We Built the Future. Then We Unplugged It…
This story is about 20 years old and it still bothers me.
Not because we did something wrong. Because we did almost everything right — and it still didn't work. That's the kind of lesson that sticks with you.
It was somewhere around 2007 or 2008. I was closing out one of my early LEED-certified buildings, a readiness center for the Arizona National Guard. For those who don't know, a readiness center is where Reservists and Guard soldiers come one weekend a month to train, store their gear, and do their jobs. It was one of the first LEED-certified readiness centers in Arizona. Maybe the first.
And it was loaded!
Rain collection systems. Occupancy sensors throughout the building. A full building management system. Lighting control zones that would activate as you walked down the hallway, bank by bank, lights coming on ahead of you and switching off behind you. The kind of thing that felt genuinely futuristic in 2007. The locker rooms were the same way. Troops could store their gear and the lights would respond to their movement automatically, never burning juice when nobody needed them.
The idea was simple and right: automate the conservation so the occupants don't have to think about it. People walking into a building aren't thinking about energy. They're thinking about getting their work done and going home. So you take the decision out of their hands entirely. The building does it for them.
I believed in it completely. I still believe in the idea of it.
About three days before we were supposed to hand the building over, I noticed a contractor at one of the control panels. Didn't think much of it the first day. The second day, I figured he was wrapping something up. On the third day I finally stopped and asked him what was going on.
He explained he was programming the lighting control system. Zoning it out, configuring the sequences, making sure everything responded the way it was designed to. I asked if it was going to delay our opening. He said no, this just takes time. Advanced system.
I walked back to the trailer and sat with that for a minute. This guy does this every single day. It's his whole job. And it took him three days to set it up.
Walter and Lonnie, led our facilities guys, the ones who were going to be responsible for maintaining this building from the day we handed it over, they were regular tradesmen. Good at their jobs. Comfortable with tools, HVAC systems, basic electrical, the everyday work of keeping a building running. This was 2007. None of them had ever touched a building automation system in their lives.
I called Walter and got him out to the site before the contractor left so his crew could get some exposure to the system. They showed up, looked at the panel, looked at each other, and looked back at the panel. They were lost. Not because they weren't capable, because nothing in their training or experience had prepared them for what they were looking at.
The contractor left. We opened the building. Soldiers showed up for drill.
A few months later I checked in with Walter on how the building was performing. He told me it was fine. Good, even. But then he said something I've never forgotten.
"Mike, we're not equipped, from a staffing and training standpoint, to handle all the electronics in these buildings you're building."
He was right. And I knew he was right the moment he said it. We had the budget to build the technology. We didn't have the budget or the time to train the people who were going to maintain it. That gap, the space between installation and operation, is where good ideas go to die.
They unplugged the whole system. Every piece of automation in that building, disconnected. That beautiful, expensive, carefully designed lighting control system that was going to save energy and reduce costs for the next 30 years sat dark in a panel room because nobody knew how to keep it running.
As far as I know, it's still unplugged today.
I've told this story more times than I can count throughout my sustainability career. And every time I tell it, the lesson lands a little differently depending on who's in the room.
For project managers: get your stakeholders in the room early and keep them there. I had included maintenance in the design charrette. They knew what was coming. But life gets busy, people get pulled away, and by the time the building was ready to open they were as lost as anyone. Checking a box at the beginning of a project is not the same as bringing people along for the whole journey.
For the industry: we need to stop measuring success at the ribbon cutting. A building isn't a success when it opens. It's a success ten years later when it's still running the way it was designed to run. That requires a plan for the people who maintain it, not just the people who build it.
For the tradesmen coming up right now: this story is more relevant today than it was in 2007. Buildings are smarter than ever. HVAC systems have software. Electrical systems have control logic. The line between mechanical and digital is gone, they're the same system now. The tradesman who only knows the physical side of the installation is going to end up standing in front of a panel with the same look Walter's crew had in that locker room.
The technology is not going to slow down and wait for the trades to catch up. That means the trades have to move toward it.
I genuinely believe today's tradesmen have an incredible opportunity in front of them. The demand is there. The pay is there. The stability is there. But there's a version of the future where we build a generation of smart buildings maintained by people who don't know how to run them, and we watch billions of dollars in technology get quietly unplugged because the gap between installation and operation never gets closed.
We always seem to find money to build something new. We rarely find money to teach people how to maintain it.
Don't let that be your story. Learn the system. Not just how to install it, how it thinks, how it fails, and how to bring it back when it does.
The future of the trades isn't just physical. It never was.