Mastering Technology Integration: Simplifying Smart Solutions for Modern Spaces with Alex Carrion

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Hello hello. Ginny Bowling here with Pivot to Prosperity and we help investors build wealth and income through commercial real estate that also improves communities. And today for the podcast we have Alex Carrion. Welcome. Thank you for coming on Alex.

Thank you. Thanks for having me Jenny.

So we met through a local organization. We were both just talking how much we honor the the people in it and that's crew, commercial real estate, women and there's men too obviously. And actually Alex is on our board and does a lot of great things and so I think he can share a lot with us that will help people to put two and two together for better ways to attack technology, shall we say? So Alex, go ahead, take it away. Tell us about what you do.

Awesome. Well Jenny, thanks again for having me. Alex Carrion with Phase Integration. The last name is C A R R I O N. Not to be confused with carry on luggage, but anyway, I'm currently our sales director over at Faze Integration. I lead a team of amazing individuals to help our clients with some very complex technology. What does phase integration do and how do we come to market? We are what we would consider ourselves to be is a technology general contractor, similar to what a general contractor does to build a building. They take a set of plans, they contract the framer, the drywall or the painter and they execute the project and turn over the keys to the client. We do the same thing as it relates to technology. So your structured cabling, your audio, visual systems, surveillance and access control, digital signage, Your network, your wifi, all those sorts of things. We do all the design in house, we contract the partners to execute on the project, we project manage it through to completion, and then we turn it over to the client. What it allows us to do is really deliver exactly what the client is looking for from the very beginning. And there's no finger pointing as to whose responsibility it is. Phase integration handles all of it.

And that's gotta be such a relief for so many people because there's nothing worse, I can testify to nothing worse than having a glitch. Who's responsible if you're the one. Holy moly. Because it's over your head more times than not. And yeah, so having a point person for that. Well, and I've worked with a lot of big companies like ae, Common, HDR and you know, a lot of them that have lot of networked offices and it, and we always have a technology point. And you're, you're, you're a critical piece. You're especially, and I didn't tell you this when we were talking, I used to work with Century Link and so, you know, we used to negotiate the real estate piece of getting access to everywhere. So it is critical you have an expert helping you put things in the right places because you might need to access it later, you might need to repair it or keep change it.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And you know, what we've seen is there are certain individuals within organizations that are experts in technology, but a lot of times their job is not to be involved on a construction project. Right. They have their normal day to day business that they have to attend to. And so we really become a resource for them. We become an extension of the client's team, ensuring that everything that they want within this new space is actually being taken care of by a company that understands it and knows, you know, when these different trade partners need to be on site, you know, making sure that final paint is up before TVs get installed, or making sure the flooring's in place in the server room before the racks get landed. Those sorts of things we really excel at in making sure that, that the schedule is met.

And I would venture to guess, you know, it sounded like you were talking more about new, but your, your role is probably even more critical in a retrofit because that can be a real mess. And especially if it's an older building, you might have asbestos, you might have materials to worry about and you got to do it the right way because otherwise you could have a lawsuit.

Yeah, not so much in Orlando, but we have a lot of experience with historical buildings. As you know, historical buildings have certain protections and requirements for us being able to go into a space and understand the dynamics of an existing space. We're able to really enhance certain trades and make sure that their time on site is as effective as possible. So for clients that have a short timeline and have a very strict budget, we're able to go in and identify certain things that we can say early on to the client that either saves them time or money or on the flip side is going, oh my goodness, we're going to get into this for a lot more because of these unknown site conditions. And so, yeah, retrofits. You're absolutely right, Jenny.

Right, right. And you know, I was just going to go to your website, but I guess my computer's not going to let me. Maybe you can on your end because I just don't want to risk our voices. But if you want to show your list of services that might be helpful. And what I was thinking too was to elaborate more on the signage piece because that's such a huge tool besides just a sign. Now with digital, IT is huge what you can do.

