Element Six

Many “smart building” conversations still assume a clean slate at the start.

New buildings, new systems, new budgets.

That’s not how it usually plays out.

Most of the buildings that will still be in use over the coming decades already exist today. And many of them were never designed for modern connectivity, analytics, or decarbonisation.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Peter Rake to talk about where real progress actually happens: brownfield portfolios.

The buildings that already exist.

The systems that are already stretched.

The teams that are already firefighting.

Peter has spent years in the trenches of brownfield modernisation, working with owners and operators who are trying to improve performance without ripping and replacing everything in sight.

One theme kept surfacing in the conversation:

- Upgrading the technology is only half the battle.

- The harder part is getting results seen, trusted, and funded by the business.

In this episode, we cover:

* Why brownfield is where the real decarbonisation opportunity sits

* What to look for when assessing a legacy building for digital enablement

* How to decide what to integrate, what to retire, and what to leave alone

* Why operational wins rarely reach the C-suite

* How to translate comfort, energy, and maintenance into business language that resonates

* Why starting with simple data builds credibility faster than ambitious pilots

* What actually turns operational progress into repeatable investment

About Peter Rake

Peter Rake is a smart buildings and energy technology leader with deep, hands-on experience in modernising brownfield commercial real estate. He began his career on the tools as an electrician before moving into building systems, connectivity, and platform-led portfolio transformation.

Over the past decade, he has worked closely with owners and operators across mixed-vendor estates, helping them improve legacy infrastructure, establish secure connectivity, and turn fragmented building data into credible, business-ready insight.

Listen if you are:

- An owner or operator managing brownfield or mixed-vendor portfolios

- A facilities or operations leader trying to make outcomes visible to leadership

- Trying to move from pilots to repeatable, portfolio-wide investment

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Down Low with Joe, Lewis & Joe sit down with Ted Atwood at FutureBuilt.

Ted has spent decades at the forefront of energy compliance, sustainability, and climate technology, building, scaling, and ultimately exiting a major platform in the space. Today, he advises companies across energy, real estate, and climate tech on what actually drives outcomes.

We go deep on:

• What’s fundamentally broken in the built environment, and why progress feels slow
• The biggest false beliefs holding sustainability efforts back
• Which technologies genuinely move the needl,e and which are just good marketing
• The hard truth behind ESG targets and why most companies miss net zero
• How policy really gets shaped and where industry influence often goes wrong
• What “audit-proof” compliance actually means for CEOs and operators

Plus a lightning round on overrated tech, underrated solutions, and bold predictions for the future of climate tech.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If your demand response program looks good on paper but fails under scrutiny, you don’t have a performance problem. You have a measurement problem.

Ana-Paula Issa, CEO of Encycle, explains why.

Utilities are offering more incentives than ever. AI, analytics, and advanced controls are being deployed across portfolios.

And yet many operators still miss demand response targets, struggle to defend savings to finance, or confuse demand response with demand management.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Ana-Paula Issa, CEO of Encycle, to cut through the fog around “utility grade,” multi-site AI, and why scale breaks so many energy programs.

Ana-Paula has been working directly with utilities and large retail portfolios since 2008. She explains what actually holds up when incentives, baselines, bids, and finance reviews are involved and why many programs fail quietly until the end of the year.

We dig into:

• What “utility grade” really means and why it leaves no place to hide
• Why baselines are the most common failure point in M&V
• How multi-site scale breaks single-building AI assumptions
• The real difference between demand response, demand management, and consumption management
• Why demand response targets are missed more often because of misalignment than technology
• How portfolio thresholds can wipe out DR revenue even when most sites perform
• Why incentives often fail to get credited to the right buildings or teams

About Ana-Paula Issa

Ana-Paula Issa is the CEO of Encycle. She has spent nearly two decades working at the intersection of building controls, demand management, and utility programs, partnering directly with utilities and large multi-site operators. At Encycle, she focuses on turning demand flexibility and efficiency programs into measurable, defensible outcomes at scale.

Watch if you are:

• An owner or operator managing large, multi-site portfolios
• An energy or sustainability leader accountable to finance
• A vendor selling AI, controls, or DR programs into portfolios
• Trying to turn utility incentives into outcomes that survive scrutiny

Utility programs do not fail because teams lack technology. They fail because measurement, alignment, and incentives are misunderstood.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Recorded live at FutureBuilt, Steve Hamby joins Joe Aamidor (Aamidor Consulting) and Lewis Martin (Element Six) to talk about what actually happens when facilities and real estate teams try to deploy technology at scale.

