Full Transcript for Chris Slaughter - Leveraging Technology and Automation in Lighting

00:03:40.840 --> 00:03:46.680 You know, when you look at construction today, what is present in that marketplace? 63 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:51.200 What tools are being used or being created to be utilized and that haven't been there 64 00:03:51.200 --> 00:03:52.200 before? 65 00:03:52.200 --> 00:04:01.560 Yeah, so I mean, I don't use BIM every day. 66 00:04:01.560 --> 00:04:05.680 My wife's an HVAC engineer, so she uses, you know, Revit, and you know, I talk to a lot 67 00:04:05.680 --> 00:04:09.840 of people in the industry that use it on a pretty regular basis, and I think there's a pretty 68 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:14.000 extensive spectrum of utilization of technologies like that. 69 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:19.840 So you've got a lot of capabilities when you've got a lot of information, and you know, 70 00:04:19.840 --> 00:04:22.360 you can think of it as like just specifically data, right? 71 00:04:22.360 --> 00:04:28.080 So to take a high-level view of like what are you doing when you design a building, you're 72 00:04:28.080 --> 00:04:34.000 using your intuition and expertise into some sort of data format that other people can 73 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:35.000 then act upon. 74 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:36.920 So that's like the flow of information, right? 75 00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:40.840 You can think of this as like a flow of information, it's coming out of your head into some 76 00:04:40.840 --> 00:04:44.680 sort of data format and then into other people's head so that they can act upon it, right? 77 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:48.320 That's at a fundamental level that that's what communication is, right? 78 00:04:48.320 --> 00:04:53.200 So the more information you can get into a data format such as BIM, you know, common 79 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:58.040 format as Revit or whatever, Rhino's another program that, you know, essentially has similar 80 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:01.880 capabilities and is used a lot more in the European market. 81 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:07.480 Those types of technologies have the capability to do a lot of manipulation and a lot of 82 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:09.800 workflow automation, right? 83 00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:15.080 So plugins like Dynamo or Grasshopper, I think Grasshopper came before Dynamo, I don't 84 00:05:15.080 --> 00:05:19.880 know about how far, but Grasshopper is probably described as a visual programming language 85 00:05:19.880 --> 00:05:25.160 for rhinoceros, which is short term Rhino or shorthand Rhino is how it's commonly referred 86 00:05:25.160 --> 00:05:26.160 to in the industry. 87 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:30.400 But basically, you know, Rhino's a cat environment and Grasshopper is a visual programming 88 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:31.720 language. 89 00:05:31.720 --> 00:05:36.720 And for anybody that's used Grasshopper, they probably talk about it with a lot of excitement, 90 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:37.720 right? 91 00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:42.560 So I've seen people create like bridges in what would commonly be referred to in the 92 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:46.520 mechanical engineering world as parametric design. 93 00:05:46.520 --> 00:05:50.280 And Grasshopper kind of takes parametric design and algorithmic design and kind of puts 94 00:05:50.280 --> 00:05:51.280 them together. 95 00:05:51.280 --> 00:05:56.000 So imagine you have a bridge and you have to try to figure out like, you know, what interval 96 00:05:56.000 --> 00:05:58.600 do you put supports at, right? 97 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:03.680 Or, you know, imagine you're doing like a lattice network on some sort of, you know, 98 00:06:03.680 --> 00:06:08.400 like shade structure or something like that or how frequently you need to put your, you 99 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:11.760 know, steel beams and steel columns to support the load. 100 00:06:11.760 --> 00:06:14.160 That distance is your parameter. 101 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:20.440 And the algorithm is doing the analysis on your building and helping to influence what 102 00:06:20.440 --> 00:06:21.880 that parameter should be. 103 00:06:21.880 --> 00:06:27.520 So to kind of come back and go through that thought experiment again, visual programming 104 00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:35.040 languages like Grasshopper and like dynamo are essentially workflow enhancements where 105 00:06:35.040 --> 00:06:39.760 you, you have an idea of what you're trying to create in your head and you create the 106 00:06:39.760 --> 00:06:46.160 data structure and BIM and you use these visual programming tools to iterate and modify 107 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:48.880 the design in a super rapid time frame, right? 108 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:54.200 So I know that people utilize this, like I've utilized it on a variety of projects and 109 00:06:54.200 --> 00:06:56.520 in other roles besides what I'm doing right now. 110 00:06:56.520 --> 00:07:02.880 But that's a huge time saver and productivity enhancer that I don't think is utilizing 111 00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:03.880 a huge way. 112 00:07:03.880 --> 00:07:07.520 You know, I've talked to maybe a dozen or so, which is not a huge, you know, not a huge 113 00:07:07.520 --> 00:07:11.360 group of people about like how, you know, what do they use Revit like and do they use 114 00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:17.680 dynamo and like, what does their electrical calculation infrastructure look like for buildings 115 00:07:17.680 --> 00:07:19.160 and stuff like that? 116 00:07:19.160 --> 00:07:24.280 And it seems to me that there's a lot of ability to leverage those visual programming 117 00:07:24.280 --> 00:07:28.640 stuff because it's not like you have to write a bunch of complex code. 118 00:07:28.640 --> 00:07:33.680 You don't have to write a bunch of complex code because there's tools that build tools 119 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:37.280 for you to then create custom things from a better term. 120 00:07:37.280 --> 00:07:43.120 Over here in 2022, there's a lot going on in terms of how far computational technology 121 00:07:43.120 -->

00:07:48.280 has come to the point where the standard user can log on and build a website in an hour. 122 00:07:48.280 --> 00:07:52.800 Does that translate through when it comes to looking at something that's maybe a little 123 00:07:52.800 --> 00:07:58.760 bit more sophisticated than a website like building a calculation tool or automating a certain 124 00:07:58.760 --> 00:08:00.360 otherwise manual process? 125 00:08:00.360 --> 00:08:01.760 Yeah, I think so. 126 00:08:01.760 --> 00:08:06.440 And the corollary there between like building a website on Squarespace or Wix or something 127 00:08:06.440 --> 00:08:09.920 like that where you have this kind of building block that you drag on, right? 128 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:11.120 This is a text block. 129 00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:12.200 This is a separator. 130 00:08:12.200 --> 00:08:16.600 This is a drop down things like that is you have these like building blocks. 131 00:08:16.600 --> 00:08:20.720 So in these visual programming environments, it's still drag and drop. 132 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:21.720 You have these blocks, right? 133 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:29.040 And maybe that block is like array your light fixtures or array your beams or in a certain 134 00:08:29.040 --> 00:08:30.040 distance. 135 00:08:30.040 --> 00:08:31.040 And that's your parameter, right? 136 00:08:31.040 --> 00:08:35.320 But the array function is your visual programming block. 137 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:37.240 So that's fairly analogous. 138 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:40.840 Now obviously constructing a building has a lot more details into it. 139 00:08:40.840 --> 00:08:45.720 So it gets a lot more complex than your 12 things that you're going to put on a website, 140 00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:46.720 right? 141 00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:50.000 So you have like image, text, title, button, link. 142 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:55.760 But there's like a smaller subset on kind of like your build your own website on a building 143 00:08:55.760 --> 00:08:56.760 building. 144 00:08:56.760 --> 00:08:58.360 Yeah, you got a lot more of those blocks, right? 145 00:08:58.360 --> 00:09:00.520 But you also have a lot more disciplines. 146 00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:07.840 So imagine you don't need to understand all of your co-workers, disciplines, visual programming 147 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:09.160 blocks, right? 148 00:09:09.160 --> 00:09:12.440 There needs to be something that understands all that, but it doesn't need to be you. 149 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:16.600 There's an opportunity for software to come and be a key player in that. 150 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:22.520 And we've seen that try to come online with Revit almost 15 years ago now. 151 00:09:22.520 --> 00:09:23.520 It's been around. 152 00:09:23.520 --> 00:09:24.520 Yeah. 153 00:09:24.520 --> 00:09:29.640 Cloud computing, BIM 360, live modeling, so on and so forth. 154 00:09:29.640 --> 00:09:36.080 But these things, at a certain point, they've gone from ideas and stuff people have talked 155 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:40.160 about to beta tested to being used and being used every single day. 156 00:09:40.160 --> 00:09:45.080 And we're sitting in an era where some of these tools are no longer just talked about. 157 00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:46.680 They're utilized every single day. 158 00:09:46.680 --> 00:09:51.160 Yeah, I just saw a visualization and what they rendered and simulated was temperature 159 00:09:51.160 --> 00:09:53.280 flow through a building. 160 00:09:53.280 --> 00:10:00.880 It's basically fluid dynamics being inserted into a visualization of an entire building, right? 161 00:10:00.880 --> 00:10:06.040 So that has factors like solar heat gain, it has factors like HVAC temperature and where 162 00:10:06.040 --> 00:10:07.920 that HVAC is coming from, right? 163 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:12.720 So it's doing thermodynamics and fluid mechanics across the building. 164 00:10:12.720 --> 00:10:14.480 What was the purpose of that animation? 165 00:10:14.480 --> 00:10:22.560 The purpose is just so you can see how efficient your building is and where thermal energy is 166 00:10:22.560 --> 00:10:24.760 either being introduced or lost. 167 00:10:24.760 --> 00:10:26.520 But you could literally see it. 168 00:10:26.520 --> 00:10:28.080 Yeah, you're visualizing it. 169 00:10:28.080 --> 00:10:29.400 So it becomes a design tool? 170 00:10:29.400 --> 00:10:30.400 Yeah, exactly. 171 00:10:30.400 --> 00:10:34.840 For not only the designer, but the people the designer has to speak to. 172 00:10:34.840 --> 00:10:35.840 Yeah, exactly. 173 00:10:35.840 --> 00:10:36.840 Maybe even. 174 00:10:36.840 --> 00:10:39.040 And they may not, you know, the end user may not care, right? 175 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:41.120 I mean, some of the times they just say, like, design me a good building. 176 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:46.680 But I think having information like that is much more powerful and much more intuitive 177 00:10:46.680 --> 00:10:50.200 to humans than, like, spreadsheet format. 178 00:10:50.200 --> 00:10:54.480 So like, you know, like what's your thermal coefficients on this building? 179 00:10:54.480 --> 00:10:57.960 So, you know, like a lot of people use the building envelopes, right? 180 00:10:57.960 --> 00:10:59.440 Like how efficient is your building envelope? 181 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:00.960 So you have like your windows and stuff like that. 182 00:11:00.960 --> 00:11:05.080 And it's going to give you some numbers about like how efficient is your building overall. 183 00:11:05.080 --> 00:11:06.760 But it's kind of like a distilled down thing. 184 00:11:06.760 --> 00:11:13.120 It's much more powerful to have those numbers along with visualizations to be able to quickly 185 00:11:13.120 --> 00:11:16.120 pinpoint where the problem areas are, right? 186 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:20.600 Of course, you got to get the model to be as accurate as possible, which I think is a 187 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:23.360 big hindrance because sometimes you just don't have

