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Are your glycol systems protected and operating at their best? Thermal Fluid Technologies is here to ensure they are. Trusted by industry professionals for over 25 years, their PROTOCOL heat transfer fluids provide unmatched corrosion protection and system performance for industrial HVAC, process heating and cooling, and food and beverage applications. Need a clean start? Their cleaner and degreaser prepare your system for years of trouble-free service. And their state-of-the-art lab offers one of the most comprehensive coolant testing programs available. Upgrade your system’s performance today with Thermal Fluid Technologies. To learn more about Thermal Fluid Technologies, go to scalinguph2o.com forward slash TFT. Once again, that’s scalinguph2o.com forward slash TFT. Thermal Fluid Technologies. Where performance meets peace of mind. Welcome to the Scaling UP! H2O podcast. The podcast where we scale up our knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems. I’m your host Trace Blackmore. And nation, I want to start today’s episode out with a question. What are you paying attention to only after it becomes a problem? I’ll say it once again. What are you paying attention to only after it becomes a problem? Think about it. In our industry, we are trained to look at what could go wrong before it goes wrong. We look at trends. We look at our testing. We inspect. We talk to people. We try to figure out what’s going on with equipment. We compare yesterday’s results with today’s results to try to figure out what normal is supposed to look like. We do that because we know a small problem caught early is often a problem that’s going to get bigger in the future if we do not address it now. And that’s why our customers pay us. That’s why our customers are our customers because we know what to look for because we understand the systems that we are treating. But sometimes, even as water professionals, we can get caught up in reacting. A customer calls because a system is down. Someone sees water on the floor. A water bill arrives and it’s ten times higher than it should be. A piece of equipment was running inefficiently for weeks, but nobody knew because nobody was looking for that type of information. And that’s what gets me thinking. How many things in our work, or maybe in our lives, would be improved so much if we just spent a little more time defining what normal looks like. Because when we know normal, we can recognize abnormal. As I said, we can do that in our professional lives, we can do that in our personal lives. Maybe it’s something about finances. We know what normal looks like when we are doing what we need to do with our finances. We are paying ourselves by saving. We’re paying our obligations and then anything left over goes for anything extra. By the way, that’s the order you’re supposed to do that in. And so many of us do that in the exact opposite order. But when we do that, we can budget, we can plan, we can actually feel good about the money that we are spending. And we know that we are working hard to get paid. And the money that we’re getting paid now, if we’re letting it work properly, it is going to work for us, hopefully creating more money by compound interest. And I’ve done shows on that. So if you want to do some searches to hear the wonder of compound interest, bottom line is, you know what normal is. Bottom line is you work hard, your money should work as hard as you do. But if we’re not looking what normal is, we might not see that until there’s a problem. For a cooling tower, that might mean knowing what our normal makeup quality looks like. For a boiler, it might mean understanding what normal condensate return looks like. For a building, it could be knowing what the overall water usage is. The longer we work in this business, the more we learn that water is always telling us something. But are we listening to the story it is trying to tell us? Now, just a couple of weeks ago, we had a brand new Detective H2O each day of Industrial Water Week, and we receive so many fabulous comments about how many people enjoyed those segments and celebrating Industrial Water Week, but that’s a theme of Detective H2O. Are we listening to the stories that the equipment is trying to tell us? So I want to once again reissue what the question is. What are you paying attention to only after it becomes a problem? Ask yourself that and ask yourself that in different areas of your life. Personal, professional, and I promise you’re going to do something better about whatever you’re applying that question to. Well, nation, so many people tune in to this podcast to learn about all the great things that are going on. And I want to talk about some of the great things that have already happened. We had the Association of Water Technologies Conference about a month ago. A few weeks ago, we had the Water Environment Federation’s WEFTEC. We enjoyed that. And so many people in the Scaling UP! Nation gave me reports on how great they had a time at those two venues, how they met new people, how they learned new things. And that is exactly how you are supposed to do events like that. And so many people learned about them from this podcast. So that delights me. That delights the team here because that’s why we do it. We want you to know of all the opportunities that are coming up so you can plan accordingly. Now, there are a lot of opportunities for you to attend in our water world, but if you don’t know about them, you’re not going to be able to attend them. So the team here at Scaling UP! H2O has made that so easy. Go to scalinguph2o.com, go over to our events section, and we’ve got everything that we know about. So if you see something or rather don’t see something that you know about, let us know what that is. We will get it up there. And the reason we take this so seriously is we know how hard it is for you to drive from account to account, get on the phone from customer to customer, go from running tests to writing reports, all the things that you