Café Zai: Intelligence for Informed Environments

I asked Jack Dangermond for 5 minutes… he gave me 52.

In this uncut extended Café Zai conversation, recorded live at ESRI HQ during the buildingSMART USA 2025 event, Jack shares his candid thoughts on:

• Why collaboration happens at the speed of trust

• How GIS and BIM are converging into a true system of systems

• Why AI is a ‘miracle drug’ for design and intelligence

• His vision of a Living Atlas, a nervous system for the planet

This conversation also comes full circle: 24 years ago, I first met with Jack at ESRI HQ to introduce BIM to GIS. Today, we sat down again in the same place to explore how far we’ve come and where we’re going next.

Unscripted, raw, and uninterrupted (well, almost, Jack gets pulled once but keeps going), this is a rare window into the mind of one of the world’s most influential geospatial leaders.

Recorded August 2025 at ESRI HQ. Part of the Café Zai series for AutomatedBuildings.com exploring the intersection of BIM, digital twins, AI, and the future of connected systems.

Silos are the clogged arteries of your buildings. Time to change the diet. If you only feed your buildings and assets donuts, don’t be surprised when they get sick. In this Café Zai conversation, Michael Bordenaro of the Asset Leadership Network recalls Jack Dempsey’s observation:

“Asset management is actually pretty easy… except for the people. People don’t like eating their green beans.”

For years, we’ve been treating our assets and buildings like we treat ourselves when we skip the vegetables and live on donuts. It’s quick, it’s easy, it feels fine at first, you even get that sugar high, but over time, the arteries clog, the system weakens, and the breakdown begins.

In asset terms, that means:

• Neglect to collect and maintain accurate data…

• …or worse, collect the same data over and over again

• Let silos fester

• Pay consultants to fix the same problems over and over

Now AI is forcing leaders to face the diet they’ve been feeding their organizations. They’re asking questions they’ve never asked before:

• Do we actually have data on our assets, facilities, and energy?

• Is it in a form AI can use to give us better answers and hallucinate less?

The health of your portfolio depends on what you feed it. It’s time to get serious about the vegetables — connected, open, well-managed data, and stop mistaking a short burst of energy for long-term health.

About Michael Bordenaro:

It was my privilege to be elected Executive Director of the Asset Leadership Network and voting Member of the Board, by the ALN Board of Directors in December 2021.
Jim Dieter, ALN CEO, was the original Executive Director, and I am honored to follow him in this position.
Jim remains my guide and mentor, so things aren’t going to change too much, but I am redoubling my efforts to achieve our mission of encouraging all organizations to take a strategic and structured approach to asset management.
I am honored to have received A55K Professional Certification from the Asset Leadership Network. A55K Professional Certification validates that someone can effectively and knowledgeably participate in ISO 55000 implementation teams. it is my goal to help others learn the benefits of using ISO 55000 to guide asset visualization.

More information here.

Cameron Christensen grew up with a front-row seat to pioneering work in facility asset management. His father, Doug Christensen, literally wrote the book on Total Cost of Ownership — Building Total Enterprise Asset Management Solutions — and famously said: “Buildings… the gift that keeps on taking.”

In this first clip from our Café Zai conversation, Cameron shares how that legacy shaped his career and why the cradle-to-grave view of buildings developed at BYU is more relevant than ever, long before “asset management” was even an industry term.

It’s a story about legacy, the true cost of our built environment, and why a ribbon cutting is just the beginning of the journey.

Watch the clip here, then listen to the full 22-minute conversation:Full Episode – Café Zai with Cameron Christensen

In the full episode:

• How to balance shiny new construction with aging existing facilities

• Why “It begins and ends with inventory”

• The concept of a Living Master Plan and why 10-year plans are obsolete

• Where AI fits in (as an accelerator, not the strategy)

What’s the “gift that keeps on taking” in your organization?

OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP
- More than fifteen years of experience leading organizations in planning, maintenance, operations, and project management
- Twenty years of experience directly related to facilities and grounds operations
- Directed maintenance, custodial, and grounds operations
- Developed and managed both short and long-term operational budgets
- Experienced managing unionized staff including staff from the CSU Employees Union, State Employees Trade Council, and District Council 37 of New York City
- Participated in collective bargaining sessions and labor/management conferences with union representatives
- Developed and implemented proactive maintenance programs consisting of preventive, predictive, corrective, and other planned maintenance programs
- Developed and implemented new work flow procedures that included a new computerized maintenance management systems, space planning and management, new work flow procedures, inventory management, tool crib, and other operational administrative tasks

PLANNING, PROJECT MANAGEMENT, & RECAPITALIZATION
- Participated in the development of the APPA American National Standard for Total Cost of Ownership (APPA ANSI TCO 1000)
- Leading an APPA Center for Facilities Research group on the study and application of a new, dynamic form of living master planning
- Developed and managed Total Cost of Ownership programs consisting of tracking the cradle-to-grave cost of construction, operations, maintenance, and recapitalization of the facility’s assets
- Developed and implemented Capital Renewal and Deferred Maintenance programs including 5-year deferred maintenance and 40-year life-cycle management plans
- Developed and implemented multi-year ADA action plans to strategically address deficiencies and increase the level of accessibility to persons with disabilities
- Worked with city and state agencies such as the California Department of Capital Planning, Design, and Construction, New York Departments of Buildings, Landmarks, and Citywide Administration, as well as other public utility, construction, and capital asset management agencies

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-christensen-cefp-fmp-3531515/

New Café ZAi Episode, with Birgitta Foster

That new building smell? It fades.
Then it starts to smell like budget gaps, moldy ductwork, outdated spreadsheets……and the LEED Platinum plaque still gleaming on the wall.

Welcome to the post-ribbon-cutting reality, where sustainability goals crash into aging systems, talent loss, and siloed data.
Or as we like to say: it’s a classic #PainInTheGlass.

I sat down with Birgitta Foster to talk about what really happens after the glamour fades — and how AI, TCO, and strategic planning can help owners stay ahead of the rot.

We covered:

Why deferred maintenance is bleeding portfolios dry
How TCO reframes lifecycle decisions
Birgitta’s use of AI agents as digital interns
Succession planning in a shrinking workforce
How to find your mission-critical vulnerabilities
Why systems must stay connected, even if decentralized
And how C-suite pressure is forcing legacy systems to open up

Birgitta brings serious credibility.
She’s Programmatic Infrastructure Program Manager at Sandia National Laboratories, managing 7,000+ assets that support national security — and she’s helped shape the very standards the industry runs on.

Birgitta Foster serves as the Programmatic Infrastructure(PI) Program Manager at Sandia National Laboratories, where she oversees morethan 7,000 real property assets across approximately 300 buildings. Theseassets serve as critical building system components supporting Sandia’s diversenational security missions. As the subject matter expert on equipment propertytype determination, she plays a key role in ensuring accurate assetclassification and lifecycle planning.

Her responsibilities span inventory oversight, riskmanagement, and sustainment planning and execution. She manages the funding ofthe annual $1.4 million PI maintenance budget and evaluates mission impact toprioritize risk buydown investments. Birgitta has been a driving force behindthe integration of PI asset data and location into a Geographic InformationSystem (GIS) and is a leading contributor to the development of Sandia’s AssetManagement (ISO 55001) framework.

A cornerstone of the PI Program is risk management,including comprehensive Criticality Analyses (ACRN) to identify and prioritizehigh-risk assets. From these analyses, the Program leverages interactivedashboards to enable data-driven, risk informed decision-making for strategic,like-for-like replacement planning to reduce deferred maintenance and supportrisk buydown funding requests. She collaborates closely with Sandia’s inhouse design,construction, and project management teams to execute timely and effective replacementsof high-risk equipment, minimizing disruptions to mission-critical operations.

With over 30 years of experience, Birgitta is aninternationally recognized expert, author, and speaker on Building InformationModeling (BIM) for Owners. Her BIM2FM strategies, Design for Maintenance andTransition to Operations, have appeared in Journal of BIM. She previouslyserved as Assisting Director of the buildingSMART alliance, supporting theNational BIM Standard–US, and was an early member of the BIMForum’s Level ofDevelopment (LOD) Specification Core Group and the USACE/Industry BIMConsortium.

Internationally, she serves on the buildingSMARTInternational (bSI) Standards Executive Committee, guiding the development ofIFC standards for Open BIM. In 2019, she was honored as one of the first womeninducted as a bSI Fellow. Birgitta holds a Bachelor of Science in MechanicalEngineering from the University of Texas and an Executive MBA from the AndersonSchool of Management at the University of New Mexico.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/birgitta-foster-380a5217/

We’ve been making the same mistakes for decades. Jack Dempsey isn’t afraid to say it, and in this 3-minute clip from our Café Zai conversation, he breaks down why the system is designed to fail, not just in federal facilities, but across the entire built environment.

