Episode 330 ControlTalk NOW Features Siemens’ Senior Product Manager, Bill Vargo and Automated Buildings’ Editor, Ken Sinclair

Announcer
The following is a presentation of the ControlTrends Podcasting Network

Eric Stromquist
This is Episode 330 of ControlTalk Now The HVAC and Smart Building Controls Podcast where we talk about all things HVAC and Smart Buiding Controls and whatever else we want to because , the man, the myth, the legend, the one the only secret agent man. Kenny Smyers is well versed in so many topics, and he is going to give you the inside skinny before you get started on Antonio Brown. That’s just for the wide receivers run into england patriots, as Bill Belichick share falling on what’s going on Kenny fire?

Ken Smyers
Well, you know, I have a AB rookie signature and I thought he was one of the most amazing athletes I’ve ever met in person. He’s not a big guy. He’s 510 maybe, you know, hundred 90 pounds, you know, while rocket muscle he’s gone through the you know, the challenges of fame. He’s He’s hit the big time. He’s you know, in Pittsburgh, he walked on water and everybody loved him and then somehow you know, the last year the relationships inside the team deteriorated next you know, he’s been ostracized he goes somewhere to Oakland and sounds like he’s going to get a good Fresh Start with a great quarterback and you know keep keep things going and now he’s in my he’s got another terrible thing he’s got to deal with as far as you know, accusations or whatever, we don’t know anything about him so we’ll keep off of that. But you know, I’m sure he’s going to give Mr. Bella check run for his money.

Eric Stromquist
Now Hang on a sec because if you if you want to know about Antonio brown you got to watch a show called Hard Knocks American writers training camp Okay, so he did everything for coming in with frost but fee to not like in his helmet. Refusing a penny by the way I’m not going to wear these regulation headphones in woman I don’t like the way they put your mess with my game. So I’m gonna put everything on hold until the NFL changes whatif I say my did we offer you a lucrative contract? And then still you not liking it? you endorse it? How about that? How can I was couple millions on

Ken Smyers
not enough money because I’m a big man. But anyway, you get it. So anyway, I mean, if you’re an NFL fan, you know, that’s going on. Why is that relevant? Well, it’s not really but Kenny I like talking about something again, he’s the man the myth.

Ken Smyers
Next to stab me in the side of the stomach with needles about Pittsburgh and about, you know, some of the characters we’ve had, you know, and, and I don’t it doesn’t bother me. I mean, I think the Steelers are so horrible. That first game that I haven’t I haven’t been I haven’t been repaired yet. I haven’t had

Eric Stromquist
the same way. So the good news is, that means Kenny and I are over football season already before season starts. And we can we can focus more. But Kenny, Hey, man, we got two great guests lined up. Sure. That’s some great content. So hey, before we get started a couple things on the on the website we want people to be aware of. So how about running them through that real quick?

Ken Smyers
Well, sure, as everyone knows, it’s like a golf course. There’s some parts under repair. Big, big better website coming soon. we’re minimizing the post, but we can’t ignore important dates and times and training. So webinar, unbelievable retrofit overview, September 25, one o’clock, pm Eastern Standard Time, Link spring also coming up even sooner, all things edge Wednesday, September 18 2018 1pm to 2pm, Central Standard Time. So or Daylight Time, whatever you prefer, but a lot of good content, that we’re feeding information to control trends. As you’d mentioned, there’s, there’s kind of a consequence, because the all the stuff being posted between a transition period won’t be available, because it’ll be lost in space. But going to going to the incredible guest interviews, we’ve had the string, these two guys coming up here, we’re not lowering the bar, we’ve got some really, I mean that it was very fortunate that the people in the industry, they’re changing the making the needle move are coming on to our show, and it’s just it’s great opportunity.

Eric Stromquist
Well, yeah, absolutely. Let’s put in football partner committed control trends. Guess we’re like fantasy football players, you want to have these two guys on your fantasy control trends team. So Kenny, first guest is from cnet’s, about introducing him,

Ken Smyers
love to her. So we have Bill Vargo from Siemens. He is the senior product manager for thermostats for Siemens North America, welcome to the show, Bill.

Eric Stromquist
Welcome bill. Be here. So I gotta start off right away, man, you know, because you know, it’s just like Siemens is one of the premier, you know, smart building controls companies on the planet. I mean, your big two or three, right? And he does got all these really sophisticated building automation systems, all this kind of stuff. But our community out there, I mean, what roles Do you see thermostats points for communicating thermostats, even standalone thermostat, in this age of IoT and IoT device,

Bill Vargo
I think you hit it on the head IoT. And that’s what a lot of people are afraid of. And our thermostat fits right into that space. So the new RDS 120 and RDS 120 dash Be smart thermostat plays in that IoT smart buildings smart energy. And as that sneak look, design, not like the old commercial thermostats that are the old, white, ugly looking thing that you’re like, I really don’t want that on my wall, or in my conference room. The new one looks much, much better.

Eric Stromquist
You know, dude, I hate to say this, but you know, because, you know, Kenny and I are bit older, and you know, and I think we’re gonna got a lot of people going about us, you know, we want sleeker, better looking men in our lives, as opposed to the old guys with with all the functionality. But But I think you’re right. I mean, I think design does matter. And that seems to be a trend we’re seeing with products, man, from your centers, to your thermostats really have a very sleek looking. And that seems to be a very important thing, especially with architects for buildings and homeowners, right?

Bill Vargo
Yes, I mean, I have one, I put it my house. And as long as my wife’s not complaining, it looks good on the wall, she’s happy. And everybody that I’ve shown this to this particular product. They’re like the design. And that’s where the trends heading, you’ll see a lot more, I think and trending on thermostats going to that sleeker look, because if you don’t, it’s just another chance that something on the wall that somebody doesn’t want to buy.

