakers, Since I sent out the news about JCI suing upstarts [https://www.nexuslabs.online/jci-sues-upstarts-nexus-newsletter-116/], I’ve re

> “By making controls simple and transparent every day and for every building, you massively increase energy efficiency without even talking about ana

Hey friends, Sometimes this newsletter is more letter and less news. Usually I'm feeding you my thoughts and reactions to today's trends. But today I

> “The fragmentation is a very real issue. I don't see it necessarily resolving anytime soon, just because of a lot of these other trends in the marke

> “I've been giving presentations on why commissioning agents should be using data analytics and commissioning since 2013. It's completely unsatisfyin

I first met David Blanch [https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-blanch-4170514b/] through an introduction from Jon Clarke, Head of Smart Building Technol

> “You've got control systems in the building and interesting applications up in the cloud. And then there's something in the middle and it's really g

Hey friends, Have you ever discovered a podcast and then binged on the whole archive? That feeling where you just can’t get enough? I know the Nexus

> “You're never going to fix the decarbonization challenges we have today with just data and adjusting active systems. You also have to fix the envelo

Hey friends, If you caught our series on the top six themes of 2021 [https://www.nexuslabs.online/workforce-issues-are-everywhere-nexus-newsletter-10

> “What we need is a carbon reduction plan for every existing building on the planet. And we can do that immediately." —Christopher Naismith Wel

When I was growing up, I loved road trips. Jumping in my mom’s navy blue minivan meant we were going to one of two places I loved to be: my grandparents’ house or a soccer tournament.

> “Humans are great sensors, but we're not very good at dashboarding anything. Having this IAQ data can become a change management tool and it could r

Hey gamechangers! Welcome to The Lens, a monthly-ish recurring series where I unpack the strategy and context behind the news in as few bullet points

“Stop talking, start doing. The tools are in place. The vendors exist. The folks that understand how to bring this stuff to life exist."

Hey friends, Last year, we talked A LOT about climate tech for buildings. Today, let’s weave all of those pieces together into one cohesive, succinct

> “I like to say 'Use what your mama gave you.' Your building is already a battery. Every building is a battery." —Deepa Lounsbury Welcome to Ne

📚 An educational, non-biased, and technically-sound experience exploring the past, present, and future of the smart buildings industry. 🙌 A fun and

Hey friends, Have you noticed that when our industry talks about ESG, they’re usually talking about energy efficiency improvements? 🙋‍♂️ I’m guilty

Hey friends, Here’s where we headed and where we've been: 1. ​“Green” → ESG (and the carbon flywheel) [__GHOST_URL__/green-esg-and-the-carbon-f

Hey everyone, We've got something a little different for you today. In celebration of the end of 2021, we've pulled the top 3 episodes of the Nexus P

Hey friends, As you have probably seen in the last few newsletters, for the last six weeks of the year, we’re exploring my top trends, lessons learne

> “Real estate companies are not going to go bankrupt because they're inefficient. It's actually just a blip on the bottom line compared to much bigge

This is one of the most important pieces of content we’ve ever produced. Why? Well, first, this isn’t your average white paper. Our generous sponsor,

Here’s where we headed between now and 2022: 1. ​“Green” → ESG (and the carbon flywheel) [__GHOST_URL__/green-esg-and-the-carbon-flywheel-nexus-

> “My position is that in this space, when you're really getting systemic you need to be connecting all three (Buildings, Utilities, and Policymakers)

Hey there gamechangers, happy Wednesday! Welcome to the final Member Digest of 2021… a collection of recent highlights you shouldn’t miss. These dig

Hey friends, There are four weeks left in 2021! For the last six Nexus Newsletters, we’re exploring my top trends, lessons learned, and lightbulb mom

> “We needed an incredible sophistication at the building level, but we also need to do this in a way that is not just reliable, but also makes sense

Hey friends, There are five weeks left in 2021! For the last six Nexus Newsletters, we’re exploring my top trends, lessons learned, and lightbulb mom

> “Step one (of 3) on reducing embodied carbon emissions is to start thinking about if we have to build a building at all. So if we just stopped build

Hey friends, There are six weeks left in 2021! For these last six Nexus Newsletters, let’s explore my top trends, lessons learned, and lightbulb mome

> “You can build anything on top and change things rapidly. Because of the platform business model, there's an ecosystem, so things are continuously e

Do you ever find yourself having the same conversation over and over again? One that keeps coming up for me: Why is an overlay software platform need

> “Those that adapt and recognize what's coming will continue to live on and those who want to keep their Blockbuster stores open with videos on the s

Hey friends, After a fun week in Scottsdale, Arizona at the Realcomm | IBcon conference, I'm feeling very energized! Here are three of my highlights

Once per month, we host industry-shifting conversations in front of a live audience. These sessions are education-driven, they cut through the marketi

> “I know people have different views on what digital twins is all about. I think that if digital twins are fundamentally an integration challenge the

Hey friends, A few weeks back, we talked about avoiding carbon washing [https://www.nexuslabs.online/how-to-avoid-carbon-washing-nexus-newsletter-95/