John Burton with UrsaLeo
On this week's Industrial Talk we're talking to John Burton, CEO of UrsaLeo about “Using Digital Twins and IoT to Manage Decarbonization.”. Get the answers to your “Digital Twin” questions along with John's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
building, industrial, data, people, talking, sensors, decarbonization, world, work, consume, generating, iot, big, exists, industry, solutions, john burton, important, model, conversation
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots,
and let's go. Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast that celebrates industry heroes all around the world. Because you are bold, you are brave, yet daring greatly. You solve problems. You're changing lives, and you're changing the world as we speak. That's why this platform, this ecosystem of industrial professional is here just because you're cool. That's it. You're cool. All right, you know what we're going to be talking about in this particular podcast. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about digital twin. We're gonna be talking about how we manage decarbonization. The gentleman's name is John Burton. He is the CEO of Ursa Leo, and he is dropping some major insights into what we're talking about digital twins, let's get the correct one. Yeah.
You know, the technology is great. I mean, it's just, it's where do you go? What do you what do you focus on what's important to you and all of that stuff, it's, it's just a, it's just an intriguing time. Again, and and for me, I'm, I'm living a dream. I'm living on like a Discovery Channel dream, where I get to learn from the very best, and you get to learn with me because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I get to learn from the very best I can. It's like, it's like my own Smithsonian channel each and every day, my own discovery channel each and every day. All right, before we get into that conversation, to sponsors, I want you to put on your radar. If you have a radar, or whatever, you put them on your radar Armis that's AR m i s as well as AI dash, you go out to armas.com. Well go out to armas.com. Why not? Let's do that. And great website. But this is the you need an organization, a team like Armis, if you're venturing into the world of IoT, digital transformation, everything that's associated with industry for Dotto, you need a trusted partner when you start down that journey, because one of the conversations that you gotta have, you gotta have the fact that are you secure, are you protected against attacks. And if you're in these, if you're in this world of, you know, going down this IoT, you need Armis in your group, that's go out to armis.com. It's cool tech. There it is. Good, Tito, you're gonna like that, too. All right. The other one is AI Dash. Again, we're talking innovation, but we're talking innovation from the sky space. How can we, and what do we need to do to leverage satellites? To make our let's say vegetation management better to deploy the capital at the right time at the right location? What about what about all of the the sustainability type of questions? The the technology exists today? And it's, it's, it's available, right? It's, it's not out of reach? It's, it's not Buck Rogers stuff. It's today and it is now. Ai dash is a again, a trusted resource for you to just at least begin that conversation like, hey, what's, uh, can satellite do for me? That's right, AI dash go out. there.com. All right. All right. I've been talking a lot about ecosystems I've been talking about, and I think it's more so than ever, but given the challenges that are taking place out there in the world, whatever it is, it's pretty fluid, pretty dynamic. I like to say squiffy, because I don't know where it's going. But we still have to, we have to deliver we have to deliver solutions, we have to deliver solutions that solve problems, and and allow right our clients to succeed. That is paramount. And are you nimble enough to be able to take the situation that exists out there today, and be resilient, going forward. And I just challenge you in the fact that you need to be a part of an ecosystem. You might have solutions, but you need to be a part of this collaborative ecosystem because you need to continue to educate, right? You need to collaborate, you need to innovate, if you are truly having a desire to be quite resilient in your business, and you're going to have to do that. And I think the real focus is not not fluff, not not hype, but when real solutions to problems, real solutions that help your clients, your customers succeed. We all when you succeed, basically succeed, because we're all trying to solve problems. And the problems are coming at what I can suspect coming at us fast and furious, and it requires tremendous. I don't know, you got to be nimble, you got to be nimble. So just keep that in mind. You got to be a part. You know, industrial talk is a platform. And what we do at industrial talk is we create the podcasts, we support, events, visit virtual events, conferences, we do it all because we want you to get the most out of whatever your engagements, period. That's important. It's important to you. Alright. John Burton. Ursa Leo is the, the company, you got to their website, that's pretty cool, doggone website, I, it's like buying wine. Right? If your website's cool, I'm going to stick around and is like, Hey, I'm gonna buy that wine because the label looks great. It might not taste good. But I'm telling you right now, they've got a good
website. Very cool, very compelling value proposition. And they deliver. Unlike cheap wine. These folks deliver John Burton, and he's dropping some truth bombs. He is going to be talking about digital twin and decarbonization. Enjoy. John, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule. And I'm looking forward to this conversation because I don't have a clue about the carbonization. So come along with me, you listeners, John knows. All right. So before we get into that conversation, give us a little background, who you are, why you're such an incredible professional. Didn't get it? Yeah.
So yeah, I grew up, born in the UK grew up in the UK, moved to California about 20 years ago, and living in San Francisco now for about 10, I spent most of my career in the hardware business, so messing around with semiconductors. And that's how I've got into this whole industry, 4.0, industrial IoT, whatever we want to call it where, you know, the last 1015 years, people have been adding sensors to pieces of equipment, and then gathering that data and doing things to make decisions and act on that data. So I've been in that world since probably around the turn of the century around 2000s. And then about
four, trust me, I'm thinking to myself, but come on 1900s
we realize we worked through the turn of the century. And then a few years ago, for four and a half years ago, I got together with a friend of mine who was ex Apple computers and Stitcher. She'd done a 10 year stint at Apple said, Look, you know, this whole world of Industrial Computing data gathering needs needs to be do what Apple did to the consumer market. We've got it, we've got to make it so it's easy to use, it looks nice people can actually act on the data. It's too abstract. It's too hard to do stuff with and that that was really the the guiding principle behind the company what we started, and we've followed through with that UI, user interface user experience. It's just everything to us. And yeah,
I love that. And I agree with you 100% If you make the the solution, a pain in the butt to try to use and to understand and to gather the information you need to make tactical decision, whatever it might be, you know, moving that ball forward, because I know for me, I'll drop off fast, I'll be lazy, and then I'll be pissing moaning about your, your solution. So yeah, I'm all about. Speaking of Apple, Tim, Tim Coby. He worked there, he
designed all of the Apple stores, and he agrees with you 100% Return on experience. So he's driven by the fact that, hey, it's got to be a positive experience. It's got to have something Yeah, right. Yeah, people just won't use it. Otherwise, I think something like 40% of IoT installations, industrial IoT installations just don't work out. They do just get abandoned. It's probably is somewhere. I think that's yeah, a user experiences big part of the problem. You've got to train people and train people and train people and they still hate it when the project isn't going forward.
