Occupancy data and reducing risks with leak detection

The transcription of this episode is auto generated by a third-party source. While Microshare takes every precaution to insure that the content is accurate, errors can occur. Microshare, Inc.  is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information.

[00:00:31] James Dice: Hello and welcome to the Nexus podcast. I have, uh, Byron Lopez Pineda, director of OT operational Technology at Kilroy Realty, and I have Mike Moran, chief Markets Officer, chief Risk and Sustainability Officer at MicroShare. So we’re gonna do an overview of Killroy Realty Smart Buildings Program and get into the weeds on how they’re thinking about occupancy data and leak detection, which are two topics that we’ve talked about before, but [00:01:00] not in the detail.

I think that we’re gonna get into them today. So let’s, let’s do it. Um, Mike, you’ve not been on the podcast before, whereas, uh, Byron has. Can you give us a little, uh, a bit of your background and then a bit of an overview of MicroShare.

[00:01:17] Mike Moran: Sure. I’m a recovering journalist 20 years as. Foreign correspondent various outlets, b bbc, msnbc, and then, uh, went into financial services and ultimately, uh, became a partner at a place called Control Risks. So International risk consultancy, and then invested in this thing MicroShare. And as I always ta tell my c e o, from there it was like Marco Cor Leoni.

I kept doing them things on the side and all of a sudden they sucked me in and I, here I am at a W2 job again, . So, um, so my, my core value, uh, was probably from their perspective marketing. Um, but, uh, I’ve always been a pretty, uh, really [00:02:00] interested in sustainability issues. I got involved in documentary work earlier in my career, did a lot of climate change stuff really early.

So, uh, that was a kind of a natural, um, entree for me into the smart tech building technology and particularly the retrofit. Opportunity cuz so much as you know, so much of the world’s carbon comes from the built world. So that was a really attractive thing for me and I’ve learned a lot along the way.

That’s another thing I like to have in every job I have.

[00:02:31] James Dice: Totally. Uh, so, so Byron, you have been on the podcast before, um, episode 72. For those of you that that haven’t watched that episode or listened to that episode, we’ll put that in the show notes. We talked about cybersecurity mostly with, uh, the folks, Andy from, um, intelligent Buildings. Um, so we’re not gonna repeat a whole lot of that I don’t think in this episode.

But, uh, for, for people that haven’t watched that episode, can you, uh, give us a little bit of your background please?

[00:02:59] Bayron Lopez Pineda: [00:03:00] sure. So as you mentioned, I’m the Director of Operational Technology at Killer Realty. Under my group supervision, we oversee the smart building programs for all of our assets right across our entire portfolio, five different regions, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Austin. Uh, our purpose is to help our different teams validate technology, implement technology with a cyber component, but also make sure that we’re requesting the correct solution, right?

That we’re looking at technology that meets the needs for our users, uh, not just in the sustainability side, but in the engineering side, the security side, the construction side, and making sure that we bring that together. So, , the foundational piece that is security, uh, network infrastructure lays a foundation for those things that I like to call the bells and whistles, right?

Everything that we’re adding on top to make sure that the building is smarter, more efficient, uh, maintainable and leaseable for our tenants.

[00:03:50] James Dice: Yeah, and in that conversation we talked about standards and setting up networks and kind of a, a little bit of the foundational stuff. Uh, we’ll talk a little bit more [00:04:00] about foundational stuff and what all of that enables here. Let’s talk a little bit about Kilroy first. So can you talk about what type of assets are in that portfolio and those different regions you just talked about?

Um, and maybe a little bit more about how Kilroy thinks about real estate. What are, what’s the real estate strategy of the portfolio, that kind of thing.

[00:04:21] Bayron Lopez Pineda: sure. So we like to say that we are where innovation works, right? And we mean it, uh, class A commercial real estate across those five different regions, large products. Kilroy Oyster Point in, uh, in South San Francisco, IND Tower in Austin, uh, Netflix and mine in Hollywood. Skyline Center in Bellevue. It’s a large commercial real estate offices, right?

Multi-tenant. Uh, we have some, uh, residential and strategic areas. Butter, bread and butter is large commercial bioscience, developing and maintaining those sites, right? So we also go out there, acquire the sites and build them to our standards. That’s where the technology comes into place, [00:05:00] right? Most companies, uh, usually give directions to their GC and say, we want you to build this space.

We don’t care what’s inside. We like to say, we want you to build this space with these specific components, these specific solutions, sustainability pieces, right? Be able to take proactive measures in our construction, right? Be able to develop and deploy a site. Technology leaders in the market will want to occupy, and that will also be beneficial to the market in general, to the community in general, and make sure that we’re doing that sustainably.

Uh, we have a great sustainable program. If you look at kil sustainability, we’ve ranked highest, uh, in the years for, you know, couple of years running, if, if not more. Uh, but we also wanna make sure that our buildings are innovative. Uh, last year we want, you know, uh, most intelligent building portfolio because of the projects that we do across the us, uh, and want to keep that program going forward, and being technology leaders in the space.

[00:05:54] James Dice: Awesome. Awesome. And, and you mentioned buying and building according to your [00:06:00] standards. Um, do you guys look at the portfolio and individual assets, like you’re gonna keep them, you know, buy them, renovate them, and hold them for a long time? Or is it more of a transactional strategy where you’re buying and selling and you’re looking to increase the asset value when you buy and sell?

[00:06:18] Bayron Lopez Pineda: That would be our investor team who would decide that. But my direction has been mostly make sure that the assets are great for our tenants, right? That we are holding. If you look at Kils assets, we’ve held a bunch of our assets for a very long time and we’re improving on them, right? And as we bring new assets online, we also make sure that they’re either better at the level or better what we currently have, right?

So our newest buildings are always the smartest buildings within our portfolio, but that doesn’t mean that our oldest buildings are lacking, right? They have a certain standard of technology that we want to see within the property to be able to provide our tenants with the needs that they have. Right?

Also provide our engineering teams, our sustainability teams with the technology that they provide, right? Cuz we are operating them, we are maintaining them. [00:07:00] Um, so they are our babies, uh, but we wanna make sure that we can provide a product for the, for the general market.

[00:07:05] James Dice: Okay. That was gonna be my next question. So you guys have the fm, the property management, all that in house as

[00:07:11] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We do all the operations in house, um, our teams, right? I can call up the property manager or the chief engineer and, and talk about how the building’s going, what their needs are specifically for that building, and then go to the regional asset manager and see what do they wanna see across that portfolio or the VP over that region or or head of, of head of asset management.

What does he wanna see throughout every property? Right. And get guidance down there from there.

[00:07:35] James Dice: Okay. Yeah. And I, I, the reason I wanted to start here is obviously this is gonna flow into how you guys think about technology and how the business case is made. So can you talk about when you guys make the case, we’re gonna talk about where the budget comes from and all of that in a second, but when you guys make the case for technology, um, how is that business case made for those, you said the financial team, the, you know, the investment team.