all the details and sometimes the 188 00:11:23.360 --> 00:11:25.600 details are changing quickly. 189 00:11:25.600 --> 00:11:29.640 But that's why that workflow automation is super important. 190 00:11:29.640 --> 00:11:33.240 I want to dive into the workflow automation just a little bit more. 191 00:11:33.240 --> 00:11:40.040 We have tools there here to sort of speak, promise us more efficiency in time. 192 00:11:40.040 --> 00:11:44.840 They help us connect better across industry trades, maybe potentially even in a presentation 193 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:46.800 to the design architect or the owner. 194 00:11:46.800 --> 00:11:49.880 But it all comes back to that ability to automate. 195 00:11:49.880 --> 00:11:54.160 There's things that are going on in automation, like intelligent design, machine learning, 196 00:11:54.160 --> 00:11:58.720 talk to me a little bit more about what's being implemented into that space right now. 197 00:11:58.720 --> 00:12:00.040 Like on the machine learning side? 198 00:12:00.040 --> 00:12:01.040 Yeah. 199 00:12:01.040 --> 00:12:02.040 Yeah. 200 00:12:02.040 --> 00:12:03.040 So I'm not a machine learning expert. 201 00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:06.520 And that's a good indication of keep reading if you're listening. 202 00:12:06.520 --> 00:12:09.400 While you're not a machine learning expert, you have some experience and you understand 203 00:12:09.400 --> 00:12:10.720 the theoretical concept of it. 204 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:11.720 Yeah. 205 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:16.240 I've done some background in it and do my best to understand the high level concepts 206 00:12:16.240 --> 00:12:18.000 of what's going on with it. 207 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:23.480 And there's a huge emphasis in other industries, mainly in the Silicon Valley industries 208 00:12:23.480 --> 00:12:26.200 to utilize machine learning techniques. 209 00:12:26.200 --> 00:12:32.080 What some people may call artificial intelligence, which that line is not super clear anymore with 210 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:34.040 new types of neural nets. 211 00:12:34.040 --> 00:12:40.600 And I'm not 100% sure where machine learning is going to take the construction industry. 212 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:44.200 You know, one of the things that machine learning algorithms are really good at is kind 213 00:12:44.200 --> 00:12:48.000 of accomplishing narrow scope tasks. 214 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:53.160 But an example of where I have seen machine learning be very successful is on organic structural 215 00:12:53.160 --> 00:12:54.160 design. 216 00:12:54.160 --> 00:12:59.000 So like Fusion 360 has a plugin that was written that uses machine learning to remove 217 00:12:59.000 --> 00:13:02.440 as much material from a structural analysis as possible. 218 00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:07.520 You know, like let's say you had a building that was supported with like concrete, right? 219 00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:12.760 It would be able to tell you how to pour that concrete with while using the minimal amount 220 00:13:12.760 --> 00:13:17.040 of concrete on your columns as possible, like what is the shape that does that? 221 00:13:17.040 --> 00:13:21.880 So I think that probably will be utilized in select segments of the industry. 222 00:13:21.880 --> 00:13:25.920 And I think because my expertise in lighting, I can envision places where it will be used 223 00:13:25.920 --> 00:13:28.440 in lighting, specifically on the machine learning side. 224 00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:30.080 I want to talk more about that. 225 00:13:30.080 --> 00:13:33.040 The construction process of we look at the cost of a building. 226 00:13:33.040 --> 00:13:36.760 There's certain budgetary items that cost more than others. 227 00:13:37.320 --> 00:13:38.640 Structural integrity of it. 228 00:13:38.640 --> 00:13:40.160 There's all the glass in the building. 229 00:13:40.160 --> 00:13:44.280 There's other MEP trade equipment that needs to go in there. 230 00:13:44.280 --> 00:13:46.600 Then there's finishes and then there's lighting. 231 00:13:46.600 --> 00:13:52.240 And the electrical portion of a project is not necessarily the largest portion of a project. 232 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:57.600 So when people look at innovating a construction process or a building or really anything, the answer 233 00:13:57.600 --> 00:14:00.320 is how can I save the most money the fastest, right? 234 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:05.320 They've started with these big tools for the bigger portions of construction. 235 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:07.240 Your example of concrete is a great one. 236 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:11.160 Lighting is arguably not maybe next on everyone's list. 237 00:14:11.160 --> 00:14:14.320 But it's very close to the top of the list at this point. 238 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:18.120 Given the fact that there's been proven success at automating things, 239 00:14:18.120 --> 00:14:22.360 not only helps innovate the way we build buildings and what we can design, 240 00:14:22.360 --> 00:14:26.800 but also the cost and the speed and the time that it takes to do all of this stuff. 241 00:14:26.800 --> 00:14:34.240 What's really interesting is the people that are doing that aren't your traditional roles in these companies. 242 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:39.800 There's a new layer of people being added to every single company to develop software, 243 00:14:39.800 --> 00:14:45.760 to manage that software, to run that software across everybody's desk. 244 00:14:45.760 --> 00:14:49.400 In the sense of I'm changing what your job is, right? 245 00:14:49.400 --> 00:14:51.720 Like just give me the parameters and I'll do the rest. 246 00:14:51.720 --> 00:14:54.640 Or just put the parameters in the software, 247 00:14:54.640 --> 00:14:58.160 or maybe you don't even need the person to do it anymore. 248 00:14:58.160 --> 00:15:01.760 Robotic isn't the right word, but there's just a full automation stack 249 00:15:01.760 --> 00:15:06.720 that's basically being created to require people to become valuable in

different ways. 250 00:15:06.720 --> 00:15:11.560 What's going on in the architectural industry in your perception 251 00:15:11.560 --> 00:15:12.880 that you've seen be implemented? 252 00:15:12.880 --> 00:15:15.280 And where do you feel like that might take us next? 253 00:15:21.520 --> 00:15:26.560 So I've seen a lot of job postings recently on, as you say, 254 00:15:26.560 --> 00:15:30.240 non-traditional roles in construction companies, right? 255 00:15:30.280 --> 00:15:32.680 So a couple of examples here. 256 00:15:32.680 --> 00:15:36.720 BIM managers are being hired on most firms. 257 00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:41.160 Most firms I know of have at least one BIM manager if not multiple. 258 00:15:41.160 --> 00:15:47.200 Additionally, a lot of the bigger firms have their own internal tool software developers. 259 00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:54.600 There's whole tech stacks that are developed internally for larger firms to be able to leverage. 260 00:15:54.600 --> 00:15:59.320 And to discuss why this is happening, 261 00:15:59.320 --> 00:16:05.280 it's because it increases productivity and it separates companies' ability to be profitable. 262 00:16:05.280 --> 00:16:07.320 Or at least in my view, and I might be wrong on this. 263 00:16:07.320 --> 00:16:13.320 But if you're competing with a bunch of firms to bid for the right to design a project, 264 00:16:13.320 --> 00:16:16.960 to be the engineer and the architect, maybe you're all in one shop, 265 00:16:16.960 --> 00:16:20.160 or maybe you're different, you still have to be competitive in the marketplace 266 00:16:20.160 --> 00:16:21.560 on your fee structure, right? 267 00:16:21.560 --> 00:16:23.800 So you have to figure out, in a broad sense, 268 00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:27.880 what is the marketplace of designers and engineers doing, right? 269 00:16:27.880 --> 00:16:30.800 And if they're more profitable than you, and by profitable, 270 00:16:30.800 --> 00:16:33.240 I mean, I don't mean like, can they make more money? 271 00:16:33.240 --> 00:16:36.200 But basically, can they be more productive with their fee? 272 00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:38.320 Because the fee is going to be the normalizer. 273 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:43.440 So if you can make that fee go farther and be more productive with the time 274 00:16:43.440 --> 00:16:46.640 and leverage tools like what we've been talking about 275 00:16:46.640 --> 00:16:50.880 and certain aspects of automation, that makes you better, right? 276 00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:53.760 And so the hope is over time, and this will happen, 277 00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:55.960 is over time, like all these firms will get better. 278 00:16:55.960 --> 00:16:57.640 And one of the ways that they're getting better 279 00:16:57.640 --> 00:17:00.960 is by hiring these, what would commonly be non-traditional roles. 280 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:03.800 Like we're talking about bid managers, software developers. 281 00:17:03.800 --> 00:17:06.920 You know, I wouldn't be surprised if in like, 282

