Beyond Buildings: Exploring Facilities Management

Brian Gregory [00:00:01]:
Hi everybody, this is your host Brian for the Beyond Buildings podcast, where we meet innovative and inspiring facilities leaders from across the country. In this episode, I chat with Lee Rasberry, who is the Director of Construction and Planning for Bastrop Independent School District. He has an extensive background in controls in H Vac and has served as a Director of Maintenance and Operations at several districts prior to his current role in this episode, Lee discusses his utilization of machine learning and artificial intelligence to optimize the building automation system. He also covers the importance of being scrappy and taking calculated risks to find solutions that ultimately help the kiddos. Lee is a very bright mind and shares a great deal of actionable insight. Let's dive in. Hey Lee, welcome to the podcast.

Brian Gregory [00:00:46]:
Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Just to kick things off, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself, kind of your background, your career, and what you're doing now.

Lee Raspberry [00:00:54]:
All right, Brian, I appreciate it and thanks for the invite. I know that we've tried to get together on a couple of different occasions, and I'm glad we were finally able to make it happen today. So thank you. I appreciate you including me. I'm currently the Director of Construction and Planning for Bastrop Independent School District in Bastrop, Texas. I've been here a relatively short amount of time. Prior to that, I was with Dell Valley Independent School District as Director of Maintenance and Facilities. Previous to that, Firector of Maintenance and Facilities for Lockhart Independent School District.

Lee Raspberry [00:01:24]:
Previous to that, Comal Independent School District, where I was the Systems Administrator for HVAC and controls. And then prior to that, I was the Energy Manager for Judson Independent School District in San Antonio. So I have traveled a little bit, but I had. What's funny is that in my career I have not necessarily traveled for position. I have been moving my entire house, household and everything. And so that's required me to shorten my commute over the years. So I've been in K-12, about 13 years. I love what I do.

Lee Raspberry [00:02:00]:
I love the operations side. I started off in the energy management side, which I still love today. Sustainable building practices, that sort of thing. Indoor air quality. And I guess, Brian, that what I do today, even on the construction side, is really driven by trying to achieve outstanding results for students every day.

Brian Gregory [00:02:22]:
Great. Man.

Lee Raspberry [00:02:23]:
If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be doing this. And so that's kind of the driving force, I guess. I get up every day and I say, what can I do today to increase student achievement? Somehow some way, what can I do? And so that's kind of, I mean that's kind of the driving force behind what I've been doing for the last 13 years and what I continue to do.

Brian Gregory [00:02:41]:
That's great man. Is that the primary reason that you got into K-12 facilities leadership?

Lee Raspberry [00:02:46]:
That's a funny story. Prior to getting into K-12, obviously I worked in the private sector and I would, the position that I had prior to entering K-12 was I worked for a mechanical contractor, a large mechanical contractor and I built and sold HVAC PM programs. And I kind of went outside of the standard scope, if you will, for preventative maintenance and started looking at these units from a more sustainable standpoint. I didn't agree that a lot of unitary equipment had a life cycle of twelve or 14 years. I wanted to be able to, through preventative maintenance, I wanted to be able to push that life cycle after 20/25 years even on a piece of unitary equipment. And so that's what got me interested in that. And then I decided to, I started looking into getting a LEED accreditation. And so just out of I guess kind of out of the blue I started studying for my LEEDaccreditation.

Lee Raspberry [00:03:44]:
And while I was still with this mechanical contractor I went and sat for the exam and I passed the exam. It was then I realized I didn't have anything to do with it. Here I've got this LEED accreditation and I can't really put it to work. And even though the company that I worked for thought it was great, it didn't really translate well from a PM service standpoint. So that was kind of a turning point for me I guess, in my career in that I started to really reevaluate. Where do I want to be ten years from now? I was well into my professional career. I had already been in mid level management prior to my tenure with this HVAC contractor and I kind of decided I needed to reevaluate what I wanted to do. And all the signs kept pointing back towards sustainable facility management, LEED accreditation, certified energy manager.