[00:08:00] How are they thinking about it?

[00:08:01] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Yeah. So for us, we have a A committee, right? We are all growing together, right? So if it affects security, it probably will affect engineering. It will probably affect sustainability in operations. So what we do is we look at technology as a whole. Where can we find synergies, right? A lot of other organizations have had, engineering has its own budget and figures out what they’re doing, and then security will bring that in.

We like to bring all groups together and say, where do we have common goals? What technology will help you from an engineering standpoint, security standpoint, sustainability, and how do we then divvy budgets, right? Make sure that it is, you know, either paid by it, because we might know the technology solution, but it will help the team downstream.

So we basically figure out what the needs and the use cases are for. And say, oh, you’re looking at occupancy engineering is looking at occupancy and security would like to know occupancy for, you know, staffing procedures. So why don’t we just make this one group together? Uh, you’re looking at leak detection or end indoor air quality or whatever type of sensoring [00:09:00] technology that might be out there.

How do we make those use cases come together and make sure that we have synergy across? Right. Uh, it it, I’ve heard colleagues say, well, my security team doesn’t know at all what engineering’s doing. We wanna make sure that we talk to each other in case there are projects there that we can share, budgets that we can share it.

It makes it much easier instead of having two concurrent projects, doing the exact same thing with people not talking to each other, let’s bring those together and make sure that we can deploy one solution that is gonna meet everybody’s goals.

[00:09:28] James Dice: Totally, and that’s a, and and Mike, I want to hear from your perspective, but from my perspective, I’ve heard, so Boston Properties or bxp has talked about having these committees that are cross-functional, cross-department, cross the portfolio site, divide that a lot I think a lot of people struggle with.

Um, but I’d say. That’s still pretty rare to have that sort of cross-functional, uh, committee based working together collaboration, uh, which is pretty cool. Um, Mike, when you guys think about your [00:10:00] customer base at MicroShare, how rare is, is that from that, that collaboration?

[00:10:06] Mike Moran: It’s, um, so it’s, it, it’s rare to find one of these committees that’s empowered. Um, a lot of times they, they tend to be sounding boards. That’s not true at Kilroy. They, they are always, in our experience, kind of a, a bit ahead of the curve on these issues. But one, one interesting way to look at this is, you know, we’ve been in this business for quite some time, about 2016 or so, uh, on commercial real estate, really focusing on commercial real estate, ultimately right before the pandemic.

Uh, most of this, the conversations about, uh, smart building technology and retrofits were based in either the IT or facilities management teams. Um, none of which have, uh, particularly big, you know, footprint in terms of political clout in the corporate structure. The, the pandemic completely changed that.

Um, now the, [00:11:00] the mission, whether it’s gathers sustainability, data manage, uh, energy use, Or, you know, air quality and, and things that actually are tenant facing. These are now being, you know, told, you know, the FM and IT departments are being told, figure this out because hr, if they’re gonna get people back into our buildings, they’re gonna need to show that we learn some lessons from this, this experience of the pandemic, air quality feedback monitors, stuff like that.

Um, similarly, uh, and HR of course wants to retain and, and attract talent, and that’s a big issue right now in the tight labor market. So you just have, it’s gone across now many new constituents are at the table talking about these capabilities. The legal council worries about, uh, you know, liability of bringing people back in.

The CFO and the CEO are, are going in front of shareholders every quarter, and the shareholders are saying, why do you have two-thirds too many, uh, expensive leases? Can’t you [00:12:00] downsize? So they want occupancy data for a very different reason than a security department. But ultimately, when these opportunities arise, there are many stakeholders that now need to kinda look at it and understand what can this do for me?

And does this have a a real value for me?

[00:12:16] James Dice: Totally. So let’s circle back then, because we’ve just created a I, I think a pretty complex. starting point for a business case. So when, by Byron, when you go to make the business case, you have all these different stakeholders involved from different departments, um, you have all these different budgets that you may or may not be pulling from to pay for technology, but then you have all these different ways in which technology might provide revenue back to those budgets or savings back to those budgets.

So how do you guys in these committees, how do you think about putting together the business case and communicating the ROI internally?

[00:12:57] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Uh, it’s, it’s very [00:13:00] interesting and dynamic, right? So one of the things that Mike mentioned was prior to Covid, right, we maybe did not have as much power, right? We, we, it was interesting cuz we were directed to protecting the buildings, make sure that the buildings were technology advanced, but covid kind of changed the structure of what should be in the site, right?

And there was still technologies in there that people were deploying and setting up, like temperature scanning cameras, right? We looked at them, but it wasn’t the right use case, right? It wasn’t the right piece of solution for us to deploy at that point, right? Temperature scanning is great, but why spend $5,000 on a camera when you can have somebody that does it much more efficiently and potentially, or deploy a technology that does more than just temperature scanning, right?

How, why do we not deploy analytics and cameras that can tell us if a per person might be looking sick or somebody might need to, you know, went through through the building without checking into the front. Those were the pieces that we were looking at. And making sure that the budgets make sense, not just for the current situation but long-term sustainable [00:14:00] technology, right?

Is it in the property to last a while? And that’s where we go back and look at our budgets and say, yes, this might solve, solve one solution, but we wanna make sure that we solve multiple problems within a budgetary sense that makes good, accurate financial planning for us to go forward. So that’s kind of how we go back and showcase the.

They request to upper management and say, look, engineering needs it. Sustainability needs it. It will help promote it and support it. And this is the budget. It might be more expensive upfront, but in the long run we will have a program that will run for seven or 10 years as opposed to something that might be cheaper, but you’re gonna be replacing two.

Right. So that’s kind of where we see the, the long term goals of the solution. And we’ve done that with, you know, BMS technology. We’ve done that with, uh, car parking systems. You know, how do we plan for the future even though it might be more expensive now, but we can have it there for a longer period of time.

[00:14:51] James Dice: Okay, so it sounds like it’s, it’s less, and, and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m just trying to repeat back how what I’m hearing is less about. [00:15:00] the exact ROI on this technology, and it’s more about, here are the experiences we’re trying to enable in these buildings, and here’s the best way we’ve found to check all these boxes, and here’s the budgets that’s gonna come from, or here’s the co.

Here’s the budget I need for that project. It’s kind of like that sort of process.

[00:15:19] Bayron Lopez Pineda: correct. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:15:20] James Dice: Got it.

[00:15:21] Mike Moran: and if you bring it, if, if you, if you look at it, James, from our perspective, the fit the vendor. So it depends on who we’re speaking with, right? Um, ultimately if you’re talking to the tenant occupier in commercial real estate, these are people who are really scrutinizing the amount of real estate they really need.

Now, post covid, there’s a very different reality. The labor employer dynamic has shifted toward labor. So they’re trying to figure out how do we make this stuff we’re gonna keep as, as, as appealing and sustainable and efficient as possible? And identify those things we can kind of cut loose and save money.

