I wrote about LEED v5 O+M’s move away from the Arc Performance Score recently, and the piece before that covered v4.1 BD+C. This one closes the series out with the version most existing buildings pursuing LEED right now are actually still…
LEED v4.1 BD+C: The Scoring Landscape and Why It’s Still a Live Choice in 2026
I wrote recently about what changed in LEED v5 BD+C, and the question underneath that piece keeps coming up in real conversations: if v5 exists, why would a project team still register under v4.1? The honest answer is that plenty of…
LEED v5 O+M Explained: What Changes Now That the Arc Performance Score Is Gone
If you’ve managed a LEED v4.1 O+M recertification, you know the feeling: your building runs the same way it did last quarter, but the Arc-calculated score moved anyway, and nobody on your team can fully explain why. That specific frustration, a…
You Don’t Need an AI Model for Predictive Maintenance. You Need the Right Standard, Applied to Real Data.
Every predictive maintenance pitch sounds the same right now. Feed a model your equipment data, let it learn, watch it forecast failures before they happen. It’s a good pitch. It’s also not the only way to do this, and for a…
The Hidden Costs of Smart Building Software: A Buyer’s Guide to Real Total Cost of Ownership
I’ve sat across the table for enough vendor negotiations to know the pitch by heart. Three-year payback. Clean energy savings numbers. A slide that makes the decision look obvious. What’s almost never on that slide: the invoice that shows up in…
LEED v5 BD+C Explained: What Changed and How to Meet the New Platinum Gate
Every LEED project team I’ve talked to this year has asked some version of the same question: register under v4.1 or move to v5? There’s no universally right answer to that, it depends on where the project is in its timeline…
The End of the ROI Mirage: A Blueprint for Value-Driven Procurement
The End of the ROI Mirage: A Blueprint for Value-Driven Procurement For decades, the process of buying and selling technology in the commercial real estate industry has been built on a fundamental flaw. It’s a flaw that creates the “ROI Mirage,”…
Augmentation vs. Automation: A Better AI Strategy for Facility Management
Beyond Automation: How to Use Technology to Augment Your Team’s Expertise The conversation around AI in the smart building industry is broken. It is dominated by a Silicon Valley narrative of “automation” and “disruption,” centered on a flawed premise: that the…
Big Data vs. Right Data: The Foundation of Building Analytics
Data Janitors vs. Data Scientists: The Unsexy Work of Building a Solid Data Foundation The smart building industry is obsessed with the promise of Artificial Intelligence. We’re sold a future where sophisticated data scientists and powerful machine learning algorithms will unlock…
The Problem-First Mandate: Fixing Your Smart Building Strategy
The Problem-First Mandate: Why Your Smart Building Strategy is Backwards The smart building industry has a fundamental addiction: solutionism. We are obsessed with new technologies—the latest AI platform, the slickest dashboard, the most advanced sensor—before we have a clear-eyed understanding of…