DiscoverEE Webinar: Building With Data

Canadian residential and commercial buildings have seen significant reductions in energy use over the last several decades, but the places where we live, work, play, and gather still account for nearly 20% of Canada’s GHG emissions. Canada has set ambitious decarbonization targets, but these will require a major transformation in how we design, construct and retrofit new and existing buildings.

A key piece of the puzzle is data – rethinking how we collect, preserve, share, analyze, and make use of information across our built environment to advance building technology while preserving institutional knowledge.

Join us on September 18th for a deep dive into new and innovative projects at the intersection of technology, data and building retrofits with special guests Brad Pettes (Founder and CEO, Harmelo) and Christian Cianfrone (Co-founder and Chief Decarbonization Officer, OPEN Technologies).

Guest Speakers

Brad Pettes

Founder and CEO, Harmelo 

Brad Pettes is the founder and CEO of Harmelo, a Canadian infrastructure-technology company helping property owners, operators and contractors understand the systems inside buildings and preserve the evidence behind them. Drawing on his background as an HVAC contractor, Brad founded Harmelo after seeing how valuable equipment, service and performance information was routinely lost as contractors, staff, software and ownership changed.

Harmelo connects authenticated field records to the equipment and buildings they describe. That evidence supports the Infrastructure Condition Index (ICI™), which helps communicate how a building is performing, the strength of the evidence behind that assessment and what may require attention next. Through the Infrastructure Disclosure Report, organizations can turn that information into a practical view of condition, upcoming capital needs and documented building history—supporting better maintenance, retrofit and long-term planning decisions.

Christian Cianfrone

Co-founder and Chief Decarbonization Officer, OPEN Technologies

Christian is a mechanical engineer and a subject matter expert in building energy efficiency and modelling, with over 20 years of experience that includes leadership positions in consulting, non-profit, and construction – before co-founding OPEN Technologies in 2018. As a consultant, Christian led one of Canada’s largest building performance groups as it consulted on hundreds of projects across North America and developed award winning energy policy for various levels of government. Christian then went on to serve as ZEBx’s first Executive Director – a City of Vancouver-funded Centre of Excellence – where he tripled its core funding and staff during its start-up phase. And finally, prior to joining OPEN full time, Christian co-led the development of EllisDon’s climate targets and advised internal project teams and clients on building decarbonization.

As part of the leadership team at OPEN, Christian oversees the company’s strategy and implementation of its building and data science initiatives, which underpin the analytical engines in OPEN’s products.