It isn't. And I've been in those conference rooms where people are talking about how they don't like it. And they don't understand the value. But I think fundamentally, I think there was a hype. There was this huge hype, and it makes sense don't get me wrong, John, it makes sense that if I can gather information, important data, a gazillion data points on an asset Yeah, I'm I know that there's some you know, golden that there, you know, data, but it really requires people like you and your company to be able to sort of pull that out and make it easy for me to know just be able to look into it. Okay, let's talk a little bit about decarbonization, because we're talking about digital twin. We're talking about IoT. We're talking about decarbonization. And quite frankly, can you draw the link between how this IoT, this digital twin and decarbonization are linked? Because I don't?
Sure, so. So first of all, what is decarbonization? It's kind of a buzzy word that's being used, or the energy that Buildings consume mean other things as well. But the one we're focused on is buildings. So buildings take about 40% of the world's energy usage.
Whoa, really 40% buildings. Yep. That's a staggering stat. Yeah,
no, it's it's so think about it. I mean, every building, every buildings cools, every buildings got lights in it. Yeah. and the European Union has legislated that all buildings must be net zero. By 2030. netzero means they generate as much power as they use. British government's done the same about 20 US states have done the same. Every university you you go and talk to has a sustainability decarbonization program, every corporation you large corporation you talk to same thing. So it's, you know, if you look at the climate change and the low hanging fruit, the two that you can probably do something about pretty quickly, building energy usage. And then the other one is methane emissions in oil and gas and other industries. But building decarbonization is a really big one.
And I'm gonna have to sort of digress or pivot or go off on a tangent real quick. So let's take a building. And again, I, I want to low. So we take a building, how the heck do you create a building that's net? Zero, right one, to be able to say, Hey, I consume one kilowatt over here. And then, you know, I produce one kit, whatever, whatever that metric is, how do you how do you accomplish that I fail.
So it's a whole bunch of different things. I mean, it's generating power, so photoelectric panels on the on the roof, which can generate a lot of power. It's sufficiency. So making sure the building is well insulated, so it uses you know, less heat less cooling, turning stuff off when there's nobody around. So you know, you walk downtown, you still see every building lit up like a Christmas tree all night. Why? Why is every light in an office building all the time? Because it's important? Yeah, not really. So sensing when people have moved come into a room and when they leave a room, so you can actually turn the lights on and off automatically, people aren't around. Efficient, H fax he efficient, cooling, efficient heating. So instead of using gas boilers start using heat exchangers using some of the excess energy to to, to, you know, instead of just pushing heat outside the building with an H fac, use that heat to do something like heat water. efficient building materials, it's there's a lot of different things, we focus mostly on showing off how the power is being generated and consumed or batteries are another one. So yeah, batteries. Yeah, I was just gonna say I put, put a big battery in the edge generates power all day, you store some of that power, and all night you use the battery to power the building.
So the question I have, it might be somewhat provocative. If we're already consuming 40% and 40% of our our consumption is our buildings. That means there's a lot of buildings out there and I'll I'll categorize them as Brownfield. How do you how do you take a an existing building and try to make it netzero? That that is a big, big ass? That's a big lift, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's
a lot harder. Obviously, if you if you don't get to build the thing with the right materials, but it's still stuff you can do. You can still put put, you know, put solar panels on your roof. You can put a battery in, you can make you can get the old H back out and put a more efficient H back in you can change the water heater. definitely harder. But
yeah. Will you be able to get to that net zero, even with these maybe? No, of course, it's you know, there's a scale there. Right? Some are just a little bit more energy efficient they might have been in than others. Is there just a way of is there some flexibility in that?
So I think you can you certainly see flexibility when you're talking about large residential installations, you know, you've got a development, that's 10,000 houses, some of those are going to be using energy, some are going to be generating energy and you can probably add all the energies together and say, here's, here's the total number. It's going to be tough for some buildings, but government's gonna start finding you EU is just going to tell you, I'm sorry, your building is still using energy. You know, here's a $10,000 fine so there's a big there's gonna be a big incentive to make it happen.
Yeah, hell yeah. But it would make would make my butt puckers the fact that because I'm getting fired, I'm trying to do everything I can, I've got a lot of capital outlay, I've got a lot of work that needs to be done, I've got a lot of disruption that needs to happen. I've got, you know, added up. They're just going to be some buildings that you're just going to sort of mothball and say, I can't do it, I'm out of here, I can't do it.
Is that cheaper than sticking a bunch, let me put solar panels on the roof and then put a bunch around the building, I mean, put them in every, you know, green space you've got and just keep doing that until you've generating enough power to run the building is going to be cheaper than mothballing of the building.
Well go with it. Okay. So then then what I would think is that that the cost of these solutions for existing assets, existing buildings, existing manufacturing, whatever it might be, whatever the driver is, we've got to drive down those cost too, right? If I'm going to deploy some solar battery tack or, or pop in some IoT, whatever it might be to achieve that. We can't expect businesses to say, All right, you got to you got to be net zero, but it's gonna cost you a gazillion dollars. Yeah, well, solar panel
keeps dropping and dropping and dropping, pretty pretty much the the cheapest form of energy generation at this point, you can stick a wind turbine on the roof. I mean, that's getting pretty expensive as well. So I think it's just, it's a mix of technologies. You know, I mean, I talked to construction companies a lot, and they're all going down, you know, the path of building these buildings. First one in Pittsburgh was done by a construction company I worked with a lot of, you know, they now putting together buildings are planned to consume no energy when they're designed.
