“So you start seeing this cross pollination, worlds colliding, the traditional digital workplace applications with the traditional smart building solutions.

We started working with our clients on helping them connect the dots on both sides of the house and the value. Not just from an operations standpoint, but from a space management standpoint,and most importantly, from an employee experience standpoint. That's when you start to really get to my definition of a smart building.

My definition of a smart building is everything's connected. It isn't just HVAC and lighting and elevators. It's not just base building and systems, but when you can connect into the workplace and more importantly, start connecting to the occupants, that's really when the smart experience starts to happen. "

—Darlene Pope

• The first definition of a smart building (3:41)
• The three early phases of our industry (11:16)
• Darlene on the 3-30-300 rule and how to quantify the benefits of technology (14:41)
• What Darlene learned at WeWork and how she pulled people and system silos together (27:14)
• Why she joined Planon to knock down silos (31:56)
• Defining IWMS (37:05)
• What is Women in PropTech and how we can increase diversity in the industry (53:42)

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“We take that value creation reframe and we look at it through two ROI lenses. The traditional finance lens, which is return on investment, to understand the financial benefits.

And then the second is a relevance assessment lens, which is the risk of ignoring your risk of being left behind. And so when we apply these two ROI perspectives, you find opportunities to create the value, to innovate."
—Mandi Wedin

• What is ESGR and what are some examples (6:01)
• How ESG, and the E specifically, are changing real estate (12:38)
• How the real estate technology community can be more inclusive (19:09)
• How ESG is driving tech investments (23:59)
• How real estate professionals think about buying technology (32:39)
• The way to think about technology ROI in the ESG era (36:03)

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"You feel like you're tackling an impossible problem because you're looking at such a broad set of solutions or in our case, now we're looking at such a broad set of manufacturers, and so many devices in our building, and every building is different. How can you ever address that?

We'll just address everything and then move forward with whomever is willing to move forward with you. It could be at a regional level or a certain manufacturer who understands what you want to accomplish, they totally buy into it, and they move forward.

Some others, not so much. You keep them up to date, but you don't hold back, you just move forward with whomever is willing to move forward. So that absolutely applies with the Building Operating System solution that we have today and our involvment with manufacturers and within Google as well.

We'll see how different regions move at different speeds, different construction teams move at different speeds, different facilities operation teams embrace the solution more than others. We're large enough that we always find someone who is interested.”
—Sabine Lam

• How Sabine and Google helped change the building materials supply chain and how that is happening in building technology now (5:35)
• The Google BOS mission statement (14:38)
• The three specific goals of the BOS program and how it's being driven by cyber security (27:44)
• Sabine's take on IT vs. OT. Hint: it's all on the IT network. (31:37)
• The role of the MSI and contractors in setting up the BOS and our frustration with data mapping (40:15)

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"So you live or die by the data at the end of the day, not the sticker on the front door."
—Ruairi Barnwell

• We need Building Intelligence Groups in every city (7:13)
• How we can overcome the challenges with the traditional design process (21:00)
• How owners are seeing the need for the IDL and how Nexus is spurring collaboration and community (26:08)
• Summarizing the past year of IAQ and rating system confusion (31:45)
• How building owners/landlords and tenants are investing in IAQ data (37:59)
• IAQ snake oil, or as Aaron Lapsley says, Hygiene Theater (43:36)

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"So that's how we got here... we were focused on enabling this massive energy retrofit opportunity or enabling people to implement this zero costs down energy savings. But then I realized there's no point if buildings don't have the infrastructure in place for that.”
—Ben Birnbaum

• Why Ben is a superconnector (14:27)
• Ben's 3 "Holy Grails" or massive opportunities: Project/Asset Financing, No CapEx Solutions, and Fixing Controls (26:24)
• Why now is the time for this industry to transform (43:24)
• Ben's advice to startups in our space (52:18)

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“The point of Nirvana  is to have a self-tuning, self-commissioning building that is completely adapting itself (based on) the outside conditions and internal conditions of a building. That is clearly an endgame here that we're all after, but that is only one aspect of what you're talking about in terms of the investment you make.”
—Jim Whalen

• How Jim thinks about building tech in three interrelated buckets (13:49)
• The landlord-tenant split incentive and how it makes technology a challenge and how we're very early in solving it (17:47)
• A smart buildings endgame (23:44)
• Boston Properties' data journey and how they've applied what they've learned and how they're looking for the next set of tools (30:38)
• How Jim is thinking about analytics as the next toolset (43:50)
• Jim's keys to the success they've had in the last 10 years digitizing buildings (52:10)

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“The sun is setting on building management systems as we know it and change is coming through building operating systems and packaged equipment control, which when delivered will eliminate the need for field fitted BMS control altogether.”
—Rob Huntington

• How Jim thinks about building tech in three interrelated buckets (13:49)
• The landlord-tenant split incentive and how it makes technology a challenge and how we're very early in solving it (17:47)
• A smart buildings endgame (23:44)
• Boston Properties' data journey and how they've applied what they've learned and how they're looking for the next set of tools (30:38)
• How Jim is thinking about analytics as the next toolset (43:50)
• Jim's keys to the success they've had in the last 10 years digitizing buildings (52:10)

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The digital readiness score is our way of quickly highlighting whether the building is ready (for new technology). We’re looking at network communication speed, the data density from the number of devices and points, the data accessibility based on the protocols, and the scope of the digital systems. And that's been allowing us to say, “yes, you’re digital ready”.

—Rachel Kennedy

• What is Dx³ and why did Switch develop it (6:34)
• The digital-readiness score (12:30)
• The diverse skill sets and jobs of the smart buildings industry (21:21)

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“The fact that other industries were being solved with an API, it really made sense to create this single layer that takes on all the historic complexity and abstracts it away into that API, so that everyone doesn't have to keep repeating the exact same task over and over again.”
—Shaun Cooley

• How Jim thinks about building tech in three interrelated buckets (13:49)
• The landlord-tenant split incentive and how it makes technology a challenge and how we're very early in solving it (17:47)
• A smart buildings endgame (23:44)
• Boston Properties' data journey and how they've applied what they've learned and how they're looking for the next set of tools (30:38)
• How Jim is thinking about analytics as the next toolset (43:50)
• Jim's keys to the success they've had in the last 10 years digitizing buildings (52:10)

You can find Shaun Cooley on LinkedIn.
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“I used to chase kilowatt-hours and now I'm chasing renewable energy.”
—Rob Brimblecombe

• How Rob spearheaded the university's 100% renewables goal (12:56)
• How Monash defines Net Zero and how they're getting off gas (19:03)
• No longer chasing kilowatt-hours (32:00)
• How South Australia Water makes money off of demand flexibility (33:57)
• Good control means good grid economics (36:34)
• H ow appliance selection is the key to Passive House design (38:52)
• Proving the value of data modeling (50:23)
• Why the smart campus system is like an octopus and why the system is named the Kraken (1:01:38)
• How building technology works with DERs to provide flexibility (1:04:46)

You can find Rob Brimblecombe on LinkedIn.
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