And by the way, carbon footprint, right? Um, [00:16:00] on the other hand, if you’re commercial real estate owner, you’re using that same occupancy, uh, use, uh, u use case. That data is very valuable for you to understand when you have a lease, these seven year leases that’s really at risk cuz no one’s been in that building or it’s been very lightly used.

for the last two or three quarters, um, and the renewals coming up, you could, you maybe have to start marketing that well before the renewals coming up cuz you already know. And, and that owner obviously is less interested in right-sizing a footprint, cuz to them the larger the footprint, the more property they are releasing.

Um, what they’re looking at now is, okay, I’ve got this portfolio of buildings, we’ve got data now telling us that some of them perform at this level, some at this level, some of them have constant complaints about air quality. Maybe even if that’s a slightly more profitable building, that’s possibly a, a, a problem down the line.

We’re gonna cut that one loose and, and focus on this market where, you know, that, where these [00:17:00] comparatives seem to work. Um, so there’s an awful lot of difference in, uh, the ROI equation depending on the business model that your, your potential client is dealing with.

[00:17:12] James Dice: totally. Yeah. And I guess the last thing to kind of cover here about, you know, this overall smart buildings program and the business case specifically, is that, so Byron, you mentioned all the different groups. You mentioned security, you mentioned sustainability, you mentioned fm. Um, was there, was there one more?

[00:17:32] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Legal. Legal always comes in play

[00:17:34] Mike Moran: Yeah.

[00:17:34] James Dice: I wanted to circle back on who has the budgets for technology. I think before we hit record, you guys mentioned that. The head of sustainability has a budget, which is actually pretty rare. Um, for sustainability folks across our industry. A lot of times they’re trying to get a whole lot done without a whole, without any sort of budget of their own.

Right. So how do you guys, Byron sort of, yeah, exactly. , [00:18:00] um, how do you guys, Byron, sort of pulled money from each of these different budgets when you know that this, like the technology project that you’re trying to get approved, benefits, all, all these different departments at the same time.

[00:18:11] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So depending and, and yeah, it’s great that our teams have budgets based at the building. They have budgets based within their groups. Right. Um, but we also in technology, carry in innovation and te. Building technology budget, right, that we can help use, uh, to help projects along. Uh, maybe the sustainability team doesn’t have a large amount, or maybe they don’t have specific funds, Airmark for a specific program.

So we might take that from the IT budget from our specific. Smart building OT budget and be able to deploy solutions. So an example might be an upgrade for, let’s say an access control server, right? The building usually is responsible for that. But what happens if that access control server no longer supports the general umbrella of the entire portfolio?

That server is going to affect the general umbrella, right? That server is going to affect the [00:19:00] greater good. So it will say, okay, we will pay for that server out of our budget. We will put it within our budget because we know it’s a greater good for the entire portfolio as a whole. So that’s where we will work together.

Uh, if it’s an engineering program or if it’s a security program as well, we’ll take a look at where we can share, uh, where we can leverage each other’s budgets to be able to go out and provide a program. Access control camera systems. Based for the building, but security is the one that’s leading the charge.

They’re the ones who are staffing the security officers. They’re the ones who are working with the local police department to say, we have these issues around the board. Right? It might be a security cost that might also be a passthrough to a tenant as part of the security program. Uh, it really varies.

Uh, but what we try to do is if it affects the entire portfolio, uh, let’s share budgets from each other. Our team might pay for some team sustainability might have a program where they say, we will pay for the entire thing, but we need IT support to help us with the technology implementation. Right? How do we secure the data?

How do we make sure that the devices put into the building are connected to an infrastructure that is valuable? [00:20:00] So that’s how we kind of play around and, and make sure that we’re all successful. Um, our teams will travel, right? Like they’re coming up to ISE West Security is primarily a security conference, but our operations teams are coming to see where do they need operations to.

Put in their input, right? Security might know that they want license plate readers and we have them. Uh, but they might say, well, we want these types of licenses, plate readers, or these types of facial recognition solutions or appearance recognition. Um, but those are the types of projects that we work on together and say, this is what the cost is, this is what the technology cost is, this is what the people cost is, and then this is what’s gonna cost for training, right?

Because we also gotta figure out how do we train all these groups together, right? Because the solution might be used for multiple, uh, sys multiple departments. So how do we create a good training program for that? So,

[00:20:48] James Dice: Cool. And I think this is a really good jumping off point for talking about occupancy data specifically, um, because it enables, and I’ve written a lot about. It enables a [00:21:00] bunch of different use cases for technology. Uh, it enables a bunch of different ways to run buildings better, like we’ve already talked about a little bit here.

So it sounds like you guys are working together on an occupancy data project, but maybe Byron, if you could just talk about how you guys are thinking about occupancy data and specifically occupancy sensors as encounters as part of how, how does that fit into your Smart Buildings program? Is this a portfolio wide thing and, and kind of, where are you guys at on that portfolio?

[00:21:31] Bayron Lopez Pineda: the, the request initially came out of San Francisco, actually, right? As part of the covid regulation. San Francisco wanted you to provide cleaning, specific cleaning schedules for restrooms, right? How often are you cleaning the restroom? Uh, what time? And that used to be for most part, pen and paper, right?

Most people, usually you see pen and paper. Most restaurants when you go, you see that paper hanging in the back of the door. Um, so we were challenged and said, look, our, what is a better way to do this? Is there some technology that [00:22:00] can help us? And that was the initial approach. How do we start reporting on occupancy usage of our restrooms?

How do we basically digitize that pen and paper process? And that’s where we went out to the market, took a look at different solutions and you know, we found solutions where it was very specific and it would count person by person. Uh, but it required a bunch of infrastructure in the backend, right? So you were paying for that sensor itself, plus cabling, plus switches, plus all that.

So that quickly ballooned. Uh, and then we found solutions similar to MicroShare, right? Where it was more ease of ease of access, right? It was easier for deploy. We had a tiny little, you know, guidance at first and then that exploded, right? Because then we were said, well, if we’re doing that in our restrooms, why do we also do that in our elevator lobbies or front doors?

Or what else does, can these sensors do? Oh, they also do I A Q, why don’t we put that into place? Oh, we need to be more specific for people counting within our front doors. What other sensor is that there? So that tiny, how many times are we cleaning our [00:23:00] restroom ballooned into. How occupied our building is going.

You know, how many floors, what floors are being hit more. Uh, it helped with parking in valet, right? As we put those sensors in our valet lobbies is people, are people coming in through those doors? Are people using the parking structure? You know, we might not be counting the individual cars, but we are counting traffic across that parking lobby, uh, elevator.

So that’s where the program actually morphed and it became more of the holistic piece of the building. Uh, we, we were also thinking of using it for cleaning, right? How do we know that, you know, the restroom on the 22nd floor was used 60 times in the last hour, but the one on the third floor was not used, right?

