Element Six

In this In The Weeds episode of The Climate GAP, Lewis sits down with Tyler Smith, Vice President of Global Lifecycle Solutions at Johnson Controls. Tyler is one of the most experienced voices driving the healthy buildings movement, and his 20-year career tells the story of an industry in transformation.

From engineering grad to executive, his journey tracks directly with the evolution of building tech. Smart systems. Indoor air quality. Fault detection. Decarbonisation. And now, AI.

In this conversation, they unpack:

• What healthy buildings actually mean in 2025
• How Johnson Controls built OpenBlue into its digital backbone
• What it takes to lead at scale and still move with speed
• Career advice for emerging talent in the space
• Where the future is headed with AI, automation, and connected assets

Whether you’re building a product, managing assets, or growing a career in this space, this episode brings perspective that matters.

🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube

📌 Hosted by Lewis Martin, Co-Founder of Element Six

📣 Follow for more episodes at the intersection of growth, adoption, product & climate

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.

Buildings aren’t just consuming energy.

They’re becoming part of the grid.

In this panel edition of The Down Low with Joe, we bring together three leaders who are reshaping how distributed energy resources (DERs) and virtual power plants actually work at scale:

Courtney Blodgett — Co-Founder, Edo

Focused on building-level load flexibility, automated pre-cooling/pre-heating, and unlocking value with minimal impact on occupants.

Brendan Reed — VP Growth, Sparkfund

Driving utility-scale DER deployment, storage programs, and new ways for utilities to plan around distributed capacity.

Thomas Armstrong — Director of Sales, Voltus

Connecting buildings to wholesale markets, monetising load flexibility, and turning portfolios into revenue-generating grid assets.

We discuss:

• How DERs are becoming a faster source of capacity than new power plants

• The shift from emergency-only demand response to daily, dynamic flexibility

• Why so much load flexibility in commercial buildings is still stranded

• The policy barriers preventing DERs from scaling nationwide

• How facilities can earn revenue, reduce load, and improve reliability

• Whether VPPs can replace peaker plants over the next decade

• The convergence of building tech, utilities, and market operators

• What “grid-interactive” buildings actually look like in practice

Subscribe for weekly conversations on buildings, data, and the future of the grid.

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.

Smart buildings aren’t broken.. their data is.

From inconsistent BAS naming to years of legacy config, most buildings struggle not because they lack sensors, but because the underlying data model is impossible to trust.

In this episode of The Down Low with Joe, Nick Gayeski, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Clockworks, breaks down what a decade of FDD deployments has taught him about data quality, ontologies, and why XETO and ontologies matter more than any dashboard or AI feature.

We discuss:

• Why bespoke naming kills scale, speed, and ROI

• How Clockworks thinks about FDD, optimisation, and (eventually) write back

• The real-world state of ontology adoption and where XETO fits in

• Why integrations and metadata need the same investment as hardware

• How partnerships and skilled labour shortages shape building performance

• What’s actually slowing down digital transformation in the built world

About Nick Gayeski:

Nick is the Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Clockworks, one of the most established analytics platforms in the industry, helping owners, operators, and service teams detect faults, optimise performance, and get value from building data at scale.

Subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of data, buildings, and climate.

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.

Smart buildings depend on data, but the operational networks carrying that data are often the weakest and most overlooked part of the entire system.

In this episode of Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Andrew Rodgers, Co-Founder of ACE IoT Solutions, to expose the hidden fragility inside OT networks and explain how it impacts analytics, energy optimisation, controls integration and digital building projects.

Andrew shares insights from his background in industrial automation, IT and software, and breaks down why so many smart building deployments stall or fail due to network issues that no one is monitoring. From BACnet complexities to organisational silos between IT and FM, this episode uncovers the root causes and offers practical guidance on how to build healthier, more resilient building networks.