00:17:06.920 --> 00:17:09.720 somewhere in the five to like eight to, you know, 283 00:17:09.720 --> 00:17:12.120 maybe five to 10 year time frame, 284 00:17:12.120 --> 00:17:16.400 people have in construction firms like GCs, they have, 285 00:17:16.400 --> 00:17:18.240 and this may already be going on, 286 00:17:18.280 --> 00:17:20.120 but they have people that are specialized 287 00:17:20.120 --> 00:17:21.400 in augmented reality. 288 00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:24.760 So as every day, they walk a site with, 289 00:17:24.760 --> 00:17:27.240 there's a company up in Boulder called Trimble. 290 00:17:27.240 --> 00:17:29.720 They've got a technology called Connect, 291 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:31.040 which plugs into Revit. 292 00:17:31.040 --> 00:17:32.600 You take your whole 3D bin model, 293 00:17:32.600 --> 00:17:34.640 and it projects it into where you are, right? 294 00:17:34.640 --> 00:17:37.040 So you put on an augmented reality headset, 295 00:17:37.040 --> 00:17:38.560 and you can walk the site. 296 00:17:38.560 --> 00:17:40.560 You can see where stuff is supposed to be. 297 00:17:40.560 --> 00:17:43.280 You know, you can see where walls and pipes and conduit, 298 00:17:43.280 --> 00:17:45.920 and you know, you can work with these different layers. 299 00:17:45.920 --> 00:17:48.480 It depends on what level of detail you've got in your model. 300 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:50.360 But I think duct work is a good one, 301 00:17:50.360 --> 00:17:51.840 like where this is supposed to go, 302 00:17:51.840 --> 00:17:53.280 and look for any interferences, 303 00:17:53.280 --> 00:17:56.200 or look for where stuff is currently being constructed, 304 00:17:56.200 --> 00:17:57.880 and look for problem areas that weren't caught 305 00:17:57.880 --> 00:17:59.720 in the design process. 306 00:17:59.720 --> 00:18:02.800 It's literally live coordination. 307 00:18:02.800 --> 00:18:03.640 Yeah, live coordination. 308 00:18:03.640 --> 00:18:06.560 Without actually physically having to realize, 309 00:18:06.560 --> 00:18:09.080 oh, my whole cruise here, this is happening. 310 00:18:09.080 --> 00:18:10.400 Crap, we're gonna have to call someone, 311 00:18:10.400 --> 00:18:12.360 we're gonna have to file an RFI, 312 00:18:12.360 --> 00:18:14.040 we're gonna have to build it up for our time. 313 00:18:14.760 --> 00:18:15.960 So there's a common theme here, 314 00:18:15.960 --> 00:18:18.600 which is to stay in a sense, 315 00:18:18.600 --> 00:18:21.840 able to react quickly and calmly, 316 00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:23.000 and I emphasize that last part, 317 00:18:23.000 --> 00:18:24.920 because that doesn't seem to be a real, 318 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:26.320 you know, common thing in the industry, 319 00:18:26.320 --> 00:18:27.960 you know, most like, oh, this is broken, 320 00:18:27.960 --> 00:18:29.040 you know, everybody freaks out. 321 00:18:29.040 --> 00:18:30.840 But if you can say, 322 00:18:30.840 --> 00:18:34.000 if you can identify problems without freaking out, 323 00:18:34.000 --> 00:18:36.320 right, and we can train ourselves in the industry, 324 00:18:36.320 --> 00:18:38.640 and the partnerships between all the people 325 00:18:38.640 --> 00:18:40.600 that are gonna be in the construction process, 326 00:18:40.600 --> 00:18:43.240 to work together to address the problems that are happening, 327 00:18:43.240 --> 00:18:45.720 that's gonna be a big win for the industry as a whole. 328 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:48.160 And I think things like that augmented reality 329 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:51.760 on site walks will be very helpful, right? 330 00:18:51.760 --> 00:18:54.680 And also you can do things like the augmented, 331 00:18:54.680 --> 00:18:56.600 with something like an augmented reality, 332 00:18:56.600 --> 00:18:57.720 and you know, full disclosure, 333 00:18:57.720 --> 00:19:00.000 I've never used this connect, it's just an example, 334 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:02.080 and it's a good one, a good obvious one, 335 00:19:02.080 --> 00:19:04.920 of like, yep, this wall is built, right? 336 00:19:04.920 --> 00:19:07.080 This pipe is ran, right? 337 00:19:07.080 --> 00:19:08.760 So you can verify all this stuff, 338 00:19:08.760 --> 00:19:11.200 and especially when you go out to like, 339 00:19:11.200 --> 00:19:13.280 you site walks and you're like, 340 00:19:13.280 --> 00:19:15.080 looking at as-built plans, 341 00:19:15.080 --> 00:19:17.360 so maybe it was 10 or 15 years ago, 342 00:19:17.360 --> 00:19:20.040 and the as-built plans are not what was currently built. 343 00:19:20.040 --> 00:19:22.600 If something got moved for some reason or another, 344 00:19:22.600 --> 00:19:25.480 like imagine the plan set is being modified 345 00:19:25.480 --> 00:19:27.120 on the construction site. 346 00:19:27.120 --> 00:19:29.160 So this was the original plan set. 347 00:19:29.160 --> 00:19:31.400 This is, you can modify, the contractor can modify 348 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:35.080 the as-built on the fly, with augmented reality, right? 349 00:19:35.080 --> 00:19:36.800 So that's increasing accuracy, 350 00:19:36.800 --> 00:19:39.080 not only for what you're doing right now, 351 00:19:39.080 --> 00:19:42.080 but you can feed that information back to RFIs 352 00:19:42.080 --> 00:19:44.680 and other aspects for the future. 353 00:19:44.680 --> 00:19:48.480 So reacting in a calm and quick way, right? 354 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:50.160 I think it's gonna be super important 355 00:19:50.160 --> 00:19:52.960 because I do not think that's like, 356 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:56.320 the speed is gonna like notch down. 357 00:19:56.320 --> 00:19:57.600 That doesn't seem likely. 358 00:19:57.600 --> 00:20:00.000 I would make some form of an argument 359 00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.120 that if you can react quickly in both directions, 360 00:20:04.120 --> 00:20:07.400 it can almost establish that calm that doesn't exist, 361 00:20:07.400 --> 00:20:10.320 which is something that not only people would appreciate, 362 00:20:10.320 -->

00:20:12.760 but let's face it, makes humans feel better. 363 00:20:12.760 --> 00:20:15.240 I wanna take a quick break and when we come back, 364 00:20:15.240 --> 00:20:18.800 we'll talk about how all this applies directly to lighting. 365 00:20:18.800 --> 00:20:20.920 Maybe a little bit lower on the totem pole 366 00:20:20.920 --> 00:20:22.160 in terms of construction, 367 00:20:22.160 --> 00:20:24.320 but something that's rising very fast. 368 00:20:24.320 --> 00:20:25.160 Sound good? 369 00:20:25.160 --> 00:20:26.000 Yep. 370 00:20:26.000 --> 00:20:29.480 Hey, it's Sam, real quick. 371 00:20:29.480 --> 00:20:31.640 The light pot is brought to you by Lada. 372 00:20:31.640 --> 00:20:33.120 A hub for ideas, education, 373 00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:34.360 and a little bit of entertainment 374 00:20:34.360 --> 00:20:37.120 when it comes to the architectural lighting industry. 375 00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:39.680 Delt around the idea to create a single place 376 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:41.520 to come to be inspired about lighting, 377 00:20:41.520 --> 00:20:42.440 to learn about lighting, 378 00:20:42.440 --> 00:20:43.880 and to share it with others. 379 00:20:43.880 --> 00:20:45.640 Lada brings you a series of content 380 00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:48.160 from video production to this podcast. 381 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:52.360 If you wanna learn more, check them out at lytie.com. 382 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:57.480 And welcome back over the break, Chris and I. 383 00:20:57.480 --> 00:21:00.280 We're talking just a little bit more about lighting. 384 00:21:00.280 --> 00:21:01.920 Let's face it, something I love, 385 00:21:01.920 --> 00:21:04.720 something Chris is also super passionate about. 386 00:21:04.720 --> 00:21:08.120 He's had a pretty cool opportunity to actually build a tool 387 00:21:08.120 --> 00:21:12.320 that helps a rep and a contractor understand the feasibility 388 00:21:12.320 --> 00:21:14.360 of what a product is. 389 00:21:14.360 --> 00:21:15.360 And I'm gonna say, 390 00:21:15.360 --> 00:21:16.360 I'm gonna say, 391 00:21:16.360 --> 00:21:17.360 I'm gonna say, 392 00:21:17.360 --> 00:21:18.360 I'm gonna say, 393 00:21:18.360 --> 00:21:19.360 I'm gonna say, 394 00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:20.360 I'm gonna say, 395 00:21:20.360 --> 00:21:21.360 I'm gonna say, 396 00:21:21.360 --> 00:21:23.600 what a project might cost 397 00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:25.400 and what kind of lighting you might need 398 00:21:25.400 --> 00:21:27.880 without even having to design on paper 399 00:21:27.880 --> 00:21:30.800 to set that entire design process up for success 400 00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:33.120 instead of somebody just throwing a random number 401 00:21:33.120 --> 00:21:33.960 at the wall. 402 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:36.800 It's one quick example that I know is close to your heart, Chris, 403 00:21:36.800 --> 00:21:38.320 because you put a lot of work into it. 404 00:21:38.320 --> 00:21:41.560 But talk to me a little bit more about some of those, 405 00:21:41.560 --> 00:21:44.520 quote, non-traditional roles or things 406 00:21:44.520 --> 00:21:46.840 that are potentially going to become 407 00:21:46.840 --> 00:21:48.880 an integral part of every business moving forward 408 00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:50.240 in the lighting industry. 409 00:21:50.240 --> 00:21:53.040 Well, I can speak to my own experience. 410 00:21:53.040 --> 00:21:55.920 You know, like I joined a rep agency, 411 00:21:55.920 --> 00:22:00.000 which I'd had some experience in talking to reps, 412 00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:01.000 working at acuity, 413 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:04.480 and took a chance at doing what I would consider 414 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:06.920 a non-traditional role for a rep. 415 00:22:06.920 --> 00:22:09.960 And pretty grateful that I was given that opportunity 416 00:22:09.960 --> 00:22:12.440 to see what you can change. 417 00:22:12.440 --> 00:22:13.280 You know, as we say here, 418 00:22:13.280 --> 00:22:14.520 and we talk about the construction industry, 419 00:22:14.520 --> 00:22:15.360 it's like, 420 00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:17.200 yes, you can imagine to the moon, right? 421 00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:19.640 But until you put the work in, 422 00:22:19.640 --> 00:22:21.360 and kind of, you know, 423 00:22:21.360 --> 00:22:22.760 somebody's got to roll up the sleeves 424 00:22:22.760 --> 00:22:25.400 and kind of figure it out, right? 425 00:22:25.400 --> 00:22:27.920 So that's one of the things that I've been working on 426 00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:29.880 over the past couple of years is, you know, 427 00:22:29.880 --> 00:22:35.000 how can we make the lighting portion of the rep 428 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:38.640 and the construction and the electrical contractor interaction 429 00:22:38.640 --> 00:22:42.080 all the way from the design into procurement better, right? 430 00:22:42.080 --> 00:22:44.920 And so it's hard to fix everything simultaneously. 431 00:22:44.920 --> 00:22:46.200 You know, it's not usually how it works. 432 00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:47.280 There's a good quote where it's, 433 00:22:47.280 --> 00:22:50.720 we overestimate what will happen in two years, 434 00:22:50.720 --> 00:22:53.760 and we underestimate what will happen in 10 years. 435 00:22:53.760 --> 00:22:55.920 So if you think about that, it's like, 436 00:22:55.920 --> 00:22:57.200 you're like, oh, well, two years, 437 00:22:57.200 --> 00:22:58.920 in two years, like everything will be different. 438 00:22:58.920 --> 00:23:00.680 It's like, no, that's not true. 439 00:23:00.680 --> 00:23:02.840 But in 10 years, we tend to think about like, 440 00:23:02.840 --> 00:23:06.640 things won't have changed as much as maybe you could think, 441 00:23:06.640 --> 00:23:09.000 and it's very different in 10 years. 442 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:10.680 And I just want to pause real quick. 443 00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:12.880 If we think about 10 years ago, today, 444 00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:16.000 that'd be 2012, yeah. 445 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:16.840 Smartphones. 446