Ken Smyers
So you know, yeah, and you’re absolutely right. And we have one too, I was fortunate to get a Siemens demo there. And I was very impressed with very pretty, very intuitive. And we’ll go through some of those features and benefits. But I just wanted to remind everybody that Siemens actually has an enormous product line thermostats, I mean, you have from standalone, you know, basic go single stage heat, cool, but just tell us about the complete line before we start focusing heavily on the RDS 120 v.

Bill Vargo
So yeah, we have a complete line of thermostats from communicating and non communicating. And the trend is really going to the communicating thermostats is where a lot of the trend is going to and when people sit there and they and you can still have a communicating standalone thermostat. And that’s what they already is. 120 is via this Wi Fi. I mean, it provides you that opportunity for access. And that’s what people want is access to home automation to automation of anything that’s going on. I mean, the trend for from refrigerators and everything is going to be interconnected in your house. So the thermostat fits right in there. But it’s also standalone, it doesn’t have to be interacting with, with anything else that provides a lot of data and insight into how your home functions, how you energy saves many different opportunities.

Eric Stromquist
When I think you know, you’re really hitting on something, because one of the trends that Kenny I’ve been tracking is it’s like, you know, oddly enough, it seems like what’s going on in the home. These are the things like the app like you guys have for your thermostat is what the sort of the new the new tenants are demanding and commercial buildings. So the contractors have to sort of be aware of that. So it’s interesting, because it seems like this done a second point in multiple places, residential or buildings, but accurate.

Bill Vargo
And that is exactly the way it place. You when you sit there and you look at it, everybody takes you know, they say, home is home and works work. That’s not necessarily the case, you take what you experience at home, and you take it into the workplace, and they want that same home comfort and feel in the workspace and that control capability. Well, now with our product, you can do that. So you can have small light commercial spaces, small residential, or even multi use spaces where it’s commercial on the bottom yet residential on the top three floors, or we’ve now have it where we’ve included this with back net, and we can take it to, let’s say a 300, you know, foot condo building, and have that same access and same feel on one thermostat.

Eric Stromquist
Okay, now, that’s a key piece, Kenny, I want you to hop in on two more features. But to me if I’m an MMA contractor, and you know, again, time is money, right? So you got you know, I have one of your thermostats on the Wii model, which is BACNet, even if they don’t want to connect it right away. I mean, I can sort of future proof that thermostat by putting the B model and even if its standalone, because later on, I can use the badness feature and bring it into a building automation system, right?

Bill Vargo
That is correct. I mean, because that features in there. It’s just a matter of when you want to access the data. And it’s all about back net, being able to access the data into that building automation system. And what do you want to do with that data? And how do you want to manage and control that information?

Ken Smyers
Well, I think that, you know, in reviewing the history of the market, I’ve done numerous trending of the thermostat itself, the small reason the small space, the individual room controller, the total room automation, I mean, we really, you know, and I’m seeing that this thermostat here in a comparison of the other leading brands that were primarily residential, young, and I won’t go into names here, but you know, one has to do with birds. Another one has to do with with. Yeah, so so the the criteria of a thermostat and bringing the most feature benefits, you know, the biggest bang for the buck, I think Siemens has brought basically raised a new raise the bar, because you know, there’s more to the thermostat like you were saying, I love the the mobile first terms that I use my thermostat, my thermostat sends me alerts about, you know, potential flooding, weather reports, I put the web web services into the thermostat, which now you know, constantly updates and adjust the the conditions that I have the set point for you admittedly temperature, but cnet’s introduced indoor air quality, with a with a sensor, that’s kind of very interesting, because it’s basically measuring voc and volatile organic compounds. It also does it energy consumption feature that is above and beyond with the other thermostats in this category, the conditioning, to put the thermostat online, is actually been done on inside of five minutes, I think you say two minutes and in six sensors. So let’s start with the sensors tell us about the sensors and what that does to a space, and how it makes the people inside of it more comfortable, more productive and more in touch. So they can make mobile first to the thermostat and change things and read things. Correct.

Bill Vargo
And that’s what key I mean, we put six sensors in our thermostat. And the reason being, then you don’t have to put external sensors. And we still have the capability to add two more additional sensors if we really want it to, it’s all about setting it up so that the user gets the information that they need and is key. And and by doing that with our six sensors that we put in there, it allows for that, right? So it allows for the user to not have to do certain things and just take a look and go wow, what is it doing in my in my space? Can I change the temperature? Can I do certain things? We have a goal we call a green leaf optimization where the leaf itself is green, because you’re following what you set the parameters for it to do? Well, every once a while my wife gets warm or cold and changes the settings, right? Well, if I want to go back to those settings, and I can’t remember what they are, you just select that leaf and it goes automatically back to that you could do it via the app or in front of the thermostat.

Ken Smyers
Try new feature. Yeah.

Bill Vargo
Well, yeah, exactly. If you can change it whenever you want. I mean, but also part of that is, you know, you want to be able to not remember what things are. And just one click of the button. Like if I leave the home, I want to just touch one button and go, Okay, I’m away, go to unoccupied mode. And it’s going to once you set it up, it kind of functions all by itself and provides that information. You talked about data. And we provided it when we first launched the product, we just showed run hours, right? So we showed how many hours per day your heating or cooling and a nice bar graph? Well, we took that one step further, if you look at the app, now with the update, we taken it where you can now look at any particular time of day, select it on a different chart and go here’s the time here’s what the set point was, here’s what my room temperature was, and also humidity. So we put it all into one particular app, and you can just select it at a point in time and go, is my unit controlling the way I want it to? Or is it out of whack?

Ken Smyers
When we’ve had numerous cases where we used to have to put in the little data monitors because we had such a problem with schools and commercial buildings where they were saying the tenants were saying that the it was too cold too cold never was in set points. So having the archiving ability is remarkable. And having that publicly available so that the user themselves can see that this thing’s maintained dead on temperature, you know, set points in the plus or minus in the breeze.