So let’s deploy that cleaning, uh, person, that Porter janitorial staff to that floor, uh, and make sure that that room is clean, uh, versus, you know, having to deploy somebody to every single floor, every half hour and, you know, wasting time or wasting materials. Unfortunately, you know, there’s some very strict, uh, regulation and, uh, union, uh, policies behind how [00:24:00] you adjust people’s cleaning.

So that kind of created a little bit of a challenge. That also morphed us to how big is the, the building being used, what about retail spaces? You know, how many people are coming in here as leasing is happening? How can we show a potential tenant look, this is the foot traffic that we get across this area.

Uh, so it really became a whole product of the building. Uh, it became a security piece. How do we know that doors that should not, we have very beautiful assets in Hollywood that see the Hollywood sign. Uh, and there was a specific door that was being used that should have not been used, aside from security, where people were going up there and potentially taking pictures of themselves.

You know, uh, we discovered that.

[00:24:38] James Dice: Selfie door.

[00:24:39] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Exactly, yeah. It was a selfie door. Somebody was out there, and it shouldn’t have been, we, we saw that some restrooms were being hit after, uh, certain hours. We were in Hollywood and around certain bars. So restrooms that should not have been used after 2:00 AM were being used because, you know, people were coming in.

It ended up being like, uh, a boma event or people who [00:25:00] would go out for boma, things that would come because we were probably the closest restroom. Uh, but that kind of gave us that traction. Like, why were there 20 people inside our 13th floor restroom or 14th floor restroom at two 30 in the morning? Why was that traffic happening when the building supposed to be empty?

So those are the kind of pieces that we started to look at and, and become more developed. And as the data came out, our leasing teams, our investments team started looking at it and saying, okay, how occupied are we? Can we then, uh, merge that with our access control systems? Just take a look and say, we know these many people batched into the front door, but these many people went to specific floors.

So that’s kind of where the program is right now.

[00:25:37] James Dice: Totally. And I, I think there are a couple different questions I have here, but lemme just sort of just sort of like reflect back on what you just said. So it was a, a city specific regulation that happened that caused you to say, what’s a better way for us to do this besides pen and paper? And that sort of ballooned into, okay, let’s count people in the restrooms and digitize when we [00:26:00] sort.

Uh, clean, right, clean based on usage. But then you’re saying, okay, that same technology stack can then be used to swap out the sensor. It sounds that same technology stack can then be used to enable all these other different use cases throughout the portfolio.

[00:26:16] Bayron Lopez Pineda: correct. And initially it was just when does the porter arrive to the restroom? Right? When does he, instead of having to write it down, give that to the property manager who types it up, how do we enable just the sensor to tap And that automatically creates a record. and that goes into the system already, right?

So what we’re doing is we’re just downloading the record and sending it off to the city. Before it was all a manual piece, but that stack, you’re right, that that technology stack now has more pieces that you can put on top. And we’re not individually counting people within a restroom. We’re counting movements, right?

Uh, what movements has been there. We don’t want people to think that we’re counting, you know, Byron going into this restroom. It’s just a movement that’s present within that restroom, right? Somebody came in, somebody came out, we didn’t know who it was. But you know, if 60 of those movements have happened, [00:27:00] then maybe we should probably go and clean that restroom proactively

[00:27:02] James Dice: Yeah. And it sounds

[00:27:03] Bayron Lopez Pineda: the hour.

[00:27:04] James Dice: it sounds like you guys went out and said, what are all the different vendors that are available here? And you guys came up with MicroShare. So Mike, can you talk a little bit about how you guys have approached this project and is this similar to other ways you, you work for, uh, customers like kilroy?

[00:27:21] Mike Moran: Absolutely. And you know, one of the absolute constants in the things we’ve done over the last five, six years is that we have a use case. We, when we deploy it, the client almost always finds two other values to it. Um, and sometimes they come back and ask us, Hey, what if we tried this? Can we do this? Or else, sometimes just the same data.

So for instance, in the cleaning scenario, that data is not just valuable to the people who operate the building, but the people who are the tenants who experience it. So they can now know which, which bathroom, if, if they choose to manifest this data somehow, which bathrooms have been cleaned recently, they can also [00:28:00] know, which haven’t been used recently.

Uh, similarly, you know, cleaning as an industry is a very low margin business. And it has, it has, it’s as affected as any industry in the world in the tight labor market conditions we have right now. So in order to do the, being able to clean what needs to be cleaned instead of doing it in this kind of territorial.

You know, take territory kind of way, like an army, uh, where they just go around with a mop and they touch every single place in the building. Once that doesn’t cut it in the post covid world, uh, people wanna see that things are being cleaned when they need to be cleaned. So, so one of our, uh, products has a feedback, uh, and it’s, it could be very detailed feedback, which also brings this predictive, uh, maintenance and risk mitigation, uh, capability to bear.

So if there’s water on the floor or if there’s a clog toilet, if you’re out of soap, those things can be reported very quickly, either with a QR code or a button. Um, and so all of that in increases the [00:29:00] satisfaction of the, the people experiencing it. It makes the operational, uh, side of it hopefully less expensive and also more efficient.

And at the end of the day, you can prevent some pretty serious problems. If there’s water on the floor and someone reports it, that can prevent water from going down to the next floor and the next floor and the next floor, and you end up with lawsuits and flooding and damage in the building. So a lot of these things trickle down.

No, it’s unintended. Um, and that’s just with feedback. That’s just group sourcing, predictive, uh, maintenance essentially. Uh, then you go into things like leak detection and air quality. One of the things that it’s also shows up, and, and Byron has the experience with this, if you’re talking about something like air quality, occupancy is a core cause of poor air.

So carbon dioxide, we, we generate carbon dioxide wherever we go. You put 10 of us in a room, in a conference room, you close the door. It’s not gonna be long before the carbon dioxide levels in that room. [00:30:00] Reach levels that aren’t maybe dangerous, but certainly not ideal. Um, so those types of things.

Correlation of data, oy plus air quality, you know, those are the kind of things that really begin to transform the building.

[00:30:13] James Dice: Um, let’s switch gears a little bit here. Um, around, so we’re talking about a, a couple of different types of sensors for occupancy data. Um, we’ve talked about access control, we’ve talked about, you talked about Byron computer vision a little bit. Uh, we’ve talked, you talked a little bit about BMS data.

Um, I think one of the things that’s a challenge right now across the industry is that there are so many different sources of occupancy data and you could get insights from a bunch of different systems and you might have coverage, you might not have full coverage, you might not not have the actual granularity that you want.

So, Byron, how are you thinking about. , I have all these different sources of occupancy data across my portfolio. Number one, how do I come up with like a single [00:31:00] source of truth or like a best available set of occupancy data? And then how do I then combine all these different sources as well? How do you think about that?

[00:31:09] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So we have a strategy within our, our department within it. We actually have a, a business intelligence development group, right? They’re very sharp guys. So what we are actually doing is we are using data for MicroShare, right? So MicroShare and a bunch of different solutions provide us that data, uh, that we can log into.

