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the commercial construction industry. Prior to Bedrock, I was a
Scott Collins general contractor and construction manager in the Detroit area.
cott Collins is the That may seem odd, but as I transitioned to Bedrock I realized
Project Executive for I have a great understanding of how buildings go together; I
SBedrock Detroit, where have an appreciation for all the technical devices in a building.
he has acted as an owner After decades in the business, I can say smart BMS systems and
and a tenant representative, connected buildings aren’t a new concept, but they are tre-
bringing more than 20 years mendously underutilized. Most people in the industry are slow
of knowledge and experience adopters of technology. My experience in the field, blended with
to various multi-million dollar my knowledge of how buildings need to operate from a real
renovation projects. Scott estate perspective, has afforded me the ability to understand the
has also led Bedrock in the two worlds, taking advantage of what’s already in a building and
implementation of an integra- maximizing the utilization of sensors, controls and components
tion system across Bedrock’s to better operate, maintain and manage our portfolio.
diverse portfolio, which has Over 2016, the deployment of a common network theme was
automated all critical build- really our focus, to make what we’ve learned over the years scal-
ing systems, reduced capital able—bringing it all together. Instead of each building having a
expenditures and enhanced the tenant experience. brain, we now have a brain across all our buildings, which means
software updates are much easier and, therefore, management is
What technology and business initiatives were most import- much easier. Training and standardizing within the team has also
ant in 2016? improved. We now have a repeatable process that deploys and
I’ll share a little history first, for context. Bedrock was founded in implements the same way, so that at the end of the day the tool
2011, and when I started with the company five years ago, we that we hand off to our operations staff is the same no matter
had five properties. Today we have over 90. Our areas of focus who’s handling a particular project.
include commercial, office, retail, residential and parking. My
team is part of the construction development team; so ultimate- What will the focus be in 2017?
ly, we assess and evaluate properties prior to purchase. Once Our focus will be to continue deploying our network intelligent-
purchased, we set the vision for what each building will be and ly, focusing on those buildings that are the most critical. Even
then execute that vision. It’s been a blur the last five or six years though we typically do this the same way over and over, there is
from our perspective. uniqueness in the portfolio. A uniqueness building-over-building
It was very early on at Bedrock when we started on the journey requires the technical team get into the building, understand
of trying to understand what a ‘smart building’ is. We were a very what’s going on and design to those components, with time
early adopter of connecting building systems together to try to being our biggest challenge. We’ll continue to be strategic about
optimize performance, to be more efficient from an operations the way we plot through our buildings through 2017. We have
perspective and to provide our tenants a different experience that strategy of, “If it’s a new building, it’s a no brainer, we do it.”
than other landlords. Deploying a common portfolio network But we’ve fallen back on some buildings that were unable to get
and tying building systems together, then adding components BMS at the very beginning, where we didn’t deploy an entire
that tie into our network has become the norm. I would say 2016 all systems network—that will mean going back to retrofit or
was a good year for us, in terms of reaching fruition with those upgrade.
early goals. Parking optimization is a priority for us in 2017. There are two
Essentially, we want the ability to know what’s going on across sides to that, the first being the software side. For the parking
our portfolio in real-time so we can be second to none as far as apps to work, we have to normalize all the data in our properties.
our tenant experience. Our vision is to merge these buildings We’ve worked through our parking structures to get common
together so we have common visualization across all instead hardware installed so they are on the same data platform and
of just a building at a time; then we can really start to manage communicate just like our buildings do. We’re taking all our park-
things much more efficiently. The drive was tenant based, but we ing data and putting it in one big pot so then we can apply the
quickly found out the concept drives more efficient engineering software app on top of it.
and operations management. We can do more with less because The app can then read that “This parking deck over here has
we see and understand what our buildings are doing. 100 spaces.” From a business standpoint, you want to be able to
I’m a civil engineer by degree, but I have spent my career in have that deck full all the time. If you are really on the cutting

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