So it'll have pretty cool bad you got a man, that's a hell of a statement. If it's a, there's a big building, whatever it might be. It's a big building. It's like a
community central zoning, but it was, it wasn't that huge, but it's still, they wanted to make it very green from day one. And they, they, you know, they, they designed it to use no energy.
But it's still pretty cool. I mean, here's, here's how I look at it. It looks like it's a, you've got your, for lack of your your test case, right here, your bench model, and you've just scaled it up. And now it's even bigger. And and I'm fascinated by the level of engineering that exists in order that you know, they're going to have to walk in. And I would imagine, Ursula, does Ursula do the sort of like, hey, contactors, Elio, and then we're gonna walk through your building, and we're gonna help you become more efficient, right? Yeah, so
So what we do is we show them the data in a very visual way. And the reason they want to do that, rather than just looking at a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet, is because you've now got institutional investors coming in and giving money to universities, for example, specifically to do netzero, decarbonization projects. So once you do one of those, you got to show the investor, you design the building, you built the building, and it doesn't actually use any energy. What we do is we give you a very, very visual way of showing that investor or showing whoever's interested in advocate
that, that's great. It's one thing for me to say, Yep, I don't consume any energy. And then it's another thing to say, alright, prove it. Because that's that, that that that is needed. And it has to be a reliable source of proving that you are netzero or whatever. Can you can you be upside down in that? Can you start wielding power? Like, okay, we consume one, but we're sending back 1.5?
Yeah, you got me, especially in Europe, you see people who are buying and selling from the grid. So the, you know, they're connected to the grid, but they're generating a bunch of energy. They're storing some of that energy in batteries, and they're selling access
back in June. That's a hell of a conversation to have with a utility space, because the utilities have to manage the fact that there's this power out there, and I've got, it's coming online, and I've got to match my
supply. And you mentioned she's become big batteries effectively.
What was that
you should have just become big batteries.
It's true. It's changed quite a bit since I was there. I'll tell you that much. And I definitely way above my paygrade to be able to understand how to how to manage that. But but so just for the listeners out there, right, you the problem statement that we were looking at is you got digital twin, right IoT, and then we got, of course, decarbonization. How does something like a digital twin solution helped me with my decarbonization. Again,
it's all about visualizing the data. So you know, you think about a big building, you've got hundreds of power sensors, you got also got environmental humidity, temperature sensors. That data can just be displayed on a traditional dashboard, but there's a lot of it. So you know, you end up with, you know, no, no dashboards good for more than about 10 data points. So you've got 1000 1000 sensors in your building. You got it. You got 100 screens to get through to see what's going on. That's an awful lot of flipping from screen to screen screen. If you build it A digital twin, which in our case is a 3d computer model of the entire building, we just take that from the architect, the architect gives us CAD files and we turn them into a model, we can literally put that data all over the building, and you know exactly where it is. And it's becomes, I'm just gonna look at floor seven, and I can see all the data points on floor seven. So it comes, it's just a great way to visualize what's actually happening in your building. And allow people to navigate and allow them to show off. So again, University is a big one for us. And it's theirs, their students are really interested in climate change. They're teaching sustainability classes, so they having very visual things they can show to that class or the class can get involved in. It's just a better way of serving up the data if I started talking to somebody it so it's a nice to have I go, Yeah, I mean, PowerPoints are nice to have. I don't put PowerPoints up, we just have writing on them, because it pulls people to death. I put images, we all put images on PowerPoints, the reason I do that is because human beings are incredibly visual animals. And they if they see data in a in a boring format, it doesn't means less than if they set a really interesting format. They absorb the information much more much easier.
And what I do like about what you're talking about is that I me, my learning curve, I would imagine is not that steep. It may be an old, old way of saying, Okay, I gotta go dive into this data and look at this spreadsheet and look at these tables and whatever might be trying to find those nuggets, I theoretically, I guess, take that digital twin and say, what's happened on floor seven? And I can visually go there, right? Oh, look at that. We've never we've never given a training class to anybody see, see? You know,
I said, I never wrote I never read an instruction manual for my iPhone. I've never given a training class on it.
That's brilliant. That is that that's one of those, you know, and we've all been there. I know, listeners, you've been out there, you've been a part of a demonstration of a system that's out there. And then you're thinking to yourself, Oh, my God, how the hell am I going to navigate this? And what? And then somebody is going to come up to me and says, All right, it's got I need the you know, whatever the data on this particular asset, go find it. Oh, my God.
Yeah, or socket. 17964 is using too much power. Okay, that's useful information. But it's let me pull up the architectural plans and start looking for socket. 17964.
Yeah, yeah, I see. And I think that that whole model of what you you mentioned, I think that that's a real clever way of success. Because I think that that I don't think people in general, and it's not a, it's not meant to be a negative by any means. But I think that we have many things that we're trying to consume on a daily basis. And if I can make the consumption of something easier, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna Okay, I'll do it. But if it's harder, no, I'm gonna always gravitate to that little easier side, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a visualization of data is it is underappreciated in the industrial world, especially,
I think Apple genuinely did make it in the consumer world. I was staying at somebody's house the other day, and I was, I was trying to use their TV. I'm a technical guy. I was an hour trying to figure out how to turn on the TV and select a spin home channel. The control had 100 buttons on it.
I break out in a cold sweat. Yeah.
1997 of those buttons on the average TV remote and never used.