But then we take that information into our iot hub, and then we start putting reporting and technology and dashboards around that, right? Um, we then, our team internally is developing the dashboards that our team might say, well, look, I like the way that it’s presented on MicroShare, but I would also like to see that data with the access control system brought together, right?

That’s not something MicroShare is going to do in their platform. They’re very good at what they’re doing. Those additional pieces we’re gonna bring ourselves and then start bringing those different threads into our iot. And aggregating that information. It’s a lot of data. One [00:32:00] of the big things that we found out when we first started doing this was I think we’re getting like 14,000 points of data, like every couple dates from just one building from MicroShare.

And that was just like our, our BI team was just like blown away with that amount information. Right? And that was just one piece. So as we started getting more deeper into information, where can we pull the, the traffic, they’re kind of becoming experts and you know, IOT information, IOT data. These guys are our BI guys who are used to doing financial reporting, analytics and all that kinds of information.

And now we’re asking them to bring in the data from the building to be able to present that to our, our operations team. So that’s one way that we’re tracking. We are looking at, you know, different tools that might be out there that help us bring in that information. But kil likes to, uh, develop a lot of stuff internally.

Uh, we like to do a lot of stuff there, so that’s why we have that specific group there. And, uh, depending on where the market goes, you know, we might partner with somebody else out there that might be able to bring a bunch of the information together, but still keeping that [00:33:00] iot hub where we can go in there, run SQL reporting, run, uh, you know, any type of analytics that we might want to do ad hoc, uh, and be able to provide that to.

[00:33:08] James Dice: Got it. Very cool. Um, last, my last question. You guys can add more on occupancy data if you want, but I, I’d love to talk about from both of your perspectives, um, well, uh, about what I think is the elephant in the room with when you have all these different types of occupancy data. And we started to get into it with talking about the BI team there a little bit, but basically how do, how do we take all this data and actually integrate it into people’s workflows?

So I’ve been pretty, like, this is a good thing to talk about because what you just said, Byron, because I’ve been pretty critical around our industry’s sort of, um, everyone loves dashboards and single pane of glass and, but, but what we’re doing is we’re expecting people to. , stop what they’re doing normally and log into this other thing and look at this dashboard and try to come up with some sort of [00:34:00] insight and then go back to their job and, and implement it in whatever workflows they had before.

So maybe Byron, you think about, you talk about like how you guys think about it and then Michael go to you on how you sort of coach all of your customers to try to like actually integrate the technology into their day to day lives.

[00:34:20] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So, yeah, and, and it’s actually really good because we actually had this challenge, right? We had this challenge where we had all this great data and people had too much work. There was too many things going on and trying to interpret what’s really going on without your building. And you have, let’s say one side has 144 sensors, right?

How do you as an operations person or a property manager who have a million other things going on now go in there and try to address the data science piece. That is not your job, right? Uh, unless there’s a red button saying, look, this is what’s going on. Unless something’s flashing in your face, you might not really look at it.

Right? And that’s kind of where we wanted to make sure that we were. Creating those dashboards with the information that [00:35:00] people really wanted to see. And we were lucky enough that our, you know, product manager through MicroShare, uh, Lindsay became kind of that data scientist for us, right? MicroShare said, well, we know that they had constant conversation with the pm.

We know that your property manager is busy. Let us take a little bit of that data science piece internally and kind of tell you, oh, these are where we see the challenges. This is where we see your restaurants being impacted heavy at night. So that’s kind of where the idea came out of, right? We understand that PM teams might not want to see that data holistically.

They might wanna see specific pieces. Uh, and as we are now giving data to our higher executive teams, they’re asking for the granularity, whereas opposed to operations might just wanna see, tell me where I need to change this cleaning staff me person or not. Don’t tell me I had 2000 people in there. Just tell me what do I need to do now.

Right? Uh, and that’s kind of where MicroShare helped us with that.

[00:35:49] James Dice: And I, I call this the, we have a podcast about this. I call this the super user approach, where you have somebody that is just, uh, wiz with the tools. Um, [00:36:00] I’ll, I’ll pull in and we’ll pull it into the show notes. We have the analytics super user podcast that I think is interesting because I found one of those people and we dove deep into actually what they do every day.

[00:36:11] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Yeah. We call them power users on our site.

Right.

For specific, yeah.

[00:36:14] Mike Moran: have a,

[00:36:15] James Dice: Gotcha.

[00:36:16] Mike Moran: yeah, we

have a Chief digital officer

who is often the, the, uh, person we put in front of. The large clients that are, that are deploying multiple use cases in multiple sites. So, uh, we’re allowed to mention some clients Aramark, this massive, uh, you know, facilities management firm who handles stadiums and multifamily and offices all over the world.

Um, they, uh, you know, through the experience we’ve had with them, you know, we’ve learned that it’s obviously you can make a colorful dashboard. Um, no one’s gonna look at it if they think they’re doing a good job already or if they’re not really getting pushback. So if you’re gonna make your, your contract, uh, terms, um, if they’re, let’s say, we’ll go back to the [00:37:00] commercial cleaner thing.

Um, you need to be able to understand how to change these age old routines. They really are. Things that pretty much haven’t changed in possibly 50 to a hundred years, but the way that buildings are cleaned, so it takes a certain power user, or we like to think of them as our champions inside an institution like that to help, uh, bring that value to life by teaching people that, listen, there is a slightly better way to do this.

Or I realize you don’t have the staff you had three years ago and you’re being asked to do e actually more. Here’s one way to do that, to to focus on the things that need doing and do it visibly so that the client sees you do it. So that means maybe the ma mates and and janitors don’t show up after shift, uh, and just say hello to people who are on their way home.

They’re there during the day and they clean conference rooms that are being heavily used. These are kind of things that are not, they sound easy, but when you’re a big commercial cleaner, how do you redo your, your [00:38:00] thinking on this? So that change management piece, It’s hugely important. In some instances, we actually will bring in somebody like Ernst and Young, um, to take that piece after the, the data is, is installed and working, which doesn’t take long really.

Um, but once they get the data, as, as, you know, as Byron was saying, it can be overwhelming for a team that doesn’t have a native data science, uh, capability. And that’s where somebody like EY can be very effective to come in and, and do that piece for them, customize their, uh, whatever dashboard flavors they like, and make sure that it does end up on a single pan pane of glass.

I, I’ll actually, let me say one more. Let me say one more thing. There’s also a, a lighter touched use case where you, you need to just think about business process management, right? Bpm. So the, so we’ve been talking about this, this restroom. We somehow, we’re all in the toilet today I guess, but we’re talking about the restroom scenario.

Some, sometimes you’re dealing with very large companies that don’t have a dedicated [00:39:00] staff or a contract cleaning crew. They’re basically pushing this onto the, the line staff. Somebody gets tapped every week, said It’s your turn to do bathrooms. Let’s say you’re a big supermarket chain, or you’re a, uh, a coffee chain.

