The Smart Building Blindspot | E3 - Hard Refresh - An ISSA Podcast

Sa. Alrighty. Well, welcome everyone. We are back on the Hard refresh and this is our first official episode with a guest. I don't need to mince words in any way, shape or form in expressing gratitude for Juneay for joining us today. We're going to get to his introduction in a second. But before we get started, today's episode, just a quick overview is going to be about the smart building blind spot. Smart buildings are really cool, but are they all what they're cracked up to be? I don't know. We're going to find out today's discussion, but before we do that, we got some quick control to go over and I'm going to let Karina take it away and do some housekeeping.

Yes. And I'm going to be cheesing all day because I am so excited to have Janath on the call today. So if I'm smiling the entire time, it's because this stuff makes me so happy. And he has agreed to be our first guest and I could not be more thrilled. So we are going to get right into it with our quick control. Things that I want to mention do check out on our group LinkedIn page. We just posted Ryan's webinar. I'm sorry, not webinar, microlearning. It is creating a culture of innovation. And also please check out the last episode of Hard Refresh, which was all in one or all wrong. The platform dilemma. And still stay tuned on more information about the CLX, which is March 25. We are going to be providing more details as they come, but let's get into it. I'm jazzed.

All right, well, we got to clear the cash on this episode with Junaid dropping some truth bombs. So first off, as we dive into this segment, so Junaith is going to introduce himself and then we're going to like go deep into some. Just kidding. I'm going to turn it over. Junaith, real quick. CEO and founder of Xan Compute Geneith. Welcome officially to the show.

Thank you. Thank you guys. And I just learned that I'm the very first guest. It's increased my pressure level, like.

So have I.

Now I gotta perform, right? So I'm ready. I'm very excited and I'm on it. Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate that. And it's always great to talk shop and I'm always excited these type of discussions.

Well, and I told you earlier, so I've been following you for quite some time now. I remember we met when I was at Pioneer and just following the journey of XAM Compute and all the things that you guys are doing really leads leading us and through this kind of world of smart building. So I am so excited to be able to pick your brain a little bit and see what you guys are working on over there at San Compute and what you're hearing in terms of the new directions. And so I think let's just get into it.

Yeah. So this, this is all about like the smart building dilemma, I guess we could say, or the smart building blind spot. And I mean, smart technology and facilities has been around for quite some time. It's continuing to involve. But what always seems to be the question that comes to my mind is, is it integrating well with specifically like cleaning operations? Because there's smart lighting and smart sensors and all of this stuff. Junaith, what do. What do you think is the most common fail when it comes to the idea of integrating smart technology in a facility and how that matches with cleaning operations?

Yeah, yeah. I think that are. They are like two different aspects of things, right. One is more technical, one is more how do I take technology and operationalize it? Right. That's the way I look at it. And you guys know this forever and ever. The silos in buildings, building technology always existed. Be it like, you know, just something as simple as occupancy sensors for automating lighting versus occupancy sensor for or doing something else. Right. Controlling H Vac or tracking occupancy in conference rooms. Always two different players, two different systems. And we do still see places where there are like two occupancy sensors. One is doing something for lighting and one is like doing something else. Right. So those silos do exist and those are mature systems. Like the building management side of things have been around for like many decades now, already has gone through multiple generations. When we look at this from the cleaning side, put the cleaning filter on, we have an opportunity to start over in many ways, like kind of break those silos and build system that can actually take data from existing sensors as long as the other side is willing to open it up. Right. And in many ways set a trend. Right. That does not exist in the building space today. And at zan, we are doing that a lot. We always have these type of conversations with other technology providers. And in fact, we do have standing partnerships today with guys like Enlightened and Siemens and so on, who are deploying like tens of thousands of sensors, millions, if you will, across the world, to track occupancy for automating lighting. And we actually take that occupancy pass it into our algorithms to now predict cleaning needs and so on. So these are like, you know, steps towards it. But industry at a large, at large has to kind of recognize that and start taking more of those steps. So that's. That's like the tech side of things. And on the upside, that's like even more challenging. Right. If you will, because. Oh, yeah, you talk about few decades of technology existence. Now we're talking about 100 years of cleaning and the way things have been done. I think, you know, there's definitely a lot of development there as well. And that's not as fast as a tech provider we expected, but we are now recalibrating ourselves and trying to track to the industry. And from that sense, this trajectory looks like parabolic, you know, amazing. Right. That, to me, is very exciting as well. And as we go into this, we can talk a little bit more specifics and go into exactly what is happening. And, you know, I want to take this opportunity to use, you know, to. To convey the point of how Issa can help. Right. In. In that realm of.

