Janelle Penny: Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the Buildings Podcast, sponsored by Schneider Electric and produced by Endeavor Business Media, a division of EndeavorB2B. I'm Janelle Penny, Head of Content for Buildings, and today I'm here with Tyler Haak. Tyler is the Global Digital Energy Solutions Service League Leader for Schneider Electric, and he has over 15 years of experience in the digital building sector. Today, we're going to talk about why building services have become a strategic asset. Tyler, thanks for joining me. 

Tyler Haak: Thank you for having me. I appreciate the time, and I look forward to chatting with you. 

Janelle Penny: So, why is the traditional break-fix service model no longer sufficient for many organizations? 

Tyler Haak: I love this question. Thank you for starting us out with this. It's really because operable is not the same thing as sufficient, especially now. There are higher risks, and there are new demands that lurk below the surface of today's building industry that weren't always there when we created our industrial culture of building services. 

You can talk to folks anywhere — there's a lot of stuff that runs. There's a lot of building hardware and infrastructure that just runs. It's been running for a long time, and there's a lot of pride in that. Things were made well, and so there are things in place that, when we service or operate these, we're happy that it sticks around. But the world that we're in now is one of software, which is ever-evolving and fast-changing all the time. It unlocks new benefits and new capabilities for a facility that, if you're thinking about simple break/fix in terms of what service is, you're kind of missing the boat on what software can bring to the table for your enterprise. 

There's also interoperability. As more items, tools, and devices are connected, there are opportunities for us to bring them together, often at the edge of where we're running our systems, that unlock new capabilities and new outcomes that, again, is 'of the moment,' and becoming more powerful. 

There's cybersecurity concerns, meaning if we're just thinking about break/fix and looking at our systems and just trying to keep them running, we are often creating or enabling long-standing vulnerabilities for cybersecurity, that can stand in the face of uptime and building resilience and the things that we're trying to do with our facilities. I also talk a lot about the importance of people and the human labor asset of everything in our industry. But supportability and the folks that know systems, and the kind of intricacies and the special things that we've been coaxing along for a long time — we're running into a world where there's less supportability. There are new people coming into the industry, not at the same rate as people leaving it. And so we need to be able to do more and dream about more in our service approach. Just running is no longer sufficient for buildings as assets. 

Janelle Penny: How can digitally enabled services help organizations prioritize modernization without requiring one large replacement project? 

Tyler Haak: A question that customers ask all the time — nobody really likes the large replacement projects. So we need to lean in on who it is we are as an industry and what it is that we do. And remember, as a group, that services come from expert partners — expertise of who can assess the lifecycle roadmaps that we need our buildings to be on for a happy future. It's those service partners that can really look at where we're at with our system and understand, 'What's approaching end of life? End of service? What are some of the things that are out there that we can improve?' 

And so it starts with people. But it's the digital enablement here that helps. That means we can use data and performance to identify where to start and to identify where we can make the biggest chips into some of the issues that we might be having. You could think of it as an evolutionary journey, but you should be using that information to identify what the critical things are that need to happen now. Oftentimes, these are smaller fixes, and they might be things that you could affect in your initial operating budget, to make sure that we're up and running smoothly and comfortably. But these same digital tools can also help us figure out what we need to phase in to allow us to reach our organizational goals. What are the things that we can be doing to allow us to produce a little bit more efficiently, or make the people in our facilities a little bit happier and healthier so our outcomes are better? That's pretty dependent on organizational goals. 

Then the last thing that we could look at with digital tools, with a service relationship, is 'What's best in class for our industry? What's best in class for our geography?' And that really requires counsel from our services, organizations, and partners that use this information. 

The alternative is the thing that I mentioned people don't really like. And that is the always-looming, always-menacing large capital expenditure that we might not have planned for and that requires a wholesale replacement. This does not work for organizations for performance; it doesn't work for appropriate operations, and it definitely doesn't work for budget. So we really need to be looking at a digitally-enabled service lifecycle approach. It makes modernization something that is more phased as opposed to a large capital expense. 

Janelle Penny: What does a configurable service approach look like when organizations have different goals, resources, and risk profiles? 

Tyler Haak: Janelle, you'll hear me talk about this or write about this. Every organization needs to start with what they're out to do, what their goals are, what they can tolerate, and what resources they have in place. I think that's the start for every organization. It can lure you into thinking that you need some type of boutique, ad hoc, very specific service approach for you. Customized is probably a better word for it. But success in service does not require creating some type of bespoke delivery model for every facility. By trying to create that scenario for yourself in your environment, it winds up making it very hard and more expensive for your service partner to deliver because service organizations should be built on configurability, so they can deliver repeatably, reliably, scalably, and in a timely fashion. Which is ultimately what we're all after. When I have a big problem, or I have something that's concerning me, do I have a service partner that I can rely on for timely fixes in the agreement that I've got? 

And so, service can be configured around those customer priorities that I mentioned. They're unique to each customer, but they can be configured to that while still drawing on proven technology, still drawing on established processes that are shared from a building owner and a service provider, and always with expertise that you should expect from a service provider, so you could deliver this reliably at scale. That type of thing is always needed, and that balance with configurability is what gives customers a relationship that's suited to their needs in a situation where they're not sacrificing consistency from their service partner, or an ability to support them in a timely fashion. 

Janelle Penny: What should building leaders look for in a strategic service partner? 

Tyler Haak: I recently put together a blog that we published, titled, "Why Building Lifecycle Services Have Become a Strategic Asset." What should they be looking for? The starting point is the organizational mission. What are we trying to accomplish, what do we want to do, and how can my building help me get there? A strategic service partner. 

Strategic is there to help me along my path. Service is specifically there in place to serve my needs around the system I've invested in. And a partner is somebody who's rooting for me and really looking to grow with me along that path. A strategic service partner knows where to start, which is that organizational mission. They understand that's why you're in business, and they can use field expertise — and I emphasize that, field expertise and personnel — data and analytical insights, which are better and stronger for us every month than they were the month before so we can get our building on a path of evolution, which puts us in a place where the building is best-in-class, and it doesn't really matter where you start for that. It's helping along that evolutionary journey, so we can stage in modernization, and over the appropriate timeframe have an asset in our building that can help us along our path towards our top goals. 

Janelle Penny: Tyler, thanks so much for joining me today. 

Tyler Haak: I appreciate the opportunity as always. Thank you for having me. 

Janelle Penny: And thanks to all of you for listening to this special episode of the Buildings Podcast, sponsored by Schneider Electric and produced by Endeavor Business Media, a division of EndeavorB2B. We'll see you next time.