Lee Raspberry [00:04:42]:
All these things I found to be extremely interesting to me and I just felt, I just felt like on average we do a very, and I say we as, just as a society, we do, we do a very poor job of managing these buildings that we're in. You know, we spend a ton of time in these buildings professionally. You know, if you think about the time that you spend, you spend eight to 10 hours, sometimes longer a day, five days a week, 60 hours a week, whatever. A lot of times in a building in some sort of an occupied building. And I just feel like an. And I still feel this way that we can do a better job of creating a more conducive atmosphere through energy management, energy and resource management, indoor air quality, all of these things, and not incur some astronomical cost while doing it. A lot of it just standard practices. So that was kind of the driving force behind me getting into facility maintenance.

Lee Raspberry [00:05:42]:
I started on the energy management side. I applied for a job that I had no, I had no background in, but I can write a resume and I can put together a hundred day business plan. And I actually did a video resume and I submitted this video resume to the school district and they called me right away.

Brian Gregory [00:06:00]:
Awesome.

Lee Raspberry [00:06:01]:
Yeah, they'd never seen anything like that before, you know. And so anyway, so that's how it all started. And once I started the process, and once I got into K-12 and I started seeing some, you know, some of these antiquated systems and these dilapidated buildings, and then I understood how they got that way. And it wasn't really the fault of anybody or any group of people or any department. It was just, that's the way it was in K-12. It's public money and it just, a lot of times the funding's not there. So there had to be, you know, I set out on a path to build a better mousetrap to take care of these buildings, and to maintain these buildings. And so that's how it started.

Brian Gregory [00:06:40]:
That's great. Lee, just one question for you. I'm always kind of interested how this goes for folks going from the private sector into the public sector. Yeah. Any surprises? Pros? Cons? Like, what was that like?

Lee Raspberry [00:06:52]:
Yeah, so it was a little bit of a culture shock for me, because in the private sector, I don't want to say that funding for projects flows more freely, but it does flow more freely in the private sector a little bit than it does in the public sector, because it's public funded. And so you always have to, no matter what project you're working on, what initiative, what renovation, it doesn't matter what that is. You always have to view that from the perspective of being a good steward for the public dollar or with the public dollar. And I'm a taxpayer, you're a taxpayer. And so I never really looked at it that way. I never really studied the makeup of a school district's general fund and how that money comes to be through interest in sinking and all of these other things in maintenance and operations. What portion of the tax dollar goes to maintenance and operations. And so I didn't really know all of that.

Lee Raspberry [00:07:47]:
It was something that was unknown to me. So that was a little bit of a culture shock, coming in and finding out how projects are funded, how you go about getting approval to get them funded. It took me a few years before I was involved in a bond project. I had no idea how a bond project worked. And then, funny enough, the other thing was, my first year, I was constantly sick.

Brian Gregory [00:08:12]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:08:12]:
Constantly.

Brian Gregory [00:08:13]:
Being around the kids, you think, or being around kids.

Lee Raspberry [00:08:15]:
I had, I had multiple, I had multiple teachers and staff members, paraprofessionals. I had them tell me or warn me, hey, you know what? Make sure you get your flu shot. Make sure you get this. Wash your hands and all this other stuff, because these kids will get you sick. And I was like, ah, come on, these kids aren't going to get me sick. My whole first year, I was like.

Brian Gregory [00:08:33]:
I can hear you, man. Just, just having kiddos. I tell you what. Like, every year, this flu bug or not flu bug, stomach bug hits our family.

Lee Raspberry [00:08:41]:
Yeah.

Brian Gregory [00:08:42]:
And it's like the worst thing ever. Like. Cause I'm usually the last one to fall, but I see the kids go down, they're throwing up, then, you know, like, it's not gonna hit us. Like, just when I think that we've dodged it, then my wife gets sick, and it's like, oh, God. Like, it's. I'm gonna be next.

Lee Raspberry [00:08:56]:
Yeah, you're gonna be next. It felt like my whole entire first year at Judson Independent School District, I just. I had something all the time, you know, I get rid of this, and then I'd get this, and I was never sick, and then all of a sudden. But anyway, that, that stuff all wore off and.

Brian Gregory [00:09:12]:
Yeah, now you got superhuman immune system.

Lee Raspberry [00:09:16]:
Yeah, exactly.