Yeah. I would just add, too. I love that you said that from the operational kind of, not barriers, but from being on the BSCS side. Right. With Pioneer. And I was training a lot of the frontline teams and one of the things that really helped was being able to speak the language. Right. I was able to communicate with these team members in Spanish and that gap of. Well, I. Not only do I understand them culturally, I understand the language, I understand their viewpoints. I've cleaned buildings myself. I know exactly how things operate at night and day. Porters. And so I, I just think that commonality when you're onboarding technology becomes super critical because there is an inevitable fear that a lot of times operational teams have with new technology. And so coming in as an ally of your people and saying, hey, we're going to do this together, I think sets the tone and the intention of any sort of any implementation. Kaden, would you agree?

Yeah, Well, I mean, it's like, it's the idea that you're trying to evolve processes at a. At a rate that is like, you know, a thousand years of habitual learning.

Right.

Cleaning's been cleaning, Right.

Yeah.

Like, I wiped off that surface because it was dusty and that happened in a thousand bc, you know.

Right, right.

There was dirt on the table. We wiped it off, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. That has not changed in forever. And technology is like trying to. To challenge.

Yeah.

Where this can go. Jenith, when you were talking about. I started geeking out of my mind when you were talking about how the lighting sensors is informing data back on if the room was occupied. Which means if the room was occupied, it probably needs cleaning. Right. And so I started geeking out. I mean we, we geek out as software people all the time on this stuff that just instead of having contracts for building service contractors in the future that says I want you doing this, this and this weekly, we will eventually get to, we're not there as an industry yet, but like I, I, as I say, leading the charge and constantly having like the industry trade shows and things coming together. They're pushing the education and narrative that as we unify much more data is going to become available in the market and we're going to switch from contracts that have predefined scopes to contracts that follow censored data scopes. Right. It only gets cleaned if it was used.

We're already starting to see that.

Right.

Really the contract. Right.

Yeah.

It's less about how many people you have deployed, more about what's the cleaning level and how effective it is and how helping with the building occupants and the customer experience and so on. As we start seeing those shifts, these type of technology adoption becomes, it paves the way, it becomes a lot.

Absolutely easier.

And that also brings you back to as solution providers and technology providers. How do we think about it? How do we facilitate from the tech end? Right. That's, that's really important as well because these are not like, you know, there's some actuator that needs to flip or a fan that needs to stop or anything. We're talking about real people here who are like walking around, right. And they need to take care of things. And that's where the industry is today. And that's where it's going to be for years to come. Till the human eyed robot starts walking around and cleaning areas. Right. Till that point the tech has to be designed in a way that it makes it easy for people to adopt it, operationalize it and take advantage of the recommendations coming out of these AI systems. Right. So that's really important. So if I can take a minute. The way we think about it is going back to first principles. Right. In cleaning, it's about ads. Tasks need to be performed in that area. At what frequency do you perform those tasks and route. Right. Like kind of. But that's the spectrum of things, if you will. Now you got to go back and see how do you rebuild this in a way where you insert technology and kind of Change the way things are done. Right. Fundamentally so Iot AI combination kind of changing the frequency at which these tasks need to be performed. Because tasks need to be performed, we all know that you can't skip that. But at what frequency do you perform based on usage is a question that you need to answer and incorporate it into that program. You bring in robotics and AI, right, which is a physical form of the AI. That kind of changes the type of tasks as well. Now you don't need to go back in that area with a person. The robot is doing it, the task is still getting done, but it's not a person doing it, but it's a robot doing it. So the task kind of changes, the nature of the task kind of changes. Right. So then how do you build this program up with these technology ingredients in there to make it effective is where the secret sauce is of success, right, for these type of platforms and technology in this field in general.