The barista might be the one who’s responsible for making sure the bathroom doesn’t look like a disaster. That’s a, that’s a nightmare. So all we needed to do there was put a similar solution in that has all the feedback, monitors and, and the various occupancy, uh, sensors, but also a little app that just allows that stuff to be fed to the key person so that doesn’t get outta hand so they can take action before the thing becomes a crisis.

And so those little things are, you know, we’ve learned over time, you can’t just sell the data. It’s, it’s got enormous value, but it’s, it needs to be manifested in such a way and taught in such a way that people can react to it.

[00:39:55] James Dice: This is a, I think, a key playbook item as we’re thinking about the [00:40:00] smart buildings industry. There’s, we’ve talked about the super user playbook, right? Where you have someone that’s internally data scientists specialist, right? Um, they’re responsible with, okay, they have to analyze the data. They have to understand what are the insights that I’m getting out of the data.

And then they have to go then find the person that can do something with that insight. Right? I think that’s an important playbook and some people run that. We’ve also talked about what you just said, Mike, the application, which is, can I build an application that directly inserts the insight into someone’s existing workflow?

Or can I make the technology where the work gets done, right? If, if I need to check off my work in that application, when I clean the bathroom and I’m the barista, if that’s the only way I can show that I’ve done that work, then that creates the data itself. And so it’s integrated into the workflow from the beginning.

Um,

[00:40:53] Mike Moran: of this for someone up the chain who’s the brand defender or the, or the customer, uh, [00:41:00] experienced czar of a chain of disparate, um, you know, cafes around the country. It’s a nightmare cuz they can’t enforce what their standards might be unless they get data.

So essentially that data then comes back to headquarters and they say, listen, you folks in southeastern New Jersey are just not up to snuff. You need to step it up because the rest of the country seems to be able to do this. And so that, that’s very valuable for, for people up the chain who have to deal with the potential flowback of these things not being done properly for the, for the larger brand.

[00:41:32] James Dice: Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess there’s the third playbook, which is kind of what we teach in our foundations course, which is maybe the Ernst and Young route You talked about, Mike, where you’re actually going and you’re. , what, what are all, are all the current workflows in this organization and how can we like rearrange them or tweak them to include this technology aspect?

Whatever use case I have, how can I insert that into the workflows of the people that are [00:42:00] in the organization? I don’t think there’s any like right or wrong way to go about this. It’s just a matter of anchoring in that let’s get to the workflow in some way rather than having it be some dashboard that we, you know, collect dust on a virtual shelf.

What would that like to say? Let’s, I think that’s a great discussion. Let’s shift into the leak detection discussion that I was hoping to have here. We haven’t talked about leak detection to my memory on the podcast, although we’re up close to 150 episodes now. I could be forgetting some conversation that we’ve had in the past.

Um, Byron, before we hit record, you said you guys have had a kind of a long-term leak detection program and, and, and Kilroy. So can you talk about, like, just talk about the program overall, how long have you been doing it, how many sites, uh, and just give us an overall summary and then we’ll kind of dive into the details.

[00:42:55] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So every single site within the K portfolio has a leak detection piece to it, [00:43:00] right? As part of our operation side, uh, for our common areas, even within some tenant spaces, there’s a requirement for leak detection. Uh, anywhere we might see any sort of vulnerability, uh, restrooms, common spaces, even, you know, kitchen nets and different pieces.

Uh, and it’s been in, in the part of our kind of dna. As long as I’ve been here, even longer, 10 plus years probably. Uh Right. We have a very robust operations team who oversees it and a very, uh, well structured, uh, deployment cycle. Right. We actually recently, within the last two years, we upgraded to the newest version of that lead detection program that we have in, in place where we went from old analog pot lines to digital lines where this is all going.

You know, before it was, it would have to use a phone system to call somebody, and then it would go down the tree. Now it’s all virtualized where, you know, there’s a detection of water. It goes back to the central hub. That central hub then has a list of, you know, people who should be. Notified of water, uh, and incidents.

[00:44:00] Uh, and then it goes down the, that, that spike. We’ve also kind of tried to automate it with our camera system. So if the leak detection goes off and the camera system detects water in that space, right? They’re both creating a notification to engineering, to janitorial, to security, right? Do we need to say security, go out there to secure the space, make sure nobody goes into this, you know, waterfall of, you know, coming from the roof or whatever it might be.

So, automating those pieces together, using the local sensors, plus the cameras is the newer version of our lead detection program. But the bread and butter has been detecting water, uh, within spaces for, you know, 10 plus years. And, and using that to make sure that our, our buildings are, are secure

[00:44:39] James Dice: Got it. Oh my God. So many questions to ask here. So, so you’re talking about, first of all, you’re talking about back of the house and front of the house, so Kilroy owned and managed spaces, and you’re talking about tenant spaces like Kitchenettes, like you said as well. So you’re doing this sort of on behalf of and as an amenity to tenants [00:45:00] as well.

[00:45:00] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So we, and, and I don’t know the specifics regarding the lease, but I know there’s a component, uh, that talks about, you know, water detection specifically for places that there might be something at risk, right? So we will provide support for a tenant’s water detection program. Let’s say they’re not as robust or not as sophisticated as at ours.

We will provide that network and infrastructure that we talked about, the foundation to be able to run their piece. Uh, but for our back of the house processes, anywhere that we, there might be challenges, we make sure that that is fully deployed to a building and then working with individual tenants to see what the need is for their, their space.

Again, I don’t know the specifics behind the lease, but there is a component there.

[00:45:38] James Dice: Totally. Okay. Let’s go into the, just a little bit about the tech stack. I don’t wanna like go deep, deep into that because there’s so many other interesting pieces of this. But you’re talking about a specific sensor for different types of leaks it sounds like, or is it just water and is it only one sensor?

And then can you talk about like where the data then goes? I have detected a leak and where [00:46:00] does that go? And then where is the alert created and how the alerts then sent elsewhere. How does that, how does that all work?

[00:46:06] Bayron Lopez Pineda: sure. So there’s a specific sensor, uh, that uses Laura when, uh, that gets deployed out, right? And they actually piggyback off of each other. So there’s one centralized hub. That centralized hub is the brain of the whole operation,

right? That guy for the whole buil. Depending on the building, uh, you know, depending on the stack, you might one or two sensors or, or hubs. Those guys will be the brains of the operation. They talk to the sensors deployed throughout the building, and they detect just pure water. Uh, there’s water under the floor, there’s something going on, right? If you want to be a bit smarter, you can have, you know, water detection within valves and stuff like that.

Uh, but that creates a whole other challenge and, you know, security pieces. But the, the easier piece to deploy is sensor under the floor, and you might see them when you go into the restroom. You might see that there’s little white boxes, or gray boxes, or depending on what the color on the floor. They have antennas and they detect water.

Uh, usually they’re placed by, by doors, underneath sinks, underneath locations where we [00:47:00] might see a potential flood or, or potential for water. Sometimes the older systems were very easy to be. To be hit. So if somebody was mopping and hit them with them, it would create an alert. So you had all these false positives.

