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Honeywell Study Reveals More Than 80% of Commercial Building Managers Plan to Increase the Use of AI to Optimize Operations

William Attardi on March 8, 2025

Honeywell released the findings of its AI in Buildings study, which revealed that 84% of commercial building decision makers plan to increase their use of AI in the next year to help them improve security, streamline energy management and integrate predictive maintenance. In this study of U.S. building managers and decision makers with more than 250 building occupants, Honeywell found that across property types, respondents are increasingly using AI to help improve process efficiency, productivity and operations. However, since most respondents (92%) reported challenges in hiring skilled, tech-savvy individuals, a greater opportunity remains ahead for building operations to tap into AI’s capabilities to enhance employee training, augment their current workforce and ultimately help upskill labor to support the sector’s rapidly changing needs.  Honeywell study reveals more than 80% of commercial building managers plan to increase the use of ai to optimize operations

AI’s Growing Waste Problem—and How to Solve It by Samsurin Welch, Khaled Soufani and Eva Morales

William Attardi on March 4, 2025

Harvard Business Review: While AI has come under scrutiny for energy use, a less discussed but equally concerning trend is the growth in resource use and electronic waste from computing and data center infrastructure. Circular economy principles can help mitigate negativeenvironmental and social impact from the AI boom. Companies need to think about how they can use equipment and materials longer, use differently, use again, and use less. The circular economy offers a path forward. By rethinking resource use, extending the lifespan of AI hardware, and developing robust recycling systems, businesses can not only reduce their environmental footprint but also drive innovation and competitiveness. Drawing on our previous developed 4-Use framework offers several insights on how circularity can improve the sustainability of AI operations. AI’s Growing Waste Problem—and How to Solve It

The Role of Energy Audits in Enhancing Facility Performance by Ellie Gabel

William Attardi on March 4, 2025

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), approximately 30% of the money used to power buildings — around $400 billion annually — is wasted yearly. A professional-grade energy audit can help facility managers reduce electricity expenses without compromising comfort or safety. During a commercial energy audit, an auditor assesses how, where and why a facility consumes power. They aim to address inefficiencies and identify areas of opportunity, enabling a substantial energy consumption reduction. Whatever the audit’s results, management will receive a baseline on the property’s energy consumption, waste and reuse effectiveness rating. They can use this data to identify pain points, explore areas of opportunity, or prioritize equipment upgrades. Nearly 40% of a building’s energy usage can be attributed to lighting. Replacing outdated lighting fixtures with more energy efficient options can drastically reduce those costs. The Role Of Energy Audits In Enhancing Facility Performance

Memo: Clarifications to the NLC 2020 Report – 2025 update

William Attardi on February 22, 2025

 “Energy Savings from Networked Lighting Control (NLC) Systems With and Without LLLC”  Key updates include refined clarification of the definition of luminaire-level lighting controls (LLLC) used in the report, elaborated explanations on several important aspects of the control savings factors (CSFs), and distinguishing the calculation methodology between high-end trim savings and other control strategies (occupancy sensing and daylight harvesting). The memo emphasizes that the documented CSFs reflect average savings across a diverse set of projects, where optimal programming varied, and highlights considerations for small sample bias in evaluations. Building-specific CSFs and their limitations are explained, and the memo differentiates findings from a related redesign study to avoid misinterpretation. Lastly, an updated executive summary and errata sheet correct clerical errors, reaffirming that NLC systems with LLLC offer higher energy savings potential but encouraging ongoing updates as technology and datasets evolve.

Demystifying AI by Oracle NetSuite

William Attardi on February 16, 2025

AI is no longer confined to the realms of science fiction or cutting-edge research labs. It is becoming increasingly pervasive in nearly all aspects of our lives, as businesses and governments harness the power of AI to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and solve complex problems. The time for action is now; understanding AI is no longer a luxury but a necessity as we strive to adapt, thrive, and shape the world around us. This guide written by author and CFO, Glenn Hopper, provides a comprehensive introduction to AI, shedding light on core concepts and technologies that fuel it. Demystifying AI

 

Download it now to gain insight into:

  • Making informed decisions around AI.
  • Harnessing the potential of AI-driven solutions.
  • Navigating the ever-changing landscape.
  • And so much more!