Brian Gregory [00:09:17]:
Well, cool. Maybe we can keep on pivoting here. I just, uh. One of the things I wanted to jump into, and one of the things that really, first of all, I've also got a passion for energy, and that's. It's amazing what you can do in a building to reduce consumption without impacting the environment negatively. In fact, you can improve the environment and reduce energy, and it's just fantastic thing to do. And, like, you kind of, you drew me to you. Like, you put on a presentation, it's been maybe a year ago in Orlando, around how you're using artificial, or how you use artificial intelligence in the building automation system and that.

Brian Gregory [00:09:51]:
I think that's something that our audience would definitely want to hear more about. Maybe you can just tell me a little bit about what the process was there, why you picked that technology up, and what it did for you.

Lee Raspberry [00:10:00]:
You know, I became accustomed eight, ten, twelve years ago, whatever it was, to looking for energy conservation measures that were, and you've heard the term low hanging fruit, low cost, no cost. Back when I started in energy management in K-12, it was a very tough department or position to fund. Okay. The other thing about that was when I was in Judson ISD, we had, in Bexar County, we had the only self funded energy management program in Bexar county. So we were self funded. I funded the entire department, including the staff, the personnel and the initiatives in that department through savings.

Brian Gregory [00:10:41]:
Wow.

Lee Raspberry [00:10:42]:
And so I've always, I've always looked for, I've always looked for these low cost, no cost, have tried not to create animosity with regard to a program. You know, a lot of times, the very first thing, the very first thing that staff members will say is, here, we got an energy management guy, he's just here to turn our lights off, you know, he's going to shut our AC off and that sort of thing. And I think once you explain to folks that 90% of the energy conservation measures that you can implement in a building don't impact the occupants much or not in a negative way.

Brian Gregory [00:11:15]:
Yeah. What were some of the low cost, no cost things that you did?

Lee Raspberry [00:11:19]:
Very first thing that we looked at our set point standardizations, just bringing in set points, we looked at how we properly staged our buildings. We made sure that we brought our buildings online in such a way that we didn't bring on multiple chillers or cooling towers at the same time. We didn't bring boilers on or large pieces of equipment that have a huge amperage draw. We didn't bring this stuff on at the same time. And so we properly staged buildings. We brought in set points, we normalize set points, and we didn't do it from a global perspective as much as we did in the buildings. And so we would go out into the campuses, we'd go into the classrooms, and we would take readings with atmospheric equipment, and I would record that, and I would make sure that what we were doing was the right thing to do. And a lot of that was just spending time interviewing occupants, talking to teachers, letting teachers know what you were doing.

Lee Raspberry [00:12:17]:
I found out a long time ago that if you just take the time to explain to staff members what it is that you're doing and what the benefits are, you can develop a consensus pretty easy. When you explain to people that every dollar that you save through energy conservation is a dollar that can go back into education. That rings true with a lot of educators. That rings true with a lot of staff members and paraprofessionals. They understand that kind of discussion. It's better than just going in and saying, you know what? We're going to be. You got to get out of here at 04:00 to shut your air off. You're not going to gain any friends that way.

Brian Gregory [00:12:51]:
Right.

Lee Raspberry [00:12:51]:
Most people are pragmatic if you give them a chance.

Brian Gregory [00:12:54]:
Yeah. Yeah. We recently had an all company summit, and. Are you familiar with the golden circle by Simon Sinek?

Lee Raspberry [00:13:00]:
No, I'm not. No.

Brian Gregory [00:13:01]:
There's this concept, and there's a circle. At the core of the circle is why, and then the middle layer is how, and the outer layer is what. And so pretty much everybody understands what you do. Like, you're turning the h vac off at 04:00. You're doing, like, the what is understood by everybody, but it's not very powerful. That's, like, not a good. You're not going to motivate folks, you're not going to affect change. How is a little bit less understood? It's kind of the mechanics of exactly how you're doing something.

Brian Gregory [00:13:28]:
So a few people understand how you do it. But if you can communicate from the why, like, why are we doing this? Very few people sometimes understand why, but the best leaders, the best organizations, they start with the why, and it kind of sounds like that's what you did naturally, is explained.

Lee Raspberry [00:13:41]:
I've got a book over here called start with the why.