Yeah, absolutely. And I can show really quick. Our solutions really are tied to the different teams that we normally integrate with. A lot of IT can be read through. As we work very closely with architects, we do get contracted occasionally through general contractors. Owner's reps are a big avenue for projects for us. Along with space planners, we do some on the facilities maintenance side with building managers and then managed service providers. These are the individuals, the IT help, you know, help desk break fix sort of organizations. And so within that we have a variety of services that you can see here. Audio, visual technology, structured cabling. We do a lot with acoustics. So both the acoustics consulting ease models, an acoustical analysis, as well as active and passive types of sound masking. We do lighting system design and then a few others in there. But to touch on the digital signage aspect of it, we do a lot with a variety of digital signage systems. Right. They can be as small as the scheduling panels located outside of a conference room that show the upcoming meetings. Two is as large as. We're currently in the process of putting up the brand new CSX letters at the top of their headquarter building in Jacksonville on the water. It's going to be the CSX letters and the train and it's all direct view led so they can change the colors, they can put different images up and you know, really that's kind of at the higher side, bigger picture. But really the most common digital signage that you see is when you're walking through a lobby and you see a display on the wall. A lot of times the building will utilize that for, for relevant information that's pertaining to tenants. Food trucks on Friday. Maybe there's a space for lease and there's an incentive there. Or internal communications within corporate offices where it's hey, Ginny, happy birthday or congratulations on 10 years. That sort of communication can also be leveraged through digital means. Always say this. It's not so much the physical display that's on the wall. We always want to know who's going to own it, who's going to manage it. Because at the end of the day, we can put a display anywhere. We can put up a very large one at the top of CSX or we can put a small one in a lobby. But the big driver there is the content. Who's going to own that and be able to update and not just have Ginny's birthday for the next three months shown on there. So that's always our biggest thing when we're doing digital signage is who's the owner and how can we help them, either train them, give them a basic slide deck, something that they can kind of hit the ground running so that the content stays fresh.

Absolutely. I recently walked into an office and I was shocked to see a sign there saying welcome Jenny Boland. I was like, oh, my goodness, I love it. It's a different feeling.

Yeah, it's a very powerful tool. Especially when you're like, you, you were unexpecting, you know, it's like, oh, that's amazing. They've gone the extra mile to welcome me.

Yeah, yeah. So you hit a bunch of things there I want to back you up to too. So signage is huge, especially the changeable digital simplified. Although it too has its glitches. So somebody may say, oh, I can manage it. But until there's a glitch and then you need someone to call.

Yeah.

Otherwise you're going to go nuts. But then you talked and. Well, another easy one to touch on is lighting. Oh, my gosh, it's huge. Especially medical offices and oh my gosh. And all places manufacturing industrial. So that's awesome. If you can do that and it's integrated especially, you don't always have to have the high powered ones on, right?

Yep.

And you can do mood lighting. Right?

All of that in a massage place, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you touched on the digital signage. Real Quick with the service. That's a huge one. Right. Is who's owning it. And then when something goes wrong, who do you call? When we do a digital signage project, we can either manage it, which means the client would just send us a note and our team would create the content and push it to that given display. Or we could just be break fixed. We give them the keys and they own it. And then we're just there to support. Right. Something goes wrong, they give us a call, we go on site, we fix it. So that's really the digital signage aspect. And we can go as big or as little as I mentioned with that. And then definitely moving into the lighting. The lighting. Everybody knows led. A lot of us in our homes have changed to LED bulbs because of the cost savings. With commercial spaces, it goes a bit further. Right. The typical model. And a lot of electricians are getting up to speed on this. The typical model is, well, we're going to run conduit and high voltage electrical to each fixture. Right. And then the fixture can either be a traditional two by two, four by two troffer or we'll do an LED bulb in it. Right, cool. But you still have that cost of all of the electrical and high voltage that you're running to each fixture. A lot of LED fixtures now can be ran on data cabling. So your cost to run the power and just overall installation significantly goes down. You still run the power to wherever the power supplies are located, which is usually a server room or an electrical room. But in terms of your overall consumption of power, it decreases substantially. A lot of. Yeah, a lot of. A lot of large facilities here in Orlando have transitioned a lot of their systems as they're going to led. They change their control panels as well. And what it allows them to do is just save on overall running costs. But then they're able to also control things a lot better. Right. Imagine walking into a ballroom in a hotel that's been on for the last three days because nobody walked in before and turned off the lights after the cleaning crew. Right. That's a huge expense. So a lot of hotels are putting in smart controls, whether they're Strand or Lutron or any of these brands that can integrate motion sensors, cleaning timers, all those sorts of things. And so we have really great partners and we're able to do some really neat projects to save clients tons of money on the operating costs.

Yeah, that's huge. That is huge. And I didn't know that. Is it Cat 5 or is that why you mentioned E Cat 5 E. Yeah.

So most of the category cable that's being run now is 6cat5e is kind of being displaced. That's been kind of the standard for a while now. And so six is the most common. And if you want to kind of quote unquote, future proof, you go to 6A, which is kind of that step up a little bit more capacity. But yeah, that's the lighting systems. Now, certain light fixtures, not all certain light fixtures, the most traditional troffers and that sort of stuff that you would put in an office space, a lot of them can run off of category cable. So you don't have to run high voltage to each. To each lamp, essentially.

So you used a word twice now that I didn't know and I was going to ignore it, but you did it again. Troffers. Are those like troffers?