I set it up by pointing out what many of us know:

Agencies, GAO, Congress, this isn’t partisan. No one has gotten it right. The will is there. The technology is here. But we’re still spinning the same wheels.

Jack picks it up with:

The real definition of renewal

Why Total Cost of Ownership #TCO is only part of the story

And how short-term budgeting, broken data, and a lack of strategy are baked into the system

“The federal government doesn’t even have a balance sheet for what it owns.

You can’t do ROI if you don’t even know what your assets are doing.”

Jack Dempsey leads and directs the development and implementation of technology enabled asset management strategies and solutions. Jack has over 30-years’ experience as an Asset Manager. For the first 20 years as a US Coast Guard Officer and Civil Engineer, then as a Director, Consultant, Advisor, Convener, Researcher, and Board Member focused on advanced asset management implementation. He is a Professional Engineer with a passion for solving problems and challenges owners of large and complex facilities portfolios face every day. His specialty is the development and implementation of asset management capabilities.Jack has over 30-years’ experience as an Asset Manager. For the first 20 years as a US Coast Guard Officer and Civil Engineer, then as a Director, Consultant, Advisor, Convener, Researcher, and Board Member focused on advanced asset management implementation. He is a Professional Engineer with a passion for solving problems and challenges owners of large and complex facilities portfolios face every day. His specialty is the development and implementation of asset management capabilities.

More about Jack:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-dempsey-assetmanagementpartnership/

https://amp4outcomes.substack.com/

Paul calls himself a “recovering architect,” but that’s underselling it. He’s been quietly shaping the smart city and metaverse discourse for decades, while most of us were still arguing about CAD vs BIM. In this session, we go full-circle: from the DNA of IBM trade show booths in the ’80s… to AI hallucinations, smart contracts, digital twins, and fractional real estate coins tied to building performance.

Core takeaway? Architects have the mindset and training to lead this next chapter — but only if we reclaim our relevance, rethink our tools, and start designing conversations after the certificate of occupancy.

This is the kind of provocative, honest, forward-facing storytelling that defines Café Zai, a series of short, caffeinated conversations at the messy intersection of architecture, AI, infrastructure, and culture.

If you’ve been feeling like the built environment is stuck in 1990, while AI and the rest of the world are moving at warp speed, this one’s for you.

As published by Forbes as “Changing the World”, seen on The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg TV and reported by CNBC as one of America's Business Titans, Paul is an Award-Winning Architect and one of the global Industry's most sought after thought leaders, strategists and integrators of process, technology & business. Paul is the Founder & CEO of The Digit Group, Inc. (TDG), a leading Smart Cities design, build, operate and solutions company, headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. He is an author, educator, analyst and consultant to Fortune 500 organizations, government leadership, prominent institutions and the most prestigious AEC firms in the world. Paul has spent the past 30+ years in the industry after graduating cum laude from the New York Institute of Technology and graduating from the Career Discovery program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
His past successful ventures include Revit (Sold to Autodesk 2002), Buzzsaw (Sold to Autodesk 2001) and TRIRIGA (Sold to IBM 2011). He is a prominent and top rated speaker at industry events each year around the world and has been appointed as a guest lecturer at leading Universities around the world. Paul has been on the Board of Directors/Advisors of numerous organizations, including the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) where he is an IFMA Fellow and he is a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. Paul holds both European Union and US Citizenship, and is the co-founder of the AEC Hackathon. Widely quoted in the mass media, Paul is also a contributing author to multiple sections of the AIA Handbook of Professional Practice, the Interior Design Handbook of Practice, the McGraw Hill Graphic Standards of Residential Construction, 3 whitepaper contributions to the McGraw-Hill Financial Global Institute and author/co-author of 7 books and over 1,000 published articles. Paul's 8th book "Smart Cities: Reimagining The Urban Experience" was published by Quality Press in 2023, while Paul's 9th book, "Unlocking the Metaverse: A Guide for the Built Environment", published by Wiley, was released in December 2023 that became #1 New Release and Editors Choice on Amazon.