Eric Stromquist
But okay, hang on real quick. I want to get back to it. I just want to stop for a minute and pause on it. Because that is such a great point that you brought up, Kenny, because I don’t know about you. But you’ve had so many contracts. We both have so many contractors over the years. And again, getting back to the contractor being profitable. I mean, how much time and money do you have to spend? If somebody says they’re uncomfortable? And like you said, we’ve sold a ton of data monitors in the past to prove it. Thanks, folks. Right, the fact that this farmer said has that in there, it’s easy to access, it’s got to be huge for the contractor that’s doing service work, I would think,

Bill Vargo
to be a teacher. And I think that’s key. So not only the user, but then you add in that back net. So all those same points are now pulled in via back net over IP, and you can access that same data. So you can access that in your building management system and throw that in there. And now you have even more data and analysis to provide that information.

Eric Stromquist
Right. Especially with that. Yeah, no, no, especially but but again, for me, it’s like, you know, just how can I avoid a headache? In other words, there’s a saying, What is it Kenny, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, just the fact that we know that temperature is so psychological. And if people are going to complain about temperature, and the fact that you can, you know, again, for very little money, even if it’s standalone go in and be able to get this and show Yes, we’re except point.

Ken Smyers
It’s not our problem.

Ken Smyers
Well, you know, the in tune with it’s not just temperature, the temperature, humidity plays a big function and comfort. And then they’ll do was we, we had several applications where these people design these great houses in commercial buildings. But because they’re designed so funky, it’s very difficult to maintain the right humidity, it gets a little too humid and starts to turn into the ceilings gray and the walls green. And it was because we had no ability, ability to control heating and air conditioning, to the effect of we can prevent this. And and also, the very important thing here that we don’t want to lose is the future proof that Eric was mentioning, the ability to get updates via internet is remarkable. So every time you guys make an improvement or add another algorithm to you know, some sort of energy savings or some sort of data collection, how does the How does the user that has this themselves? Well, how does he get those updates where she gets those updates.

Bill Vargo
So if you think about it, think about your smartphone, right? The same way your smartphone gets updated. It’s the same way that thermostat and the Smart App get updated, it’s seamless to the user, it’s if we find that there’s an issue with something or an improvement that needs to be done, we can sit there and target and update the thermostat itself, all the settings stay in there. So it doesn’t affect the user. So we can download those directly via the Internet to that particular over the air to the thermostat. And then we also update the app. So we’re constantly evaluating and taking improvement ideas and suggestions from people and go, is this a value add or is it not. And we can add those at any particular time. And it’s zero impact to the user to the management to anybody who’s in, in who uses that particular product.

Ken Smyers
And just to be clear, that’s awesome about the the six sensors, I’m just going to review them because I don’t know if we did that the temperature, humidity, light proximity, occupancy and voc. And also so that you put this in a commercial application, you don’t need to put an additional occupancy sensor in the room because the thermostat can handle that because it has an occupancy sensor on board, which helps you get maximize your energy efficiency. So not only do you have a schedule, but then you also have the occupancy feature that can get you even more tighter savings. Could voc is new, not new to our industry or new to HPC. But to the thermostat world, I don’t think anybody’s introduced a voc tell us a little bit more about how the thermostat is able to give you an indication of what your air quality is. Air Quality is obviously not only heating, you know, and cooling is a comfort level. But people are more concerned about the air quality that they breathe and what’s going on with the air quality in either your home or in your in the space that you’re in. So on the particular app or on the app, it tells you whether it is forgetting the name exact names that’s on there. I think it’s good poor. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Good, okay, poor.

Bill Vargo
So that’s on the app, right. But then on the thermostat itself, it also shows you a world symbol of green, yellow, or red. And what you can do is you can connect things to that from outside Eric dampers. So when and set the parameters and go, Hey, when the air quality gets to this, open up the outside air, air sensor, or damper and let some air and from the outside to clear out your space to make it a little bit more viable, breathable air. You know, I mean, it doesn’t give you the numbers, but at least tells you Hey, what’s going on in the air and in your space. Right? And

Ken Smyers
absolutely, yeah, that’s that’s a great option.

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, and I think you know, one of the trends we’ve been tracking again, and this is great, because it seems like what this allows is for the smaller customers, retail spaces, whatever, we get some of the benefits of the bigger ones. And one of the trends Bill and I know you guys are doing this on your big building automation systems that we sell, is, you know, you’re focused on the customer experience, and you know, the CEOs are getting more and more involved in, you know, we want to have to tell us to have a great experience. And you know, this, this voc thing to me is great, because like if I go to a restaurant, and I know they’re filtering the water or whatever, I feel a bit better about eating the food, right. But you know, now you start thinking about it. I mean, it gives that smaller, sort of landlord to his contract or the ability to go, yeah, you know, we’re monitoring their quality, you know, you’re going to get good air quality here. It’s something that they can market if they want to. So again, as you know, there’s a lighting contractor can sell this feature and differentiate themselves from other people. Because Yeah, if I mean, it seems like a little thing. But if I walk into a space and I see a sign, by the way, we’re monitoring Eric, why make sure you have a great experience, I’m going to remember something like it just as walking into a space, I’m going to choose between two restaurants, for example, I’m going to choose the one that’s probably going to have the Fuji one, which is the one that’s got the got the water filter, and got the better air quality. Why not? Because before more concerned about their house, so well thought out very well.