have to do within your day. And I only listed a few. There’s probably 300. How are you ever going to keep up with all of the potential events that you could go to out there? So that’s why you can go to scalinguph2o.com. Go over to our events page. One of the things I want you to pay attention to because it is coming up and I’m so excited because it’s one of my favorite things to do is the Association of Water Technologies Technical Training. That is coming up November 11th through 14th in Frisco, Texas. I am teaching several courses throughout that week, so you and I will see each other if you are there. And I hope we see each other. I love going to events like this and people telling me about the podcast, what they like, even what they don’t like, who I should invite. And maybe even something that they’ve done with this podcast. That happened recently at the AWT convention. So many people came up to me and said so many kind things, gave me lots of advice, and I just love that. I love knowing that this podcast is helping you, and I also love knowing where this podcast needs to go. So we will have another opportunity for all of that coming up at the technical training. And I’ve got some episodes coming up right before the technical training, which is pretty soon, next week and the following week, where we’re going to talk a little bit more about it. But your job right now is to make sure that you register for it. So if you go to that same web page, scalinguph2o.com, go over to our events page, we will have a link there that will take you directly to the Association of Water Technologies page where they host for technical training, and you will be able to select all the things that you want to attend. We’ve got a whole menu of options now. And then you can attend it and you and I can have a conversation. I know you’re attending it more to have all the technical information. But let’s face it, I want to talk to you, you want to talk to me, I would absolutely love that. Another thing that people are asking me about is they say, Trace, they really do they say, Trace, when are we having the next hang? Now we just had the hang a few weeks ago and we have had so many people compliment the fact that we are doing it in the middle of the day now and not in the evening. So it’s at 1 p.m. Eastern and we just had a great time. We had a lot of people that connected, that had fun, that shared information with each other. It was a great time, and we even got to see the queen of water treatment, Angela Pike. She came on to say hello, and of course we thanked her for her years of service. And people are saying, Trace, I want to go to another hang. I know you do. We don’t have it scheduled yet. So all that to lead up to, I don’t have a date for you yet. But that’s why you tune in each and every week. We will get a date, and if you’re wondering Trace, this is your podcast, it’s your hang, how come you don’t have a date yet? It’s a fair question. We want to make sure as many people as possible can attend the hang, but we also have other events that are going on. Not only events that you travel to, but events like committee meetings for different associations that people that listen to this podcast, you, the Scaling UP! Nation, attend. So we want to make sure that we have our calendar set so there are no conflicts. So you don’t feel, do I go to this? Do I go to that? What do I do? We want to make it as easy as possible. And we’ve asked several of our partners to come back to us and let us know what their dates are next year so we can properly plan the hang. All that to say, I don’t have a date for you yet. But you know that I will, so stay tuned. Well, nation, as I mentioned earlier, I get to meet so many wonderful people on this show, whether it’s at technical training, whether it’s at different association conventions, or people just reaching out to me and saying, I have somebody I want you to meet. Or even those people saying, I want to be on the podcast. And I wouldn’t have a show if people didn’t do that. So thank you so much for participating and making sure that we are meeting new people. Because when we do, we learn new things. Just like we are getting ready to do right now. Here’s our interview. My lab partner today is David Benaiges, Vice President of Intelligent Water Solutions at Watts Water Technology. David, welcome to the Scaling UP! H2O podcast. Hey, it’s great to be here, Trace. Glad to have you here. We’re going to be talking about something that maybe people think a lot about, which are people that listen to this podcast and maybe some people that only think about it when they pay their bill. So we’re going to get into that in a second, but I was hoping you would introduce yourself to the Scaling UP! Nation. Yeah, absolutely. It’s great to meet you, Trace, and to meet everyone on the line here listening. David Benaiges here. I’m a vice president at Watts. I’ve been doing this job for the last four years, leading our digital transformation in this fascinating world of smart and digital plumbing and digital water, if you will, which is, again, a very inspiring place to be innovating and be creating new technologies. So I partner with the rest of the Watts community. If you don’t know our company, go ahead and give it a Google. We touch anything related to water in buildings and take it to market. And yeah, I have the mandate to take all of that into a digital era with everything that comes with it. And I’m excited to talk about all that stuff with you today. I’m excited about that as well. I want to start off with a term everybody throws around, and I want to define it. Everybody says intelligent water. What really should that mean? Yeah, it is a great question and probably you’ll find as many definitions as people you ask this question to. But at the end of the day, we’re looking at buildings, right, as a collection of systems and use cases. And many of those systems have experienced now for the last few decades a significant thrust, right, towards this digital era that we live in. Think about your