The Nexus Podcast

Episode 148 is part of a new series called Foundations. The idea behind this series came from conversations with many of you from our Nexus community. We'll be covering topics that keep coming up time and time again, that don't have a lot of beginner resources. These are concepts that we explore in our Nexus Foundations course, our six week online introduction to the smart buildings industry, but...

Deep Dives will be a new series of episodes featuring one on one conversations with various subject matter experts. Episode 147 is our first episode in this format featuring Ernie Beck from NV5 Engineering & Technology, discussing audio/visual systems, and the role they play. Ernie draws parallels from A/V stacks to traditional building stacks, teases out some pretty interesting smart tech from th...

Episode 146 is the first episode of a new series called In The Field. In The Field will feature people working out in the built environment giving real-life perspective on their day-to-day, and how smart building technologies fit, or don't fit in. This is one of our most creative concepts on the podcast to-date, featuring a self-narrative and then live interview. Episode 146 features facility mana...

Early Stage is another new series of episodes featuring early stage founders of startups hoping to fill a gap in the smart buildings marketplace. Episode 145 is a conversation with Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli and Laura Rosenshine from WATS. Meredith and Laura share their passion and insights to better manage the waste we all produce. And they’re eager to connect with the Nexus community at large! P...

Episode 144 is the first episode in a new series diving into case studies of real life, large scale deployments of smart building technologies. For this first episode, we talk with the University of Iowa regarding their integration of FDD via Clockworks Analytics. This project started in 2014 and includes 6.8 million square feet across 47 buildings. We hear the project team, the rollout, and key i...

Episode 143 is the first new podcast after taking a break to reformat and expand our podcast platform. Updates + AMA will be a series of shorter episodes for us to discuss industry news, what's happening behind the scenes at Nexus, and to answer questions from our pro members. Towards the end, we have an ask me anything (AMA) where pro members can call in, and James and Rosy can answer your questi...

"The building industry can be the first to show the world what it looks like for an industry from within itself to transform itself in line with a sustainable future." —Lindsay Baker My Highlights Lindsay's background (4:45) Occupant application now versus its inception (17:37) Ideas from WeWork (24:51) The Institute and living buildings (29:33) How Lindsay thinks about smart building technology (...

"So many organizations want to sell ESG solutions, but very few have their own ESG statements, goals, or positions. If you don't want it, why would I?" —Mandi Wedin Highlights Joe's introduction (1:05) Mandi's introduction (2:01) ESG+R and why we care (4:21) How DEI fits into ESG+R (12:26) Greenwashing from the investor's perspective (17:01) Green bonds (22:15) More transparency in the EU (28:23)...

"You can't just sell the data. It's got enormous value, but it needs to be manifested and taught in such a way that people can react to it." —Mike Moran My Highlights Mike's background (1:17) Bayron's background (3:00) Kilroy's assets and real estate strategy (4:03) How the business case is made for smart buildings (7:36) Communicating the ROI (12:17) Budgets for technology (17:36) Occupancy data...

"Even with heat pumps and electrification, demand flexibility is a really big issue. You need controls to be able to use or roll back energy at the right times and that becomes increasingly important as you have more variability in terms of the generation of energy on the grid." —Joe Aamidor Highlights Jeanne's introduction (1:05) Joe's introduction (1:52) The economic environment that startups ar...

"Building owners need a lot more than what siloed systems are capable of. Smart building solutions need to solve that problem by integrating with those systems, and in the next phases, adopting more of a horizontal architecture where building owners are not buying all of these redundant layers anymore from a bunch of different vendors. But if we're all speaking from different sheets of music, we'r...

"We pay $10 billion per year for balancing the grid using natural gas, peaker plants, etc. when we could be paying that to households for those services instead." -Jigar Shah My Highlights How smart and decarbonized is Jigar's home? (2:30) Business model innovation and unlocking decarbonization at scale (4:20) Deployment-led innovation (5:50) Moving from the 'what' to the 'how' (7:02) An overview...