Brian Gregory [00:13:44]:
Oh, perfect. Yeah, that sounds like exactly what you did there. Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:13:47]:
You know, and then we spent, you know, we spent. We spent about a year just doing behavior modification. That's a term that bothers some folks, but there's really no other way to describe it. Behavior modification, you know, it's not shock therapy or anything like that. It's just, it's exactly what you're talking about. It's getting people to understand the why of what you're doing. All of that is great, but if you can't track this through data and you can't produce the data and you can't show trends and trending by capturing data, then all of that is. It doesn't really matter.

Lee Raspberry [00:14:26]:
So it's all academic at that point. And so I've always been a data person. So gathering data on the energy management side, I mean, it's all data driven. All of it. 100% of its data driven. I enjoy that. Too. I enjoy producing the data because, you know, at the end of the day, then if your data going in is clean, then it's coming out clean, and the results speak for themselves.

Brian Gregory [00:14:50]:
So was there anything, Lee, that you tried that didn't work?

Lee Raspberry [00:14:53]:
Oh, yeah.

Brian Gregory [00:14:54]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:14:55]:
So I did a pilot program in one of our. In one of our large high schools. This high school was probably. Gosh, I'm gonna say it was probably very close to 400,000 sqft. It was a really, really big high school, and we had already had. We already had units, mechanical equipment staged in that campus. It was a chilled water campus. But I had.

Lee Raspberry [00:15:19]:
I did have rooftop units, and I had some VRF in there as well. I wasn't so much concerned about that. But we already had the large, large piece. The large machines were already staged, and I wanted to get a little more granular with that. So I started staging individual classrooms. And so I thought, you know, if I can achieve positive results by staging large pieces of equipment, maybe I can achieve even better results by staging individual spaces that are run by, you know, VAV boxes or fan coil units. And so I made the attempt to try to do that, and it didn't provide the results that I was hoping for. It got too granular, and at some point, it just became.

Lee Raspberry [00:16:04]:
The results became lost in all of that. And I had a really, really hard time tracking it. I mean, I even use some. Some. I used some. Some data collectors in some of the classrooms, and I wasn't able to, you know, I spent six months doing this, and I wasn't able to. To show the results that I was hoping I could show. But that's how you learn.

Brian Gregory [00:16:23]:
That's how you learn. Yeah, I learned a lesson. So, on the design side, we designed a building with a heat recovery chiller. And throughout the construction process, that wasn't something the contractors were familiar with, so it wasn't set up properly. So in the summertime, they were running their boilers and the chiller. Because I had to reheat the interior spaces, the chiller was supposed to deliver enough heat to do that. Uh, long story short, we. We fixed the problem with the chiller in.

Brian Gregory [00:16:46]:
In the plant, and we're able to function without running the boilers. But what I learned is to get that chiller to operate in such a fashion that it could actually generate enough heating for the reheat. We were using more energy than just more expensive energy, because electricity is a lot at that time, a lot more expensive than natural gas. What actually ended up being the best method for us is in the summer is what we were worried about. We just changed box minimums. There weren't any kids in the classroom, so setting the minimum down to zero. So if, if it didn't need cooling, the box could go down to zero meant that we didn't need reheat, which meant. Meant that we didn't need heat recovery chiller or the boilers.

Brian Gregory [00:17:22]:
You just run it, you know, it's like on paper, this thing sounds fantastic. And I'm sure there are a like lot of use cases where it does make sense. But your point, when we look at the data, we're all patting ourselves on the back. So we've got this thing working. Yep. And now the bill is even higher. But look, the gas bill is nothing, but, you know, the electric bill's higher and it just, it's interesting.

Lee Raspberry [00:17:38]:
Yeah. And then, and then, and then of course, you fact, you factor in all of the additional fees from your utility company at that point. It's not just a KWH or BTU problem, you know, demand. Yeah, yeah. But you really are, and I tell people this, look, in energy management, there have been a lot of people that have come before you that have created really good programs, really good initiatives. They've helped solve a lot of questions, a lot of problems that you'll find that you'll have the same problems in your school district. Don't recreate the wheel. There's no reason to recreate the wheel.