It's true. I remember we were staying at a Airbnb, the same thing. You see a couple of boxes underneath the screen. Then you see a couple of remotes and you're just at right off the bat you've got it sure would like to be able to watch something. Yeah.
That was Apple Genius. Yeah, my Apple TV remote has got one button on it, I think or three buttons on it or something like that. Hey,
speaking of Apple TV. Have you been watching TED last? Oh,
I did watch the whole thing. I finished it in about about three weeks, and I got to meet some of those pretty good and that's
yeah, that is that's, that's binge watching. We're all into it. We're getting ready to finish up Season Two. Oh, that's good.
I will tell you what happens. No doubt
is the it's a great it's a great show looks really
good. It's a great concept. We'll take an American football coach and drop them in into a soccer club in the UK and it's just a great way of looking at the two cultures and yes, how they interact.
Yes. Well, one of the bucket lists I had back onto that. Bristol Rovers are my team is my team.
My God, how did you pick? pretty obscure?
It is isn't it? I had a terminal in Bristol. And the terminal manager says hey, let's go to Bristol gate. Okay, I go to briskly and apparently apparently, you're supposed to love the team that you first you know, you get to know
yeah the way you move you move to a new city you change you change soccer team, you change football teams and
I'm getting in the right one. Yeah,
I read rugby is a little because there's less regional rugby clubs, and they're also clubs, but so yeah, I gotta tell you, anyway, Hey,
what are the roadblocks? Yeah, you're you're chirping, you're great. You're wonderful. I get it. It's important. All that fun stuff. What are the roadblocks here? What are we talking about? Wow.
So what do we run into? Probably the one we run into with older buildings, as they don't have three dimensional CAD. The building was designed, but it's just a bunch of floor plans. That's much harder for us to work with. And it's not impossible, but it's much harder. So buildings less than less than 15 years old, are gonna be a lot easier for us. Otherwise, we'd have to get an architect to take the floor plans and turn them into 3d CAD.
Could you do that? I mean, if it's if it's an older look, we had, yeah, we
have done that. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. We've done it a couple of times, it's not ideal. People don't understand how to get sensors into buildings into reps, especially retrofitting sensors, and how you gather the data from lots of different sensors. So there's a little bit of an educational piece there. We don't do that. But we can tell people how to do it.
See, an interesting part is like you're asking a Facility Manager or whatever, I don't know who that the head, she's saying, you're going to have to put these sensors in? Well, why? Well, these sensors are going to be able to tell you what, what's going on? Who, who's gonna do it for me, then it's at that level, it's like, what do you what are you talking about? No, digital twin, and we're gonna make it you're gonna do this. And you're like, What? What? Yeah, an electrician
can install this stuff. They just need to know what to install and how to install it. And then yeah, you basically have to have a PC somewhere in the building an industrial PC that gathers all that data and sends it up to us. It's not hard. I mean, it's, you know, the software that all I can give you download some software off of a website, stored on an industrial PC, connect all your senses to that PC, you're done. So, but it's not, it's not knowledge that's commonly out there.
Yeah. So let's say I make that decision. And I'm going to be dumping some devices out there, I've picked, you know, let's say I incrementally approach my my journey here, and I h back here, and this that and I picked the big ones, right? But how quickly once I get those devices out there, how quickly can I just sort of flip boom, get that information into sort of that digital twin environment? So if you give us CAD of your building, so we got that got that and it's good quality CAD, which if you know any decent architectural firms going to generate good quality CAD, yeah, probably a week 10 days for a day or two. Yeah, firsthand, back and model
the time consuming pieces then sort of mapping where the sensors are on onto the model, ideally really modern buildings. That's what that was designed by the architects. Yeah, that's all built into the architectural drawings. If it isn't, then yeah, we've got to know where to put the sensor readings. Yeah, makes sense. But so that's probably the most time consuming piece you could have this thing up and running and see that's
that's thank you for not saying 18 months because apparently every projects 18 months this is
this is a little bit of wiring it's no more difficult than installing a light bulb it's an industrial PC and then us creating the model and so the most time consuming pieces were is this sensory thing you're sending me where in the building is that? So that's that's the trickiest thing I can put my
arms around that Alright. We got to wrap it up. We've We've digressed we burn up through time on some some football European by the way, that was a great experience up why not even at that level Bristol Rovers go
vaguely where the Bristol Rovers exists.
You know, it was a cold rainy day. Yeah, it was.
It's a winter sport. In Bristol, it probably almost all rains every day. Pretty much did. It was awful. Alright, how
do people get a hold of their saying, Hey, I gotta get a hold of John, because that's a, I need help. I need a conversation with somebody I trust.
Our website www.chesterlaw.com info@versilia.com works if you wanted to send us an email.
That is you are sale. Oh, I'm going to have all that information out on industrial talk. So if you say that I can't get a hold of John, you're you're not telling them that it's a pretty rememberable name. That's why we picked it short. You can actually yeah, if you're on video, you see it right there. That's a like that's your house and you have your logo there.
It's not my house. It is my house.
Very good. All right. Hey, John, thank you very much for being on your podcast. That was great.
I appreciate it. Really fun chat, too.
All right, listeners. We're gonna once again wrap it up on this side. Share something up on the Ursa Leo and we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that you get all the contact information you need. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Again, thank you very much for John Burton, with Ursa Leo, being on the industrials talk podcast, technology and innovation being led by companies like Ursula Leo, big time important to your business, and the resiliency of that business, especially in these times of uncertainty. I don't even know. But I know that technology and innovation are going to be your friend going forward. So you know, pick out trusted people like John and and personally, definitely an important company to sort of engage with and have a conversation or Alright, industrial talk, platform of industrial leaders, trying to solve problems creating and collaborating to solve these problems. That's what this platform is all about. You need to get engaged, you need to get involved. Reach out to me asked me how that can happen, and we can definitely have a wonderful conversation. All right. I always say people, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people like John, when you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk and we're going to have another great conversation. Sure.