HVAC or electrical, right, energy management, lighting, you name it, elevators, right? And then there’s the world of water, which to your point earlier, a lot of people just don’t want to think too much about because it’s that utility bill item that you worry about once a month or once a quarter. It’s something that unless it goes wrong, you don’t hear much about it. And when we talk about intelligent water at the end of the day, what we’re doing is bringing forward all that potential value that water is supposed to have in the lives of the facilities managers, but also in the lives of the tenants, the users in that building. And making that come to life, whether by saving risk or avoiding risk. Think about a leak or a flood situation, right? Water damage. Whether it is about saving water usage. Another big topic, especially in some of the key geographies here around our country. And then also about managing those systems, the temperature, the pressure of your hot water, the domestic hot water system or your hydronic systems in the building. So when you add all of those things together, if you can provide real-time visibility and insight and translate that into dollars and into value at the end of the day, that’s what we’re aiming for with intelligent water. Well, let’s face it. There’s a lot of building engineers out there. There are a lot of building owners out there that really the only time they think about water is when they pay their bill. And if you ask them any questions about water, they’re going to refer to that bill to answer those questions. How should they be looking at that? What should they be doing? Yeah, the problem with those bills is they are a symptom, right, of an issue or of many issues. But then where it gets tricky is to truly pull apart what is the root cause and what’s causing those symptoms, right? And unfortunately, it’s not good enough with one data point a month, or even if you pushed me right, even one data point a week or a day is also not good enough in a lot of instances, right? So for those facilities managers, those property managers, even sometimes CFOs and GMs that come to us, at the end of the day, they want to understand what’s wrong, how bad is it, and then how do I go and prioritize how I get it fixed. So we look at that utility data as a way to get in and understand that we need to be looking at something. But then we come in with the solutions we provide in intelligent water management. For example, the one we have at Watts called Nexa, which allows us to truly pull apart those root causes, place sensors in the right places, get the right data points and identify what should we be focusing on to get those things fixed. So are we talking about submetering systems? For example, right? So it really depends on what you want to achieve. The best possible, you know, single data point you could get in a building is flow, right? Flow tells us a lot of things that are going on in that building. It tells us if the water usage patterns are off for some reason. Some of it may be normal because you’ve just had a big event in the building that drove more water usage. Some of them may be, you know, not normal and we cannot identify what’s going on. We’ve had a lot of examples of customers with underground leaks, for example, right? You can’t catch those, but you can see the water usage is off the charts, right? So flow sensors or flow monitoring, a big significant advantage if you can get your hands on that. But then we can get more sophisticated than that. We can monitor water presence in high-risk areas, you know, through leak sensors, for example. We can monitor temperature differentials and pressures across different parts of the system. And we can then do things like submetering, as you mentioned, as well. We can add flow, you know, measurement in places where it didn’t exist before for the intention of providing billing to some of the tenants in the building, but also again for that ability to understand how is the water being used in this building and is that telling us something about risk, about savings opportunities or about something else. And that’s where we get most of the insights that we work with. Not too terribly long ago, one of our clients had a leaking cooling tower. The makeup valve had misfired. It had totally fallen apart. And it was overflowing their system. And because there was so much water going on and our controller was monitoring that, we were able to catch that within the same day. What are some other things that you can recommend so we can catch leaks like that? Yeah, it’s a combination of approaches, you know, and it’s almost like your preference for how risk averse you want to be and how much of that risk you want to avoid, right? If you want to be very practical and just take one or two steps in that direction, you could just be measuring water usage at the main meter on an ongoing basis. We can retrofit that existing meter or we can add one if that meter is not available or not in the right place. And that gets us live data about the patterns of that water usage. And through that, we can identify when something looks off versus your baseline, your historical baseline. Now that obviously is not gonna catch a smaller leak that’s very far downstream somewhere in the 10th floor of the building. So then we can start getting creative on how do we get closer to understanding that, right? And one way is to segment the building into specific areas, right? Call it the kitchen area, the spa or the pool area. Higher floors, lower floors, and then get downstream to those pipes, to those loops, and get some sort of flow monitoring solution in those places. Then once we start getting more granular like that, we can amplify the way we see those leaks, right, occurring. And then if there is a desire, in some instances we have customers placing leak sensors in specific areas behind an ice-making machine, for example, you know, high risk because not a lot of traffic all the time. Sometimes those things, you know, behind a washing machine. Etc, etc. So