Lee Raspberry [00:18:18]:
But, but you're, I mean, you really are. I mean, you really are. I mean, for lack of a better term, you really are a scientist of sorts, you know, because you do a lot of, you do a lot of fact finding, you do a lot of testing, you're looking for specific results, you develop a hypothesis, you try to prove it out. At the end of the day, sometimes it proves out, sometimes it doesn't. And, you know, you don't get discouraged. You just start again, you know, and at the end, like I said earlier, at the end of the day, is the emphasis, or is what it is that I'm doing, is it, is it contributing to a better space for kids to learn in and staff to teach in? If you can answer yes to that, then keep going.

Brian Gregory [00:18:59]:
Yep, that makes a ton of sense. So maybe we can move on to the kind of the AI piece. That's kind of intriguing, I think, for probably the audience. Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:19:05]:
So in the vein of energy conservation measures, I start looking at, I started to graph specific classrooms and to see how specific classrooms were running from a graph standpoint based on set points and that sort of thing. And so using a graph, if you can picture a graph, and for you HVA people out there, along with a dead band, a five degree deadband, you know that if a unit is cooling or heating and it's within that deadband, it's doing what it's designed to do. When it's outside of that five degree deadband is when the set point in the space changes and it calls for cooling or heating. It's the unit that functions outside of the dead band on the cooling side and on the heating side. That energy that's needed to fire that unit, whether it's fired by electricity or it's fired by natural gas, or whatever the case may be, the energy that's used to fire that to bring the space back into set point again, really is wasted energy. And the reason that's happening is because we're using our building automation or our controls in our schools, we're using controls really just is a static set point tool. It's just a static tool. We enter the set point and we can, depending on the building automation system, you can change your deadband, although you don't want to get it too tight, because then you confuse the system.

Lee Raspberry [00:20:31]:
It doesn't know whether you're calling for heating or cooling, but we set it and forget it. We set the set point, the deadband, for space, and then we leave it alone as long as it maintains set point, we consider that to be a win. Right, when the unit's running outside of the deadband, calling for cooling and calling for heating, that's wasted energy. So I started looking into artificial intelligence, and I thought, what if using AI, and there are people out there that do it? But I started thinking to myself, what if AI can learn and we call it machine learning? What if, using machine learning, you can shrink that deadband down where the system still knows that it's calling for heating and cooling and the units not coming on, or calling for heating and cooling outside of the deadbane. So you take that wasted energy that you had before, and you're pulling it back down. So now your graph becomes a lot more streamlined and you're functioning within that dead band and not above it and below it. While your system is trying to call for heating and cooling, the system doesn't know any better. It just knows that when.

Lee Raspberry [00:21:37]:
It just knows that if it wants to produce 72 in a space, then it's going to come on at 74, right? It's going to call for cooling at 74. Well, we just waited two degrees where we didn't have to wait two degrees in order to call for cooling, we could have started calling it 70 for cooling. And the same thing goes on the heating side. And it's been proven out, there are companies like Brainbox and others out there that are doing this, and they're doing it successfully. I think Schneider's doing it as well, that over time, the machine will learn certain characteristics of the space, whether it be occupants, ambient temperature, CO2 levels. It has the ability to learn all of these things, develop algorithms so that it can be more efficient when it's heating and cooling the space.

Brian Gregory [00:22:24]:
Do you see this as kind of a table stake in the future? Like right now? It's certainly cutting edge. Like where do, where do you see the future of building automation going?

Lee Raspberry [00:22:32]:
Having worked in building automation and tracked it for the last 15 years, I guess not near as long as a lot of people, right? I've seen the advancements in building automation, a lot of it driven by technology, some of it driven by code requirements, but I've seen the progression in controls, building automation, energy management systems. I've seen all of this over the last twelve to 15 years. And I just, I just don't see how you can advance. You can advance any more five years from now or ten years from now. I wouldn't say ten years, five years from now without involving some sort of AI in there. I just don't. I just don't know how you would do it. I think the, I think the, you know, I think it's already been put out there.

Lee Raspberry [00:23:17]:
It's just a matter of time. It's one of those things that, it's one of those things that school districts will have to, and building managers will have to get comfortable with. Historically, school districts and maintenance personnel and school districts, and this is not a slight at them, I'm one of them. But historically, we're eight to ten years behind the technology curve when it comes to managing these buildings. We use building automation from a static setting standpoint. Now, there are people that use it to generate reporting and use it as a tool, and it can be a robust tool. But I think on average, building managers in K-12, we only tap into about 50% to 60% of the capability of a very comprehensive building automation system.