Transcript
Welcome to the industrial talk podcast with Scott Mackenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots,
and let's go. Alright, once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast that celebrates industry heroes all around the world. Because you are bold, you are brave, yet daring greatly. You solve problems. You're changing lives, and you're changing the world as we speak. That's why this platform, this ecosystem of industrial professional is here just because you're cool. That's it. You're cool. All right, you know what we're going to be talking about in this particular podcast. Yeah, we're gonna be talking about digital twin. We're gonna be talking about how we manage decarbonization. The gentleman's name is John Burton. He is the CEO of Ursa Leo, and he is dropping some major insights into what we're talking about digital twins, let's get the correct one. Yeah.
You know, the technology is great. I mean, it's just, it's where do you go? What do you what do you focus on what's important to you and all of that stuff, it's, it's just a, it's just an intriguing time. Again, and and for me, I'm, I'm living a dream. I'm living on like a Discovery Channel dream, where I get to learn from the very best, and you get to learn with me because I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. But I get to learn from the very best I can. It's like, it's like my own Smithsonian channel each and every day, my own discovery channel each and every day. All right, before we get into that conversation, to sponsors, I want you to put on your radar. If you have a radar, or whatever, you put them on your radar Armis that's AR m i s as well as AI dash, you go out to armas.com. Well go out to armas.com. Why not? Let's do that. And great website. But this is the you need an organization, a team like Armis, if you're venturing into the world of IoT, digital transformation, everything that's associated with industry for Dotto, you need a trusted partner when you start down that journey, because one of the conversations that you gotta have, you gotta have the fact that are you secure, are you protected against attacks. And if you're in these, if you're in this world of, you know, going down this IoT, you need Armis in your group, that's go out to armis.com. It's cool tech. There it is. Good, Tito, you're gonna like that, too. All right. The other one is AI Dash. Again, we're talking innovation, but we're talking innovation from the sky space. How can we, and what do we need to do to leverage satellites? To make our let's say vegetation management better to deploy the capital at the right time at the right location? What about what about all of the the sustainability type of questions? The the technology exists today? And it's, it's, it's available, right? It's, it's not out of reach? It's, it's not Buck Rogers stuff. It's today and it is now. Ai dash is a again, a trusted resource for you to just at least begin that conversation like, hey, what's, uh, can satellite do for me? That's right, AI dash go out. there.com. All right. All right. I've been talking a lot about ecosystems I've been talking about, and I think it's more so than ever, but given the challenges that are taking place out there in the world, whatever it is, it's pretty fluid, pretty dynamic. I like to say squiffy, because I don't know where it's going. But we still have to, we have to deliver we have to deliver solutions, we have to deliver solutions that solve problems, and and allow right our clients to succeed. That is paramount. And are you nimble enough to be able to take the situation that exists out there today, and be resilient, going forward. And I just challenge you in the fact that you need to be a part of an ecosystem. You might have solutions, but you need to be a part of this collaborative ecosystem because you need to continue to educate, right? You need to collaborate, you need to innovate, if you are truly having a desire to be quite resilient in your business, and you're going to have to do that. And I think the real focus is not not fluff, not not hype, but when real solutions to problems, real solutions that help your clients, your customers succeed. We all when you succeed, basically succeed, because we're all trying to solve problems. And the problems are coming at what I can suspect coming at us fast and furious, and it requires tremendous. I don't know, you got to be nimble, you got to be nimble. So just keep that in mind. You got to be a part. You know, industrial talk is a platform. And what we do at industrial talk is we create the podcasts, we support, events, visit virtual events, conferences, we do it all because we want you to get the most out of whatever your engagements, period. That's important. It's important to you. Alright. John Burton. Ursa Leo is the, the company, you got to their website, that's pretty cool, doggone website, I, it's like buying wine. Right? If your website's cool, I'm going to stick around and is like, Hey, I'm gonna buy that wine because the label looks great. It might not taste good. But I'm telling you right now, they've got a good
website. Very cool, very compelling value proposition. And they deliver. Unlike cheap wine. These folks deliver John Burton, and he's dropping some truth bombs. He is going to be talking about digital twin and decarbonization. Enjoy. John, welcome to industrial talk. Thank you very much for finding time in your busy schedule. And I'm looking forward to this conversation because I don't have a clue about the carbonization. So come along with me, you listeners, John knows. All right. So before we get into that conversation, give us a little background, who you are, why you're such an incredible professional. Didn't get it? Yeah.
So yeah, I grew up, born in the UK grew up in the UK, moved to California about 20 years ago, and living in San Francisco now for about 10, I spent most of my career in the hardware business, so messing around with semiconductors. And that's how I've got into this whole industry, 4.0, industrial IoT, whatever we want to call it where, you know, the last 1015 years, people have been adding sensors to pieces of equipment, and then gathering that data and doing things to make decisions and act on that data. So I've been in that world since probably around the turn of the century around 2000s. And then about
four, trust me, I'm thinking to myself, but come on 1900s
we realize we worked through the turn of the century. And then a few years ago, for four and a half years ago, I got together with a friend of mine who was ex Apple computers and Stitcher. She'd done a 10 year stint at Apple said, Look, you know, this whole world of Industrial Computing data gathering needs needs to be do what Apple did to the consumer market. We've got it, we've got to make it so it's easy to use, it looks nice people can actually act on the data. It's too abstract. It's too hard to do stuff with and that that was really the the guiding principle behind the company what we started, and we've followed through with that UI, user interface user experience. It's just everything to us. And yeah,
I love that. And I agree with you 100% If you make the the solution, a pain in the butt to try to use and to understand and to gather the information you need to make tactical decision, whatever it might be, you know, moving that ball forward, because I know for me, I'll drop off fast, I'll be lazy, and then I'll be pissing moaning about your, your solution. So yeah, I'm all about. Speaking of Apple, Tim, Tim Coby. He worked there, he
designed all of the Apple stores, and he agrees with you 100% Return on experience. So he's driven by the fact that, hey, it's got to be a positive experience. It's got to have something Yeah, right. Yeah, people just won't use it. Otherwise, I think something like 40% of IoT installations, industrial IoT installations just don't work out. They do just get abandoned. It's probably is somewhere. I think that's yeah, a user experiences big part of the problem. You've got to train people and train people and train people and they still hate it when the project isn't going forward.
