Bennett Fisher

Bennett Fisher is responsible for the vision, strategy, and leadership of Retroficiency. Previously, Bennett worked at Pitcairn Properties where he helped source and underwrite +$300M in acquisition and development deals. He successfully repositioned and sold their $150M flex portfolio achieving +20% returns for investors. Read more…

Through his work, Bennett became passionate about commercial real estate and the use of technology to identify energy savings opportunities. He has spent the previous 10 years researching, acquiring, and operating commercial buildings while trying to make the process more efficient by leveraging innovative trends and business concepts.

Bennett received his B.A. in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University and an M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management where he met Retroficiency Co-Founder Bryan Long.

Bryan Long

Bryan Long is responsible for overseeing development of Retroficiency’s on-demand Building Efficiency Intelligence platform and ensuring development is closely aligned with Retroficiency’s vision and strategy. Previously, Bryan spent ten years working for the U.S. government at the Volpe Center, a research and development facility, where he deployed an international network that allowed more than 50 countries to share maritime information in real-time. Read more…

Bryan was responsible for the complete life cycle of the software, including accreditation within the US Navy. Prior to that, Bryan co-founded Cadimus Technologies, which produced a digital jukebox for use in high-end home entertainment systems.

Bryan received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Northeastern University and an M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management where he met Retroficiency Co-Founder Bennett Fisher.

Zaid Ashai

Zaid focuses on Clean Technology investments at Point Judith, including the Firm’s investments in Earth Aid, Nexamp and Power Assure. Prior to joining Point Judith, Zaid worked at Good Energies, a global Clean Technology venture capital firm, and in that role spent the majority of his time focused on investments in next generation technologies in energy efficiency. He joined Good Energies from HarbourVest Partners, a global private equity firm based in Boston, MA. Read more…

Zaid holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an MPA from the JFK School of Government at Harvard University. At Harvard University, Zaid was selected as a Zuckerman Fellow. He has an AB in International Relations and Economics, with honors and Phi Beta Kappa, from Brown University.

Jill Preotle

Jill Preotle is a private equity investor who works with entrepreneurs seeking access to capital and growth markets. She serves on the boards of Zipcar, Red Tail Solutions, iTeam, Dancing Deer Baking Company, TaskRabbit and Daily Grommet. She holds a J.D. degree from New York University Law School.

Sarah Slaughter

Dr. Sarah Slaughter is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Built Environment Coalition, and is a recognized expert in high performance built facilities. She serves on the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment in the National Research Council, the IFMA Sustainability Committee, the MA Sustainable Water Management Advisory Board, and boards of several nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Read more…

She was previously Associate Director for Buildings and Infrastructure in the MIT Energy Initiative, director of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, and a professor in MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her specialty is innovations to increase the sustainability and disaster resiliency of buildings and critical infrastructure systems.

Definitions

Energy consumption interval data is a record of a building's energy consumption levels, with readings made at regular intervals throughout the day, every day, over an extended period of time. Interval data can be obtained from utility company meters, building control systems or increasingly from energy service provider- or building owner-installed smart meters.

Building asset data is information related to general building characteristics and energy systems in the building. This could include basic information such as the year built or facility use type (e.g., office, warehouse, etc.), to more specifics, such as heating ventilation and air-conditioning systems, lighting and lighting controls, envelope and windows.

Fortune 100 Company

A well-known Fortune 100 finance company wanted to gain LEED status for all of its buildings. Three of their buildings presented a challenge as they were unable to get ENERGY STAR rated, a requirement for LEED certification. The company hired external engineering experts who identified 15 improvements for each building that would help them meet their goals. Retroficiency was engaged to demonstrate their technology to develop recommendations and help validate the external company's findings with a calibrated energy model.

Using proprietary technology with minimal information from on-site facility managers (and no site visits), Retroficiency was able to construct and calibrate energy models. By running these models against our database of thousands of energy conservation measures, we were able to offer recommendations that increased ENERGY STAR ratings by an average of 31% and had less than 2 year paybacks. In terms of annual savings, we found more than $85k in operational changes and $45k in physical retrofits. Once we had calibrated energy models we showed that 12 out of the 15 retrofits recommended by the external engineers (and almost $2M in spend) had paybacks greater than 67 years and were not necessary to meet the desired goals.

Leading Facility Management Company

Retroficiency was asked to evaluate 3 buildings totaling 1.2M square feet. The goal was to test the ability of our platform to do high-level quick evaluations of multiple buildings. In addition, they wanted to calibrate the energy models on all three buildings to test the depth of the analysis and performance of the models.

To start, the facility management company was given online access to the Retroficiency platform and spent about 30 minutes entering high-level information about the buildings. Within 3 hours of submitting this information, the energy managers were sent an email notifying them that their initial reports were available. These reports showed combined annual savings opportunities of $883k at the 3 buildings � all with less than 6 year paybacks.

Next, the energy managers were able to access, evaluate, and change the inferred data on all of their buildings. After submitting these changes, the energy models were updated. Retroficiency then used 12 months of utility data to calibrate the models to ensure accuracy. The ECM database was again run against these models and new savings and cost numbers were produced.

The process from start to detailed output took 5 days and did not require site visits. The software found more than $2.5M in annual savings with all paybacks less than 6 years.

Board Of Directors