we can keep complementing and keep getting closer to point of use, depending on that appetite. Also, depending on what kind of value is at risk. Are we talking about a lab with lots of expensive equipment? Are we talking about a facility that’s closed for several days at a time with nobody walking it so that we want to know what’s going on, right? And then we could even go one step further if you allow me, which is around shutting off the water, right? We can do all these things, but if we detect a leak and we cannot get there fast enough, can we do something about it remotely, right? And that’s where remote shutoff systems come into place. And that is the definitive sort of protection, right? If we complement those three steps together, that’s where we see most of the benefit. Also, the insurance companies then providing some benefit to those customers, which is exciting, very exciting for them as well, right? What are the different parameters we can monitor? We’ve already talked about flow. We’ve talked about water meters. What are some of the other ones out there? Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, the basic parameters of water performance and the state of water are well known, right? We can look at temperatures. And within those temperatures, we can go system by system. To give an example, we can look at the domestic hot water loop, for example, right? And understanding temperature coming out of the water heating plant, we can look at temperatures coming out of the mixing valves, right? Whether those are thermostatic or digital, we can measure overall differential of the supply and return temperatures. So we understand what those deltas are and whether we’re operating within those limits, right? That gives us a lot of understanding around, first of all, energy efficiency. Are we being efficient? It gives an understanding on whether we’re operating as per the spec of what the building and that system was designed to do. And then in other instances, it gives us an understanding if something is happening that we were not aware of, like a cross flow situation, for example, where the water is being mixed incorrectly, right? So I would say temperature is another great data point. And we could keep going down the list. The other one is pressure, for example, right? Really gives us a great understanding on whether something is off in any part of the system. It gives us also sometimes an opportunity to reduce pressure overall, again, saving water usage as an opportunity. So I would say the combination of flow, leaks, temperature and pressure is a perfect, let’s say, mix to get almost like a, you know, a blood work sample of, you know, the status of the building, if I can make that analogy, which allows you to start making decisions that have impact, right, on the performance and on the economics of the building. In the situation I mentioned to you earlier, that was because a system notified us that something was wrong and then we had to respond to it. How is AI filling that gap so somebody doesn’t have to be there right then looking at it? Yeah, and with everything, including AI, it’s always that balance, right, between wanting everything to be automated but then giving it that touch where we make sure that things mean something to the person that’s receiving them, right? So AI allows us, allows technologies like Nexa, to understand baselines and making the, let’s say, the anomalies or the anomaly detection a lot smarter instead of flagging everything that goes above a certain very static, rigid threshold. We can make that more variable and understand the patterns. Oh, because on Saturdays, you always have a spike in the afternoon because Saturdays, typically an event happens in this facility, right? If you start coding that manually, you would be there all day, right? And then you’ll be half wrong because the behavior will change over time. So with AI, we’re able to tweak and adjust the sensitivity and the ability to know what, you know, how bad things are, right? Or how off track they are. And then we need to apply a logic with, we still believe a human, right? A team of humans in the background who understand water, right? And that’s maybe where Watts and Nexa have also a differentiation. We’ve been around for 150 years, not Nexa, but Watts, which gives us a very deep understanding of water systems, how things operate in buildings. What’s normal, what’s not, how to troubleshoot things. So the combination of that AI anomaly detection plus the ability to filter and understand what’s going on. And then Nexa with its smart alerting mechanism that is incorporated in the solution really gives that end user sort of a very neat and a very prescriptive idea of where to focus and where to prioritize. Our users are extremely busy. Facilities managers are running around. Always on to the next topic, right? If we can do anything to give them clear priorities and where to focus and what matters and what pipe to go after and what mechanical room to go after, that saves them hours, that saves them headache, then we believe that’s a good ROI for those customers. Whenever we give a device an entrance or even an exit out of a facility, people are worried about security. How do we make sure that we’re only getting the data that we need and people aren’t peeking in there to get more things off the network that they don’t need? Yeah, I would say that’s a question we get at least 50% of the times we talk about a solution like Nexa with our prospective customers, even our existing customers that have systems installed. And that’s where the architecture of the system matters a lot. And then having optionality also matters a lot, right? When we deploy a system like Nexa, at the end of the day, we’re standing up our own network and our own device, right, architecture within the facility. In most instances, we’re not trying to connect or to be a part of the existing infrastructure that has access to the Internet, for example, right? We want to make sure that data flows directly to our cloud and there are