It isn't. And I've been in those conference rooms where people are talking about how they don't like it. And they don't understand the value. But I think fundamentally, I think there was a hype. There was this huge hype, and it makes sense don't get me wrong, John, it makes sense that if I can gather information, important data, a gazillion data points on an asset Yeah, I'm I know that there's some you know, golden that there, you know, data, but it really requires people like you and your company to be able to sort of pull that out and make it easy for me to know just be able to look into it. Okay, let's talk a little bit about decarbonization, because we're talking about digital twin. We're talking about IoT. We're talking about decarbonization. And quite frankly, can you draw the link between how this IoT, this digital twin and decarbonization are linked? Because I don't?
Sure, so. So first of all, what is decarbonization? It's kind of a buzzy word that's being used, or the energy that Buildings consume mean other things as well. But the one we're focused on is buildings. So buildings take about 40% of the world's energy usage.
Whoa, really 40% buildings. Yep. That's a staggering stat. Yeah,
no, it's it's so think about it. I mean, every building, every buildings cools, every buildings got lights in it. Yeah. and the European Union has legislated that all buildings must be net zero. By 2030. netzero means they generate as much power as they use. British government's done the same about 20 US states have done the same. Every university you you go and talk to has a sustainability decarbonization program, every corporation you large corporation you talk to same thing. So it's, you know, if you look at the climate change and the low hanging fruit, the two that you can probably do something about pretty quickly, building energy usage. And then the other one is methane emissions in oil and gas and other industries. But building decarbonization is a really big one.
And I'm gonna have to sort of digress or pivot or go off on a tangent real quick. So let's take a building. And again, I, I want to low. So we take a building, how the heck do you create a building that's net? Zero, right one, to be able to say, Hey, I consume one kilowatt over here. And then, you know, I produce one kit, whatever, whatever that metric is, how do you how do you accomplish that I fail.
So it's a whole bunch of different things. I mean, it's generating power, so photoelectric panels on the on the roof, which can generate a lot of power. It's sufficiency. So making sure the building is well insulated, so it uses you know, less heat less cooling, turning stuff off when there's nobody around. So you know, you walk downtown, you still see every building lit up like a Christmas tree all night. Why? Why is every light in an office building all the time? Because it's important? Yeah, not really. So sensing when people have moved come into a room and when they leave a room, so you can actually turn the lights on and off automatically, people aren't around. Efficient, H fax he efficient, cooling, efficient heating. So instead of using gas boilers start using heat exchangers using some of the excess energy to to, to, you know, instead of just pushing heat outside the building with an H fac, use that heat to do something like heat water. efficient building materials, it's there's a lot of different things, we focus mostly on showing off how the power is being generated and consumed or batteries are another one. So yeah, batteries. Yeah, I was just gonna say I put, put a big battery in the edge generates power all day, you store some of that power, and all night you use the battery to power the building.
So the question I have, it might be somewhat provocative. If we're already consuming 40% and 40% of our our consumption is our buildings. That means there's a lot of buildings out there and I'll I'll categorize them as Brownfield. How do you how do you take a an existing building and try to make it netzero? That that is a big, big ass? That's a big lift, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's
a lot harder. Obviously, if you if you don't get to build the thing with the right materials, but it's still stuff you can do. You can still put put, you know, put solar panels on your roof. You can put a battery in, you can make you can get the old H back out and put a more efficient H back in you can change the water heater. definitely harder. But
yeah. Will you be able to get to that net zero, even with these maybe? No, of course, it's you know, there's a scale there. Right? Some are just a little bit more energy efficient they might have been in than others. Is there just a way of is there some flexibility in that?
So I think you can you certainly see flexibility when you're talking about large residential installations, you know, you've got a development, that's 10,000 houses, some of those are going to be using energy, some are going to be generating energy and you can probably add all the energies together and say, here's, here's the total number. It's going to be tough for some buildings, but government's gonna start finding you EU is just going to tell you, I'm sorry, your building is still using energy. You know, here's a $10,000 fine so there's a big there's gonna be a big incentive to make it happen.
Yeah, hell yeah. But it would make would make my butt puckers the fact that because I'm getting fired, I'm trying to do everything I can, I've got a lot of capital outlay, I've got a lot of work that needs to be done, I've got a lot of disruption that needs to happen. I've got, you know, added up. They're just going to be some buildings that you're just going to sort of mothball and say, I can't do it, I'm out of here, I can't do it.
Is that cheaper than sticking a bunch, let me put solar panels on the roof and then put a bunch around the building, I mean, put them in every, you know, green space you've got and just keep doing that until you've generating enough power to run the building is going to be cheaper than mothballing of the building.
Well go with it. Okay. So then then what I would think is that that the cost of these solutions for existing assets, existing buildings, existing manufacturing, whatever it might be, whatever the driver is, we've got to drive down those cost too, right? If I'm going to deploy some solar battery tack or, or pop in some IoT, whatever it might be to achieve that. We can't expect businesses to say, All right, you got to you got to be net zero, but it's gonna cost you a gazillion dollars. Yeah, well, solar panel
keeps dropping and dropping and dropping, pretty pretty much the the cheapest form of energy generation at this point, you can stick a wind turbine on the roof. I mean, that's getting pretty expensive as well. So I think it's just, it's a mix of technologies. You know, I mean, I talked to construction companies a lot, and they're all going down, you know, the path of building these buildings. First one in Pittsburgh was done by a construction company I worked with a lot of, you know, they now putting together buildings are planned to consume no energy when they're designed.
