In this episode, we discuss the top five questions you want to make sure you ask when you perform a site walk.
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Phil Zito 0:00
This is the smart buildings Academy podcast with Phil Zito episode 310. Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome to episode 310 of the smart buildings Academy podcast. In this episode, I will be discussing the five key questions to ask during a sidewalk. So first off, let's talk about what a sidewalk is, then let's talk about kind of strategy behind questions. And then let's go into questions. So sidewalk, all right, you've got a existing customer building, and they're going to do a retrofit, or maybe they're going to do an expansion, or maybe they're making changes, oftentimes, what will happen is they will request what is called a sidewalk, this is where all of the contractors can walk the site, they can look at it, and then they can come up with a scope and they can come up with an estimate, based on whatever the customer is trying to achieve. You most often will see this in retrofit or major expansion projects. Now, oftentimes, when you are running into a sidewalk,
Phil Zito 1:12
it's the questions that you don't ask that actually can be the most strategic. Now, this kind of flies in the face the whole premise of this episode, which is five key questions to ask during a sidewalk. But let's imagine that you're out there, and you've got four or five of your competitors, and they're alongside you. And you're sitting there and you're going, and you're walking the site, and you're asking all these wonderfully smart questions, you know, how are you going to integrate? What protocols are you using, what devices are acceptable, etc, etc, etc, guess what you're doing for your competitors, you're actually telling them risks to avoid, and things that they can build into their scopes and estimates that actually may make them more competitive. So if you notice, and this is kind of where you really want to focus in, is, if you notice, while you're watching or walking the job site, you notice it's a BACnet chiller, or you notice they have some sort of Modbus power meters, or you notice that they have a system and you could tell just the system's degrading. You don't necessarily have to ask about these things. Because if you have inexperienced competitors, they're not potentially going to notice, they may not know the difference between a BACnet, MSTP and BACnet, IP chiller, they may not know that, that type of air handling or a fan coil unit or whatever that has built in controls, actually only has read only points and doesn't have rideable points and thus they need to include controls. So by not asking questions, sometimes you are actually going and helping yourself because what you're not doing is you're not disclosing potential risks to your customer, or your competitors that they would then avoid. Next thing is to really understand the environment. And this kind of ties into questions that you don't ask. Because oftentimes, I will say, okay, maybe you don't ask questions on the sidewalk, but you get the card at the facility manager and you ask the questions and follow up? Well, this is where you have to understand the environment, because depending on if this is a public entity, if this is a private entity, their procurement policies, even if you ask a question to them offline, they may have to disclose that question and the answer to all potential bidders. So be cognizant of that as well understand the contracting environment that you are engaging in understand the type of customers you're engaging in, sometimes you may even offline be required to route all questions through the mechanical or the GC. And because of that, those questions then right are going to be routed to everyone else who's on the bedless questions and answers. Another thing, so we do live in COVID land, right? And who knows what the heck is going on with that Fun Fest? So the reality is there's a fair bit of states where you can't gather up and you can't go and actually visit sites. So because of that, you may be like, Oh, crap, I can't do sites. I can't do sidewalks. Well, you actually can. You can do virtual sidewalks and those are a thing. Be cognizant of that. Now that is in response to existing potential project requests. But what you also can do with the virtual sidewalk model, is you can actually reach out to your customers and do Virtual sidewalks before they even get on the street. So this is where you know you've got some spare time you're in the office, you can actually find your top key customers, if you understand their capital plans, which we'll talk about in a future episode, you can actually go and do virtual sidewalks before those projects ever get announced. And if those projects technically aren't announced, then guess what? With the procurement environment, you typically will not have to disclose those question and answers, because those projects aren't yet fully released. And thus, you're not under under those procurement obligations. So let's get to the questions. So there's some basic, obvious questions, right, the first three are pretty straightforward.