very limited or no opportunities for any intrusiveness into the system. There’s obviously a lot of compliance and testing we need to do every year to prove that we are a secure solution. I can proudly say we’ve had no major incidents over the years. And then most of these systems are also non-controlled. They’re mostly about monitoring. So even if somebody in the event, somebody got access to data, it is very hard to do anything with it other than just see what the temperature of the pipes was. In the few instances where we have control, some of our smart and connected equipment has control embedded within Nexa, for example, a mixing station where you can change the setpoint and so on. There is a very strict protocol of security that requires several layers of access control to get to make those modifications. So I would say we’re pretty well protected. Experience and history tells us it’s working well. And we’ve got some very prominent customers who are opting to trust us, which I guess is a good sign as well. Hold on to your test kits, folks. We’re going to take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors. Hey there, Scaling UP! Nation. One of the biggest water treatment challenges in cooling water systems is biofilm. You know that stubborn, slimy stuff that can wreak havoc on your operations? Our friends at AMSA have developed a line of biofilm control products that are specifically designed to tackle this problem head on. 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And now, back to our interview. I think one of the biggest factors of insurance and insurance claims are water damage. How can we protect ourselves from future water damage? Yeah, and it’s a great question because we see it more and more with insurance companies actually putting out a mandate both in residential and commercial settings for customers to adopt leak protection measures, right? And it’s getting more sophisticated as well. It used to be as basic as we just need a leak sensor in a couple spots in the building. Insurance companies have realized that only goes so far because if water is not present in those places, you could still have a leak but you’re not catching it. So we see more and more what we would call flow-based leak protection solutions, right? So given that water damage is at the top of the list in terms of what these insurance companies are seeing in terms of claims and issues, this is now becoming, I would call it, table stakes and a mandate. So the question for all the building users out there, facilities managers, what kind of solution gives you the most comfort that you’ve got this well covered, right? It’s an insurance within your insurance. I go back to my response earlier around the layers of protection. Are you comfortable with just one data point that gives you a very high level visual of how things are going? Do you want to go down and get a more granular view with more flow data and then some leak sensor data? Or do you want to go all the way out and protect yourself with the ability to shut off the water? So our conversations always come down to sort of which of these layers do you want to be in? And in a lot of instances, I’ll say it’s a journey as well, right? You first want to understand layer one. How, you know, what’s my profile? Do I see anything that tells me I need to act? And then this is a modular, you know, system solution. You can keep going down, making it better and better. Choose wisely and make sure that the solutions you choose in the market allow you for that expansion into different levels of security and protection. Let’s say we deployed a couple of these options. Can we then go back to our insurance company and expect a discounted premium? It obviously depends a lot on who is that insurance company, what’s the history of the building and so on and so forth. But yes, we have seen instances. We have, I will give an example, a major sports league customer that came in from their insurance company, came in a requirement to look at a flow based leak protection solution. They came to us because our solution was certified. Our solution is FM Global. It’s the only leak protection, wireless leak protection solution certified by FM Global. We made a deployment of a combination of flow meters and other devices. And thanks to that, their risk profile was downgraded or upgraded, depending on how you want to look at it. And that led to a discount, right? So yes, there are instances. You’ve got to work with insurance. We got to work with insurance companies to make sure what we’re deploying will actually catch the majority of that risk. But the good news is the technology is there. Insurance companies now know they have the right risk assessments, the right talent in place to help do those audits and come up with those recommendations. And we’re seeing that more and more. So it’s a great point to go after. Earlier in the interview, you mentioned that there are devices that will actually cut off the water supply during a leak. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, that is again another very smart and powerful tool when used the right way. It’s very flexible as well, right? So we can shut off the water based on certain parameters when water flow exceeds a certain, you know, a certain level because I know my facility typically operates under that level. I want that shutoff to happen automatically. We could do that. That works really well for a residential setting where things are really well known, right? If you were to turn on all of your faucets in the house, you would know what kind of your limit of flow is. And then anything that goes above that, probably you’re having an issue somewhere, right? So you want to be proactive and shut off the water. And then we have many other ways to do this, right? It could be action by the detection of a water presence in a specific spot that triggers that water shut off. Or it could also be a manual thing. We have a lot of customers that really don’t want the automated portion, but they do want the ability to do it