The Smart Buildings Academy Podcast | Teaching You Building Automation, Systems Integration, and Information Technology

How do you perform a takeoff? How do you ensure that you have the most competitive proposal when bid day comes? In this episode, we tackle the topic of takeoffs. You will learn 5 steps for quickly creating competitive proposals.

How do you interview a building automation candidate? Do you simply stick them in a room and hope you make the right choice?

What if there was a way that you could verify that the person you are hiring actually has the skills they say they have on paper?

In this episode, we lay out the 5 keys to successfully interviewing a BAS Candidate.

Have you ever tried to teach yourself something? It can seem overwhelming.

Where do you begin?

How do you find resources for your training?

How do you know when you've "done it"?

In this episode of the Building Automation Monthly Podcast, we are going through our 7 step process for creating your own building automation learning plan from scratch.

Developing Your Learning Plan

• Why learning how to self-train is critical to your success (1:38)
• The 7 step process for creating your training plan (3:03)
• How to identify supporting skills for your training plan (5:02)
• The importance of an honest self-assessment (8:45)
• How to use Google to solve all your problems (or at least most of them) (10:27)
• Why you must be willing to invest in your career (12:58)
• The power of constantly adjusting your training plan (15:47)
• Three examples of how to apply the 7 step process (18:52)

Have you ever been told you just need to do your time? Rome wasn't built overnight after all, right?

Well, that kind of thinking is dumb. In this episode, we explore how the current way of learning building automation is to slow and what you can do instead.

How to Learn BAS Fast

• Why you are capable of much more in your career than you know (1:38)
• The two ways of solving the skillset gap (4:37)
• How the industry currently develops skilled labor (6:25)
• What tasks should a first-year tech really be able to do? (11:45)
• Overcoming the four barriers to optimization (11:02)
• Three alternatives to traditional learning (16:10)
• How to avoid the dreaded pay cut when moving into a BAS job (21:17)
• Why we need to change how we approach learning (28:25)

Can you use a building automation system to optimize the performance of your facility?

And if so, what does optimization even mean?

In this episode of the Building Automation Monthly Podcast, we discuss what optimization is and the role your building automation system may, or may not, play in it.

Optimizing your BAS

• What is optimization? (3:38)
• The four benefits of optimization according to facility leaders (5:42)
• How the four benefits of optimization build upon one another (6:45)
• Why 72% of facility leaders feel optimization can work, but not for them (9:02)
• Overcoming the four barriers to optimization (11:02)
• How to collect data on what is happening in a facility (11:05)
• The importance of selecting your data source (12:02)
• Four categories of tools for BAS optimization (15:35)
• How do we utilize the four tools to optimize a building? (18:46)
• Why you must maximize your BAS functionality prior to using analytics (22:40)

We reached out to over a dozen facility owners of small and large facilities. The reason for doing this was to understand how they use their BAS and more importantly why they don't use it.

After doing this we found two interesting results. And in this episode of the Building Automation Monthly podcast we will talk through those results and how to integrate a building automation system into a facility process.

Creating your triage process

• The biggest barriers that keep facilities owners from understanding BAS (1:51)
• The hidden danger of learning through "tribal knowledge" (4:07)
• Three common facility triage processes (5:14)
• How to tie a BAS into the facility process (8:02)
• What is the main goal of a facility? (10:02)
• How to collect data on what is happening in a facility (11:05)
• The importance of selecting your data source (12:02)
• Four key questions your data should answer (14:49)
• Three methods for gathering data for your triage process (18:22)
• Why you must get to the core issue as fast as possible (22:08)
• Use the right tool to identify the right issue (25:42)
• Key questions you must be able to answer in order to optimize a facility team (29:21)

Utilizing a building automation system to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of a facility team can seem like a daunting challenge.

Where do you begin and what steps do you take?

In this episode, we "go back to the basics". We are going to look at how to command and control our building automation systems. By the time you finish this episode, you will have a series of steps you can take to begin working on organizing and structuring you or your customer's BAS operations.

Getting back to basics

• Why it's important to get back to the basics (1:45)
• The core parts and pieces of a BAS (2:49)
• The importance of gaining alignment on the benefit of a BAS (4:50)
• The two C's of a building automation system (6:40)
• How to gain control of your building automation system (7:35)
• Signs that you may not have control of your BAS (9:42)
• How to get the right data, at the right time, to the right people (12:21)
• Utilizing user profiles and use cases to segment data (14:52)
• Why you must use user logs and unique logins (17:22)
• How to use your BAS to address issues before, during, and after their occurrence (19:22)
• The power of feedback loops to quickly solve issues (21:48)
• How your trend interval may be costing you thousands (23:12)

Do you feel like you've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a building automation system and only use 10% of its capabilities?

If so you're not alone. In this four-part series we will be discussing how to design, setup, configure, and optimize your building automation system, even if you are a completely non-technical person!

How to analyze your existing BAS use

• How do I optimally utilize my BAS? (1:15)
• Why proper intake is the secret to effectively using your BAS (3:27)
• The four-step process to optimally using a BAS (4:03)
• How BAS systems are designed right now (4:58)
• Why you must know the main purpose of the BAS (5:45)
• The power of the RFI, RFQ, RFP Process (6:42)
• The importance of proper consulting (11:55)
• How a health check will keep your BAS system running well (13:05)
• What is your current triage process, and why you must know (16:42

Have you considered upgrading a building automation system but aren't sure where to start?

Do you struggle to explain why the "new" features of your building automation system are worth the cost to your customers?

Are you trying to better understand how an upgrade could positively impact your business?

If so this episode is for you. In this weeks episode of the Building Automation Monthly Podcast, we discuss the ins and outs of upgrading a BAS!

How do wireless networks work with building automation systems?

If you've found yourself asking this question then you're not alone.

Wireless technology seems to bring with it a lot of benefits but yet wireless technology still is seeing slow adoption rates. Why?

In this episode, we discuss the four most common wireless technologies used with a building automation system.

We will discuss the pros and cons of each technology along with when you would use each technology.

Wireless Technologies and Building Automation

• Why is wireless still not receiving the love it deserves? (0:45)
• Why Wi-Fi is the most common wireless technology (4:02)
• The benefit of using mesh networking with your BAS (13:12)
• How cellular connections deliver an always-on building network (17:20)
• The solution to monitoring distant devices (19:24)