Steve has spent his career working across facilities technology, IoT, and connected solutions. He has advised operators, vendors, and industry groups on how technology is adopted, where it breaks down, and why outcomes often lag behind capability.

This conversation focuses on the gap between promise and execution. Why connected buildings are still hard to deliver. Why data ownership remains unclear. Why AI and IoT adoption continue to move more slowly than expected inside large portfolios.

No theory. Just lived experience from someone who has been in the middle of it.

Topics include:

• What connected buildings really look like in practice
• Where FM and real estate tech adoption stalls
• Data ownership and accountability
• What operators should demand from vendors
• What actually drives measurable outcomes

Recorded live at FutureBuilt.

Hosted by Joe Aamidor and Lewis Martin.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the DLWJ, we’re joined by Maureen Ehrenberg, one of the most respected leaders in the global built environment.

Maureen currently serves as Executive Managing Director of Strategic Growth and Solutions Development at Sireas Global Real Estate Advisors and is President Elect of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) for 2026. Her career spans decades of executive leadership at organisations like WeWork, JLL, CBRE and Grubb & Ellis, and she’s a recognised authority on strategic real estate operations, digital transformation, and facilities management at scale. 

In our conversation, Maureen cuts through the noise around technology in CRE and FM to focus on what actually drives value inside real portfolios.

We explore:

• Why data infrastructure still outpaces dashboards
• How investors and operators talk past each other
• What happens when you lean on AI without solving data readiness
• The skills and organisational changes that actually move the needle

A grounded discussion about what it really takes to move the built environment forward.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If your EMS creates more alerts than actions, you don’t have a data problem. You have a decision problem.

Ryan Adelman, CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies, explains why.

Energy management systems promise visibility and control. In reality, many operators are overwhelmed by alarms, managing massive multi-site portfolios with small teams and data they do not always trust.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Ryan Adelman, CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies, to unpack why data overload persists in commercial real estate and what it actually takes to build a culture where data leads to decisions, not paralysis.

Ryan draws on years of experience working inside retail, grocery, and national portfolios to explain why alarm triage, system fragmentation, and optimization drift are so hard to escape, and what separates organizations that break through from those that stay reactive.

We dig into:

• Why small teams struggle to act even on timely, actionable data
• How fragmented EMS platforms erode trust in data quality
• What “optimization entropy” looks like in real buildings
• The hidden costs of staying reactive, from comfort to credibility
• Why decision culture starts with writing things down and assigning costs
• Where AI genuinely helps, and where human judgement still matters most

About Ryan Adelman

Ryan Adelman is the CEO of Phoenix Energy Technologies. He has spent nearly two decades working across the built environment and distributed energy, from large enterprises to early-stage technology companies. At Phoenix, Ryan leads the company’s next phase of growth, helping large multi-site portfolios move from alarm-driven operations to decision-driven performance.

Watch if you are:

• An owner or operator managing large, distributed building portfolios
• An FM or energy leader buried in alerts and dashboards
• A technology leader trying to translate data into action
• Exploring how AI fits into real-world building operations

Smarter buildings are not built on more data. They are built on better decisions.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this market update episode, Lewis Martin is joined by analyst Joe Aamidor to break down what’s really happening across smart buildings, energy management, and OEM digital strategy.

They dive into Siemens’ recent moves around Brightly, Setmetrics and XOI, and why this signals a deeper structural shift rather than a one-off acquisition. Joe explains how CMMS platforms are becoming a critical control layer, why asset intelligence and energy analytics are converging, and how OEMs are quietly scaling their digital services behind the scenes.

The conversation also covers the rise of CMMS plus energy platforms, what the ECOTRAK and ENTOUCH Controls deal tells us about small commercial buildings, why residential HVAC softness matters to the wider market, and what Deloitte’s latest real estate AI survey reveals about stalled expectations and implementation challenges.

They close with quickfire views on open versus closed systems, where real value is emerging in building tech, and whether multi-site retail or commercial real estate will see faster technology adoption over the next five years.

A grounded, data-driven discussion for anyone building, buying, or investing in smart building and energy technology.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI in buildings is having its breakout moment.