Well, and I love this because one of the things that we really were pushing was challenging the status quo. And I think this speaks to that because if you look at analytics, you can make better decisions. And so specifically, let's talk through like the periodic work schedule that's incorporating the scope of work. Right. A lot of these scope of works are ancient. We're still talking about emptying out ashtrays, for God's sakes, and majority of buildings, you know, don't have those. And so I love the ability to be able to really lend to a approach of understanding work or work allocations and making better decisions based on data, but also based on what is actually needed. And that to me feels so good because you're seeing traffic patterns, lighting patterns, data sensors, and making this really great assessment. And to your point, Junaith, I think the people, instead of just mindlessly having them go to a specific set because it's set in the scope of work dated 1984, you're actually prompting them to go into a specific office because there was someone there. And it's just, it feels like that's the direction we should all push our clients, push ourselves and push past this traditional status quo.

Yeah. And two, I get excited when BSCs start talking about these things in the past, like I would say two to three quarters. I've seen a lot of examples where many BSCs have seriously started looking at our technology, the sensors and the AI platform and robotics. Right. And bringing in these director of Innovation and experts. Right. If you will, the subject matter experts who are now making an attempt, sitting with us, spending a Lot of time learning how to bring this into their operations and make it effective as a program internally. Right. Which is a really good trend to see. And the maturity of the industry, where this points to the maturity of the industry, I should say. And we should see more of those. And whenever you guys are ready, I have a suggestion for Issa. Right.

You do this.

Yeah.

I want to hear, you can't leave us. You have a solution for Issa?

No, I have a suggestion for Issa.

Okay, well, you can tell us.

Yeah. So, you know, there are lots of these training programs and certifications and so on that Issa does. Right?

Right.

Today, the IoT AI Technology and Robotics to a large extent has reached the level of maturity where it can be operationalized. Right?

Right.

Yes. We can improve a lot more, we can bring in more, we can be more effective as technology providers. But it's at a stage where the supervisors and the team there on the ground can have training programs in terms of how to effectively use this technology. How do you choose the right set of technology for your facility? These are all, in many ways empowering the right people who are in charge of taking care of the day to day things and making this whole ecosystem effective. Right. Once such training programs exist and ISA is a great organization to structure those type of things, I almost see Issa as a glue. Right. There are these two different worlds and you guys can, through these programs, can bring these together. And what that could do eventually is if we are successful in that, basically create this loop, if you will. Right. Tech providers with whatever they have, they're feeding the training and the guys on the ground get trained, they start using it and they realize, hey, you know what? This works in most of the cases, but here are some examples where I can't use this. These are gaps, right. As what can you do right now that cycle starts. Right. Then that's a way we can get the entire industry rolling forward where not all tech providers will be able to provide that solution. And the solution is not coming from one tech provider. You guys know that. Because too complex. It has to be a combined system that works for the operations.

Right.

But this loop starts, which actually will be a really good thing for our industry as a whole. Right. So, you know, there you go.

I think no, and I think no. I mean setting the standard, right? That's what I'm hearing. You're setting best practices, you standardizing. Because there is, and that has always been the intention of this is this committee is to be able to establish best practices. There's so much going on in the industry and what better place to do it within, like to your point, ISISA is the glue that holds us all together. And if we can come and have that commonality of like, okay, these are the benchmarks, these are the standardizations best practices, I think this is the best place to do it with the best audience as well. Kaden, would you agree?

Yep. That's a double click moment. Yeah, double tap on that and agree with it. You know, that's it's, it is overall an industry that is so far behind in technology adoption that what we're trying to come together in is what other industries did, you know, 10, 15 years ago? Right. And so it's just exciting to be part of that evolution. And we're probably going to do it at a faster adoption rate. Just because there's not probably we will be doing it at a faster adoption rate because technology is moving at rates that feel overwhelming to even keep up with. Even as technology service providers, right. Every day something new comes out, you're like, well, we already decided this three days ago, you know, so that definitely does happen. So Jenith, we like to keep these episodes semi short and consumable. So I kind of want to lean into one last topic or question. I would love to understand the most valuable facility in your experience. The most val type of facility. The most valuable type of facility that technology just seems to be booming in from IoT and AI technology with smart buildings. Do you see a trend of this particular type of facility? If you're doing this type of facility and you don't have this technology like you're behind because these are the ones that are like this size and this type.

Yeah. Like what vertical? Yeah, love it.

Yeah. There are multiple verticals come to think of it. Right. The immediate first one, I'm not ranking them, but listing all of them that, that are relevant here. Aviation has always been a big one. I think it's for both IoT and AI, right. Large corporate offices, right. Where there are like you know, 50, 100, sometimes even 400 cleaners. Right. This has been really effective. And there are definitely other verticals like that we are starting to go into. Right. Healthcare is one. Healthcare is a unique one, right?