Phil Zito 5:52
Can I get a copy of the load is latest o n m, set operations and maintenance? Now you'll notice I did not say, Can I get a copy of the plans? Can I get a copy of the specs? I said, specifically, can I get a copy of the latest O and M set. And there's a key difference here. And the reason you're asking for the latest O and M set, not just the plans and the specs is there are catalog sheets, there are installation guides, there are submittals, there are as builts. There are test and balance notes, there's all sorts of things that are included in an O and M set, that would not be included, if you just asked for specs, and plans. And you know, I've been guilty of that in the past, when I was less experienced, I would say, can I get the latest plans and specs. And sure enough, they hand me the specs, they have made the plans. But I'm missing out on the as builts, I'm missing out on potential database and program copies. I'm missing out on test and balance and potentially commissioning reports that sequence out oh, you know, the plant was designed like this in the spec. But it didn't really work that way. It was designed like that in the MEP set, but it didn't really work that way, you know, I'm reminded of a high school where even on the final MEP set, it showed certain piping to the tower, but that piping would never work. And so the actual commissioning documents showed and reflected the proper piping layout. And if I wasn't aware of that, that directly affected by sequencing and controlling of that central utility plant. So having the latest omm set, while it seems like a minor detail, it is actually going to be quite beneficial to you. Next up is going to be Can I get a copy of the database. Now I realize for some of you, the database is going to be useless, especially if it's a competitive system. So what do you do in that case? In that case, you try to get like a points list a point list print out, or maybe screenshots of the graphics, what you're trying to do here is twofold things you're trying to understand one, how the control system is laid out. And what's actually in there from a point density perspective, from a point monitoring perspective from a control perspective. Additionally, when you're able to look at graphics, you're able to see what's online and offline. There's nothing worse than getting a retrofit project where you are integrating the existing system, only to find out that half of the existing system doesn't even work. And you're liable for that because you didn't do your due diligence. Which brings us up to our next question, which is have any major changes happened? So have any major changes happened? What has changed both with the existing system as well as site usage, as well as your operations team as well as capital funding? This is a broad question. And depending on our background, and expertise, we can tend to focus in on kind of one area. So for example, if you're really like a mechanical background, your major changes, you may be like have you replaced in the equipment? Have you upgraded your equipment? That is the wrong question to answer or ask. I want to be specifically clear on that. You don't want to ask these kind of close ended questions that are specific to a single subject matter. So you don't want to say have you upgraded your chillers? Have you made any major changes to the air handlers? By asking have you asked had any major changes happen? One, you're probably going to get a What do you mean by that response? And you're going to have to fight that temptation to say, Well, have you upgraded a trek? No, you want to understand? Well, let me go through this with you. Let
Phil Zito 9:48
me understand, have you made any changes to the control system has your operations team changed? And you should have like a bulleted list of things you want to go through primary things Do you want to cover our capitol finances, operational finances, team structure and capabilities to self execute and self support, the status of the equipment and the status of the control system, and any major sequence or space use changes that have happened. So for example, if this is kind of the classical example, you have a room that used to be office space, and now it's a data closet, the thermal load in that space as well as the ASHRAE 62.1, ventilation loads have completely changed, right, because now you have an increased thermal load from that equipment. But since it is now a no longer a occupied space, you have different outside air requirements, you actually have lower outside air requirements, because it is not considered an occupied space. So understanding that right, that's going to lower the outside air requirements of air handlers and sequences and stuff like that, as well as the pre cooling and pre heating capacities. But at the same time, because you're increasing thermal load in there, you're going to have a increased cooling requirements. So not pre but post right post coil cooling, discharge, all that fun stuff.