00:23:16.840 --> 00:23:17.640 Infancy. 447 00:23:17.640 --> 00:23:19.280 Barely, barely around. 448 00:23:19.280 --> 00:23:21.000 Something called Instagram. 449 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:21.840 Forget about it. 450 00:23:21.840 --> 00:23:22.600 Yeah. 451 00:23:22.600 --> 00:23:24.080 I mean, household words. 452 00:23:24.080 --> 00:23:26.000 Yeah, yeah, so it just gone. 453 00:23:26.000 --> 00:23:29.160 Not even, not even, people out of smartphones, 454 00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:30.000 and they thought it was cool, 455 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:31.960 they could check their email on a mobile device, 456 00:23:31.960 --> 00:23:33.200 and that was it. 457 00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:34.040 Yeah. 458 00:23:34.040 --> 00:23:36.600 And I mean, like how you bick with SR LEDs now 459 00:23:36.600 --> 00:23:38.720 in sort of light fixtures or something like that. 460 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:40.880 I mean, and so if you think about the beginning 461 00:23:40.880 --> 00:23:42.840 of when LEDs came around to light fixtures, 462 00:23:42.840 --> 00:23:45.160 you know, there was kind of this thing about how like LEDs 463 00:23:45.160 --> 00:23:46.840 would completely take over everything. 464 00:23:46.840 --> 00:23:48.800 And kind of the time frame that they thought about 465 00:23:48.800 --> 00:23:50.400 was like two to four years. 466 00:23:50.400 --> 00:23:53.040 So it's kind of like a relatively short time frame. 467 00:23:53.040 --> 00:23:55.720 And it probably took like six or seven 468 00:23:55.720 --> 00:23:57.720 until fluorescence were just dead. 469 00:23:57.720 --> 00:24:00.280 Yeah, from 2010, when the first stuff came 470 00:24:00.280 --> 00:24:02.840 into the marketplace to about 2016. 471 00:24:02.840 --> 00:24:04.800 Yeah, something in that time frame, right? 472 00:24:04.800 --> 00:24:06.720 So there's like these bullish people 473 00:24:06.720 --> 00:24:11.120 that create a lot of enthusiasm around some new technology. 474 00:24:11.120 --> 00:24:13.960 And then people start to get excited, right? 475 00:24:13.960 --> 00:24:15.440 They start to imagine the possibilities. 476 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.440 And so their perspective of like how fast things 477 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:19.760 will happen is kind of short. 478 00:24:19.760 --> 00:24:22.040 And then all of a sudden like that doesn't really happen 479 00:24:22.040 --> 00:24:23.920 because it takes a lot of effort 480 00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:25.680 and a lot of people work in the same direction 481 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:26.680 to make some serious change. 482 00:24:26.680 --> 00:24:29.480 But over time, people just keep kind of grinding away 483 00:24:29.480 --> 00:24:31.040 at stuff and it does kind of change. 484 00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:33.600 Anyways, this is kind of an auxiliary topic. 485 00:24:33.600 --> 00:24:35.840 But you know, automated driving is this way too. 486 00:24:35.840 --> 00:24:38.080 And the first people thought that automated driving 487 00:24:38.080 --> 00:24:41.200 was going to be like figured out and like stuff like that. 488 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:42.560 And there's always people that didn't think 489 00:24:42.560 --> 00:24:44.320 it would be figured out in five years. 490 00:24:44.320 --> 00:24:47.520 But when we look back across like the lineage of time, 491 00:24:47.520 --> 00:24:50.200 you go like, oh, well, it did take 15 or 20 years 492 00:24:50.200 --> 00:24:51.760 to get automated driving figured out. 493 00:24:51.760 --> 00:24:53.640 But it will be so good 494 00:24:53.640 --> 00:24:55.840 that we won't have steering wheels anymore. 495 00:24:55.840 --> 00:24:58.680 And I'll also point out just because something gets figured out 496 00:24:58.680 --> 00:25:00.280 doesn't mean people are ready for it. 497 00:25:00.280 --> 00:25:01.120 Yeah, absolutely. 498 00:25:01.120 --> 00:25:03.440 And one of the most important things in all of this 499 00:25:03.440 --> 00:25:04.800 is the human factor. 500 00:25:04.800 --> 00:25:07.920 And whether we like it or not, humans are very predictable. 501 00:25:07.920 --> 00:25:09.480 But they're also unpredictable, right? 502 00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:10.600 Yeah, they can be both. 503 00:25:11.120 --> 00:25:13.760 I mean, humanity has this opportunity 504 00:25:13.760 --> 00:25:15.200 to just blow our minds. 505 00:25:15.200 --> 00:25:17.880 But like, at the same time, we basically 506 00:25:17.880 --> 00:25:20.120 know what humans like, right? 507 00:25:20.120 --> 00:25:21.520 They like human interaction. 508 00:25:21.520 --> 00:25:23.120 They like to be comfortable. 509 00:25:23.120 --> 00:25:24.440 They don't like to be forced to change. 510 00:25:24.440 --> 00:25:27.840 So things do take time for not only the reason 511 00:25:27.840 --> 00:25:32.360 that developing it takes time, but humans adopting it 512 00:25:32.360 --> 00:25:37.360 in a what I'll call manageable reactionary moment 513 00:25:37.360 --> 00:25:41.240 and the past two years of the pandemic 514 00:25:41.240 --> 00:25:43.480 and humans being forced to change too fast 515 00:25:43.480 --> 00:25:44.760 is a great example of this. 516 00:25:44.760 --> 00:25:46.440 And yeah, at first you're like, oh my gosh, 517 00:25:46.440 --> 00:25:48.360 well, at least we have something we can do. 518 00:25:48.360 --> 00:25:50.960 And then you're like, wow, I really don't like that. 519 00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:54.640 As an example, people were really tired of video calls, right? 520 00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:57.520 Yeah, the change happened too fast 521 00:25:57.520 --> 00:25:59.520 and honestly, probably wasn't completely thought through. 522 00:25:59.520 --> 00:26:02.320 Now it's still here, but it's in a different capacity. 523 00:26:02.320 --> 00:26:04.720 So it's important that as we look at our industry, 524 00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:06.680 as we talk here a little bit about lighting 525 00:26:06.680 --> 00:26:10.080 and what's changing to reflect on, 526 00:26:11.760 --> 00:26:14.880 I use the word dinosaur nature of the