But most of what we see today is still surface-level. Chatbots on top of legacy systems. Optimisers tweaking setpoints. Dashboards that look new, but run on the same foundations we’ve had for decades.

In this episode, Lewis and Joe sit down with Troy Harvey, Co-Founder & CEO of PassiveLogic, to unpack a very different view of the future: fully autonomous buildings powered by actionable AI, generative control models, and real-time digital twins that understand and operate the built environment end-to-end.

Troy breaks down why fragmentation is the industry’s core blocker, why language models aren’t the future, and why incumbents have struggled to innovate for nearly 20 years. We explore how autonomy changes the economics of buildings, the role of blue-collar workers in driving adoption, and why the next 100 years of building technology won’t look anything like the last.

If you care about smart buildings, controls, AI, or the future of building operations, this is one of the most important conversations you’ll hear this year.

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Net zero sounds simple in press releases, but within real organisations, it becomes far more complex.

Reporting cycles absorb time, voluntary targets lose momentum, and teams often end up counting carbon instead of cutting it.

In this episode of Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Joel Cesare, who has lived net zero from almost every angle. He helped deliver Santa Monica’s net zero ordinance, led sustainability at Skanska, and ran Google’s Absolute Zero program before joining the executive team at Cambio.

Joel shares a candid, grounded view on why net zero often breaks down in the messy middle between ambition and delivery, and why real progress depends on focusing on the operational decisions you can control. Most conversations about net zero focus on targets, frameworks, and reporting. Joel focuses on what actually gets built.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why voluntary net-zero targets struggle once they meet organisational reality
• How the reporting season has overtaken action and slowed decarbonisation
• Why teams should prioritise the emissions they directly influence
• The cost of chasing offsets instead of investing in local outcomes
• What cities can do that genuinely improves resilience, affordability, and public health
• Why language matters and why “climate” may not be the most effective frame for progress
• How AI is uncovering energy reductions hiding in plain sight across commercial real estate

About Joel Cesare

Joel is a sustainability leader with two decades of experience across city government, construction, and big tech real estate. He helped push forward Santa Monica’s net-zero building ordinance, led sustainability at Skanska, and ran Google’s portfolio-wide Absolute Zero program. He now sits on the executive team at Cambio, helping organisations identify energy efficiency projects using AI. Joel also hosts the podcast Less Talk More Action.

Watch this if you are:

• A sustainability or ESG leader navigating net-zero delivery
• A real estate or facilities executive trying to translate targets into action
• A policymaker interested in the gap between regulation and implementation
• A climate tech or energy professional working on practical decarbonisation solutions
• Anyone who feels net zero has become more complicated than it needs to be

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI won’t transform facility management with moonshots, it’ll transform it with thousands of tiny wins.

McKesson’s Drew DePriest joins The Down Low with Joe to break down what AI actually looks like inside a Fortune 10 real estate organisation, far from the hype, and deeply rooted in the realities of FM, data, and operations.

Most AI conversations in smart buildings revolve around flashy pilots, giant platforms, or “intelligent buildings” that never escape the pitch deck.

Drew shares a very different viewpoint: the future is being shaped by incremental, practical AI adoption, small efficiency gains that compound across portfolios.

In this live episode from NexusCon 2025, we dig into:

• How McKesson uses AI for everyday “roof shots,” not moonshots
• Why unstructured data (emails, decks, tribal knowledge) is the real bottleneck
• The challenge of building an AI agent that understands both structured and unstructured data
• Why FM teams need consistency before they need “intelligence”
• How AI is already solving problems we never thought to automate
• The fragmentation problem: why innovation in smart buildings moves slower than it should
• The shift toward open-source tools, ontologies, and end-user configurability
• What the next 5 years of AI + smart buildings could realistically look like

Drew is the Director of Real Estate Operations Technology at McKesson, one of the world’s largest healthcare logistics organisations. With a background spanning startups, controls, workplace tech, and enterprise operations, he brings a rare, grounded perspective on how AI and smart building solutions succeed and fail in real-world environments.

• A facility management or real estate leader navigating AI adoption
• A smart building vendor trying to understand what enterprise buyers actually need
• A technologist interested in agentic AI, ontologies, and FM automation
• Anyone curious about how AI is changing the day-to-day reality of buildings

Produced by Element Six, a specialist talent partner hiring across building intelligence, grid infrastructure and data center power.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.