Brian Gregory [00:24:03]:
100% agree. Well, the other thing too, you mentioned the static piece. I've noticed a lot of systems are set up based on design loads or based on a hypothetical scenario. It almost be like, Lee, what's the most you think you're ever going to weigh in your life. So you're going to go through phases. Okay. I'm going to make you a 2XL shirt. So it'll always fit.

Brian Gregory [00:24:24]:
Most of the time it's going to be so baggy. You're going to be swimming in this thing. It's going to suck. And it's kind of like sometimes with building automation it's, it's somewhat set up like that. You know, like, yes, this gym might have 3000 people on it for graduation or what have you, but most of the time it doesn't. And the way that things operate, they're not always fine tuned and they're kind of statically programmed versus being flexible and tuned. Right. I think that makes a lot of sense, man.

Brian Gregory [00:24:48]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:24:49]:
I mean if you, because, because you're building automation system is not going to sense a load. It's not going to sense a, it's not going to, it's not going to necessarily sense an occupant load.

Brian Gregory [00:25:00]:
Right.

Lee Raspberry [00:25:00]:
It's been programmed for a full load to your point, in a gym.

Brian Gregory [00:25:03]:
Right.

Lee Raspberry [00:25:04]:
Well what happens, what happens when you have a smaller event in there and you only have 150 people? You walk in there sometime and watch them. They all have blankets on their laps.

Brian Gregory [00:25:12]:
Oh, right. Well, and you might have like outside air ventilation for 3000 depending on what you, what kind of setup you have. I mean if you have, if you're monitoring CO2, maybe not, but a lot of districts don't have that. So you're bringing in ventilation for 3000 people. When you got 30 people in there.

Lee Raspberry [00:25:27]:
You got 30 people and then the next thing you know you've got, you've got condensation on your gym floor. You've got players that are slipping and. Yeah, so, so I think that, I think that from a, from a unit, from a, from an HVAC unit standpoint, an HVAC unit will do what it's told to do.

Brian Gregory [00:25:44]:
Right.

Lee Raspberry [00:25:44]:
It doesn't have a lot of limits. It really doesn't. It's designed to do what you tell it to do. Well, if you're just inputting static set points or static parameters in there, it'll go with the static parameters that you provide. So if you have machine learning that's doing the same thing that's smarter than static set points, more intuitive, then the unit will respond to that in a positive way. The unit will produce what it's supposed to produce.

Brian Gregory [00:26:16]:
Just makes sense, man. It's like if you, if you had your hand on the knobs and you're watching the room and you're adjusting it, you're going to do a better job. And so, like, can you, can you make a machine learning and AI? I think that's the way to do it. Right. Can you replicate that experience? Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:26:30]:
And so over time, you know, over time, using different learning methods, over time that the machine, the system, the system begins to understand more about what's going on in the space than, you know, what's going on in the space, you know, at least from an algorithm standpoint. And it just, it never forgets that. It won't forget that, and it'll continue to replicate that based on the situation in the classroom. So I'm very interested in it. I'm looking to conduct a pilot in the campus, and I want to track it through data, and I just want to see if there's a market improvement over space and thermal comfort and indoor air quality in the, in a campus that's, that's using machine learning versus static, you know, static set point parameters or static setting parameters. So I don't see how it couldn't be, honestly.

Brian Gregory [00:27:25]:
Right. Yep. There'll be challenges, but. Well, this is kind of dangerous. I think we could both nerd out over this for probably three or 4 hours. Well, but everybody to sleep, this could be like a great episode to play when you're, like, having trouble falling asleep. I don't know. Depends on what you're.

Lee Raspberry [00:27:41]:
What's that? What's that one guy that's got the AM radio after midnight, either you're going.