Phil Zito 11:20
Additionally to that, you're also potentially going to have increase in reliability concerns. Okay, now, this is a data closet, we need to be concerned with this data closet, I'm just going to make sure this is a recording real quick. Cool. Alright, so we've went and covered any major changes. Now we want to go and pivot to kind of more exploratory questions. So at this point, we went and we gathered some information, we went and understood like the state of the environment in which we're potentially doing this project. And now we're going to move to cause questions. So are you happy with the existing system? And what if, if not, what would you want changed? If yes, what would you want changed. So just because someone's happy with something does not mean that they necessarily don't want something changed? You know, I'm happy with my office here. But there are still things I would like changed in it. Whether those changes are enough of a pain to me, to drive me to move from that happy to dissatisfied state, this is kind of where we move into that like SPIN Selling model, right? Situational problem, implementation needs pay off kind of questions, which if you don't study SPIN Selling, I really liked that model, from a owner direct selling perspective to progress from hey, everything's fine into a actual problem state where there is a definitive payoff to resolving that problem state. So that's a really good selling program, by the way. But as I was saying, you understand, are they happy with the existing system? And what would they want changed? So this works, not just for salespeople, but also for technicians who are maybe doing service, and you're trying to like, convince a customer to do something that's good for them to make a change. So you're saying, Okay, are you happy with the existing system? And what would you want change? And you're gonna be like, Okay, does it meet temperature? Is it controllable? Is it easy enough to maintain? Is it easy to understand, these are all things that you want to kind of understand from your customers perspective, so that you can properly position because if you have two salespeople, and they're coming in with an equal price, right, $10 and $10, for a solution, but one salesperson has communicated in the language of the customer, like, you've expressed that during design days, your central utility plant isn't able to keep up, and you would like some sort of strategy that is able to increase the capability of your central utility plant and air handling systems to provide thermal comfort to specific spaces. Okay, well, we can do that. And here's how we do it. Which then brings us to what is driving this change? So you've understood their problem and their pain. Now we're looking for organizationally, or regulating or regulate regulatory that's the word I'm looking for organizational regulatory drives to change. So we've got to change but is this change coming from a organizational like, hey, we need to meet our sustainability goals. We need to meet our energy goals. We need to meet a tenant set score. That's specific If you see tenant SAT scores and patient set scores, in the educational space and in the healthcare space.
Phil Zito 15:08
So we need to understand what's driving the organizational change. And then regulatory, you know, if you're in New York, there's a big push for sustainability. If you're in California, there's a big push for sustainability. If you're in anywhere in the world, right now, there is an IQ push. And so what is driving this change? That way, when you're writing your executive summary, for your proposal, you can use that language in your executive summary. Because you're just another number to the people who are reviewing and oftentimes you're shielded, or the people who are reviewing or shielded from you. That's a reality, we all would like to get to the buyer and be able to influence the buyer. But the reality is, oftentimes, the facility director is an influencer, not a buyer. And we have to sell through them. And so being able to understand organizational requirements, regulatory compliance requirements, and to communicate that in an executive summary, is going to make our proposal stand out from a sea of other proposals that may be the same. And this brings us to a pretty bold question. But if you can understand it, it's one that you may not be able to influence in this exact moment. But you can definitely go and later influence which is what is the decision making process and who makes the decisions? Now, in an ideal world, you would have your target accounts, and she would be doing account mapping, right. So account mapping is where you look at your target accounts, you identify who are buyers, who are blockers, who are influencers, who are gatekeepers, and you create a strategic plan, either through team selling or direct selling, depending on the size of your organization. To cover that account, give me one second, I'm still getting used to this dryer. Excuse me. So you would go and now make a map. And that ideally, would be happening before you ever got into the scenario. But you know, it's kind of that when's the best time to plant a tree, you know, 20 years ago or today? So that's kind of the thing that's going on here. Okay, you haven't done account mapping, you haven't planned this out? Well, hey, that's not the end of the world, we can start doing it now. And we can start doing it by asking what is the decision making process? Who makes decisions? That's something our sales team does. They have specific snippets of questions that they need to ask when they engage with new customers, to make sure they understand the buying process to make sure they understand who makes decisions, etc. So there you have it, folks. Those are a bunch of key questions and a bunch of mindset related to doing a site walk. So what I want you to take out of this is one sometimes the questions you don't ask realize that oftentimes, whatever questions you ask are going to be shared with everyone else. And sometimes you don't want to ask questions because you know the answers already, and you don't want to give your competitors an advantage. Also, don't forget that you don't have to wait for a project to come on the books on the streets. You can go into virtual sidewalk sidewalks with your existing customers, you can understand their pain states, and you can understand any changes and you can go influence those. And the third thing is make sure you get the right data so that you can properly scope estimate and quote, your deals. And also make sure that you understand the mindset of the different people within your customer site and understand any regulatory and organizational requirements that are driving change. Thanks a ton for being here, folks. And I look forward to talking to you in the next episode. As always, everything will be available at podcasts, smart buildings academy.com Ford slash 310. Thanks a ton and take care