remotely. So let’s say you’re on vacation or the facilities manager is away. Something big is happening in the building. He or she, they get an alert that water usage or certain indicators are popping up in different parts of the building. That person can log onto the application, they can see what’s going on, and they can make an informed decision. And if they wish to do that, they can just remotely activate that shutoff valve, which gives you extra peace of mind that you’re avoiding a very big potential water damage event. In some instances, for example, a backflow preventer. I don’t know if the audience will know what that device is. I’m pretty sure they will. If they will, then that’s perfect, because it is a device that’s supposed to save our lives in many ways. And when it activates, because it’s saving our lives, it can create a potential flood risk, right? Because that’s the way it’s supposed to work. So the ability for us to also monitor backflow preventers, we have a specific part of the solution with Nexa that does that, allows us to then provide that double benefit, the insurance that the backflow is there doing its job. And then the communication that when something gets activated, we can tell our users, our customers, that they need to immediately pay attention to it because that could pose a big risk, right? With a potential flood situation. So it’s all about those high-risk areas and how we keep all of that monitored and then the ability to shut off if we want to and how we want to, right? It’s all about those rules. A couple years ago, we went on vacation and apparently we had a leaky toilet valve. And of course it was leaking into the toilet, so nobody knew, but then we got our water bill. And I remember thinking, surely there has to be some sort of device that a toilet knows or the valve knows if more than three gallons goes in this thing, there is an issue. Does that exist? It does and you can either do it at that fixture level, although obviously the closer you get to the fixture, the more devices you need and then it gets more expensive. But at the end of the day, if you’re in a home, you would expect that at down hours, right, valley hours in the middle of the night, the water usage for your entire home should be zero or very close to zero, right? So that’s where we start looking at baselines, right? If your baseline historically was that zero and for some reason the last two weeks, it’s growing or it has had a step change, then that indicates that something is going on. And once you know that, unless you own, you know, a castle with like 30 bathrooms or something, you probably have a couple of hypotheses for where that may be happening. Right. And you want to go after those things. So again, it’s that data around flow. We are always positively surprised by even aggregated data. Once you look at the right baselines and trend lines, how much information you can gather for that that at least tells you that something is wrong, even though it doesn’t quite pinpoint exactly where it is. At least it sets you on the path, right? To know and to act on it. You’ve talked in the past about the 2030 Divide. What is that? Yeah, you know, I’m a former consultant and strategist, so I always try to think about the world and, you know, different scenarios and where are things headed and what are we all doing here? Do we have a purpose, right? And what are we solving for? And, you know, at the end of the day, water is an amazing resource that’s only getting scarcer and, you know, and more challenging to manage, more expensive, you know, climate events and so on and so forth. It is my belief and I believe a lot of folks in our industry share that belief as well, that proactive management of water, including this intelligent water management world that we’re talking about, is not just going to be that fancy, you know, add-on tool that you can use in only certain situations. I believe it is going to become a significant competitive advantage sort of resource for all buildings out there to a point where managing that water and that, you know, cost of that water and the quality of the water for your tenants, for example, if you’re in an office space where your business depends on your ability to rent your spaces, right, to potential tenants, is going to come down to your ability to use those kinds of tools to stay competitive. So if you’ve got a neighbor building that’s not using that technology, it is my belief, it is my expectation that at some point there’s going to be a divide between adopters and believers in this technology and non-adopters, right, where those non-adopters are at a disadvantage. We’ve seen that again and again with every single technology that’s emerged over the last, you know, century. And we’re now in that game with AI, right? Are you adopting that technology and increasing your productivity or are you falling behind the curve? And where will that put you, you know, three years from now, two years from now? So I believe the same thing is happening with water. Luckily, I believe we have some great solutions out there that provide that entry point. And that the barrier to entry is relatively low. We’re not talking about huge investments to participate in this game. So it is a great opportunity to look at this next four or five years and see which side of that sort of curve you want to sit on, right, as a building and as a user. So you have thousands of water treaters that are listening to you right now. What message do you want them to convey from this interview? Yeah, think about water as that advantage and not as that thing that we want to avoid talking about unless there is an issue. Think about whether you are a contractor, a treatment player, whether you’re a facilities manager. Think about what water can do for you to create value and don’t think about how much cost can you avoid or how much can you avoid talking about that water element. And if you sit on that positive side of looking at water as an opportunity and not as only as a downside or as a risk, I think we’re