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Phil Zito


Recent posts by Phil Zito

29 min read

How to Read Plans and Specs

By Phil Zito on Dec 22, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be diving into plan and spec documents. We're going to cover how to review them. What do we look for? What are the different parts and pieces of them? How are they structured? So, we're gonna have some fun.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation plans and specs smartbuildings Career
11 min read

How to Systemize Your BAS Career

By Phil Zito on Dec 20, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we're going to be talking about how to systemize your building automation career.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings Career programmer BAS technician
14 min read

Overcoming Inflation with Processes

By Phil Zito on Dec 15, 2022 2:00:00 PM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we're going to be continuing on from our previous post where we started to dive into the topic of standards for building automation companies, and we discussed processes. Now we're going to be looking at how we go about actually creating the processes that support the standard.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation Sales smartbuildings business bas projects profit standards processes procedures inflation
14 min read

Establishing a Controls Standard for Your Business

By Phil Zito on Nov 23, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be covering what a building automation standard is and why you should be using one in your contracting or system integrator business.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation Sales smartbuildings business bas projects profit standards processes procedures
14 min read

Growing Your Controls Business in a Recession

By Phil Zito on Nov 18, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be talking about how to grow your controls business during a recession. So, two quarters negative GDP growth, we're in a recession, stuff is trending downwards, energy's going up, supplies are hard to get. How do we continue to grow our controls business in this unique environment? Well, that is what we're going to unpack.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation Sales smartbuildings business bas projects profit
24 min read

How to Manage BAS Projects From Start to Finish

By Phil Zito on Nov 16, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be discussing BAS project management. We're going to go from start to finish with BAS project management:

  • How we initiate a BAS project
  • How we handle a BAS project through the design phase
  • How we handle it through the implementation phase
  • How we handle it through the closing phase
Topics: Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings Design bas projects implementation project management closing
17 min read

Learning Guideline 36 Together

By Phil Zito on Nov 10, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we're going to be exploring Guideline 36. I've had a lot of customers, both on the owner and the contractor side, reach out to us lately asking us to create an energy management, a measurement and verification, systems optimization, and an energy conservation measure course and training materials.

Topics: control sequences Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings guidelines
12 min read

A Design Pattern Approach to Programming

By Phil Zito on Nov 8, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be talking about programming, specifically, we're going to be talking about design patterns. We’ll start off by just kind of discussing what design patterns are and a design pattern approach to programming. It's probably different than some of the things you've seen in the past. Then we are going to give a couple of sample design patterns.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings programming Design wire sheets
11 min read

Why Team and Business Culture Matter

By Phil Zito on Oct 27, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be discussing culture, we're going to talk about why your team and business culture matter. Now I know a Smart Buildings post talking about culture, it may seem a little bit not aligned, but if you look at what's going on in the workforce right now, with people leaving, people checking out and not even really giving effort, a lot of that comes down to culture. If we look at employee retention, it’s critical, especially now with anywhere from 100 to 200,000 people short in the building automation industry on a month-to-month basis, depending on who you listen to or read.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings team culture ethics
15 min read

Defending Your Team Against Scope Creep

By Phil Zito on Oct 25, 2022 5:00:00 AM

Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome back. In this post, we are going to be talking about scope creep. We're going to talk about how you can manage and eliminate scope creep within your building automation projects, retrofits, service calls, etc. That being said, the goals of today are to identify common scope creep issues and to provide examples of how to solve.

Topics: Building Automation System building automation smartbuildings scope scope creep scope statement