industry 527 00:26:14.880 --> 00:26:17.560 and like a lot just didn't change for a long time 528 00:26:17.560 --> 00:26:20.000 and now everything seems to be changing at once, 529 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:22.640 but realistically, can't all change at once 530 00:26:22.640 --> 00:26:24.200 and it won't change at all at once. 531 00:26:24.200 --> 00:26:26.280 So there's a playbook. 532 00:26:26.280 --> 00:26:27.840 By the way, nobody wrote that playbook. 533 00:26:27.840 --> 00:26:30.480 Nobody knows what it is, but when we look back, 534 00:26:30.480 --> 00:26:33.600 like we look back on LEDs over the last 10 years, 535 00:26:33.600 --> 00:26:34.440 it'll be obvious. 536 00:26:34.440 --> 00:26:36.440 So that's why this led to this, led to this, 537 00:26:36.440 --> 00:26:38.840 led to that, and now we're here. 538 00:26:38.840 --> 00:26:40.760 Yeah, 120 kind of stuff, yeah. 539 00:26:40.760 --> 00:26:45.160 Yeah, so let's just walk through the theoretical dots 540 00:26:45.160 --> 00:26:47.600 a little bit here of where we're at, 541 00:26:47.600 --> 00:26:50.040 what's in the industry today in its infancy 542 00:26:50.040 --> 00:26:54.440 and what might be some things that we see next in, 543 00:26:54.440 --> 00:26:57.240 you know, it's just Chris' opinion, but it's a good opinion. 544 00:26:57.520 --> 00:27:08.840 Yeah, so I mean, I was interested in trying to make some change 545 00:27:08.840 --> 00:27:10.240 and seeing where we could, right? 546 00:27:10.240 --> 00:27:14.200 So it has given me a good perspective to be at a rep agency 547 00:27:14.200 --> 00:27:17.120 because I see a lot more of the actual industry 548 00:27:17.120 --> 00:27:20.160 than I did at a previous role kind of working as, you know, 549 00:27:20.160 --> 00:27:23.840 like a innovation style engineer, like thinking up new stuff 550 00:27:23.840 --> 00:27:26.800 and I hope that my intuition is right on this, 551 00:27:26.800 --> 00:27:28.680 but again, it may take longer than expected 552 00:27:28.680 --> 00:27:32.480 as that I think there is a tied turn on digital controls 553 00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:33.400 as an example. 554 00:27:33.400 --> 00:27:36.640 And so the concrete example is that I think 555 00:27:36.640 --> 00:27:39.960 Dolly is starting to gain traction. 556 00:27:39.960 --> 00:27:43.080 So Dolly's digital addressable lighting interface, 557 00:27:43.080 --> 00:27:44.160 I believe is the acronym. 558 00:27:44.160 --> 00:27:47.640 And, you know, this makes tunable white a lot easier. 559 00:27:47.640 --> 00:27:49.640 This makes certain aspects in the lighting industry, 560 00:27:49.640 --> 00:27:53.120 a lot easier and another big aspect of Dolly 561 00:27:53.120 --> 00:27:54.600 that's super important is the ability 562 00:27:54.600 --> 00:27:59.080 to reconfigure your zoning in software rather than hardware. 563 00:27:59.080 --> 00:28:04.080 This to me is like the duh aspect of why we should be utilizing 564 00:28:06.560 --> 00:28:09.760 a digital control interface for our lights. 565 00:28:09.760 --> 00:28:13.720 Yeah, duh, Chris, but it, you know, that takes, 566 00:28:13.720 --> 00:28:17.360 no, I mean, it's a duh moment, but it takes time to design. 567 00:28:17.360 --> 00:28:19.800 It takes, it's more expensive on the front end. 568 00:28:19.800 --> 00:28:21.880 There's all these reasons, maybe white people, 569 00:28:21.880 --> 00:28:23.000 that people are going to come up with 570 00:28:23.080 --> 00:28:26.000 that they don't want to use it because the answer is, 571 00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:29.440 not actually, it's just a little bit different. 572 00:28:29.440 --> 00:28:30.760 And yeah, it's a little bit different. 573 00:28:30.760 --> 00:28:32.640 All you got to do is welcome in that change 574 00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:36.200 and welcome to the competitive world of 2022 575 00:28:36.200 --> 00:28:38.920 if you don't, someone else. 576 00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:41.000 Well, I would have thought that, you know, 577 00:28:41.000 --> 00:28:43.440 but there's an industry standard of zero to 10 volt. 578 00:28:43.440 --> 00:28:46.400 And the benefit of that is it's analog 579 00:28:46.400 --> 00:28:48.480 and it's relatively cheap. 580 00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:52.240 But, you know, using Dolly interface is also quite cheap. 581 00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:54.800 Like, you don't need like expensive processors 582 00:28:54.800 --> 00:28:56.400 and drivers to do stuff like that. 583 00:28:56.400 --> 00:28:58.160 It's polarity agnostic, like, you know, 584 00:28:58.160 --> 00:28:59.520 there's a lot of benefits there. 585 00:28:59.520 --> 00:29:03.560 But I think the big one is this didn't get installed, right? 586 00:29:03.560 --> 00:29:07.040 Or there was a whoopsie on the sort of wiring diagram 587 00:29:07.040 --> 00:29:10.920 or whatever, it gives you the ability to reallocate 588 00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:13.200 what's under what controls zone dynamically. 589 00:29:13.200 --> 00:29:15.640 And the emergency one is a big deal too. 590 00:29:15.640 --> 00:29:17.640 So anyways, emergency is always really hard 591 00:29:17.640 --> 00:29:19.360 with zero to 10 volt, right? 592 00:29:19.360 --> 00:29:23.560 And if you can simply use like what is standard 593 00:29:23.560 --> 00:29:27.640 in the Dolly protocol to like program the emergency level 594 00:29:27.640 --> 00:29:31.920 on the fixture as part of the emergency lighting system, 595 00:29:31.920 --> 00:29:33.120 I think that's a big win. 596 00:29:33.120 --> 00:29:36.080 It actually removes a lot of complication and hardware. 597 00:29:36.080 --> 00:29:37.840 The point from your design. 598 00:29:37.840 --> 00:29:40.520 The point is if you can just lay a foundation down 599 00:29:40.520 --> 00:29:42.640 and decide what it needs to do after the fact 600 00:29:42.640 --> 00:29:45.160 and actually can create a lot of operational efficiency 601 00:29:45.160 --> 00:29:48.600 and provide flexibility that otherwise 602 00:29:48.600 --> 00:29:50.400 literally does

not exist. 603 00:29:50.400 --> 00:29:51.240 Well, it exists. 604 00:29:51.240 --> 00:29:52.960 We just maybe in the industry are not using it 605 00:29:52.960 --> 00:29:53.800 to the full potential. 606 00:29:53.800 --> 00:29:56.440 I'll give you an example, like I commissioned a POE job 607 00:29:56.440 --> 00:30:00.000 and the drawings didn't show switches 608 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:01.640 in both sides of the conference room. 609 00:30:01.640 --> 00:30:04.240 So it was a large enough conference room to have two doors. 610 00:30:04.240 --> 00:30:06.160 And there was only switches on one side. 611 00:30:06.160 --> 00:30:08.040 Well, that's obviously a little annoying 612 00:30:08.040 --> 00:30:08.960 if you're entering from the door 613 00:30:08.960 --> 00:30:10.680 that doesn't have a switch on, right? 614 00:30:10.680 --> 00:30:13.360 And this is programmed under new code 615 00:30:13.360 --> 00:30:16.400 for vacancy mode as opposed to occupancy mode, right? 616 00:30:16.400 --> 00:30:19.160 So you'd have to walk across the conference room 617 00:30:19.160 --> 00:30:20.200 to turn the switch on. 618 00:30:20.200 --> 00:30:24.400 So in that sense, with something like a digital control 619 00:30:24.400 --> 00:30:27.240 with some sort of backbone that you can program, 620 00:30:27.240 --> 00:30:30.040 you can add a switch and dynamically tell it 621 00:30:30.040 --> 00:30:31.040 what it's controlling. 622 00:30:31.040 --> 00:30:33.480 So on this POE job, you could literally add a switch 623 00:30:33.480 --> 00:30:35.280 anywhere in the building and have it control 624 00:30:35.280 --> 00:30:37.360 anything else in the building, which was super cool. 625 00:30:37.360 --> 00:30:40.320 And the whole job was commissioned in three hours 626 00:30:40.320 --> 00:30:41.440 as opposed to three days. 627 00:30:41.440 --> 00:30:43.920 As I was going to say, as opposed to a lot more time. 628 00:30:43.920 --> 00:30:46.520 And like you have like a whoopsy, it's an easy fix 629 00:30:46.520 --> 00:30:48.160 as opposed to like a really challenging. 630 00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:49.480 Well, let me run the wires over here, 631 00:30:49.480 --> 00:30:51.120 know this can't be done or whatever. 632 00:30:51.120 --> 00:30:53.360 So it's just, you know, and that's, 633 00:30:53.360 --> 00:30:56.360 you know, we got to leverage the software technology 634 00:30:56.360 --> 00:30:57.440 that's already available. 635 00:30:57.440 --> 00:30:59.160 So I think that's one thing. 636 00:30:59.160 --> 00:31:00.720 Talk to me a little bit more about 637 00:31:00.720 --> 00:31:03.520 what's going on with lighting calculations. 638 00:31:03.520 --> 00:31:07.440 Yeah, I mean, this ties into kind of a bigger topic 639 00:31:07.440 --> 00:31:09.560 that maybe we want to wrap into like a multi-point 640 00:31:09.560 --> 00:31:10.640 kind of discussion here. 641 00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:14.280 But do you mind if I say, if I do a small tangent? 642 00:31:14.280 --> 00:31:15.120 That's fine. 643 00:31:15.120 --> 00:31:15.960 Okay. 644 00:31:15.960 --> 00:31:21.440 So when I joined VI, we had this issue of people bid projects 645 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:24.400 on in a very, in a very preliminary sense, right? 646 00:31:24.400 --> 00:31:26.600 Before drawings come out, usually it's with a narrative 647 00:31:26.600 --> 00:31:28.200 of just dollars per square foot. 648 00:31:28.200 --> 00:31:30.000 Just in honor of trying to get a rough idea 649 00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:31.920 of what the heck a building's going to cost. 650 00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:34.560 Yeah, and you know, my experience is number one 651 00:31:34.560 --> 00:31:39.560 that that number is not accurate could be off by 50%. 652 00:31:39.760 --> 00:31:42.160 In certain, certain scenarios. 653 00:31:42.160 --> 00:31:45.040 And number two, you know, could be improved. 654 00:31:45.040 --> 00:31:46.520 That was one of the things I started working on. 655 00:31:46.520 --> 00:31:49.920 And so one of the projects I've worked on in the past two years 656 00:31:49.920 --> 00:31:52.560 is developing an internal tool set 657 00:31:52.560 --> 00:31:55.200 that virtualizes lighting design. 658 00:31:55.200 --> 00:31:57.960 And what I mean by that is it uses heuristics 659 00:31:57.960 --> 00:32:00.840 and kind of virtual layers of light 660 00:32:00.840 --> 00:32:05.840 to design a building with a distinct quantity of fixtures. 661 00:32:06.840 --> 00:32:07.680 Okay. 662 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:09.720 So I'll give you a real time example. 663 00:32:09.720 --> 00:32:11.760 Like let's say you're going to do a warehouse. 664 00:32:11.760 --> 00:32:13.840 Now you could do a Lumen method in a warehouse, right? 665 00:32:13.840 --> 00:32:16.640 And get 50 fixtures at 30 feet 666 00:32:16.640 --> 00:32:19.480 and 30,000 Lumen's on 25 by 25 667 00:32:19.480 --> 00:32:21.560 or 30 by 30 spacing depending, right? 668 00:32:21.560 --> 00:32:23.960 And you'll get somewhere between 30 and 40 foot candles 669 00:32:23.960 --> 00:32:25.880 give or take rough numbers here obviously. 670 00:32:25.880 --> 00:32:27.440 So that's like one layer of light. 671 00:32:27.440 --> 00:32:29.960 Another idea would be like, let's say you're in a lobby 672 00:32:29.960 --> 00:32:32.360 and you want to do like some pinhole downloads 673 00:32:32.360 --> 00:32:34.080 and maybe a couple of big pendants 674 00:32:34.080 --> 00:32:35.440 for some like visual interest 675 00:32:35.440 --> 00:32:36.920 and kind of the middle, you know, 676 00:32:36.920 --> 00:32:40.880 in your seating area or pendants on top of a reception desk 677 00:32:40.880 --> 00:32:44.600 to create focal points and kind of like visual cues 678 00:32:44.600 --> 00:32:45.720 about what's going on in the space 679 00:32:45.720 --> 00:32:47.720 and how it's architecturally organized, things like that. 680 00:32:47.720 --> 00:32:51.920 So you can add those layers in in this internal tool set 681 00:32:51.920 --> 00:32:54.760 I've developed and it'll