going to find a lot of things we can do here. And then we combine that with the technologies that are emerging in the market, including Nexa, as we’ve talked about. And the opportunities are huge. And the ROIs, the return on investments for a lot of these things are in the weeks and months, not in the years, right? Or months and years. So I encourage everyone to think about how can I unleash that? If they need help, if they need inspiration, many of us are out here sort of excited to partner and excited to have those discussions and explore those ideas together. And if somebody’s listening out there and they want to find out more about Nexa, what should they do? Yeah, they should go online. Check out our website, nexaplatform.com. Also, our LinkedIn page has been very active lately. You’ll find it very quickly by just searching for Nexa. And there’s lots of information there, the types of sensors we have, the types of equipment that connects to Nexa, which is increasingly, the list is growing quickly. And then most importantly, you’ll see a bunch of stories of how this actually comes to life. And those stories are, you know, inspiring. If I could have looked at, peeked into a thing that I was going to do, you know, five years ago or four years ago, and I could see what that was, I would choose that part of the website. What are some of those success stories, those testimonials? These are customers, again, that went from thinking about water from a negative friction point to looking at water as an exciting, positive opportunity. And that’s worth everything. Well, I think we’ve learned about a lot of devices that maybe we didn’t know existed, maybe we knew existed, or we haven’t done anything with them yet. Like I said before, we’ve got thousands of water treaters that are listening to this podcast. What do you want them to do with this information? Yeah, I would love to partner with them. We look at the water in the building, in the context of the water, once it’s ready to flow through the pipes and get to the point of use. The combination of how water gets treated, how the water gets to the right condition or the right temperature, pressure, or flow when it gets treated, and then what happens afterwards. It’s all a continuum, right? We’re all working on the same macro system. So my message would be there is a lot of opportunity for us to partner to think about a holistic sort of end-to-end benefit for that water, right? And the return on investment of managing that water better. So I would encourage all those folks to reach out or to think about you know what we’ve talked about during this interview. If anything sparks interest, I would love to have conversations about how we can tie those things even closer together. Because I believe ultimately the beneficiary of all of this is that building, right? Is that user? And I think that’s what makes all of us thrive here. Well, we’ll make that super easy. If anybody goes to our show notes pages, all that contact information and the resources that you mentioned, we’ll make sure it’s all right there for them. Sounds great. Thank you. Well, I do have a couple lightning round questions for you if you’re ready for those. Absolutely. All right. If you could go back in time and talk to your former self on your very first day working in water, what advice would you give yourself? I would say, you know, this world of innovating in water, like everything in life, it goes in waves, no pun intended. Sometimes you see things clearly, sometimes you’re wondering what’s on the other end. If I could give myself some advice or some clarity of mind, I would say it’s even more worth it than you’re thinking. There is a lot to be gained from managing water better. And every step we take in this direction tells us that opportunity is even larger and more exciting than we thought. So I would just say keep going. This is really worth it and the benefits for everyone involved are going to be enormous. What are the last few books that you’ve read? Yeah, that’s a great question, you know, and the answer will reflect a bit of my background. I’m originally from Barcelona and I speak Catalan and Spanish as well as English, so those three last books are actually a combination of those things. One was Blood, Sweat and Pixels, a book about, you know, development of video games and the challenges to take video games to market. Really, really fascinating. Another one in Catalan translated would be Oh, the Humanity, which was about a journalist and his adventures around the world in wars and conflicts, which is really enlightening. And then the third one is in Spanish and was called The Peninsula of Empty Houses about the Civil War in Spain and sort of a bit of an alternative reality to what happened but illustrating a lot of the challenges at the time. Really great books and encourage others to read those if they can. David, when they decide to make a movie about your life, who do you want playing you? Oh, that is quite a question. Yeah, I would say Hugh Jackman, always been a fan. I love his versatility, you know, from drama to comedy, dancing, musical. I feel like my life, my job, my career, they’re all about contrasts and versatility and changes. And I feel somebody like him would do a great job. I’d be honored, of course, to have somebody like him playing that role. My final question, if you could talk to anybody throughout history, who would it be with and why? I’ve learned to love and appreciate the story of the founder of Watts, Joseph Watts. And as I think about what we’re trying to do now with Intelligent Water, you know, I go back 150 years, and I go back to a lot of the inflection points that Watts has had over its history and how some bold thinking about creating new standards that elevate the quality and the management of water, like backflow preventers or pressure relief valves. There’s so many of those elements, right? It’s fascinating. So I take inspiration. I take boldness and courage from somebody like that to think about what could be next for us as well. Well, David, I