Brian Gregory [00:27:46]:
To get jazzed about this conversation and you're going to be pumped, or you're going to be put to sleep. Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:27:51]:
Yeah. And here's, but here's, here's one of the byproducts of this. And as you know, in the business that you're in as well, that, that there's not a school district anywhere that doesn't have staffing challenges. Right. Sometimes we have the funding for positions, but we can't find qualified people. Sometimes we need qualified people really bad, but we don't have the funding in place to post a position and to go hire somebody. But if you have, if you're able to, and I'm sure there's gonna be people that don't agree with this through artificial intelligence or machine learning. If you're able to take a controls technician and reassign them somewhere else within your department, maybe you move them to where they're just on the 24 volts installation side and they're going out and they're checking controllers and they're checking valves.

Lee Raspberry [00:28:41]:
And they're doing these things and they're doing PM on your control system parts and smarts and all that stuff. If they're doing that, versus spending a lot of time like a building engineer sitting in front of a monitor and changing set points and changing parameters on a system, if you already have that covered through machine learning, you can expand the program. I talked earlier about preventative maintenance. Maybe you enhance your preventative maintenance program. Maybe you're able to increase your life cycle cost of some of this equipment, this unitary equipment, because you've been able to move one of your technicians to your PM program.

Brian Gregory [00:29:17]:
Right? Yeah. You're not talking about cutting jobs like there's still a huge vacuum. It just. You can do more and let this thing do more. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, um.

Brian Gregory [00:29:26]:
Maybe coming closer to time here, just want to get into kind of a few last questions. Uh, first of all, within your career, what's one of the. One of the times you've enjoyed the most and why?

Lee Raspberry [00:29:36]:
You know, I. There's been a lot of them, to be honest with you, Brian.

Brian Gregory [00:29:41]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:29:41]:
Look, I don't care who you are. Everybody likes some form of recognition for a job well done, right? Everybody does.

Brian Gregory [00:29:49]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:29:50]:
When I was in Judson Independent school District, we were the first district to develop and build a comprehensive demand response program with the utility provider CPS. And so CPS energy had a demand response program. We were the first large school district to bring it in and start building a program during the summer. A demand response program. That program, some 13 years later, is still in place. And Judson Independent School District is the largest recipient of money, of savings and checks from CPS energy of any school district in the 13 district area. And we started out by printing off copies of the demand response graph and thumbtacking them in the hallway, if you don't mind.

Brian Gregory [00:30:43]:
If you're able to share. Do you know, like, roughly what the financial impact was in dollars?

Lee Raspberry [00:30:47]:
So they annually receive reimbursement checks from CPS. Don't quote me on this, but I've seen checks in the $400,000 range annually.

Brian Gregory [00:30:56]:
And for 13 years. So you're talking millions of dollars saved.

Lee Raspberry [00:31:00]:
They have not impacted the learning environment one bit.

Brian Gregory [00:31:03]:
That is fantastic.

Lee Raspberry [00:31:04]:
They have only impacted unoccupied spaces for the most part. And so they have grown that program. There's. There's a couple of guys over there, Andy Jimenez and David Ehler have done an outstanding. They've done Yeoman's work by taking a program that we started out with they built it out. I mean, they've become the go to guys for how to build a demand response program.

Brian Gregory [00:31:27]:
What a legacy. Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:31:28]:
And so that, I still love that. I still love that I'm not involved in it anymore, but I get goosebumps looking at how well they're doing with that program because they didn't kill it. They didn't allow anybody to kill it. They grew it. And you go back and you look at all of these, these golf check photos that they're in with, with the superintendent, the board of directors. They love standing behind those 2-3-$400,000 checks once a year.

Brian Gregory [00:31:55]:
Well, thinking aback about the students. Right. Ultimately, that's going back to making that school district be able to serve their students better and not burden the taxpayers like it's a double win. Yeah, it is. Taking it down to a. Maybe a darker notch. I'm not sure what's been one of the most challenging, like, looking back at your career, like, what was one of the most challenging times and why, you.

Lee Raspberry [00:32:16]:
Know, I think one of the most challenging, and it's probably still the most challenging aspect of my, of my job. And that that is, it's not, I've not. I've not found it difficult to, to build a consensus with, with teachers and staff about the benefits of energy and natural resource conservation when it's properly explained. I have found very few people, and if there were more, they didn't say anything to me. But I have found very few people that had an opposition to a program that was going to not necessarily reduce or cut energy, but it was going to be. It was going to be more responsibly used. Right. And as a result of that, there were going to be.