Ken Smyers
Well, what’s what’s the next in the roadmap, I mean, the way things are going, the way we’ve seen is that so on the macro level, the Department of Energy says that we have an extraordinary number of buildings that have no more control than simple on off thermostat control. Some of them have schedules, lighting is running rampant, people don’t turn off their lights, and nobody really cares about it. Because we have this thing called light letter where if you leave you go pass somewhere and you see a fire hydrant and mortars exploding out of a fire hydrant, you call the fire department, you get all excited about that, or you see a fiery cold firefighter, but you can see you could drive past lights all day and night and not even think twice. This also would have the ability then to to control outside it or set of like, with this was what it does not

Bill Vargo
I mean, the thermostat itself does not have that capability. But energy integrated into a BMS system or, you know, we have this ego control point that we also sell, that can control those those lighting things. So we have the capability in smaller and not large BMS systems, we have this ego CC, which is our large, obviously opportunity. We also scaled that down into smaller opportunities at a much less cost with the Zika control point, where now you have lighting, you have the ability to do lighting, HPC shades, all in one small package that you can combine together as that user experience, right. And I think that, you know, when you differentiate into space, and you start, how do I sell my space? Right? What makes me different? And how do I gain that advantage over somebody else’s space? And I can show, hey, come rent my condo, because you get x, y and z and this is what it’s going to save you or do for you. Where you are that on and off one. You’re kind of stuck, right? Well, so. So Bill, man, this is again, this thermostat is just so powerful. I mean, I know, it’s probably so many different customer sets, from your guy’s perspective. But describe your ideal sort of customer that you designed this one and realizing that you know, homeowners are going to want it, we realized this kind of goes across all multiple customers. So for you guys, when you’re when you’re designing who’s ideal customer for this,

Bill Vargo
I mean it like you said, there’s so many different spaces that this plays in from the small managed residential space of commercial, like I said, on the first, you know, two or three floors of commercial space where the building manager wants to know that space and can rent out those units and then has apartments or condos above that. I mean, this fits ideally into a space like that. And oh, by the way, you don’t need a bit of back net thermostat to do that. Because you can add up to 20 thermostats on the app itself and see those. So it’s almost like it has its own internal BMS system, when you can see and control 20 different thermostats via just the app itself, by itself, but then it also expands. I mean, like I said, there’s so many different opportunities, you know, you can go into managed residential space of senior living senior living is one of the booming things that’s growing across this country, you know, I can’t wait to move into one. So I don’t have to cook clean and do other things anymore. But it’s the same thing, being able to control that space, but then locking out certain functions and features where, hey, you can only go so high or so low on the temperature or change things. But then as a building owner, I can see everything that’s going on in my building. And then it explodes even up further, you know, we’re we’re bidding on projects that are three 400 units of condo space, and it fits still into that space, because you can interconnect all these together and gather that information and data. So when you sit there and say, is there an ideal customer, yet I go from my house,

Bill Vargo
to a large condo, so maybe maybe we should just renamed the thing that nest killer. So Kenny, speaking of that, now, I know these guys got six sensors, how many sensors that nest have, for example,

Ken Smyers
nest has a fairly good amount they have five, you know, across the board, you know, you’ve got the iconic save three, that could be his three, how do you want us to? I mean, the commissioning process, the levels of difficulty are rated with it will post a comparison,

Ken Smyers
we’re gonna put to the comparison chart already haven’t already done up as a post. And so you’re going to see it and a picture’s worth 1000 words. But it goes to the back that certification who hasn’t? He doesn’t seem as does of course, the others don’t? Well, Honeywell does too, I’m sure indoor air sensor, the quality sensor, I just Siemens energy consumption of three out of the five seems does, of course, commissioning time seems the lowest and indoor sensors humans had the most. So I think clearly you guys did your homework and came up with some some very strong features. And in the feature benefit presentations have seemed to have the highest marks across the board. But you said something earlier offline. And I want to make sure I understood right is you also are working with an open API. So the people that are really into the master systems integration and whatever, seem as thermostat plays nice so that people can put whatever they want or use the internal data of Siemens is thermostat, the RDS 120 in capacity. So we don’t even know yet what people might want to do or how they want to integrate that information. Is that correct?

Bill Vargo
Correct. And that’s that’s an open API. So that allows third party, I want to say home automation, or the Alexa has, and those types of opportunities to integrate your thermostat into their space. We currently don’t offer that with Alexa, because that’s not our target market is the home individual user. But that is on our roadmap. How do we improve that so that home automation in from a home standpoint, even though it could be a home unit is a condo, but in a larger BMS System, part of that ecosystem, right? So how do we still satisfy that condo owner and give him that home automation or her that all home automation opportunity? In still, as me being the building owner operator has visibility into that same space?

Ken Smyers
Very, very cool. I had one more thing. Last one is that it’s a beautiful thermostat. It’s pretty, it’s got a euro designed to it. And and I’m wondering about that footprint is that footprint big enough to put an analog output into it

Bill Vargo
will evaluate that.

Ken Smyers
Because you can do that. And you can control them modulating the heating valve or cooling valve. Oh, my goodness,

Bill Vargo
that’s on the roadmap.

Eric Stromquist
Cool. So I’m getting some texts here from some of our listeners. There’s a huge Aaron Tino from Hollywood. He wants to order one. He thinks it’s cool be pitt, brad pitt? Yeah. So it looks like this is going to patch up in Hollywood. So once that happens, I pay what is sky’s the limit the guy. So how do people get more information about it? They’ll that’s website other incentive. Yeah,

Bill Vargo
I mean, you can just do a search for Siemens smart thermostat. And we have a website that up that has all the information, some cool videos on it. It’s it’s very intuitive, very easy to install. I mean, I in the beta trial, I actually was in the process of getting a new HH AC system at my house. And I gave the guy that thermostat said here install this. And he’s like, what is this? This is our new smart thermostat. installed. It said this was great. This is so easy. How do I get one?

Eric Stromquist
Yeah, dude. Okay, what we were talking offline about what we should do some sort of training on it. But that’d be kind of a waste of time, because it’s so damn easy to use right and set up. So it’s exciting stuff. Very, very exciting stuff. Kenny, do we have a thermostat to give away?

Ken Smyers
Yes, we do. Bill, we’re trying to think of the smartest way we’ve said that, you know that she was excited that we were doing this. And that is it, you know, just signed a goodwill here that she wanted us to give a thermostat away. We’re trying to figure out the best way to do it.

