“Things in a building don't happen in a silo—all the operations happen together. So we can't look at the data coming off of it in a silo.”

—Thru Shivakumar

Welcome to Nexus, a newsletter and podcast for smart people applying smart building technology—hosted by James Dice. If you’re new to Nexus, you might want to start here.

Since starting the Nexus newsletter, many of you have reached out wanting to talk shop. After a few weeks of those wonderful conversations, I realized I needed to record and share them with our growing community. So here we are… this is our chance to explore and learn with the brightest in our industry—together.

If you have thoughts, questions, ideas, or tips: hit reply, I’d love your feedback!

Housekeeping: the podcast is up on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. To easily add it to another app of your choice, click the “Listen in podcast app” above.

Music credit: The Garden State by Audiobinger

Disclaimer: James is a researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). All opinions expressed via Nexus emails, podcasts, or on the website belong solely to James. No resources from NREL are used to support Nexus. NREL does not endorse or support any aspect of Nexus.

Episode summary

Episode 7 is a conversation with Thru Shivakumar, CEO and Co-Founder of Cohesion, an intelligent building software platform.

• We discuss what makes a building intelligent and how deep system integrations help with that. 

• We talk about digital twins, what they're used for, and the operating savings to be had by using them.

• We cover some of the misalignment of incentives in real estate,

• And much, much more. 

This episode of the podcast is directly funded by listeners like you who have joined the Nexus Pro membership community. Subscribe to Nexus Pro to support the podcast, join the community, and get access to a deep dive into my reaction, my top highlights of this episode, and a full transcript of this and all episodes. Pro members get these weekly deep dives, access to the Nexus Vendor Landscape, and can participate in exclusive discussions and events.

You can find Thru online on LinkedIn and at cohesionib.com. 

Thoughts, comments, reactions? Let us know in the comments.

View comments

Enjoy!

Mentions and Links

1. Cohesion

2. ESD Global

3. Real estate cap rate

4. WELL standard

5. RESET standard

THE ABOVE AUDIO, VIDEO, SUMMARY, AND LINKS WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. PODCAST DEEP DIVES WITH MY REACTIONS, MY TOP HIGHLIGHTS, AND THE FULL TRANSCRIPT ARE EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE TO MEMBERS OF NEXUS PRO.

Here’s this week’s deep dive outline:

• My reaction

• My highlights:

  • The difference between smart and intelligent buildings

  • Deep integrations and how they help create intelligence

  • Defining digital twins and their use cases

  • How the incentives in CRE haven’t been aligned for building intelligence

  • Why intelligent buildings are more valuable

  • IAQ is a big priority - what KPIs are WELL and RESET looking at and how can software platforms build those in?

  • Using a digital twin to weigh the decision between IAQ and energy conservation

  • The software capabilities cohesion is focused on

  • Thru’s COVID outlook

Get the deep dive