Lee Raspberry [00:33:02]:
There. The impact of that was going to be savings that you can track and that you can show, and nobody was going to be inconvenienced. Students weren't going to be inconvenienced. We weren't going to cut your lights off. We weren't going to cut your AC off. We weren't going to kick you out at a certain time of the day. That was never part of a larger program. What I found to be challenging was convincing my colleagues that this works because you have to look, I mentioned it earlier.

Lee Raspberry [00:33:33]:
Most people, I think most people that you come across in life have a certain level of pragmatism. In other words, you can convince them that something makes sense. If it actually does make sense, you can convince them that it makes sense. But there are people that just, you know, you have to drag them kicking and screaming to a better place or better end result. And it hasn't been a lot of people, but there have been certain folks that I've worked with over the years that no matter how much I showed them, no matter how much I showed them on paper, they were not going to buy into it.

Brian Gregory [00:34:05]:
Right.

Lee Raspberry [00:34:06]:
They were going to fight.

Brian Gregory [00:34:06]:
It's not logical.

Lee Raspberry [00:34:07]:
Yeah, yeah. They were just. If they were in a position where our two roles enhanced one another, we had overlap. I relied on them just like they relied on me. And a lot of times I didn't get the cooperation that I needed to move forward with something. And so that was, that was challenging, you know?

Brian Gregory [00:34:24]:
Right. Yeah, I hear you, man. Like the, uh, you run into technical challenges sometimes. The good thing about technical challenge is it's solvable, it's logical.

Lee Raspberry [00:34:33]:
Yeah. You work it out, people.

Brian Gregory [00:34:35]:
Challenges, sometimes not so easy. Well, I know we're coming up on time. I like to end every episode here thinking about folks that are getting into a facilities role, getting into public education, maybe getting into building automation. What advice would you give to our audience?

Lee Raspberry [00:34:49]:
So I would say, if you haven't, if you have an interest in any form or fashion of building operations, whether it be from building management side property management side building automation and controls, HVAC, doesn't really matter. If you have an interest in it, go do it. Because, I mean, this is the best move that I made 13 years ago. I don't even know where I would be today. I look back on it and sometimes I kick myself for not doing it sooner because I love what I do. Because you know what? At the end of the day, I have no problem saying I made a difference today in the lives of kids, man. I have no problem saying that because I know it's true. I created a better environment today for academic achievement for kids.

Lee Raspberry [00:35:30]:
I implemented something that provided a higher level of safety and security and comfortability in the classroom. And I can say that. I can say that, I can say that, and I can go home and I can come back and I can do it the next day, and it's another challenge the next day. And I will tell you that the opportunities are endless if you're an outside the box. And this role, it kind of requires somebody that is used to outside the box thinking with limited guideposts, right?

Brian Gregory [00:35:59]:
You gotta be scrappy.

Lee Raspberry [00:36:00]:
You gotta be scrappy. And nobody's gonna fault. Nobody's gonna fault you for trying things if you're gonna, you know, as long as you're gonna produce positive outcomes for kids. So I would tell it, I would tell people whether you're on the K-12 side or you're in the private sector, but you're thinking about getting your certified energy management certification or any of the other certifications or licenses out there. Do that. Get your professional license. I mean, I've got an ASHRAE license as well, and, or ASHRAE certification as well for building, building energy. Beep.

Lee Raspberry [00:36:33]:
I just call it beep. Yeah. Bill it.

Brian Gregory [00:36:36]:
Yeah.

Lee Raspberry [00:36:37]:
And so I would say do it and stay in it because guess what? We're not getting rid of buildings, we're not getting rid of, we're not getting rid of air conditioning, we're not getting rid of heating, we're not getting rid of thermal comfort. Those things are always going to be around and go out there and be a part of it. Create a better tomorrow for kids. That's what I say.

Brian Gregory [00:36:56]:
Thanks, Lee.

Lee Raspberry [00:36:57]:
Thank you.

Brian Gregory [00:36:58]:
That's awesome, man. Well, hey, man, thank you so much for your time. And you're a busy guy and really happy to have a chance to get you on the podcast. And thanks so much.

Lee Raspberry [00:37:05]:
Take care.