Eric Stromquist
I got an idea here. So all right. So email us. What’s up troll trends marketing, pro CT Marketing Pro at gmail. com. Which Hollywood movie star or music star should have the thermostat. And Kenny and I will will do two things. First of all, we’ll match the offer, we will send one of those thermostats try to get it to that movie star, the person gets the most votes that was Quentin Tarantino will send him one from control trends. And then we will give you a really swell prize as well. Maybe a ticket to the control trends awards or something like that. So again, the offers think about based on what you heard about this thermostat. Who and Hollywood or what famous musician would this be the best star so I’m thinking Bruce Springsteen, man, that would be his kind of thermostat, right? But you know, email us at CT Marketing Pro at gmail. com. And Kenny and I will endeavor to get we’ll do the best we can to get the timer set from you to Bruce Springsteen, whoever we choose, and then we’ll give you a really swell prize as well. What How does that sound guys? Well, I’ll make it to thermostats you can give away. There we go. There we go. Okay. And then the deal is, and it winds up being Mark Roby or jennifer aniston, Kenny, and I will probably deliver the summer steps. and install. There you go.

Bill Vargo
Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity, guys. And good luck to you guys.

Ken Smyers
Sounds really, really good

Eric Stromquist
day What dad is such great stuff about the thermostat. I mean, you and I have been tracking that, that seems thermostat since its first iteration. We were impressed with it then. But I mean, with all the additional stuff on that. I mean, how are you with that now?

Ken Smyers
I’m very impressed, because you want some money maker, whoever, whoever sells that thermostat and puts it in and whatever. It can generate revenue from it. So in other words, you know, one thing we’re trying to do is hit the green play, get greener, make ourselves more energy efficient, make it safer, smarter, and and you know, more comfortable. And to do it in this business. You need to have motivation and that thermostats a moneymaker. A thermostat in the right hands can make that occupant very happy, but it can also produce data that is social revenue. And it could give service contractors you know,

Ken Smyers
an edge baby.

Ken Smyers
Nice. Well done. Well, yeah,

Eric Stromquist
for sure. For sure. Well, listen, our second guest has already lined up. Kenny’s teed up, he’s ready to come on chomping at the bit. So without further ado, how about introducing guest number two?

Unknown Speaker
Ken Sinclair, the owner, editor, and the oracle of our industry is joining us here on episode 330. Welcome to the show. Ken Sinclair,

Eric Stromquist
welcome can

Ken Sinclair
thank you very much. You guys call me names again. But

Eric Stromquist
we’ve added Oracle now to Notrodomus, Sinclair, auto Sinclair. Yeah. Is the smartest guy and on the internet, I mean, somebody somebody which one’s going to stick is is is a question I gotta ask, but hey, we’ll we’ll table that dude. lots going on, man, we normally get you the first part of the month, but I was out. So if you don’t mind, we’ll start with let you know some of the highlights of the September issue that will prequel covering and talk about some other stuff.

Ken Sinclair
Okay, it’s been an interesting issue. We

Ken Sinclair
we got started with the

Ken Sinclair
building the backbone that intrigued me that actually, I’m still talking about real calm, my guess is that I went lots of sessions there. While you guys were busy working, I actually went around to a lot of the sessions. But anyway, this whole idea that the backbone is turning to fiber in the building. And because of that cost of installing that is not as prohibitive as it was, in the old days. A lot of folks are actually doing their own in house wireless, they kind of building a different kind of building that has a glass backbone, and basically, their own antenna systems. And they’re doing this both in retrofit, where there is no networks in the building of any significance. And they’re doing it for cell phone survival. And then it’s easier to piggyback some of this new 5g stuff. So anyway, that’s that’s sort of the gist. And so I tried to make that into something interesting. So I called it building backbones, and wireless skin. Nice. So you can kind of imagine that, so we got this, the building is that we used to know that was pretty chunky and substantial now has a very, very, very fine glass backbone with a whole bunch of wireless stuff. And anyway, we got some real good responses to that. Scott Cochran talked a lot about API’s and basically apps, how they’re going to drag some of that stuff and that whole wireless floating stuff and how we bring that into our, into our mix.

Eric Stromquist
Real quick. Can I back up real quick? and Kenny, I think I do have a new name for Canada. I think this one will stick which should be Shakespeare, St. Clair could turn a gray for sure. But you notice.

Eric Stromquist
I mean, maybe another way to sort of approach this is like, say, five G’s upon us, you’ve done sort of a deep dive into a real calm dead, far listeners out there. And obviously, they can go to the September issue of automated buildings calm to do a deeper dive, but I guess a thumbnail sketch, what is the average contractor building owner need to know about 5g? How’s that going to affect things and you know, they need to get on to it. Now they can they wait till later, I didn’t prepare for?

Ken Sinclair
Well, my shot on it, which I may not be right. But what I’m what I’m thinking is going to happen is that 5g is is is amazing, it’s, you know, radically going to change wireless communications. But I’m not sure that it’s going to be rolled out by the cell providers. And the reason for that is that it’s very complex. And half of this stuff hasn’t been quite invented yet. But portions of it are quite well vented, invented and defined. And what we’re going to see I think, is the very educated, the very leading edge building people actually rolling what we call 5g, like services out. And you’ve seen some of this, you’ve been excited about it too, in the fact of location services. Basically, heat mapping where the people are in the site, the way, the way Google traffic works, and tells you where the traffic jams is by looking where all the cell phones are. So that kind of technology trolled over. Traditional technology is easy to deploy, when you have your own antenna systems. And that’s what much the chatter was about at real calm, was in the house wiring wireless was what they were calling it. And there were several people, there was even a pavilion about that. So that’s a big shift. So I think what they need to know is that when they go into a building, they need to ask the question, if if they’re hosting their own wireless systems, do they have location services? Actually, that’s in the article that links to our editorial which building backbone. So if you click there, there’s actually an article or review called Building backbones. Actually, maybe let me just read the the last questions because they’re kind of startling. The last questions of that article say, this is a question for the contractor to ask when he comes to the meeting. Will copper be used anywhere? And at what point and for which networks? And why? Who will supply and install a fiber backbone in the building? What wireless in building services protocols will be provided? And how will it be propagated with within the building and near field? Do we supply wireless edge devices only? Are we allowed to create our own networks within the building? Who is the master systems integrator? A new word or professional integrator? Hmm. Interesting how our outside service providers handled within the building another word, how are the traditional sell people, we selling services to them? Because in the past, they basically put their antenna systems in our buildings, but we’re starting to see a situation where the building owner will might provide his own antenna systems. Next question Are their way finding and people heat mapping part of the design using hulu’s? platform? Next one, are these platforms open and available for edge device propagation? Big Question. Questions like this will radically lead us to our next level of learning on our journey to help us solve our education emergency. So you can kind of see that’s that’s the kind of thinking that I think the industry needs to look at. Well, I printed that out.