kind of populate that stuff. 682 00:32:54.760 --> 00:32:56.720 And then we can give that information 683 00:32:56.720 --> 00:32:59.280 at a very early stage to a contractor and say 684 00:32:59.280 --> 00:33:01.440 when you're bidding this in the lobby 685 00:33:01.440 --> 00:33:03.560 you're going to have 12 pinhole downloads. 686 00:33:03.560 --> 00:33:06.320 You're going to have three 40 inch wide pendants 687 00:33:06.320 --> 00:33:08.520 over the seating area and you're going to have, you know, 688 00:33:08.520 --> 00:33:11.480 four small little mini pendants in a recess linear 689 00:33:11.480 --> 00:33:13.560 in the reception area, right? 690 00:33:13.560 --> 00:33:14.800 And this is virtualized. 691 00:33:14.800 --> 00:33:17.080 We don't go through and lay this out. 692 00:33:17.080 --> 00:33:19.600 We just kind of tell it in a narrative sense. 693 00:33:19.600 --> 00:33:21.280 Like I would like, you know, 694 00:33:21.280 --> 00:33:22.960 and you could write this out in a paragraph 695 00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:24.240 just like you read it from a narrative. 696 00:33:24.240 --> 00:33:26.800 I would like pendants over the reception desk. 697 00:33:26.800 --> 00:33:28.320 I would like big pendants in the space 698 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:30.880 and I would like pinhole down lights in the lobby. 699 00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:32.120 And this is all in the lobby. 700 00:33:32.160 --> 00:33:36.040 It'll take all the lobbies and apply that to it if you want. 701 00:33:36.040 --> 00:33:41.040 So what this does is increases the accuracy and speed 702 00:33:41.840 --> 00:33:44.120 at which you can get budgetary pricing 703 00:33:44.120 --> 00:33:45.880 and it's not on a dollar per square foot 704 00:33:45.880 --> 00:33:47.320 because a dollar per square foot 705 00:33:47.320 --> 00:33:49.760 abstracts out too much information in my opinion. 706 00:33:49.760 --> 00:33:52.680 So the question was like how do you accelerate that process 707 00:33:52.680 --> 00:33:55.440 without doing like a preliminary lighting design 708 00:33:55.440 --> 00:33:56.800 but can just from a narrative 709 00:33:56.800 --> 00:33:58.680 which may take you an hour to right 710 00:33:58.680 --> 00:34:00.480 get a whole bunch of information 711 00:34:00.480 --> 00:34:03.080 and information to the electrical contractor. 712 00:34:03.080 --> 00:34:05.400 Because if they just say it's $5 a square foot 713 00:34:05.400 --> 00:34:06.920 that doesn't really take into account 714 00:34:06.920 --> 00:34:09.120 like the type of space necessarily. 715 00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:10.920 It doesn't take into account as an example 716 00:34:10.920 --> 00:34:14.120 is 80% of your square footage clean rooms 717 00:34:14.120 --> 00:34:19.120 and corridors or is it like lobbies and stairways 718 00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:21.240 and there's their special equipment that's required. 719 00:34:21.240 --> 00:34:24.600 And so there's like a dollar per square foot 720 00:34:24.600 --> 00:34:26.400 gives too much of

an abstraction 721 00:34:26.400 --> 00:34:28.480 to get accurate in my opinion. 722 00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:30.480 So we try to figure something out. 723 00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:33.160 So for us we use that in a budgetary sense. 724 00:34:33.160 --> 00:34:35.680 We mainly just utilize it to say like we think 725 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:37.520 there's gonna be about this quantity of stuff 726 00:34:37.520 --> 00:34:39.840 and we work with the team members 727 00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:42.520 to give that bill of materials out as a quotation. 728 00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:44.920 And that's super helpful because it's not only taking 729 00:34:44.920 --> 00:34:47.200 something that's generic like the Lumen method 730 00:34:47.200 --> 00:34:50.600 or for lack of a better term like an old school calculation 731 00:34:50.600 --> 00:34:53.760 that a calculator can do for you in 10 seconds today. 732 00:34:53.760 --> 00:34:58.280 It's not just theorizing around what one person may think 733 00:34:58.640 --> 00:35:00.600 that design actually should be. 734 00:35:00.600 --> 00:35:03.440 It's just taking a standard set of information 735 00:35:03.440 --> 00:35:07.880 and applying a somewhat specific set of parameters 736 00:35:07.880 --> 00:35:10.480 that can then be further defined. 737 00:35:10.480 --> 00:35:12.080 It doesn't can't apply the process, 738 00:35:12.080 --> 00:35:13.440 it just aids the process. 739 00:35:13.440 --> 00:35:16.720 It gives a budget that's real. 740 00:35:16.720 --> 00:35:21.320 It gives a quantity that helps people figure out 741 00:35:21.320 --> 00:35:23.160 what's gonna cost to install and how much time 742 00:35:23.160 --> 00:35:24.000 is it gonna take. 743 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:27.680 And then it also comes back to the designer and says hey, 744 00:35:27.680 --> 00:35:31.080 your budget came from something that has real like 745 00:35:31.080 --> 00:35:33.880 lighting science behind it, here you go. 746 00:35:33.880 --> 00:35:35.600 Here's a starting point for you 747 00:35:35.600 --> 00:35:38.600 so that you don't have to burn your billable hours 748 00:35:38.600 --> 00:35:40.560 and be told this doesn't work. 749 00:35:40.560 --> 00:35:43.360 Yeah, there's a lot of aspects that we try to improve 750 00:35:43.360 --> 00:35:45.480 by doing a process like that, right? 751 00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:47.480 So we can't fully influence everything, 752 00:35:47.480 --> 00:35:50.160 but we work with designers to try to let them know 753 00:35:50.160 --> 00:35:53.360 what we think a narrative will cost. 754 00:35:53.360 --> 00:35:56.040 And there's some parameters that we can modify. 755 00:35:56.040 --> 00:35:57.960 Say like, okay, we'll use this type of equipment 756 00:35:57.960 --> 00:35:59.720 versus this type of equipment and stuff like that. 757 00:35:59.720 --> 00:36:02.000 But the point is there's a whole software platform 758 00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:04.640 that can be like developed to do that 759 00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:08.080 and you

can take real design data and plug that into this. 760 00:36:08.080 --> 00:36:11.840 This is all a tool around the question was, 761 00:36:11.840 --> 00:36:14.560 Chris, what's going on with calculations in the industry? 762 00:36:14.560 --> 00:36:18.520 Well, maybe calculations now gets generic in a sense 763 00:36:18.520 --> 00:36:21.600 of you don't just calculate light levels in a space, 764 00:36:21.600 --> 00:36:24.040 we start to calculate things beyond 765 00:36:24.040 --> 00:36:25.600 how much light is in a space. 766 00:36:25.600 --> 00:36:26.920 I think you can apply this. 767 00:36:26.920 --> 00:36:28.560 The way I do it is by heuristics, 768 00:36:28.560 --> 00:36:32.040 by certain algorithms, certain rules of thumb, 769 00:36:32.040 --> 00:36:33.640 things applied in specific ways. 770 00:36:33.640 --> 00:36:38.640 I think once you can use BIM integrated calculation software, 771 00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:44.040 you can actually increase this. 772 00:36:44.040 --> 00:36:47.120 It's not even like a virtualized light need design anymore. 773 00:36:47.120 --> 00:36:49.760 It's like you can literally create algorithms 774 00:36:49.760 --> 00:36:53.320 to help you lay out a space quickly. 775 00:36:53.600 --> 00:36:56.320 When listeners and when myself think about 776 00:36:56.320 --> 00:36:57.720 how would you use that? 777 00:36:57.720 --> 00:36:59.480 We already do stuff in calculation engines. 778 00:36:59.480 --> 00:37:00.840 It helps us lay stuff out. 779 00:37:00.840 --> 00:37:02.960 We do linear arrays, we do polar arrays, 780 00:37:02.960 --> 00:37:06.080 we do copy and paste over here, we, in CAD, 781 00:37:06.080 --> 00:37:08.840 we say this is on 10 foot centers and stuff like that. 782 00:37:08.840 --> 00:37:11.000 So there's a lot of rules of thumb that we apply. 783 00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:13.480 Maybe we don't even think about, right? 784 00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:16.920 And if the calculation software that we begin 785 00:37:16.920 --> 00:37:19.680 to utilize really ramps up our productivity, 786 00:37:19.720 --> 00:37:23.240 it's gonna be able to do things like classify a room 787 00:37:23.240 --> 00:37:25.840 as let's say it's a surgical suite. 788 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:29.320 And surgical suites are designed in maybe what, 789 00:37:29.320 --> 00:37:31.080 two or three ways. 790 00:37:31.080 --> 00:37:32.760 Like there's a specific functionality 791 00:37:32.760 --> 00:37:34.120 and we figured it out, right? 792 00:37:34.120 --> 00:37:36.800 So apply this and you'll have your equipment 793 00:37:36.800 --> 00:37:38.040 that you wanna utilize. 794 00:37:38.040 --> 00:37:40.440 Similarly, like in an open office, 795 00:37:40.440 --> 00:37:42.680 you can designate an area as an open office 796 00:37:42.680 --> 00:37:47.320 and you can say, I want suspended four inch liners, right? 797 00:37:47.320 --> 00:37:48.560 Boom, done. 798 00:37:48.600 --> 00:37:53.120 And take that and generate the CAD immediately. 799 00:37:53.120 -->