More about Paul here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-doherty-aia/

Ana Thiemer, Director of Operations Support at UT Austin, joins me for a powerful 20-minute conversation on Total Cost of Ownership, what it really means, where we’ve made progress, and what still needs to change.

Ana doesn’t sugarcoat it:There’s no easy button. TCO is a culture shift, not just a calculation. And sometimes 3 data points are better than 9.

From tracking costs on new construction vs. existing buildings to what AI is teaching UT about data clarity, Ana brings sharp insight from the front lines of campus operations. She also shares lessons from her work with APPA, and what the next TCO book might need to say.

Ana Thiemer is the Director of Operations Support at The University of Texas at Austin, where she leads strategic initiatives that support campus-wide facilities and capital project planning. With nearly 20 years in facilities management, Ana is also a national leader in educational facilities, serving on APPA committees, facilitating sessions at the institute, and co-authoring the ANSI APPA TCO Standard. Connect with Ana on LinkedIn, visit her at the UT Austin campus or join her at an APPA conference.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-thiemer-19a12ab/

From rolled drawings in the basement… to talking to your building.”

In this new episode of Café ZAi, I meet with longtime friend and early BIM pioneer Russ Sanders, now VP of Design Integration at McCarthy.

Russ is leading some of the most complex projects in the Southwest, including major healthcare builds and terminal expansion work at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, while collaborating with teams like HOK and trade partners using tools such as Autodesk Construction Cloud and BIM 360.

What makes Russ unique is his path: from early adopter of ArchiCAD to licensed architect now embedded in the construction industry. He’s lived both sides and sees how critical it is to align technology, people, and process early and empathetically. He noted:

“Of all the things we talked about 25 years ago, the one that’s struggled most to gain traction is asset management, getting data into operations. But what if we could hand over a project with an AI assistant built in, where someone just asks, ‘Show me the ceiling drawings for Room 402’?”

We talk about:Why builders are now driving BIM, and what architects can still do to catch upThe power of early modeling and trade partner collaborationHow Russ break silos and surfaces decisions soonerAnd the real risk: if architects don’t lean into AI and digital twins now, we’ll lose the opportunity, again

Architects used to do more. We’ve slowly shed responsibilities like cost estimating and project management”

If we don’t engage with AI and data now, someone else will do it for us, again.”

Russ Sanders is an architect and leader in design and construction technology. 

where he is the  VP of Design Integration at the  Southwest Region with McCarthy Builders

Promoting design and construction excellence. Aligning the best tools, people, and processes.

Trusting in the power of the team. 

Committed to everyone having a voice and a positive experience.

In this Café ZAi session, Kimon Onuma meets with Finith Jernigan, author of BIG BIM little bim, for a fast-paced, insightful conversation on the state of architecture, BIM, and the rise of AI. They revisit the early promise of BIM, the persistent challenges of a document-driven industry, and how today's AI boom is echoing the same misconceptions and missed opportunities.

Finith shares the origin of the "BIG BIM" idea, reflects on its relevance nearly two decades later, and makes a strong case for why architects must embrace complexity, not resist it. If you've ever asked why the industry hasn't evolved faster, or where it's heading next, this 20-minute discussion is packed with hard truths and forward-thinking clarity.

Finith Jernigan FAIA is a seasoned and results-oriented Senior Executive and Thought Leader with more than 30 years of success in the architecture, engineering, construction, ownership, and operations (AECOO) industry. Leveraging extensive experience designing buildings from an information management perspective, he is a valuable asset for companies seeking advice on managing all their assets (including financial, properties, and people) for organizational success. His broad areas of expertise include change management, strategic business planning, process re-engineering, and construction management.

Connect with Finith here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/finith/

Episode 01 | Deke Smith: From First Cost to Total Cost

At Café Zai, conversations spark change. In this premiere episode, Deke Smith brings decades of insight to the table.

A longtime advocate for BIM, digital twins, and total cost of ownership, Deke shares hard truths about why the built environment keeps falling short. From the roots of outdated business processes to the misuse of AI and the myth of "Hollywood BIMs," this episode cuts through the industry noise.

Key themes:

Why fragmented data and contracts limit progress

The real potential of AI, if the data is trustworthy

How owners can drive change by asking better questions

Why total cost of ownership must replace first cost thinking

The untapped leadership potential of universities and public institutions

If you care about how buildings perform, who they serve, and how the industry must evolve, this conversation is your starting point.

More about Deke here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/danaksmith/