What to Know About AI Agents and Their Impact on Lighting by David Shiller

William Attardi on February 9, 2025

AI agents differ significantly from traditional AI systems in terms of functionality. AI agents possess higher autonomy, making independent decisions without constant human oversight. AI agents are poised to reshape the lighting industry, bringing next levels of intelligence, efficiency, and personalization to lighting systems. Here’s how AI agents will transform various aspects of the lighting industry:

    1. Intelligent Lighting Control
    2. Personalized Lighting Experiences
    3. Automated Commissioning and Maintenance
    4. Energy Optimization
    5. Enhanced Design and Planning
    6. Integration with Smart Building Systems
    7. Market Growth and Innovation

More information is available here.  What To Know About AI Agents And Their Impact On Lighting | LightNOW

AI in Education: Process Over Product by Thomas G. Farrell, M.B.A., Ed.D.

William Attardi on January 27, 2025

Don’t let AI steal the learning process.  The role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education should be about prioritizing the learning PROCESS over the end product or rote knowledge acquisition.  AI is transforming industries worldwide, and education is no exception.  From personalized learning to data-driven insights, AI offers tools to enhance learning experiences.  However, unlike the private sector, where outcomes and products often drive innovation, education emphasizes the learning process itself—an essential distinction.  I would argue that true learning involves exploration and mistake-making—essential components of the process-oriented nature of education (Zhao, 2020).  AI in schools should support this ethos by encouraging inquiry-based learning and providing formative feedback, rather than just rewarding final products.

What is AI?  AI is software that can perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence.  Ideally, it is a tool/assistant that allows the world’s information (knowledge) and makes it universally accessible.  AI Chatbots are based on a data set [LLM – Large Language Models] and it trains itself on that data set; constantly looking for patterns and connections.  This, in turn allows it to make predictions, while learning and improving with practice.  Tasks include understanding and processing language, recognizing patterns, making decisions, and solving problems.  AI has actually been around for a while; spell check, “Turnitin.com”, “Grammarly”, “Siri”, “Alexa”, etc.

How will AI affect productivity (The Brookings Institute)  [What else can AI do?]

AI will not hinder the education process, nor is it a zero-sum game.  AI’s potential is limitless and we need to adapt to it.  How does AI impact how we prepare students for their future?  AI tools like adaptive learning platforms, automated assessment systems, and virtual tutors are reshaping traditional learning environments.  Applications such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Gamma, NotebookLM, or Khan Academy’s AI-driven tutors help personalize instruction by identifying individual student needs and tailoring content accordingly.  These tools empower teachers by automating administrative tasks, enabling them to focus on deeper, student-centered instruction.

In Brick Schools, we utilize AI as a tool for delivery of instruction that promotes our District’s vision and mission.  Our District Vision is “Student-Centered, Teacher-Led, Community-Connected”.  Our hope is that we, as an organization, can make all decisions that are “student centered”, implement those decisions through our faculty with fidelity, and connect / communicate those decisions with our community – we will be successful.  Student-Centered instruction implies that differentiation and personalized learning is a priority and AI can support teaching in helping create dynamic lessons tailored to students’ individual needs.  By automating routine administrative tasks, teachers are afforded with more time to build stronger relationships with their students and focus on increased student engagement.  Community-Connected education can utilize AI to promote digital citizenship and support project-based/service-learning initiatives, as well as strengthen home-school connections through more efficient communication (i.e., multilingual support, etc.).  Organizational policies can ensure the ethical and legal use of AI, and policymakers must remain vigilant about the ethical use of AI,

True learning has always been a process.  While AI in the private sector often prioritizes measurable outcomes, such as increased efficiency or revenue, or profit maximization; education values the learning journey.  The emphasis in education is on fostering critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and resilience—skills that are not easily quantified.  For instance, in teaching and learning, a student’s ability to reflect on their thought process when solving a problem or iteratively improve a project is as crucial as arriving at the correct answer.  AI’s role in education is not to mimic the private sector’s focus on products and outcomes but to enrich the journey of learning.  By leveraging AI tools to support the learning process, educators can nurture students’ growth, adaptability, and curiosity—skills essential for thriving in a rapidly changing world.

What skills are relevant?  Businesses’ top 10 skill priorities for 2027 (World Economic Forum).

The private sector can benefit from AI as a superior marketing research tool, information gathering, data synthesizing, and much more.  Before AI, you had to have the data existing, mine the data, and create a database, in order to synthesize the information.  Now with AI, the entire Internet is your data and AI can synthesize and correlate the information for you in an instant.  Engaging all stakeholders with constant and creative communication mechanisms will not only connect an organization but help improve the bottom line as well.  To strike a balance, AI needs to align with the goals of education and the future of industry; ensuring equitable access and preventing over-reliance on automation that might detract from the human connections.  Implementation should focus on enhancing the teaching and learning process in education, rather than replacing it with rote knowledge.  Tools that offer dynamic feedback, foster collaboration, and allow for student agency can complement educators’ efforts to cultivate lifelong learners. When used thoughtfully, AI can amplify the process-oriented goals of education, preparing students not just for jobs but for a lifetime of learning.