"Data transparency is a key part of unlocking stronger two-way communication. If you think about the utility side, usually the amount of data they have about where and when energy is being used stops at the substation level. So you might have a really connected smart building but the utility side doesn't have the data to make smarter decisions about reliability, planning, targeting customers for s...

"Investors are thinking about the long-term value and risk of buildings and recognizing that high-performing buildings are lower-risk, which means higher value. All investment is going to be centered on the risks inherent with buildings and making sure that those buildings are future-proof and able to prosper in a decarbonizing economy." —Cliff Majersik My Highlights Cliff’s background (2:46) Mark...

“Tenants are struggling to achieve something that landlords have direct control over and that aligns with what landlords are struggling to do. Tenant submetering needs to be looked at and rethought." —Comly Wilson My Highlights Comly’s background (2:50) About Enertiv (6:35) 2022 was about TenX and 2023 is all about OpX (18:21) How we create a concept of carbon on-site with our operational teams (2...

"We're still stuck dragging the anchor of the old proprietary software. Manufacturers need to listen to what the end-use customers are saying. They want open systems, product flexibility, and access to the data." —Leroy Walden My Highlights Leroy’s background (2:11) Conversation Context (5:05) Evolutionary phases of smart buildings from a BAS perspective (9:48) About the ecosystem: product manufac...

“You can electrify your way out of natural gas usage and move to renewable energy to get yourself out of scope two emissions but refrigerants are going to be the main solution for electrifying both water and space heating, which means a significant increase in refrigerant usage." —Tristam Coffin My Highlights Tristam’s background (2:09) Keys to sustainability in the grocery vertical (5:57) Importa...

“To really operate a building at scale, you need to be able to know what's happening across everything in that building at any one time and manage it in the same way you would a smartphone. Everything end to end in the building needs to be managed in a way that's much more IT-focused as opposed to OT. And so coming up with complete management of that is really important and that's where it leads o...

"For us, it's simpler to work with applications that go ontop of the BOS because we can control the information being accessed. Without the BOS, transparency is limited, which limits the number of use cases. By adding this data layer, we're dramatically increasing transparency and the possibilities of what else can easily be added on top." —Grigor Hadjiev Highlights About Allianz (3:07) How techno...

“The tools that have always been successful at instigating change are benchmarking and performance standards. Let's use those tools and evolve them to better fit the needs of today's definition of a high-performance building, which includes the carbon aspect, grid interactivity, and occupant responsiveness." —Molly Dee-Ramasamy My Highlights JBB's background (6:25) Deep Carbon Reduction (7:55) Loc...

“The grid is starting to look a lot like the internet. These IOT devices are distributed, digital, user owned and operated nodes. They can buy from the grid, they can sell from the grid, they can respond dynamically. These nodes are increasing ten, a hundred, a thousand fold over the next decade, which has really interesting implications for how we'll operate the grid going forward." —James McGinn...

“Don't spend your time with the laggards who don't yet see the need for (smart building technology). When they see it they'll find you. Go find owners with a need and then meet that need." —Mandi Wedin My Highlights The macro perspective of commercial real estate investment (5:04) Types of real estate investment vehicles (10:12) Different issues real estate owners currently face (14:19) The soluti...

“There is another use case for smart building systems and for BAS, and it is critical input data for designing low-carbon systems for your building that if you don't have that data, you are not going to design your systems properly. They will probably be oversized and a lot more expensive than they need to be compared to as if you had good data to design on." —Brad White My Highlights The shift fr...

“A building can only run as efficiently as its engineer knows how to run it. Unless you have an engineer-first mindset, none of your energy efficiency efforts is ever really going to reap the rewards." —Sara Neff My Highlights About Lendlease (4:47) Sara's role at Lendlease (6:25) Roadmap to net zero (12:07) Renewable procurement (22:22) Energy efficiency and deep energy retrofits (41:10) Carbon a...

“We can have all the technology in the world but dropping it into a building doesn't magically transform it. It ultimately is a tool. Your people can be empowered by this tool but it will never do everything for you. You have to set objectives, lean in and embrace the technology. You have to train your people and build the organization in a structure that supports it." —Tearle Whitson My Highlight...