Ken Smyers
That’s a great capture. I mean, there’s there’s a lot of meat on that bone. In other words, it’s a summary of the future of communications in the backbones in buildings, for sure. And then, and then you end it with an amazing yo start to another major concern, which is where we’re going to get all the talent to make all this technology real, you know, I mean, and we had talked offline initially about, you know, the labor shortages and bringing all this talent into the HPC. Industry, you know, to really and truly take advantage of this technology that’s here already. And the emerging tech emerging, emerging technologies that are right on the cusp, to include 5g which is going to, you know, I was reading an article 5g is going to change the way we live period it’s going to be is going to be as such, it’s going to be like in Star Wars or in Star Trek, when you go into, you know, warp speed. Because the speed that it offers, and the immediacy of information is something that we’ve never experienced before. And once we get a taste of it, autonomous vehicles is just the tip of the iceberg. So we’re going to see information exchange so quickly, that it’s going to make life more interesting, easier. And there’s so many different ideas. But the point of the whole comment here is talent, and how do we get more talent into our industry? I had just read an article from the always really good, I think this is worth passing this on, it came out of the news. It’s called the HPC workforce development issue solutions for the HPC workforce problem. And what they did was they had a board six people, six experts from six different points of view about the industry gave serious comment to you know, very important things like, you know, the the has the budgets to attract people, you know, the colleges, you know, long story short trade, schools, get out household movers, great, you know, take on that. And then the another guy says about, hey, the Labor Department of the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t have the right numbers for the people aren’t when they start on the subsequently when people are looking for information, whatever, there’s, there’s not a real desire to put our best foot forward and put us in the best light that we are very high earning Trade and Industry. And yet the perception is that it’s not. So can you have a lot of ideas, and you got some things on the agenda for HR show that are going to help again, just accelerate the whole process? bring positive light, we have the control trends, Young Guns awards coming? What are your what do you what do you have planned for HR?

Ken Sinclair
Okay, great. We’ve worked our way up to 12 sessions, which is a world record for us we, in the old days, we Well, first, the first one, I did one session, and then it kind of evolved to about four sessions. And we kind of did that for a while. And this. This year, we went 12 sessions going and I suspect, over half of them speak to the problem of getting folks and retraining folks, it’s actually not only just getting folks into our industry, we have to retain the people in our industry, because the other industries are stealing them. And our our people are so smart. They want to they want to come and grab them. And that’s a problem. And then, in addition to them being so smart, we need to retrain them because our industry is changing so rapidly that they need to know a whole lot more than they did. Anyway. So let me just touch on the titles of a couple of our training sessions at HR. First one is Scott Cochran. And what he’s trying to do is he’s welcome building system integration. Welcome to the Jungle starting block to become an integrator. So here we have people who are pretty knowledgeable in our industry, and he’s trying to up the pace and make them into so systems integrators. Next one is with trees, pulling more women into the ranks of smart building leadership. Another source for us is to try and get more women involved in our industry. And then Scott, Brad and I are speaking to the attraction and retention of hyper digital IP enabled Millennium and generation Zed. So you can see that we’re kind of picking right at that. And then the next one is we do a session talking on how to become IP enabled people and products, this whole shift, we have to come across the floor, we have to transition into that the heat in the haystack, one kind of suggests, you know, the whole the continuation evolution of somatic tagging, and what it is and why it matters. Then our guards young, the next generation of HVAC controls open discussion for open future that has Brad Calvin, Zach and Nicholas back again for we’re going to reignite that energy that we had from that overflowing session. Last year in Atlanta. There’s some exciting stuff coming. Don’t know if you saw in our September edition, Calvin does a gives you the do it yourself for building that building controller all in one session then shows you exactly how to do that. Just a whole bunch of stuff going on. And then we’re going to take our Collaboratory. We’ve got vision there and we’re talking about this whole occupant experience side of it. Then actually, Scott, he’s got a section at the extinction of the temperature control contractor and the evolution of the MSI. It’s an interesting discussion so just that the fact that all these contractors have to step up their game then in addition to that we got Dan there’s more like the guy with the nightmares and they’re more are concurrent sessions where our rooms full for the day and we’ve got captured another room and we’ve got Scotty bomb of tritium are actually like on as he’s building himself here. building automation, one on one control at your fingertips. fingertips. Sorry about that. And I think what we’re trying to do too, is we’re trying to make our industry as exciting as it is. And then we’ve got filled Zito doing a crafting your skill set for a new career in building automation. So what he’s trying to do is provide a method across the floor. So when you come if you’re in another industry, and you have some of this skill set, how do I reapply that skill set to try and get a toehold on the building automation. And actually just closing up all of those sessions, just talking to Leo up at the George Brown College in Toronto. And they have, they’ve been running the last couple of years of BAS.