The learning process helps students to grow academically, socially, and emotionally.  For all the hype about AI replacing teachers, the reality is that teachers/instructors/coaches/mentors are irreplaceable.  It is a deeply human endeavor.  The great ones who can leverage this human element through authentic learning and relationship-building will ultimately prepare students for an unpredictable world forged by AI.  References provided on request

About the author:  Dr. Farrell is currently the Superintendent of Schools for the Brick Township Public Schools District in New Jersey.  He has served in this capacity for six years and is in his thirteenth year overall as a Superintendent.  He received his Doctorate of Education Degree in Leadership from Monmouth University.

The Critical Need for a Crisis Communication Plan for Your Business by Frank Grobmeier

William Attardi on January 21, 2025

What is one of the biggest mistakes any business can make? It’s believing that nothing bad will ever happen to it. As a result, leadership doesn’t prepare for the inevitable crisis. The reality is every business faces challenges that they never see coming. But taking a little time to prepare a crisis communication plan would allow them to quickly and effectively respond to their employees, customers and stakeholders with a unified message and the critical details that will protect its reputation, maintain public trust, and minimize negative impacts.

We’ve watched recent crises unfold, like the California wildfires and Hurricane Helene, which have shown us that unexpected situations can alter our day-to-day business dramatically. However, natural disasters are not the only unexpected things that can impact our business. Other crisis situations can include corporate scandals, bankruptcies, product recalls, severe weather closings, and technical failures, just to name a few.

A thorough crisis communication plan provides your employees with the knowledge and direction that guides how they appropriately respond to customers, stakeholders, and media requests.  A strong plan can help your organization maintain operational efficiency during a crisis and provide employees with clear guidelines on how to engage with first responders, contractors, and media, while minimizing damage and restoring regular operations.

The following 10 simple steps can help you develop a comprehensive crisis communication plan:

  1. Anticipate the crisis. Take your head out of the sand and begin to list out all the potential crisis situations that could put your business at risk. Today’s “anticipations” could be tomorrow’s “situations.”
  2. Assemble a crisis team. No matter how competent you are as a leader, a crisis requires multiple people to execute the plan. You should also identify backup personnel for each of those roles in anticipation of what could happen if someone on the crisis team is directly involved in the crisis.
  3. Decide on a spokesperson for the organization. This person will provide a unified message to the media, stakeholders, and if applicable, shareholders to update these key constituencies on the situation.
  4. Assign a leadership point person. This role is different from the spokesperson. This point person oversees managing the crisis situation while the spokesperson is solely responsible for informing people and speaking on behalf of the business.
  5. Create a place to centrally store the crisis communication plan. This will need to be a software / cloud storage area that can be readily accessed by the crisis management team. You will also need to develop email groups / text chains /  virtual links that the team can use to communicate with each other during a crisis situation.
  6. Protect employees. The first, critical piece of every crisis plan is to ensure the safety and security of your employees. Create an action plan that is specific to your employees and your facilities.
  7. Identify all stakeholders, other than your employees. In a crisis you will want to reach out personally to key stakeholders, such as board members, investors, vendors, and key customers. Others, such as smaller customers and prospective customers, you can alert through social media, while friends and small vendors may also be contacted via email. Rely on general media to inform industry folks and the surrounding communities. Make sure your plan identifies each type of stakeholder; the action required, for example notifying customers of warehouse closures; and the method of notification.
  8. Develop information management processes and protocols. These include how to interface with first responders, government officials, and other agencies, as well as how to protect employees, etc.
  9. Establish a company media policy and make sure employees fully understand the guidelines. In larger organizations, the Human Resources team will need to have a media policy in place not only for crises but also to guide how employees regularly represent the company in social media posts. In your crisis communication plan, your employees need to know who the spokesperson is and understand that they should not comment on the situation but direct all questions to that spokesperson.
  10. Create holding statements. While it’s not possible to create detailed statements about every potential crisis, it is possible, and even desirable, to write several crisis statement templates that can be easily and quickly reworked into specific statements and releases during the early stages of the event. Being prepared with holding statements speeds up response time during the event and increases the odds of successful communication with stakeholders—protecting the business reputation and relationships.

The whole idea of crisis planning is to mitigate risk during unexpected situations. The operative word is unexpected. So, there’s no time like the present to devote time and resources to developing a comprehensive crisis communication plan because you never know when you might need it.