With the old systems, the newer versions is able to tell that, okay, because it is digital, you can say, oh, the janitor hit it with the mop. Uh, instead of having this big phone call chain that has to go through the process and nonstop, so basically the data alert is collected, the water alert is collected, that is then sent to the hub.

The hub then has preset. Rules for each building, right? Each building is different.

Each building has its own chief engineer. Each building has its own security team, property manager, and then it goes through the stack. It notifies all those groups of a potential water thread. Uh, it can also create a phone call of a potential water thread, and then, then the team response to that issue.

Um, in talking to, you know, some of our engineering teams, [00:48:00] uh, they’ve mentioned that, you know, there’s been places where they found the leak and if it wasn’t managed due to the detection alert, it could have created maybe millions of dollars worth of damage, right? We’re lucky that, you know, that alert went out, it went out to the correct person within a timely manner, and they were able to go and shut off any water issue that was happening.

But let’s say that that sensor wasn’t there and that occurred over a weekend, that could have leaked into a centralized location where that would’ve created millions of, millions of dollars worth of retrofits. So, uh, the program itself has, has been really successful.

[00:48:30] James Dice: Yeah. And I was gonna ask for stories like that, but, um, can you just talk about the, like the insurance component for, for you guys, I’m gonna ask Mike about, generally across their customers in a second, but it sounds like their insurance premium deduction or reductions because you have this technology, pays for it or pays for most of it, or how do you guys think about that, uh, from a business case standpoint?

[00:48:56] Bayron Lopez Pineda: So it’s a, it’s a great operational tool for us to have. Right. And [00:49:00] it does help with, uh, with insurance. I don’t know the specifics behind it. I know our team is one of the pieces that we pull data on. Uh, we pull how many hub, how many sensors, what are we, where is this deployed? And then we provide that to our risk management team so that they can work with their counterparts On the insurance side, uh, I don’t know the specific of numbers or kind of what the breakdown is, but I know that it has given us an advantage when it comes to insurance to make sure that we have.

A leak detection program, right. Both it’s within the operations to stop any problems. And within the insurance world, uh, I know that they’ve looked to specific carriers, uh, because of their experience with, you know, leak detection and policies and how are recovered. Uh, I just dunno the specifics of, you know,

[00:49:40] James Dice: But it’s kind of like you guys would do this anyway, and then when you go out to procure insurance, the companies that say, oh, they have this and we’re gonna give them a discount for it, those are the companies that get a leg up and those sort of negotiations.

[00:49:53] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Yeah, especially cuz those guys are probably the ones who are looking more at innovation or thinking about smart building [00:50:00] security, thinking about smart building sensors and maybe have more weight within that space. Right? Versus the guy that says, oh, I’ve never heard of water detection. Uh, they might say, oh yeah, we’ve heard about water detection and people, uh, face recognition and this and this, and all these other issues that might come with smart building challenges going forward.

But yeah, it is part of our operations core to make sure we have that and make sure everything is deployed and not kept.

[00:50:24] James Dice: Got it. So, so Mike, outside of working with Killroy, how do you guys h how, like, can you talk about the marketplace for this type of

use case and kind of what you’re seeing in the, in the

market right now?

[00:50:36] Mike Moran: It, it tends to be, uh, I think for many large commercial real estate, um, firms that we deal with, it’s a huge light bulb for some of them that, not just that they can, uh, defray, uh, you know, that the industry standard right now, according to the, the loss control operators inside the insurance industry, they think they have.

That [00:51:00] these kind of, uh, you know, capabilities can reduce water damage cost by 70%. Um, now everybody who has commercial real estate has experienced the, uh, the nightmare of having a flood. And often it’s a frustratingly small problem that causes a large problem. So being able to cut that off early is very attractive.

And so what we tend to find is that we can talk about preventing claims, um, and, and frankly increasing the value of the building because buildings that have a lot of, uh, flooding problems, that knowledge becomes part of the potential exit. Um, you know, to you, you, uh, you get tenant attrition, you get tenants suing each other, you get the building being sued.

Um, you know, it’s just not a pleasant experience. There’s a lot of disruption beyond the cost of paying whatever deduct deductible is. There’s a lot of disruption and anger that it causes within a structure. So we’ve had that [00:52:00] experience where as soon as they realize the difference between what they paid just last year on one flood and the price of outfitting their entire building, they are very quickly on board.

Um, there are of course the, the other benefit of being able to go to your insurance Sure. And say, Hey, I’ve got this leak detection now deployed. I’d like to talk about my deductible or my premium, because I think you’re gonna see that there’s fewer claims. And that’s what the insurance side is so psyched about.

So you talk about making the business case on the commercial real estate side, it’s obviously, um, pure cost, but there’s also questions of client loyalty or, uh, tenant loyalty and also the, uh, issue of just dis disruption to the operations of the, of the building. And then on the insurance side, they, they honestly think that claims will not only be diminished significantly by this kind of a thing.

But that they’ll also be smaller when they do come in because they’ll, the issue will be caught [00:53:00] and it gives them an opportunity to go, okay, um, you have leak detection. We gave you a, uh, a break on your premium. Did you react properly to this, to this warning? Um, you know, and they wanna know that, right? So this goes both ways.

So the insurance industry has a very different view of this than the commercial real estate owner, but in both cases, it’s pretty easy to make the business case that this makes a lot of sense to do.

[00:53:25] James Dice: Yeah.

[00:53:26] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Yeah. And for us, I mean, it’s, it’s 100% deployed, right? Every single asset has a leak detection piece to it, right? So it, it makes sense. It’s a long-term goal and, and we’ve really committed to it. Um, you know, there’s a, a bunch of players out there and a bunch of different solutions that you could take a look at.

Uh, we’ve been with a specific one for, for a number of years, but I would recommend that anybody who has large operations, uh, to deploy this, it’s, it’s, it’s great, uh, to be able to be proactive. We’ve had leaks within our own space where, you know, the sensors, the engineers came in and said, oh, there’s water on the floor, and we’re like, where?

And they’re able to [00:54:00] point it out. So it’s a, it’s a good piece for us to have this in place and going forward and, and the overall strategy for the building, right? Technology. Getting it so that you are reducing your costs, reducing staff hours, uh, and making sure that you can react to it faster than,

you know, having multiple complaints come in.

[00:54:17] Mike Moran: and let add one more benefit here that often gets forgotten. You actually save water. Um, there are leaks in every building that you don’t know about. So there’s there it, on the one hand, you’ve got the kind of sensor that notice water when it leaks on top of the sensor. On the other hand, there are the flow detectors, which are about how much water is going through your system.

If that changes suddenly in any kind of significant way, there’s something going on, right? Either someone’s gotta faucet on all the time, and that’s not such a big problem, although it’s wasteful. But it could also be a walls. , which not only wastes water and costs you more money, but eventually is gonna turn into mold.

Um, or, or cause a much larger [00:55:00] flood again. So, so there’s all sorts of, uh, sustainability benefits to this as well. Um, you can just use less water because you find those little leaks.