00:37:56.480 Like this comes back to our workflow process automation, right? 800 00:37:56.480 --> 00:38:00.840 So don't actually draw the CAD and lay it out. 801 00:38:00.840 --> 00:38:04.080 Just tell the system that you want this area designated 802 00:38:04.080 --> 00:38:08.000 and have it have a placeholder in that location. 803 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:10.400 So if you wanna come back and change it for some reason 804 00:38:10.400 --> 00:38:12.440 in the future with your calculation engine 805 00:38:12.440 --> 00:38:15.440 that's integrated into your building design tools, 806 00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:17.000 you change that designation and say, okay, 807 00:38:17.160 --> 00:38:20.560 we've decided not to do four inch liners or whatever. 808 00:38:20.560 --> 00:38:23.200 We're gonna do dropped big pendants, right? 809 00:38:23.200 --> 00:38:24.920 So it's like an open office or something like that 810 00:38:24.920 --> 00:38:27.600 is the kind of thing I'm imagining in my head. 811 00:38:27.600 --> 00:38:30.560 And so instead of just doing linear lines of light 812 00:38:30.560 --> 00:38:32.360 that are four inches wide on 10 foot centers 813 00:38:32.360 --> 00:38:33.320 that are direct indirect, 814 00:38:33.320 --> 00:38:36.320 it's like, throw some cool big pendants in there. 815 00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:37.720 We found some extra money in the budget 816 00:38:37.720 --> 00:38:39.200 because we're so awesome. 817 00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:42.240 And we're gonna do that thing from that cool design firm 818 00:38:42.240 --> 00:38:43.920 that we like and put that in there. 819 00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:48.160 And so now you allow the calculation engine 820 00:38:48.160 --> 00:38:51.800 to automate the locationing of those things 821 00:38:51.800 --> 00:38:54.960 and you can input however many parameters that you want 822 00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:57.200 and it'll put those things in the location. 823 00:38:57.200 --> 00:39:00.560 And since you have more, we talked about like, 824 00:39:00.560 --> 00:39:02.240 putting things into a data model. 825 00:39:02.240 --> 00:39:05.560 Since you have things like a room that has walls 826 00:39:05.560 --> 00:39:08.440 and a ceiling, you can use rules of thumb 827 00:39:08.440 --> 00:39:10.600 and best practices to automatically say, 828 00:39:10.600 --> 00:39:12.880 here's the height, you can use things like 829 00:39:12.880 --> 00:39:15.320 what is the intensity and the target illumination 830 00:39:15.320 --> 00:39:18.080 for this type of room like an open office or whatever. 831 00:39:18.080 --> 00:39:19.280 You could set that as a firm. 832 00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:21.040 You could say this open office, 833 00:39:21.040 --> 00:39:22.880 click on this area, designator and say 834 00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:25.440 this is a lower light level open office. 835 00:39:25.440 --> 00:39:27.040 So it's only really 15 foot candles 836 00:39:27.040 --> 00:39:30.320 and we're using a lot of task lighting. 837 00:39:30.320 --> 00:39:31.200 Or maybe it's the opposite, 838 00:39:31.200 --> 00:39:33.400 maybe it's a 50 foot candle kind of open office. 839 00:39:33.400 --> 00:39:35.360 And so you can set that stuff 840 00:39:35.360 --> 00:39:39.400 and you can have it adjust the height and the lumin output 841 00:39:39.400 --> 00:39:41.560 and everything and you can even have it generate 842 00:39:41.560 --> 00:39:42.800 the dimming levels, right? 843 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:45.960 This is all kind of the power of the dreaming software world, 844 00:39:45.960 --> 00:39:49.640 but I can very clearly see 845 00:39:49.640 --> 00:39:52.120 how lighting calculations will get there. 846 00:39:52.120 --> 00:39:55.040 And I've already taken some first steps 847 00:39:55.040 --> 00:39:57.080 into how that could actually work. 848 00:39:57.080 --> 00:39:59.920 And so I'm confident that it can get there. 849 00:39:59.920 --> 00:40:01.720 And I think it will be a good thing. 850 00:40:01.720 --> 00:40:05.720 And when I originally told people I was working on stuff 851 00:40:05.720 --> 00:40:07.080 like this past couple of years, 852 00:40:07.080 --> 00:40:08.840 they were like, oh, you're going to automate lighting design. 853 00:40:08.840 --> 00:40:11.400 And I think that that's extraordinarily difficult. 854 00:40:13.240 --> 00:40:18.200 Can I just say not only do I agree, 855 00:40:18.200 --> 00:40:22.640 but if you understand fundamentally what lighting design is, 856 00:40:22.640 --> 00:40:24.760 it's almost impossible to automate 857 00:40:24.760 --> 00:40:28.680 because there's so many factors in the design process. 858 00:40:28.680 --> 00:40:30.320 Now you can create automated tools 859 00:40:30.320 --> 00:40:32.040 to help lighting design go faster. 860 00:40:32.040 --> 00:40:34.800 Yes, but you're never going to automate lighting design. 861 00:40:34.800 --> 00:40:36.360 You may automate parts of it like you said, 862 00:40:36.360 --> 00:40:38.400 but I the process in general, 863 00:40:38.400 --> 00:40:40.600 I think and we talked about why I got into this stuff 864 00:40:40.600 --> 00:40:43.560 is because there is a creative, psychological 865 00:40:43.560 --> 00:40:45.680 and art aspect to lighting design. 866 00:40:45.680 --> 00:40:46.800 You know, there's a science too 867 00:40:46.800 --> 00:40:48.640 and I get jazzed up about that too, 868 00:40:48.640 --> 00:40:51.120 but I don't think that you're going to be taking away 869 00:40:51.120 --> 00:40:53.560 lighting designers' jobs, right? 870 00:40:53.560 --> 00:40:55.840 And I frankly, you're actually going to create more 871 00:40:55.840 --> 00:40:58.280 and you're going to make them better at what they do 872 00:40:58.280 --> 00:40:59.720 because they're going to become more profitable. 873 00:40:59.720 --> 00:41:04.720 So the argument is like, well, automation may take away jobs. 874 00:41:06.160 --> 00:41:07.440 And I would say like, well, 875 00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:09.640 the usually automation will always go 876

00:41:09.640 --> 00:41:10.680 for the lowest hanging fruit, 877 00:41:10.680 --> 00:41:13.040 which is the stuff that people kind of do day in and day out 878 00:41:13.040 --> 00:41:14.520 and isn't that interesting. 879 00:41:14.520 --> 00:41:16.200 So as an example, laying out a warehouse, 880 00:41:16.200 --> 00:41:17.840 how many times do you want to lay out a warehouse? 881 00:41:17.840 --> 00:41:18.840 Oh, yeah, all day long. 882 00:41:18.840 --> 00:41:19.680 All day long. 883 00:41:19.680 --> 00:41:20.960 Yeah, same parking lot over and over. 884 00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:22.320 Same parking lot over and over again. 885 00:41:22.320 --> 00:41:24.040 No, no one wants to do any of this stuff. 886 00:41:24.040 --> 00:41:26.840 Well, it is fun and I think it's good to do a couple of times. 887 00:41:26.840 --> 00:41:29.280 You know, I used to enjoy the puzzle aspect 888 00:41:29.280 --> 00:41:31.320 of trying to get like, you know, high, 889 00:41:31.320 --> 00:41:33.880 yeah, perfect uniformity in parking lots 890 00:41:33.880 --> 00:41:35.160 because they can be different shapes 891 00:41:35.160 --> 00:41:36.680 and you know, you got your different optic types 892 00:41:36.680 --> 00:41:37.520 and stuff like that. 893 00:41:37.520 --> 00:41:38.360 So that's an interesting challenge, 894 00:41:38.360 --> 00:41:41.680 warehouses and open offices and stuff like this are, 895 00:41:41.680 --> 00:41:43.680 you know, if you're just going for general broad 896 00:41:43.680 --> 00:41:46.880 kind of decent uniformity, it's a really cookie cutter. 897 00:41:46.880 --> 00:41:49.360 And so I don't think that that's all that interesting. 898 00:41:49.360 --> 00:41:53.640 And so by utilizing tools, like we already utilized 899 00:41:53.640 --> 00:41:57.080 calculation engines, nobody does calculations by hand. 900 00:41:57.080 --> 00:41:59.640 I'd argue that a lot of people that do calculations 901 00:41:59.640 --> 00:42:01.840 maybe don't even understand how they're doing calculations, 902 00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:05.200 right, they just hit, they set it up and they hit go. 903 00:42:05.200 --> 00:42:07.320 And they print it out and it's in a documentation 904 00:42:07.320 --> 00:42:09.400 that says like I verified that this is supposed 905 00:42:09.400 --> 00:42:10.480 to be this light level, right? 906 00:42:10.480 --> 00:42:13.640 And so we use that as a productivity enhanced already. 907 00:42:13.640 --> 00:42:16.720 So I think thinking about aspects of calculation, 908 00:42:16.720 --> 00:42:18.400 lighting calculation tools that can help, 909 00:42:18.400 --> 00:42:21.240 that can even do more of that automation is a good thing. 910 00:42:21.240 --> 00:42:24.520 It will allow us to, as an example, spend, 911 00:42:24.520 --> 00:42:28.800 I don't see a lot of engineers in right now 912 00:42:28.800 --> 00:42:32.000 that are able to spend the time to think 913 00:42:32.000 --> 00:42:34.040 about conceptually what's going on 914 00:42:34.040 --> 00:42:35.840 because there's so much work to be done. 915 00:42:35.840 --> 00:42:39.080 They're so slammed to get a bunch of work out 916 00:42:39.080 --> 00:42:42.480 and complete the job and they're generally tied on fees 917 00:42:42.480 --> 00:42:44.360 and stuff like that in time. 918 00:42:44.360 --> 00:42:46.000 Deadlines are fast. 919 00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:48.520 So I think those tools are a necessary thing 920 00:42:48.520 --> 00:42:50.960 that we need to embrace and improve upon. 921 00:42:50.960 --> 00:42:53.360 I mean, that's what it all comes down to, right? 922 00:42:53.360 --> 00:42:56.720 There's a certain fee that is applied 923 00:42:56.720 --> 00:42:58.440 to a construction project. 924 00:42:58.440 --> 00:43:01.400 It's interpreted in one of many ways. 925 00:43:01.400 --> 00:43:04.800 It sold thousands of different ways. 926 00:43:04.800 --> 00:43:07.840 But at the end of the day, it's people coordinating 927 00:43:07.840 --> 00:43:10.840 and putting some form of documentation together 928 00:43:10.840 --> 00:43:13.960 that's then handed over to another set of humans 929 00:43:13.960 --> 00:43:15.160 that build buildings. 930 00:43:15.160 --> 00:43:17.360 We're not just going to come up with five times 931 00:43:17.360 --> 00:43:20.560 as much money in the world to do that process. 932 00:43:20.560 --> 00:43:23.040 What we're going to have to do is we're going to have to figure 933 00:43:23.040 --> 00:43:25.240 out how to more effectively use our time. 934 00:43:25.240 --> 00:43:27.960 And at the same time, do cooler stuff? 935 00:43:27.960 --> 00:43:31.720 Yeah, to sink to a spend more time on the cool stuff 936 00:43:31.720 --> 00:43:33.880 and less time on the mundane. 937 00:43:33.880 --> 00:43:37.960 So make sure that that art design that you're working on 938 00:43:37.960 --> 00:43:41.080 or as an example, this circadian rhythm influence 939 00:43:41.080 --> 00:43:44.560 in an open office, people will be able to look 940 00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:47.560 at the more complex aspects of lighting design 941 00:43:47.560 --> 00:43:49.240 because they won't be spending as much time 942 00:43:49.240 --> 00:43:52.040 on the simple aspects of lighting design. 943 00:43:52.040 --> 00:43:53.880 And I think that's super important. 944 00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:57.080 And everybody's being asked to do more work in less time. 945 00:43:57.080 --> 00:44:01.080 There's obviously the super straightforward concern 946 00:44:01.160 --> 00:44:04.760 of like, well, if we're doing this in less time 947 00:44:04.760 --> 00:44:07.400 or more productive, they're going to ask for lower fees. 948 00:44:07.400 --> 00:44:08.640 And that's a market driven thing. 949 00:44:08.640 --> 00:44:09.920 So people are going to have to figure that out 950 00:44:09.920 --> 00:44:12.120 in the marketplace, like who wants to charge what for what? 951 00:44:12.120 --> 00:44:16.000 But I don't see a lot of people doing less, you know what I mean? 952 00:44:16.000 -->