Yeah. So those are the. Those two by four or two by two fixtures that drop into the ceiling tiles.

Spell what you're saying.

I believe it's T R O F F E R. Really?

Okay. I learned a new word. Okay, well, so. And with that, something, it sounds like you're doing that, that I've gotten exposed to because I follow the League of Cities and Florida Redevelopment association go to their conferences and they're putting sensors on the outdoor lights everywhere really. But you can hear glass break if breaking into cars. They can smell smoke. Are you doing that stuff too?

Yeah. And that's been a big push the last few years as the technology investment cost has come down. Right. Historically, there was a lighting fixture manufacturer called Redwood Systems that was phenomenal, but they were doing a lot of that smarts into the light fixtures themselves, since the LED fixture has essentially a chip on board that can be leveraged for other things. But now there's a lot of other organizations, manufacturers, I should say, that are leveraging smart sensors into infrastructure like lighting. And so, yeah, absolutely. Being able to determine even as granular as, hey, we have three additional people in this room, the heat load has gone up. Let's increase the H Vac so that the temperature can stay at a comfortable 70 degrees or whatever it may be, these sensors can read occupancy. Some of the sensors can also help better guide people in an emergency situation. So being able to exit kind of like an airplane, where your path of egress is illuminated and you know, okay, I know this is the way I got to go. There's things like that. Obviously those are all dependent on what your local AHJ is willing to accept or not accept. But there's a lot of those systems, and they're even tying in with the digital signage of like, hey, you know, heaven forbid there's something on campus where you need to shelter in place. The digital signage will tell you shelter in place. The alarm might be going off, but it'll tell you exactly what you need to do. Or, hey, it's a fire. Evacuate the building as quickly as possible. It'll shut down all of the TVs in your facility and just say the message that you're needing to communicate.

Oh, that's huge. Especially if it's a real fire situation. So many people never evacuate. If you can shut down all the computers or put a sign up saying, for real.

Yeah, yeah, that's huge. We've encountered some of that with, you know, certain teams that might be in a meeting and the fire alarm goes off. And they've gotten so accustomed to a fire alarm going off that it. Whatever, they'll keep having their meeting. And so there are systems in place that when you go into emergency, the panel, the fire panel essentially communicates, triggers the system to tell every tv, hey, fire emergency. You need to evacuate. And so, you know, it essentially locks down every other system. So you can't keep having your video call. Or, you know, our call would essentially end and I have to go. The TV would tell me, okay, I need to. I need to exit the building right away.

Yeah, that's. That's good. Especially because a lot of these are in high rises, you know, and.

Absolutely, absolutely. And same thing with, you know, campuses where it's. There's a lot of campuses where distributed buildings, and especially here in central Florida, where you have a thunderstorm. Right. And some of our thunderstorms can get pretty bad. You want to be able to communicate that to the team. And so it's not a matter of just looking outside. Oh, it's raining. No, it's pretty bad. Hey, shelter in place, Thunderstorm for the next 45 minutes, so on and so forth. And you can. You can leverage a lot of different technologies to do that, either via digital signage or even communicating to your employees. Cell phones.

Right? Yeah. I was just going to say the cell phone thing is a biggie.

Right, right.

So, yeah, we've touched on a bunch of cool things, but probably even more so are some of the things that I do multifamily. Medical office, and not as much, but perhaps industrial acoustics. So many apartment buildings are frame construction. You hear your neighbor. What do you do to improve acoustics in a place like, in a situation like that?

That's an awesome question because we do a lot of sound masking, sound abatement, and even some ease modeling, which is a full acoustical analysis for different sorts of places, whether it's a church or performance venue, that sort of thing. But with medical offices, the big one is privacy, right. Being able to be within your patient room and not hear the conversation that's happening in the room adjacent, or being in the waiting room and not being able to hear what the conversation is happening behind the door sort of thing. And that expectation of privacy. And so in medical offices, we implement a couple different things, one being acoustical panels. So these are panels that absorb the sound. And that's really. You see it a lot more in kind of the newer construction where maybe your dentist's office is all glass and hard hardwood floor is. And really beautiful office. But everything's very reflective. So we need to, we need to kind of absorb some of that sound that's bouncing around. And then the other, the other type of kind of sound correction that we do is the typical sound masking system. So that's system that introduces physical emitters into a space. And those emitters play what is considered a pink noise. Right. A combination of frequencies. And what it does is it raises the general noise level of the room, but it's the frequencies of voice. Right. So if you are in an adjacent room, Ginny, you might be having a conversation with the doctor. But I'm in the adjacent room and all I'm hearing is wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. I'm hearing the peanuts. Right. It's not detailed information like, oh my goodness, Jenny's birthday's coming up, you know, that sort of stuff. And so we do a lot of that. And the same thing is true for multifamily. You know, multifamily spaces are seeing a lot more sound absorption. Right. So what materials do we use either in our hallways or in the walls? What sort of fiberglass are we using to lower that stc, that sound transmission between either apartments or between just general purpose and private spaces?