Ken Sinclair
program college degree. And this year, they’re people there was fights for their people, they basically their whole class was consumed. Some company stuck two and three. And the kids were absolutely bewildered as to what company to go with and what opportunity to follow. So there is another real time example, muscles eaters Is it his little caption that this our industry presently has a 300,000 professional shortfall 300,000 people in order to close this gap. And then that’s what he’s going to dress his his theme on. But imagine that there’s a shortage to the point where you can say 300,000 people are needed in our industry to fill all the gaps and you know, the opportunities. So it’s pretty, pretty impressive. Very impressive. Wow. That’s, I think, I think scary might be a better word than impressive, right? And that’s true. That’s

Eric Stromquist
one in Shakespeare, I want to acknowledge you for a couple things. If our audience who might not know, these are sessions go on in HR HR will be this year in Orlando, Florida. So we’re going to the show you definitely want to attend these sessions Can I mean, I mean, I think the first time we started working with you on these sessions, you were doing one or two, and he’s got 12. So I think it speaks volumes about how useful these are to two people in our industry. So we’ll be able to get you more details on that as we get closer to the show. But just mark your calendar for HR because you can be to great events there. You know, obviously Ken and what he’s doing HR and of course, the control trends awards. But Shakespeare Sinclair, there’s something else I want to acknowledge you for which is you know, and this goes back to your notes are damas said notre Thomas was a great predictor that predicted all kinds things were going to happen in the future. Is it you know, you talk about the building owner experience before anybody was even talking about that. And then we just had another interview and more and more manufacturers now they’re taking heed to that they’re realizing that, that they have to address the experience and create an occupant experience. So I wanted to acknowledge you for that, because you’re the first person I knew just started talking about that. Now it’s coming to fruition. And it seems like your October issue is going to be dealing with sort of the next evolution of that. So speak a bit about October issue and and owner operator, I can experience and how that’s going to be transformed to the next level.

Ken Sinclair
Yes, the The theme for October is going to be building user connection,building user connection.

Ken Sinclair
And I’ve got an article out now that’s actually online, that gives you a little bit of insight to the direction of the issue. And this is why connected contractor. And believe it or not, we actually have 50 chapters of an online resource we’re calling the building, building book of digital transformation. So basically, what we’ve done is we’ve just taken all of our articles and stuffed them together. And they actually it’s amazing how they kind of just fall into form a digital online book. So you can kind of see what we’re chatting about there. But it’s, it’s interesting. And I in that article, I, I make make play at Candace namecalling here of an industry industry arc, Oracle. So we’ve been playing around with that. So we linked to what you’ve been working for. But what we’re talking about now is this, if if we go through the glass backbone, and we talk about the wireless skin, is all of these people, all these users of the building somehow have to, they have to fit into how this how we’re going to interface with the building. And this is this is completely new to us as an industry. And to me as as you seem to see seem to feel I have some expertise in this, which I, I really don’t. And I just, I just gathered content, a content connector. So I basically see somebody talking about this and somebody talking about that, but the kind of the same thing. And I try to pull them together to try and see if there’s a story in there, as an industry we can use to move forward. But anyway, some pretty interesting stuff came out of that. The the the basic play that we need to look more at what’s happening in the autonomous vehicle. Industry, because what we really need to get to is we need to get to autonomous buildings. And so when, when you come into a building, as you the picture on your phone appears on the screen, and your car basically needs to appear near you, on your desk, maybe not on a screen, maybe in a virtualization, a hologram or whatever, whatever the medium is of the day, but it needs to the building needs to be aware that you’re there, you need to be aware of the services within the building. And there’s a lot of this awareness going on in the autonomous vehicle. And again, we worked with Sue, Sue Ha. And she’s, she’s basically been working in that area as well.There’s a great graphic that was provided in a site that

Ken Sinclair
an article that was in our September issue. It’s called establishing a smart building industry standard. And he’s just talking about when we go to a meeting, we spend half of our meeting trying to talk about what is smart building or or what it is we do. And we need to try and get some categories around this. So we can actually talk fast. And we need to come to some kind of an agreement, what is an autonomous building? And what are some of the features of it. So when we start talking about that, and there’s some movements that we need to know about. The open mobility foundation is is a organization that a lot of the cities are starting to look at. So we have to take a look at what’s happening in smart cities. In fact, I’m working on the next, the next piece here of this and it’s actually called Smart City buildings, building and it’s so the buildings, of course, are, are the bulk of the smart city. And we’ve we’ve been kind of working in isolation, but we need to look a lot harder at what the Smart City movement is doing. How, how they’re how they’re pulling themselves together, they’ve got a myriad of stuff, they’ve got all this information that’s coming to them, they hadn’t even seen it this scooter networks, knowing where these electric scooters are, they have all of that data, they have all the data from Uber’s. And all of their transport systems, they have their parking systems, which tell them where the cars are in the city, all of this information somehow has to be sorted out and dealt with. So that’s the kind of thing the open mobility foundation is working for. We need to be providers of open data to that we the buildings have to meld into the smart city. And all of that information has to be exchanged. Not sure how that’s all going to happen. But at fact, just acknowledging it, and there is some, some some stuff that is arriving at Yes, against Sua, she basically talks about how this how we need to design, it was an interesting twist, we need to design for artificial intelligence, we know we’re going to use it, we’ve been basically doing our designs, and then we fit then then we add our artificial intelligence, we can’t do that we need to actually design because we know that data is going to be available. How are we going to use that data? How are we going to use that data in a autonomous model? Too much said,

Ken Smyers
No, no, I’m falling. Cuz again, I’m on your website. And I’m going down the suitors article there. But but the see what Eric had said earlier, and you were blowing positive, you know, naming your way because of the Nostradamus and Oregon Irving. And you’re just saying you’re connecting information. Well, you know, that is part of that that is probably the most difficult thing is to be able to filter through all these developments. You know, we’re talking about building empathy, you know, and some of these things that were kind of like yo oxymorons, and I didn’t really like business ethics. That was one of my first oxymorons and I read an article about it was going through school and it because one didn’t seem to belong to the other. And yet, you’re seeing all these juxtapositions that you’ve done, actually have come together to become some synthesis reminds me of the thesis of antithesis, and then you have synthesis, you’ve been able to pick out you know, the important pieces, and then the opposite pieces, the headwinds, whatever, and then draw them into where they’re going to actually dovetail and come together through technology, basically, IoT has made a lot of what we’re talking about possible, you know, and you say, 5g, and 5g, what it means to you and autonomous vehicles, what it means to me and buildings, whatever, the basically, things are going to move at 1000 times faster, download speeds are going to be seconds, instead of you know, 30 seconds or a minute or whatever. So the when you’re saying coming together to build open mobility movement, and you’re going to have established small buildings or smart building standards, whatever. Basically, the bottom line is, it’s data, everything’s producing data, some that’s very relevant, very important. So you’ve got to create the protocols or put the communications in the networks, and that makes that data extendable. You know, so whoever needs it, so you need is a manufacturer going to produce something that generates data? You should make that as easy and as enlightening, as integrated as possible, right? Is that what you’re trying to say? Sometimes they’re misunderstanding them?