What we cover:

• Why OT networks are often under-provisioned and over-burdened
• How network blind spots lead to delays in analytics, optimisation and digital projects
• What observability means in an OT environment
• How BACnet muddies the separation between network and application layers
• Who should own network health in an organisation
• Better models for designing and maintaining building networks
• How network visibility can de-risk major software and analytics investments

About Andrew Rodgers

Andrew Rodgers is the Co-Founder of ACE IoT Solutions LLC. A company working at the intersection of industrial automation, software and IT. With years of hands-on experience in manufacturing and smart buildings, Andrew helps organisations uncover the operational network risks that often undermine analytics, optimization smart building performance.

About Quick Cuts:

Quick Cuts is part of The Climate Gap, a series exploring the people and ideas shaping the future of climate technology, smart buildings and decarbonisation.

Subscribe and follow The Climate Gap to be the first to listen to all of our content across our interview and podcast formats.

• Quick Cuts: Short episodes, sharp insights, no filler
• Pop Up: Chats from the floor
• The Down Low with Joe: Insider views and industry shifts
• Into the Weeds: Where complexity meets clarity

https://www.youtube.com/@elementsixco

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.

Carbon credits are confusing until you anchor them in data.

Most portfolios juggle policy, paperwork, and risk while hoping the math adds up. Ashley Sarauer breaks it down. She explains how to turn real building upgrades into verified, bankable carbon credits that buyers trust and owners can model into cash flow.

In this episode of The Down Low with Joe, Ashley shares what makes a carbon credit high-quality, why building data beats guesswork, and how a platform approach can transition projects from pilot to portfolio.

We discuss:

• The simple definition of a carbon credit and why title and transfer matter
• Turning building projects into verified credits using utility data and third party checks
• Additionality, permanence, leakage, and double counting explained in plain English
• Why buyers want local, tangible credits and how portfolios can keep a portion in house
• Ex post issuance, pre purchase contracts, and where banks fit in
• How credits change underwriting, ROI, and cash flow for deep retrofits

About Ashley Sarauer:

Ashley is the founder of Ontoly and a veteran of the carbon markets. She studied climate econometrics and worked on climate legislation in Alberta and British Columbia, then led initiatives at Verra in the voluntary market. At Ontoly, she focuses on certifying financial-grade, data-backed credits for real estate decarbonization.

Subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of data, buildings, and climate.

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.

Energy data shouldn’t be this hard to get, but across 10,000+ utilities, it still is.

In this episode of The Down Low with Joe, Udit Garg, SVP of R&D at Arcadia, joins Joe Aamidor and Lewis Martin to unpack how the “Plaid for Energy” is finally making energy data usable.. at scale.

Udit explains why every clean energy or smart building solution depends on the same two things: usage and rates. He shares how Arcadia’s acquisitions of Urjanet and Genability are powering a unified data platform for the energy transition, and what that means for corporate decarbonization, bill management, and AI-driven optimization.

We discuss:

• Why utilities remain the biggest bottleneck for clean energy innovation
• How Urjanet and Genability together solved “quantity × price” for 10,000 utilities
• Data normalization and rate modeling: the hard, unglamorous layer that enables AI
• How fragmentation across vendors and internal teams limits ROI on energy programs
• The “hierarchy of needs” for energy management — from bill pay to decarbonization
• Why ESG is cooling off, but cost volatility is heating up
• The shift from reporting to real action: saving money first, cutting carbon next

About Udit Garg:

Udit leads technology at Arcadia, where he oversees the platform that connects distributed energy assets, utilities, and corporates through unified data and APIs. He previously led energy product development at C3.ai and began his career at SunEdison, giving him a unique view of how data, software, and hardware must converge to enable the clean energy future.

Subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of data, buildings, and climate.

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 Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Gary Chance, CEO of Nantum AI, to explore how AI and human operators can work together to transform building data into measurable, portfolio-wide outcomes.

Every year, new technologies promise to revolutionize the real estate industry. Every year, most of them fail to stick. Gary explains why adoption—not technology—is the most challenging part of innovation and how operators can transition from awareness to action.

We dig into:

• From awareness to action. How large action models and human-AI collaboration will shape the next five years of building performance.
• The 80/20 rule of impact. Why a few interventions deliver most of the results and how to measure what’s left on the table.
• Transparency drives trust. How data visibility and proof of results accelerate collaboration between sustainability, asset, and operations teams.
• AI as a companion. Why operators who work alongside AI gain the edge, and why automation is about partnership, not replacement.
• Breaking platform paralysis. How to connect AI to a business case that proves ROI and scales across portfolios.