[00:55:08] James Dice: Since we’re

like in the bathroom, this whole episode, um, I’ve been noticing so many toilet leaks lately. Cause I’ve been traveling a lot. I had AHR conference and then a bunch of family travel related to a death in the family. But like so much time in airports lately, and everybody’s seen it. Just the toilets that are just like, you know, going, going, going.

Um, I didn’t think this would be the direction that we take this podcast talking about toilets, but what, what are the solutions that are available for, for

that sort of use

[00:55:43] Mike Moran: I’ll jump in quick and I think it, it’s what we just described, it’s a flow detector. Um, that is basically on the pipes. And when those toilets run, run, run, um, that’s going to spike. That can cost hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month. Uh, just [00:56:00] negligently. And, but you know, the average person might not really react to it very quickly, especially if they don’t pay the bill.

[00:56:07] Bayron Lopez Pineda: uh,

[00:56:08] James Dice: Yeah, I, I laughed. I was in, uh, PS market in Atlanta, uh, at AHR a couple weeks ago, and it was, I won’t, I won’t say who the, the developer is, but there was a water smart poster next to the set of urinals and the waters part posters, talking about all the ways in which you could save water, right. Many different ways to save water in this building.

And they’re doing ’em all. And then literally right next to that poster is a leaking urinal that’s running basically 24 7. And I was just thinking like, oh,

man, it would be great to, great to do something about That, one, but

[00:56:42] Mike Moran: That, that’s like the famous, the famous picture of the, the truck that’s gone through the window of a store and it says, how’s my driving call

[00:56:50] James Dice: all right.

[00:56:50] Bayron Lopez Pineda: There’s a, there’s an interesting use case actually that came out of security of leak sensors being used within prisons because they [00:57:00] can then detect when either inmates are flooding the floor because then they’re getting ready for a potential riot. So our security team actually brought that into place.

It doesn’t apply for us, but within prisons, that’s what they’re using it for. Right? To detect water and fluk, which means that there can be a potential of an incident. Uh,

and you know, so that’s it. It’s multiple ways of, of getting that

[00:57:20] Mike Moran: there’s another, this is of two very

related, very real Ruth cases, the, uh, British, um, national Housing Authority. When they evict somebody, it’s very often the case that they say, okay, and they turn the taps on and everything, and then they leave. and it does enormous damage. It’s like vandalism right now.

Another similar lease case is, we all know right now commercial real estate has a lot of vacant properties. Vacant properties are much more susceptible to damage, um, than a regular property that people are walking through on a, at various basis. So all of these, um, solutions we’ve discussed, whether it’s air quality and humidity or water or um, [00:58:00] occupancy, all have a really powerful potential risk prevention, uh, aspect in a vacant property.

So you can, you can catch problems obviously, cuz you’re just probably gonna have one guard or maybe even a security service who stops by once in a while. That’s just not gonna do it if there’s an upper floor. Right. Or if somebody’s in there at odd, odd hours, which you described, Byron. Uh, we’ve noticed that in our hospital use cases, and this goes back somewhat to occupancy, um, they are detecting both, uh, bathroom use and occupancy in wards that shouldn’t be under use right now.

And some cases it was like staff that knew that, uh, there’s clean bathrooms up in those wards and they’d go use the bathroom and then you’re giving the hospital patient a bathroom that isn’t clean. So there were all sorts of potential knock-on problems there. Uh, hospital, hospital associated infections are a massive, you know, the antibiotic resistant germs.

Uh, huge issue for the [00:59:00] hospital industry. So they’re looking to get a much more granular on things like that.

[00:59:03] James Dice: Fascinating. Let’s close this out. Uh, I think these are fa too fascinating discussions. Thank you both for contributing from your different perspectives. So let’s, let’s do, let’s close with some carve outs. What, uh, book podcast, TV show, movie. , documentary, et cetera, has had a major impact on you lately.

Let’s start with you, Byron.

[00:59:23] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Uh, so most of my free time now has been reading, uh, items for my master’s program, and this year we’ve been heavily focused on the ethics behind, uh, technology. Uh, so I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff on, uh, ethical process, technology and solutions. Uh, so windsurf, uh, creator of the internet, a bunch of other different people out there talking about how we should use technology in their applications in iot.

So that’s been the biggest piece of me, right? It’s been the foundation and how are we now deploying sustainable, ethical solutions, uh, for us to use going forward, [01:00:00] right? We know that we want to do. Access control and appearance recognition. Right. But you know, if we look at the, the struggles that China’s having with their access control, appearance, recognition, and how they’re using it for, are there things in access control that’s been big on my mind.

How do we make sure that technology is ethically used, sustainable, and, and long lasting?

[01:00:19] James Dice: Got it. So being, being stewards of the people that are using the building and making sure you’re not violating their privacy in any way and things like that.

Fascinating. Cool. How about you,

Mike?

[01:00:29] Mike Moran: Uh, well, I’ll give you two examples. One, it’s a book that my, one of my kids gave me for Christmas. It was the, uh, biography of Mel Brooks. It’s just impossible not to smile through a book like that. And his life story is fantastic. It’s an amazing story. Uh, you know, he did not grow up rich. He just was a smart, funny kid, and he made it.

Um, and we all know some Mel Brooks, you know, uh, piece of, you know, cinematography that, that we can recite by heart usually. Um, but more seriously [01:01:00] lately I’ve been watching something called, uh, the Laugh of Us, which is a Netflix series, which. Um, it’s, it’s kind of a post pandemic world, and it’s a, it’s a father and his daughter gets killed during the pandemic, but he kind of ends up with a, a y another young, uh, woman.

And it’s very touching to me. And it reminded me of, uh, Cormack McCarthy’s, the, the Road, which was of unbelievable book and very similar, uh, except the, instead of being post nuclear, it was post pandemic. And I cry in both of them because I’ve got both sons and daughters. And I can imagine being that person in a, in a devastated world, trying to protect your, your child, how do you do it?

It’s just, uh, amazingly moving, but it has real lessons. And I like, I like things like that, which it might be a little dark, but it has humor, it has, uh, emotion. Uh, it’s not quite a, a bleak science fiction, but, um, it’s also, you know, there’s a warning there in all instances to getting it [01:02:00] right. We have the re we have the opportunity now.

We have so much data. That tells us what is right and what is just enough. We should be getting it right now with all this data.

[01:02:09] James Dice: Totally, yeah. And I’ll second the road if anyone hasn’t seen or read the road, I’ve read it and watched the movie. It takes you to a really dark place, but you don’t really, you’re not the same afterwards. And I’d say in a good way, um, you can, you can go back to that dark place and it’s not fun place to be, but I think it helps us realize how.

everything is in our lives, gives us a nice perspective. So thank you both for coming on the show and, uh, I

can’t wait to talk to you again sometime soon.

[01:02:39] Bayron Lopez Pineda: Appreciate it. Thank you.

[01:02:41] Mike Moran: Bye now.