So it'll have pretty cool bad you got a man, that's a hell of a statement. If it's a, there's a big building, whatever it might be. It's a big building. It's like a
community central zoning, but it was, it wasn't that huge, but it's still, they wanted to make it very green from day one. And they, they, you know, they, they designed it to use no energy.
But it's still pretty cool. I mean, here's, here's how I look at it. It looks like it's a, you've got your, for lack of your your test case, right here, your bench model, and you've just scaled it up. And now it's even bigger. And and I'm fascinated by the level of engineering that exists in order that you know, they're going to have to walk in. And I would imagine, Ursula, does Ursula do the sort of like, hey, contactors, Elio, and then we're gonna walk through your building, and we're gonna help you become more efficient, right? Yeah, so
So what we do is we show them the data in a very visual way. And the reason they want to do that, rather than just looking at a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet, is because you've now got institutional investors coming in and giving money to universities, for example, specifically to do netzero, decarbonization projects. So once you do one of those, you got to show the investor, you design the building, you built the building, and it doesn't actually use any energy. What we do is we give you a very, very visual way of showing that investor or showing whoever's interested in advocate
that, that's great. It's one thing for me to say, Yep, I don't consume any energy. And then it's another thing to say, alright, prove it. Because that's that, that that that is needed. And it has to be a reliable source of proving that you are netzero or whatever. Can you can you be upside down in that? Can you start wielding power? Like, okay, we consume one, but we're sending back 1.5?
Yeah, you got me, especially in Europe, you see people who are buying and selling from the grid. So the, you know, they're connected to the grid, but they're generating a bunch of energy. They're storing some of that energy in batteries, and they're selling access
back in June. That's a hell of a conversation to have with a utility space, because the utilities have to manage the fact that there's this power out there, and I've got, it's coming online, and I've got to match my
supply. And you mentioned she's become big batteries effectively.
What was that
you should have just become big batteries.
It's true. It's changed quite a bit since I was there. I'll tell you that much. And I definitely way above my paygrade to be able to understand how to how to manage that. But but so just for the listeners out there, right, you the problem statement that we were looking at is you got digital twin, right IoT, and then we got, of course, decarbonization. How does something like a digital twin solution helped me with my decarbonization. Again,
it's all about visualizing the data. So you know, you think about a big building, you've got hundreds of power sensors, you got also got environmental humidity, temperature sensors. That data can just be displayed on a traditional dashboard, but there's a lot of it. So you know, you end up with, you know, no, no dashboards good for more than about 10 data points. So you've got 1000 1000 sensors in your building. You got it. You got 100 screens to get through to see what's going on. That's an awful lot of flipping from screen to screen screen. If you build it A digital twin, which in our case is a 3d computer model of the entire building, we just take that from the architect, the architect gives us CAD files and we turn them into a model, we can literally put that data all over the building, and you know exactly where it is. And it's becomes, I'm just gonna look at floor seven, and I can see all the data points on floor seven. So it comes, it's just a great way to visualize what's actually happening in your building. And allow people to navigate and allow them to show off. So again, University is a big one for us. And it's theirs, their students are really interested in climate change. They're teaching sustainability classes, so they having very visual things they can show to that class or the class can get involved in. It's just a better way of serving up the data if I started talking to somebody it so it's a nice to have I go, Yeah, I mean, PowerPoints are nice to have. I don't put PowerPoints up, we just have writing on them, because it pulls people to death. I put images, we all put images on PowerPoints, the reason I do that is because human beings are incredibly visual animals. And they if they see data in a in a boring format, it doesn't means less than if they set a really interesting format. They absorb the information much more much easier.
And what I do like about what you're talking about is that I me, my learning curve, I would imagine is not that steep. It may be an old, old way of saying, Okay, I gotta go dive into this data and look at this spreadsheet and look at these tables and whatever might be trying to find those nuggets, I theoretically, I guess, take that digital twin and say, what's happened on floor seven? And I can visually go there, right? Oh, look at that. We've never we've never given a training class to anybody see, see? You know,
I said, I never wrote I never read an instruction manual for my iPhone. I've never given a training class on it.
That's brilliant. That is that that's one of those, you know, and we've all been there. I know, listeners, you've been out there, you've been a part of a demonstration of a system that's out there. And then you're thinking to yourself, Oh, my God, how the hell am I going to navigate this? And what? And then somebody is going to come up to me and says, All right, it's got I need the you know, whatever the data on this particular asset, go find it. Oh, my God.
Yeah, or socket. 17964 is using too much power. Okay, that's useful information. But it's let me pull up the architectural plans and start looking for socket. 17964.
Yeah, yeah, I see. And I think that that whole model of what you you mentioned, I think that that's a real clever way of success. Because I think that that I don't think people in general, and it's not a, it's not meant to be a negative by any means. But I think that we have many things that we're trying to consume on a daily basis. And if I can make the consumption of something easier, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna Okay, I'll do it. But if it's harder, no, I'm gonna always gravitate to that little easier side, right? Yeah. Yeah. So it's a visualization of data is it is underappreciated in the industrial world, especially,
I think Apple genuinely did make it in the consumer world. I was staying at somebody's house the other day, and I was, I was trying to use their TV. I'm a technical guy. I was an hour trying to figure out how to turn on the TV and select a spin home channel. The control had 100 buttons on it.
I break out in a cold sweat. Yeah.
1997 of those buttons on the average TV remote and never used.
It's true. I remember we were staying at a Airbnb, the same thing. You see a couple of boxes underneath the screen. Then you see a couple of remotes and you're just at right off the bat you've got it sure would like to be able to watch something. Yeah.