About Gary Chance

Gary Chance is the CEO of Nantum AI, where he leads product and strategy for one of the leading AI platforms in real estate operations. With over 20 years in digital transformation and data-driven building performance, he focuses on making AI practical, measurable, and operator-friendly.

Watch if you are:

• A real estate or FM leader struggling to move beyond pilots and dashboards
• A portfolio operator or energy manager trying to quantify real ROI from smart building tech
• Anyone focused on AI adoption, change management, and operational excellence in the built environment

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.

From silos to systems: in this bonus episode of The Down Low with Joe, Lewis and Joe sit down with Richard Reyes, Digital Strategy Lead at ConnexFM and CEO & Executive Director of OSCRE International, to unpack how the built world finally starts speaking a common language.

Richard shares how his journey from enterprise architecture, data science, and financial services led him into the built environment, and why he now sees his role as a “bridge builder” between CREtech and FM tech. Together, they break down how ConnexFM as the FM community “heartbeat” and OSCRE as a long-standing data standards body are converging to create a practical digital foundation for owners, operators, occupiers, and service providers.

They get into:

• Why CRE and FM have operated in silos for decades
• How data standards, ontology, and AI can unlock real value for portfolios and multi-site operators
• The reality of data readiness, governance, and culture inside real organisations
• Talent, trades, and the urgent risk of losing 30 years of institutional knowledge
• Why now is the moment for collaboration, not just more tech logos on a slide
• How FutureBuild aims to convene CRE, FM, tech, and investors to move the industry forward

If you care about smart buildings, facilities, data, or the future of the built environment, this one is a blueprint for where it is all heading next.

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 digital twin can’t prove value in 90 days, it’s not a product, it’s a demo. Elisa Rönkä of Johnson Controls shares what makes digital twins pay back fast.”

Most digital twins look great on a screen but collapse under CFO scrutiny.

They model every pipe, point, and person in the building yet still fail to show a single verified saving.

In this episode of The Climate Gap: Quick Cuts, Ben Muwoki sits down with Elisa Rönkä, who leads the digital business for Johnson Controls across EMEA, to explore what it takes to turn digital twins from impressive visuals into measurable business value.

We dig into:

- What defines a minimum viable twin that delivers value in 90 days

- Why KPIs must connect to profit, revenue, or risk to scale

- How tech vendors can bridge the communication gap between FM and IT

- The danger of promising portfolio-wide savings from one pilot

- How to build ROI credibility with independent benchmarks and site-level results

- The one question Elisa would ask her digital twin every morning

About Elisa Rönkä

Elisa leads the digital business for Johnson Controls in EMEA and brings a rare combination of financial acumen and technology leadership. With a background in both finance and smart buildings, she helps organisations link digital transformation directly to measurable impact, not just models and dashboards.

Watch if you are:

- Evaluating or deploying digital twin technology

- A building owner or FM leader focused on measurable ROI

- A technology vendor translating data into business value

- Scaling digital twins isn’t about more data. It’s about proving value fast.

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.

The smartest buildings don’t just run on data — they run on people.

From intern to Operations Manager, Reed Powell has spent his career helping MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions evolve from a regional mechanical contractor into a leader in smart building service and energy innovation.

In this episode of The Climate GAP: Quick Cuts, Reed shares how the company balances cutting-edge technology with the craft, mentorship, and trust that define lasting performance.

We discuss:

• How sustainability became the foundation for a modern mechanical business
• What it takes to lead through innovation on the bleeding edge
• Building a learning culture where interns become leaders
• The intersection of operations, finance, and technical excellence
• How service companies can drive the next wave of smart building adoption

About Reed Powell:

Reed is an Operations Manager at MacDonald-Miller Facility Solutions, where he leads teams delivering mechanical and smart building projects across the Pacific Northwest. His work bridges sustainability, engineering, and human leadership.

Subscribe for weekly conversations at the intersection of technology and the built environment.

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.