Ken Sinclair
Yeah, no, that’s what that’s what I’m trying to say.

Ken Sinclair
The whole five g experience, you’re the the definition I think you’re looking for is, is near real time. And that’s that’s basically what’s what’s happening is the data is coming at you so quick, that for the human mind that it happened in real time. As we, as we see something we we break. You know, it’s sort of almost like a reaction. As now the the cameras and these automatic braking systems that are in some of the new vehicles, that happens, they’ve got the forward looking camera, they see something, the distance is getting too great. They alarm the basically automatic a break. And ironically enough, it

Ken Sinclair
sorry, My watch is trying to talk to me.

Ken Sinclair
Sorry. So they they basically

Ken Sinclair
got all of that occurs in near real time. Looking at it from a computer point, there’s probably a bunch of nanoseconds in between there, but we, we can’t perceive that. And ironically enough, the industry is coming to recognize that I just bought a new car, and it came with that and 10% off your insurance if in fact you have the automatic breaking. So here we got a camera on stuck on the front of a car looking at the car in front of you, it will automatically apply the brakes. there’s a there’s a discount for that. So the industry is starting to accept some of this stuff. We need to understand how we’re going to use some of these technologies in our buildings. Great point. And

Eric Stromquist
I had a perfect storm in Canada and I’ve had for a long time, which is nothing is obvious to the uninformed. And I think you know notre Domus, Oracle, Shakespeare, Sinclair, you know, you would agree that, you know, it’s not that we, in our many years in the industry haven’t seen change, we just haven’t seen it come this rapidly. And the rate of change is, I think it’s going to be a constant, it’s going to continue to increase the rate of change. So why is this important, we’re talking about all this stuff is because, hey, if you want this stuff’s gonna be coming so fast at you. If you want to know how to react to it, this gives you some preview Can I mean, you’ve been very accurate with the trends predicted, and we’ve been doing these shows waiting for three or four years now. And it’s astounding to me, Kenny, how right on. So this is, you know, we appreciate what you bring can to our audience and our community, we encourage our community to check out both the September issue of automated buildings calm as well as the October issue coming out. And then also to make sure you sign up for Ken’s classes at HR is breakout sessions. And well, when we get the signup sheet for that, we’ll make sure we get those to you. So you can do that. But can anything else you want to speak about before we hop off?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I just like to close with the

Ken Sinclair
really what I’m doing here is I’m just a content connector. There’s basically all this amazing content out there. And there’s if anything, there’s almost too much of it. And what I’m trying to do is, is highlight stuff that I think is important, and that are pieces of the puzzle. And I don’t really want to get in between all of this excellent content. And I am sometimes pass an opinion. But more often, what I do is just connect you to that article. And say you should look at this, you should look at that these two things are going to bang into each other and we’re going to get squished in the middle. That’s that’s my purpose. And why are you reading those articles, you may see a completely different path of how this is going to occur. So I think the importance is, is just to try and highlight content, current content that’s been talked about actually another thing another barometer I use is on social media like what’s been talked about you put something out there and you know, some some of this some of these articles we threw out on our September issue, I posted them on LinkedIn and we’re up into the six and 7000 reads and 40 people commenting on and a whole discussion is broke out there’s obviously some interest in that so that’s content that you guys should kind of look at it’s it’s not me understanding what the hell’s going on. I’m just seeing all these pieces. Dude, can you you’re like the ultimate

Eric Stromquist
wing left wing man when it comes to this you were the conversation starter. So we were all you know, 30 years younger and not married. We got we want to have going up for the girls at the bar going Hey, what do you think about smart buildings or whatever, right?

Ken Sinclair
That was that was a guy used to pick the little guy that used to pick the fight and then he would wiggle away and let the big guys fight it out.

Unknown Speaker
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well Ken, thanks so much, man. We appreciate you taking time come

Unknown Speaker
talk to our audience. Super

Eric Stromquist
automated buildings calm check it out. So there you go. Kenny man Canton Claire’s always man very very insightful stuff. He’s a guy you gotta pay attention to because I really think he’s, he came into the future. And you know, that’s like I said on the interview is something he’s saying Kenny, is it sort of has his finger on the pulse of what’s going I

Ken Smyers
will not tell you what people don’t realize how much work he puts into it so he’s case clairvoyant. He’s a master damas. He’s an Oracle. And now he Shakespeare so

Eric Stromquist
he’s got he’s got Shakespeare, Shankar I think it’s this kids need to maybe consider naming one of his grandchildren, Shakespeare, Sinclair.

Unknown Speaker
I bet anything else before we wrap it up?

Ken Smyers
No, I just, again, we got a full head of steam. Things are getting busy now. We’re coming to the end of September. And we’re approaching, you know, the calendar. Visibility is increasing HR is going to be a huge event right prior to that we got the control trends awards event. And it’s just a lot of really important technologies are coming into play. So between now and the release of our categories, which should be in the very near future This week, we’re going to begin the control trends voting process through the nomination. first phase is dominating the top people solutions and products in each category

Eric Stromquist
is going to be fantastic. So there you go, man. That’s another way of control talk. Now you’re smart buildings video cast and podcast, especially likes our two guests this week. Be sure to check both of them out and with that, I will leave you with the bold, stay in control and stay relevant

Transcribed by https://otter.ai