The Lagging Transition to LEDs in Schools — Part 3 by Jessica Kelly, Andrea Wilkerson, Dan Blitzer

William Attardi on January 21, 2025

Parts 1 and 2 of this series discussed the sluggish adoption of LED technology in schools and the dim prospects for fluorescent lighting. This final part addresses the LED choices school facility personnel are considering and the new tradeoffs they face. Based on PNNL’s conversations with schools, the change to LEDs is underway. Upgrading lighting can reduce energy consumption and operating costs and refresh the look and feel of the school. Fluorescent lighting has served schools for a long time. What does maintaining an LED system look like for the next 30 or 40 years? While TLEDs seem like an easy solution today, relying on fluorescent luminaires and other components will become more challenging in the future. Compare the up front and ongoing costs for each LED option and consider developing a “standard” lighting solution that can be repeated over time, space by space, or school by school. The Lagging Transition to LEDs in Schools — Part 3 | EC&M

Where Humans Still Have the Edge on AI by Marc Zao-Sanders, CEO filtered.com

William Attardi on January 15, 2025

Since ChatGPT’s launch two years ago, generative AI (gen AI) has been promising to reshape how work gets done. The use cases are many and varied, and we’re still discovering what’s going to work best, for us as individuals, in teams, and as organizations. In a surprising twist, it’s the white-collar work of the office that seems to be more imminently replaceable than the blue-collar work of the field and factory. Gen AI has several attributes that we humans lack. It’s always on. It draws on a vast segment of the web. It generates output instantly. It can scale endlessly.  This new era of AI can feel intimidating for the limited, lumbering life forms that created it. We now need to look harder to see where our unique value still lies. Where Humans Still Have the Edge on AI

It’s Back to School – How Some of Our Most Acknowledged Universities Got Their Name – Who were the true visionaries who would donate half of their estate to sculpting the minds of the future. These stories are monuments to history and culture. Let’s take a stroll through academia’s memory lane and uncover the origins of these storied university names!

  1. Ah, Harvard! The Ivy League giant was once a small college in the Massachusetts Bay Colony settlement called New Towne. But where did “Harvard” come from? Enter John Harvard, a clergyman who, in 1638, decided to bequeath half his estate and his library (a whopping 400 books!) to the fledgling college. Grateful for this generous gift, they promptly named the institution after him.
  2. A gem of New Haven, Connecticut, Yale is another Ivy League powerhouse known for its prestigious law and drama schools. It owes its name to Elihu Yale, a wealthy merchant who, in 1718, donated a modest shipment of goods (including portraits, books, and textiles) to a struggling collegiate school. Those goods were auctioned off, raising a much-needed £562 –a small fortune at the time.
  3. Dartmouth is renowned for its beautiful rural setting, nestled in the picturesque town of Hanover, New Hampshire. It was named after the Earl of Dartmouth, William Legge, a British nobleman who supported the college’s founding –despite never actually setting foot in America!
  4. Brown, this Rhode Island Ivy University, known for its open curriculum and emphasis on student choice, was founded with a mouthful of a name – the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. It was renamed in 1704 for Nicholas Brown, Jr., a prominent merchant whose family donated generously to the school.
  5. Perched atop a hill overlooking Ithaca, New York, Cornell is celebrated for its diverse academic programs and its stunning natural surroundings. Founded by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, this university was unique for its commitment to practical education, allowing students the freedom to choose their own course of study. It was a revolutionary notion at the time, which would guide a curricular reform across the country.
  6. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford is renowned for its entrepreneurial spirit and its close ties to the tech industry. But this California powerhouse has a touching origin story. Leland Stanford, Jr., the founder’s son, tragically died young from typhoid fever. His father Leland Sr., railroad magnate and former state governor, and his mother Jane, founded the university in his memory, ensuring his legacy lived on through the pursuit of knowledge.
  7. This North Carolina research giant, known for its strong medical and law schools, underwent a bit of a name change in its history. Originally called Trinity College, it was renamed Duke University in 1924 after James Buchanan Duke, a tobacco and electric power industrialist who founded the American Tobacco Company. He established The Duke Endowment, to which he donated throughout his life and left half his estate after his death.
  8. Nestled in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt is a renowned research university with a vibrant campus life. It owes its name to “The Commodore,” Cornelius Vanderbilt, a shipping and railroad magnate, who provided the initial gift to establish the university.
  9. Texas businessman William Marsh Rice provided the initial funding for this Houston university, but did not live to see its opening. He was murdered by his valet as he slept, in a plot to forge the man’s will. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, Rice University flourished through the years, becoming an institution known for its strong engineering and science programs.
  10. Who was Harvard named after? Origin of university names