00:44:16.840 I would agree. 953 00:44:16.840 --> 00:44:20.400 I would think over the last, I'll just say five years, 954 00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:23.560 everybody's been asked to do more without... 955 00:44:23.560 --> 00:44:26.120 Do you think that they usually say yes to that? 956 00:44:26.120 --> 00:44:28.320 Well, I don't think they get a choice. 957 00:44:28.320 --> 00:44:31.440 I think a lot of people are being asked to do more 958 00:44:31.440 --> 00:44:34.160 and the answer is like, hey, this is just on your plate now. 959 00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:35.720 And thanks. 960 00:44:35.720 --> 00:44:37.160 Or, hey, this is on your plate. 961 00:44:37.160 --> 00:44:38.480 And if you don't want to do it, someone else will. 962 00:44:38.480 --> 00:44:41.120 And that can be, you know, internally from one desk 963 00:44:41.120 --> 00:44:43.280 to another, but that can also be firm to firm. 964 00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:45.840 I mean, you, you know, as a business owner, 965 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:48.400 as a leader, as a principal of a design firm, 966 00:44:48.400 --> 00:44:50.760 you can choose to say, no, we're not going to do more 967 00:44:50.760 --> 00:44:53.080 for the same amount of money, but somebody else will. 968 00:44:53.080 --> 00:44:55.240 And that, that's sort of sucks. 969 00:44:55.280 --> 00:44:57.680 But, you know, it's become so competitive, 970 00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:00.680 hyper-competitive to the sense that people break off 971 00:45:00.680 --> 00:45:02.600 and they have lower overhead and they go to things. 972 00:45:02.600 --> 00:45:05.320 But at the same time, they're changing the way they work. 973 00:45:05.320 --> 00:45:07.760 They're investing maybe in, you know, 974 00:45:07.760 --> 00:45:10.120 software and technology instead of people. 975 00:45:10.120 --> 00:45:13.200 And legacy companies across the board, 976 00:45:13.200 --> 00:45:15.200 whether it's manufacturing, whether it's design, 977 00:45:15.200 --> 00:45:17.600 whether it's rep firms, or dinosaurs. 978 00:45:17.600 --> 00:45:20.240 We're so people focused in this industry and driven 979 00:45:20.240 --> 00:45:22.600 and we operate around our own minds, 980 00:45:22.600 --> 00:45:26.040 which is honestly awesome because it makes it a lot of fun. 981 00:45:26.040 --> 00:45:27.040 But at the end of the day, 982 00:45:27.040 --> 00:45:29.000 we're the most expensive part of everything. 983 00:45:29.000 --> 00:45:34.120 And the next generation of talent, 984 00:45:34.120 --> 00:45:38.360 the kids that are 18, 19, 20 years old right now, 985 00:45:38.360 --> 00:45:39.640 they just think differently. 986 00:45:39.640 --> 00:45:41.120 They work differently. 987 00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:43.360 What they think is optimization is different 988 00:45:43.360 --> 00:45:44.840 than what we think is optimization. 989 00:45:44.840 --> 00:45:46.320 They don't use that word. 990 00:45:46.320 --> 00:45:47.640 What word they use? 991 00:45:47.640 --> 00:45:48.920 Somebody doesn't sit around and think 992 00:45:48.920 --> 00:45:50.880 that their life is optimized because they can see 993 00:45:50.880 --> 00:45:52.320 everything on Instagram live. 994 00:45:52.320 --> 00:45:53.800 But their life is totally optimized 995 00:45:53.800 --> 00:45:56.920 compared to having to call your friends and catch up like we did. 996 00:45:56.920 --> 00:46:01.560 You know, their real world experience is just different. 997 00:46:01.560 --> 00:46:04.760 So they're naturally gonna feel like 998 00:46:04.760 --> 00:46:07.240 the advancement or change in technology 999 00:46:07.240 --> 00:46:10.240 in the industry to people like us and older 1000 00:46:10.240 --> 00:46:12.520 is actually completely normal to them. 1001 00:46:12.520 --> 00:46:14.200 And what we do is foreign. 1002 00:46:14.200 --> 00:46:17.360 So there's an adoption rate that we talked about 1003 00:46:17.360 --> 00:46:20.240 a little bit earlier that has to run its course. 1004 00:46:20.240 --> 00:46:22.000 But that's gonna continue to run its course 1005 00:46:22.000 --> 00:46:24.120 and that's gonna continue to accelerate 1006 00:46:24.120 --> 00:46:26.040 over the next five to 10 years 1007 00:46:26.040 --> 00:46:28.560 as the people that enter the workforce 1008 00:46:28.560 --> 00:46:31.920 have been consumed by tech adoption, right? 1009 00:46:31.920 --> 00:46:34.120 I mean, tech drives everything today 1010 00:46:34.120 --> 00:46:38.160 in terms of the efficiency in the nature of what goes on 1011 00:46:38.160 --> 00:46:42.160 in just your world to come into a professional environment 1012 00:46:42.160 --> 00:46:45.760 and not have access to that will seem foreign 1013 00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:50.400 or on the contrary will demand that stuff like this 1014 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:54.320 is developed and the young leaders will push it forward. 1015 00:46:54.320 --> 00:46:57.640 And the old leaders will either adopt it or they won't. 1016 00:46:57.640 --> 00:46:59.840 Yeah, a lot of old leaders are, you know, 1017 00:46:59.840 --> 00:47:02.560 there's a couple of good examples of kind of the people 1018 00:47:02.560 --> 00:47:04.960 in the general age frame of about 40 to 60 right now 1019 00:47:04.960 --> 00:47:08.280 that are really push in tech pretty far forward. 1020 00:47:08.280 --> 00:47:09.920 Like they seem to be pretty forward thinking 1021 00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:14.920 and they're super willing to embrace what's next. 1022 00:47:15.560 --> 00:47:18.360 I think that that's pretty refreshing. 1023 00:47:18.360 --> 00:47:21.880 I mean, being able to embrace what's next is important, right? 1024 00:47:21.880 --> 00:47:25.840 Everything in human life is on a path forward momentum. 1025 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:28.600 Everything becomes more efficient, looks better, operates 1026 00:47:28.600 --> 00:47:32.000 at a scale that maybe have not been imaginable before. 1027 00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:33.600 Except for printers, I cannot figure out 1028 00:47:33.600 --> 00:47:35.520 why regular printers still don't work. 1029 00:47:37.520 --> 00:47:39.680 It's everything except for printers. 1030 00:47:39.680 --> 00:47:42.160 Chris, this has been an awesome conversation. 1031 00:47:42.160 --> 00:47:44.600 I know that we bounced around a little bit early 1032 00:47:44.600 --> 00:47:47.360 but it's really insightful to me 1033 00:47:47.360 --> 00:47:50.080 and I hope to everybody that gets a chance to listen to this 1034 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:51.880 in terms of, you know, where we're at 1035 00:47:51.880 --> 00:47:53.960 and really inspires people to think about 1036 00:47:53.960 --> 00:47:56.720 what change can they implement or what can they adopt. 1037 00:47:56.720 --> 00:47:58.160 If people have questions, 1038 00:47:58.160 --> 00:48:01.160 if they want to continue this conversation with you 1039 00:48:01.160 --> 00:48:04.080 or they just want to give you a virtual high five, 1040 00:48:04.080 --> 00:48:06.360 what's the best way to get in touch with Chris? 1041 00:48:06.360 --> 00:48:09.960 Email chrisatlightalthethings.com 1042 00:48:09.960 --> 00:48:11.480 Chris at lightalthethings. 1043 00:48:11.480 --> 00:48:14.600 If I go to lightalthethings.com right now, what shows up? 1044 00:48:14.600 --> 00:48:16.640 Not much, I don't think. 1045 00:48:16.640 --> 00:48:18.800 A bouncy ball just bouncing around the screen. 1046 00:48:18.800 --> 00:48:20.480 Yeah, it's a flashlight that just spins. 1047 00:48:20.480 --> 00:48:23.400 Yeah, exactly, that's perfect. 1048 00:48:23.400 --> 00:48:26.160 Chris, thank you so much for your time. 1049 00:48:26.160 --> 00:48:27.120 We'll talk to you soon. 1050 00:48:27.120 --> 00:48:28.360 Thanks for having me, appreciate it. 1051 00:48:28.360 --> 00:48:29.200 Let's see it. 1052 00:48:34.320 --> 00:48:37.520 Thanks again for listening to this episode of the light pod. 1053 00:48:37.520 --> 00:48:39.240 If you enjoyed it, do me a favor 1054 00:48:39.240 --> 00:48:42.240 and click that like, follow or subscribe button. 1055 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:45.440 That's the best way to never miss another episode 1056 00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:48.440 where we talk to people about all things lighting, 1057 00:48:48.440 --> 00:48:51.440 who have inspirational and thought-provoking conversations 1058 00:48:51.440 --> 00:48:52.040 to share. 1059 00:48:52.040 --> 00:48:53.760 Until next time, cheers.