want to thank you for spending the last few minutes with us on the Scaling UP! H2O podcast and sharing so much about some things we should be doing. And now we’re going to think about it a little bit harder. David, once again, thank you for joining us on the podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and really explain what intelligent water management means, what it looks like, and why it matters. You know, I do want to expand on a few things that David said. The first is a water bill is simply a symptom, not a diagnosis. So a monthly water bill can tell you more than what water has been used. It can tell you that something has changed, just like we started the podcast. What’s the normal around that? Are we keeping the normal or is it abnormal? So with that information, is it telling you where the water went or whether that usage was intentional? Do you have a bad valve? Is there something that is leaking like a cooling tower, makeup valve, or maybe someplace else? That’s where understanding our baseline is so important. If you know what normal looks like, you have a much better chance of catching abnormal activity like abnormal water use. In our industry, catching something early, catching something quickly can be the difference between a small repair to a major capital expense. The second item that I want to look at are all the layers of protection. David talked about starting with flow monitoring, then potentially adding more detailed monitoring, leak sensors in high-risk areas, temperature monitoring, pressure monitoring, and even remote shutoff capability. Not every facility needs every single device. Not every building has the same risk. But every facility should ask, what could happen here? What could it cost and what can we do about it so we don’t have to suffer that cost? That’s the same way water treaters think about so many systems that we manage. We did not simply say, I hope that cooling tower is okay. My dad used to say, hope in one hand and excrement in another hand. See what fills up first. By the way, nation, he did not say excrement. So we don’t use hope in water treatment. We monitor, we test, trend, inspect, and we respond. We build layers of confidence around the system so we know what to expect on a regular basis. Again, that norm. And when things come out of that norm, we are then able to recognize them. And when we put systems, when we put sensors around things to monitor those norms when they’re not in their norm, we’re able to get notified of that very quickly before we have to suffer a large problem. The third thing is the technology and people working together, and right now we are in a really weird stage where there are people that are really embracing artificial intelligence. There are some that are totally against artificial intelligence and there are some that don’t even know about artificial intelligence. Now, I really think you’ve got to be under a rock by this day and age not to know about it, but there are a lot of people that don’t know how to use it. And we’ve had several episodes on this podcast that really define AI and using things like smart sensors to help us see patterns faster. They can make it easy to recognize when something doesn’t look like. And while you’re doing all the things that only you can do, the AI can alert you that, hey, something is not right and even set up some easy parameters to maybe even do something so the problem doesn’t get worse. Now, maybe that’s closing a valve or maybe that’s just sending notifications out so somebody can go investigate what’s going on. The whole point is we are able, whether we’re the water treater or the equipment owner, we’re able to do what we are experts in. It’s not replacing that expertise. It’s allowing us to better utilize that expertise. So the fact that we’ve got technology and expertise coming together, the hope is we don’t have to suffer a lot of issues before they become insurmountable issues and we can respond a lot quicker. I really like David’s challenge to all of us, which was think of water as an opportunity, not just a cost or a risk. There are so many opportunities when it comes to water. Opportunities to prevent damage. Opportunities to protect equipment. Opportunities to improve how systems operate. It is endless when we think about all the things that we can do to help water become more efficient and avoid all the problems that we’ve been talking about. So I would say, when we ask what do great water treaters do, we help people see what they could not see on their own. And we can utilize the expertise that we have. We can utilize the equipment that’s available to us. We can utilize being able to communicate all of that with the people that own the equipment. And we are really able to make an impact on the equipment that we are charged with taking care of. Nation, I’m going to put a plug in for it one more time. If you have an idea for a show, a topic you want us to cover, a guest you think the Scaling UP! Nation needs to hear from, let us know. Any and all of those things. Go to scalinguph2o.com. Go over to our show ideas page and we will make sure that we are using that in our show planning. Now I don’t know how we got into Q4, but we are in Q4 and that means we are planning for all of next year. So please don’t keep those ideas to yourself. Let us know what those are because it’s really helpful as we are planning a whole year for your listening pleasure and education for next year. Scaling UP! Nation, thank you for listening to the Scaling UP! H2O podcast. I really appreciate you being part of the Scaling UP! Nation. It’s my hope that you have a great week, and as always, we’ll have a brand new episode for you next Friday. Take care, folks. Want to ensure you’re fully prepared for the Certified Water Technologist examination? Our CWT prep course provides you with the tools and knowledge you need. From detailed study guides to a 100-question practice exam. We’ve got you covered. Visit scalinguph2o.com forward slash CWT prep and start your journey to certification.