Yeah.

Actually learning a lot as we go through this process. And it so happens that with IoT and AI, I can't speak for the other tech pieces, but because we are involved in this, heads down, I can speak for this one, that we can add a lot of value to that process even though it's a really unique process. It's much more tightly controlled, if you will. But in spite of that, this technology can significantly amplify operations. So we are starting to see success there. The other one is higher ed universities. We're starting to see they're spread out and people moving from one building to another to take care of different areas. There's always room for efficiency there. So yes, that would be top four. We've done other verticals, but you know, to keep it concise. Right.

Yeah.

These four are really good verticals to look at.

Yeah. When you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of square feet and upwards of millions of square feet, it's just a massive space to manage. And that's just one location or campus of locations, right?

That's right, yeah.

Where that, the, the problem becomes, it just becomes so magnified because there's so many moving parts. And in a singular campus you could say, hey, 10 minutes of inefficiency times by a thousand cleaning operators.

Yeah.

Like that's a lot of waste for a single facility to be experiencing.

Yeah. And especially today's day and age where the churn is really high, getting that labor is becoming more and more and more challenging. Right. So, you know, it makes sense to look at these technology. But that's to my earlier point. Right. It has to fit into your operations. And we have like software for those that helps people with that. Right. That going to first principles and building it up type of thing. That's the thought process we had and that's how we put it together. And that's starting to resonate. That's a slight plug there. But in a way that's at least we feel honestly that it's going to help the industry. And looking at it, I think it.

Also propels you to serve your clients in a different capacity. Like we were seeing a lot of times where our clients were coming to us and trying to understand sustainability initiatives. And I think a system like a sand compute could really help in bridging that gap with sustainability. I mean, there's so many things specifically in D.C. mandates that are coming down that buildings have to or property teams have to abide by. And what better way than to leverage the partnership with a sand compute and have that metrics, because that's ultimately what drives is how can we serve our clients better and provide the analytics that they need to then serve their ownership. I think what I always like to see in terms of like this type of conversation because I, if, if I was still in the pioneer hat in that seat, I would Think like, how do I leverage junaith in. In bringing Sand Compute to my clients? Like, what do I do? How do I do this? What conversations can I have with my client? Because obviously the best.

The.

The cost falls on the bsc, but the value is for both. Right? So how would you nav. How would you suggest navigating that for a BSc? How do you say, I want to bring this system into my building. This makes sense for you guys for your sustainability initiatives.

Yeah. So sustainability is an interesting one, right. The way it is defined today, I somehow feel it's still narrow. Yeah, we do a lot of energy related stuff, right. There are huge pieces like that goes untracked track like toilet paper dispensers. Paper dispensers. And we are a complete retrofit solution. Right. So it's very easy for us to track those and we end up seeing like 30, 40% waste of those roles. Right. In many cases, because it goes untracked, it doesn't hit anybody's radar. And in many ways that is sustainability. Right. Apparently we are destroying somewhere from 3% of the forest across the world to create these. I'm sure the consumer consumption is much higher than the commercial, but still 6% or 3% or 4% of deforestation to create these roles and you throw away like 40% of that is painful sustainability right there. So I think that angle makes a lot of sense. And then the second one is around waste management. How do you track solid waste? Not just the volume of it, but how heavy it is. So these are all sensing technologies that we have done with some of our progressive clients. Right. Not to name names, but I'm in the Valley, Silicon Valley. So, you know, there are a few who are like really, really diligent about those things. And we have done those type of rollouts. Right. To give insight. And that again is again one other area of sustainability that the overall quote unquote ESG programs should start looking at and incorporating. And that'll definitely expand to the bses right now because bses are in charge of the. At least the swapping out of the paper rolls in many case and taking care of the trash. They can play a big role in sustainability as well as. In addition to the energy side of.

For sure.

Yeah.

Fascinating. I could probably spend the next three hours talking.

Absolutely.

Yeah. I actually just. I was flying last week and airports is just such a massive domination of population usage and stuff. And yeah, I've been through airports that are very dumb facilities. And I'm like. And then, you know, Salt Lake International Was completely, like, redone a few years ago. And the smart technology and the newness, I am spoiled flying out of Salt Lake City often. And then I go to other airports and I'm like, man, get up with the times. You've been under construction for 10 years.