So range of materials, has it gotten better than just that? I mean, I love that, you know that your transmitter. I didn't even think about that. Yeah, that's what that is. Exactly. But the acoustical tile, of course, we've had for many years. Fortunately. Now it probably does not have asbestos.

Fortunately.

But yeah. And I know they make some materials that are sound absorbing, looking like pictures. That glass office building. What is it that you do then?

Yeah, so we do introduce those panels that either are Printed, like you mentioned, there's a couple different things we can also do, like clouds, like felt clouds that fall within the light fixtures, and the fixtures fall within those clouds, and those absorb as well. And there's even certain types of furniture for given environments, like lobbies that have an STC rating where they absorb sound. So it varies on the type of environment, but there's a bunch of different things that we can do to mitigate some of that transmission.

Well, you certainly proving you're an expert.

I love it.

Is there something we didn't talk about yet that we should.

I think the biggest thing to talk about is just how interconnected everything is nowadays. You know, one system is reliant on so many other things. And so having an expert, even if they're not on the team or just some education, but we're always doing a lot of that. Your network, what you use in the office to connect to the wifi, also has to support your audio, visual systems, your security systems, your digital signage, even the sound masking or the emergency communications. All those systems have to talk. And so it's really important to have somebody on the team that understands all of those things. And it just makes for a much easier and much more straightforward delivery of whatever project, whether it's a new build or renovation or whatnot. That's the biggest thing.

So true. And that touched on exactly the other thing that we didn't talk about, and that's security. Because systems and all that, you guys are masters at that too, right?

Yeah, we do a lot with information security. Both the cyber has been the big word the last several years, but cyber is dependent on what information you are transmitting. So your requirement for cybersecurity is different than mine. And so it's really important that it's not one size fits all. So with cyber, and really just any kind of protection of your network where you communicate information, it's important that you have somebody that really understands what they're doing to protect the information that you consider private. And so it's a very deep pool. You could spend hours talking about the specifics, but I think we've all heard horror stories on the ransomware and all that sort of stuff and the insurance not paying because certain things were missing out of a policy. I think that's just a testament to show you really, you need some. An expert on your team to be able to really implement the right strategies and the right hardware. And that starts from not just your information security, from your laptops and your PCs and all that sort of stuff. It goes all the way to the edge to how are you securing your building? What are the, you know, how are the doors secured? What surveillance systems do you have in place? What sort of mitigation do you have for individuals, you know, that are in your, in your parking lot, coming into the building, what are they carrying, all that sort of stuff. So it's, it all depends on how secure you need to be. But it's, it can be a very deep pool if we needed to talk about it.

Yeah, yeah, it seems like it.

Yeah.

Well, but we're running out of time, so I'm going to ask you a big question here now.

Okay. Yeah.

And this is what I ask everybody towards the end. And that is, is there a pivotal person event that brought you to where you are today or that's pushing you forward to a certain place?

Yeah. So I will say my pivotal person is Richard Harum. He's going to listen to this, he's going to see it. I went to interview with my prior company for a project management position and the whole interview goes through. I'm expecting a PM position. And he goes, you know, you'd be really good in sales. Taken aback. And that was 2015. I've been in the industry since then and it's been incredible. So he was very pivotal, Very pivotal person for me. Really taught me a lot of what I know and really pushed me to be the professional I am today. And I would say the more recent kind of event, obviously when you get married and you start a family and you have kids, that changes the dynamic entirely. So I have a three year old and an almost two year old and both boys and you can imagine that that is certainly with them too. My wife, it is a driving force now. So it's fantastic, Fantastic.

Congratulations. Yes, that is good. It's very. It changes you greatly.

Yeah. Ah, good, good.

All right, well, so tell people how they can get in touch with you.

Yeah. So the easiest way is going to be via email. So that's Alex A L E X Carryon C A R R I o n at phase integration. And that's p h a s e integration dot com. And then the phone number is 407-401-1153.

All right. That will be in the show notes and so. Yes, very good, thank you. And we will definitely need to. When. When we think systems. And I guess the trigger word would be technology. Yeah, Integration. Most people don't say integration, but technology. Then who's the one to.

Exactly, exactly. We're here to help.

All right. Well, very good. Thank you again. I appreciate you coming on the show.

Thank you, Jenny. Thanks for the opportunity.