That was Apple Genius. Yeah, my Apple TV remote has got one button on it, I think or three buttons on it or something like that. Hey,
speaking of Apple TV. Have you been watching TED last? Oh,
I did watch the whole thing. I finished it in about about three weeks, and I got to meet some of those pretty good and that's
yeah, that is that's, that's binge watching. We're all into it. We're getting ready to finish up Season Two. Oh, that's good.
I will tell you what happens. No doubt
is the it's a great it's a great show looks really
good. It's a great concept. We'll take an American football coach and drop them in into a soccer club in the UK and it's just a great way of looking at the two cultures and yes, how they interact.
Yes. Well, one of the bucket lists I had back onto that. Bristol Rovers are my team is my team.
My God, how did you pick? pretty obscure?
It is isn't it? I had a terminal in Bristol. And the terminal manager says hey, let's go to Bristol gate. Okay, I go to briskly and apparently apparently, you're supposed to love the team that you first you know, you get to know
yeah the way you move you move to a new city you change you change soccer team, you change football teams and
I'm getting in the right one. Yeah,
I read rugby is a little because there's less regional rugby clubs, and they're also clubs, but so yeah, I gotta tell you, anyway, Hey,
what are the roadblocks? Yeah, you're you're chirping, you're great. You're wonderful. I get it. It's important. All that fun stuff. What are the roadblocks here? What are we talking about? Wow.
So what do we run into? Probably the one we run into with older buildings, as they don't have three dimensional CAD. The building was designed, but it's just a bunch of floor plans. That's much harder for us to work with. And it's not impossible, but it's much harder. So buildings less than less than 15 years old, are gonna be a lot easier for us. Otherwise, we'd have to get an architect to take the floor plans and turn them into 3d CAD.
Could you do that? I mean, if it's if it's an older look, we had, yeah, we
have done that. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. We've done it a couple of times, it's not ideal. People don't understand how to get sensors into buildings into reps, especially retrofitting sensors, and how you gather the data from lots of different sensors. So there's a little bit of an educational piece there. We don't do that. But we can tell people how to do it.
See, an interesting part is like you're asking a Facility Manager or whatever, I don't know who that the head, she's saying, you're going to have to put these sensors in? Well, why? Well, these sensors are going to be able to tell you what, what's going on? Who, who's gonna do it for me, then it's at that level, it's like, what do you what are you talking about? No, digital twin, and we're gonna make it you're gonna do this. And you're like, What? What? Yeah, an electrician
can install this stuff. They just need to know what to install and how to install it. And then yeah, you basically have to have a PC somewhere in the building an industrial PC that gathers all that data and sends it up to us. It's not hard. I mean, it's, you know, the software that all I can give you download some software off of a website, stored on an industrial PC, connect all your senses to that PC, you're done. So, but it's not, it's not knowledge that's commonly out there.
Yeah. So let's say I make that decision. And I'm going to be dumping some devices out there, I've picked, you know, let's say I incrementally approach my my journey here, and I h back here, and this that and I picked the big ones, right? But how quickly once I get those devices out there, how quickly can I just sort of flip boom, get that information into sort of that digital twin environment? So if you give us CAD of your building, so we got that got that and it's good quality CAD, which if you know any decent architectural firms going to generate good quality CAD, yeah, probably a week 10 days for a day or two. Yeah, firsthand, back and model
the time consuming pieces then sort of mapping where the sensors are on onto the model, ideally really modern buildings. That's what that was designed by the architects. Yeah, that's all built into the architectural drawings. If it isn't, then yeah, we've got to know where to put the sensor readings. Yeah, makes sense. But so that's probably the most time consuming piece you could have this thing up and running and see that's
that's thank you for not saying 18 months because apparently every projects 18 months this is
this is a little bit of wiring it's no more difficult than installing a light bulb it's an industrial PC and then us creating the model and so the most time consuming pieces were is this sensory thing you're sending me where in the building is that? So that's that's the trickiest thing I can put my
arms around that Alright. We got to wrap it up. We've We've digressed we burn up through time on some some football European by the way, that was a great experience up why not even at that level Bristol Rovers go
vaguely where the Bristol Rovers exists.
You know, it was a cold rainy day. Yeah, it was.
It's a winter sport. In Bristol, it probably almost all rains every day. Pretty much did. It was awful. Alright, how
do people get a hold of their saying, Hey, I gotta get a hold of John, because that's a, I need help. I need a conversation with somebody I trust.
Our website www.chesterlaw.com info@versilia.com works if you wanted to send us an email.
That is you are sale. Oh, I'm going to have all that information out on industrial talk. So if you say that I can't get a hold of John, you're you're not telling them that it's a pretty rememberable name. That's why we picked it short. You can actually yeah, if you're on video, you see it right there. That's a like that's your house and you have your logo there.
It's not my house. It is my house.
Very good. All right. Hey, John, thank you very much for being on your podcast. That was great.
I appreciate it. Really fun chat, too.
All right, listeners. We're gonna once again wrap it up on this side. Share something up on the Ursa Leo and we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that you get all the contact information you need. So stay tuned.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
Again, thank you very much for John Burton, with Ursa Leo, being on the industrials talk podcast, technology and innovation being led by companies like Ursula Leo, big time important to your business, and the resiliency of that business, especially in these times of uncertainty. I don't even know. But I know that technology and innovation are going to be your friend going forward. So you know, pick out trusted people like John and and personally, definitely an important company to sort of engage with and have a conversation or Alright, industrial talk, platform of industrial leaders, trying to solve problems creating and collaborating to solve these problems. That's what this platform is all about. You need to get engaged, you need to get involved. Reach out to me asked me how that can happen, and we can definitely have a wonderful conversation. All right. I always say people, be brave, dare greatly hang out with people like John, when you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining industrial talk and we're going to have another great conversation. Sure.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