That's right. Yeah. And, you know, that realization is definitely happening. Aviation specifically, they always look at it from the customer experience perspective. How do you make sure that restrooms are cleaned on time?

Yep.

It leaves a huge impression with the pass.

100%.

Right.

So.

And how do you make sure that you hear their feedback? Use that to improve your operations further. So today we, we serve a lot of airports across the country, and that's like expanding vertical for us.

Wow, that's exciting. So next time I'm in D.C. reagan or Dulles, I want to see Zen Compute. Are you already in one of those airports?

Not those ones specifically, but I wouldn't say we're too far away. We should get there.

Nice. You're like, hope you're listening, Reagan.

There you go. Yeah. You know how to get. Get a hold of me, right?

Yeah, yeah. I said they're just on speed dot dial. That's a thing from 15 years ago. It's your favorite contact on your phone now.

But, you know, industry wise, to the point that we had. Right. It's usually like a tech adoption. They look at it like a bell curve, right. So always those early adopts, adopters on the left end of the curve, and then it starts shifting right towards the median. Right. That's when the adoption is really, really high. We have a lot of those early adopters. And I think the gap that. That always existed and now BSCS and FMS are realizing and they're fixing it, is having somebody internally to kind of bring these technology and align it with their program. As that gap kind of gets filled and there are more and more people doing that in different bses, I think the right shift will start happening. And that's when the flywheel starts spinning. Right. This whole feedback loop of this works. This needs to be tweaked. We can't use it in these scenarios. And the tech guy's going and finding the solution, and AI to a large extent is going to help us accelerate that. Because you guys know this. You know, you could collect the best data possible if you don't process it and give it as actionable recommendation. It's not getting used. Right. Data sitting in a database collecting dust. Right. So as AI, as we bring in more and more AI processing that data, bringing it together. And it's not just the sensor data. In airport, for example, we bring in the airport schedule. We bring in various other requirements like weather and stuff like that. Right. To our models to predict. Okay. These are like tasks that you need to be doing day to day. These are tasks that comes in right as the weather kind of changes. So you, you'll have like forewarning of like tweaking the labor deployment in a way that you can balance these things and bringing in insights and breaking some of those traditional thought process. Right. Go and clean the gates after every departure. Right, right. We have collected data where it shows that, you know, people hang out if, especially if there's a restaurant nearby or cafe nearby, people hang out in the gate area. And it's not just enough to go there after every depart. You might have a different schedule for those gates where those things are. So finding those things and aligning with the customer's goal and making sure that we bring that value proposition of better customer experience or optimize operations or whatever that goal is through technology that's critical. The more that examples that we start showing think the better are the pull then from the market to adopt this technology and shift us right towards that median.

Yeah.

That is so fascinating. I just thought of a question but it would probably be another 30 minutes to go down that I want to go into. We'll have to. Jenith, we'll have to have you in the future again because this has been fun.

Excellent.

And maybe it's just because of us in the industry, but whenever I travel I, I've got like a judgment hat on and it's probably not very fair. And this discussion today just made me like I have more to judge now. Yeah, that's what I go through and be like judging, doing it this way.

Yeah, they need to compute.

Okay.

Yeah. No, you set the bar very high. So we are definitely going to have you back on because this is just the tip of the, the iceberg for us and we're super excited to continue to. I think also CLX is in your future to come and teach something because you, you put, you put the seed and we're going to water it and we're going to have you come be a part of it because we're really excited to kick off this CLX series these this whole year. I think you would be incredible to teach one of those.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to do that guys. And you know, at the right time maybe bring in one of the subject matter expert on the cleaning side and kind of have a combined discussion in terms of tech because once you wear the tech hat.

Yeah.

That's a hammer. Right. You're gonna try to go hit everything somebody needs to like kind of put the brakes on. Hey.

Yeah.

Practical given what is. So we, we all needed that time to time and, and that's, that's how this thing evolves and gets to the next level.

Absolutely. We all lean in, work together.

Yeah. Well, hopefully all of you listening, enjoyed that today. Connect with Junaith on LinkedIn. Where else can they find you? Junaith.

Twitter.

Twitter, yeah.

X.

Nice. I'm going to go give you a follow on X right now.

Me too. Jumping in. Love it.

Yeah.

Appreciate you. Catch us next time on Hard Refresh everyone and look forward to more guests in the future for more awesome conversations. Thanks for tuning in.