The Distance Between Zero and One

A couple of years ago, NYCHA* completed the first window heat pump pilots in New York City public housing — proof points more than anything else, evidence that this approach could work in real buildings with real residents. The data since has been encouraging enough that NYCHA is now expanding installations in their portfolio and NYSERDA has launched an incentive program to grow the market and bring more manufacturers in.

That arc was on my mind at the Building Energy Exchange room heat pump expo yesterday. There’s still plenty of skepticism — someone raised the fire escape problem, someone else worried about facade inspections. These aren’t fake concerns, but they’re not dealbreakers either. They’re edge cases that require different specs in some rooms, not reasons to abandon the approach. The skeptics who frame them as fatal flaws tend to have some stake in the status quo.

Those early pilots still matter, years later. The distance between zero and one is enormous — and the data from that one compounds over time into something that can move an entire market.

We’re thinking a lot about our own version of that right now. We have more users than ever and we’ve been shipping quickly — notes, questionnaires, in-app messaging, vendor matching — tools that could support a full project lifecycle in one place. But we haven’t closed the loop yet. No project has gone from scoping through procurement and implementation entirely on our platform.

We’ve tried. The early CPC Climate Friendly Homes program is the instructive example — even with consultants nominally required to use our software, we couldn’t get real buy-in. In retrospect, the reason is straightforward: we weren’t making their lives easier. A mandate isn’t enough if the tool isn’t solving the right problems for the people doing the work.

So the proof point we need has to come from users who genuinely want to run their work here — because we’re solving enough of their actual problems that it makes sense to. Once we have it, I think it compounds the same way those NYCHA pilots did. It becomes the thing we point to, it makes the next one easier, and it starts to answer the skeptics — some of whom, not coincidentally, have their own stake in the workflows we’d be replacing.

That’s the push right now: focusing on the right partners who are ready to go end-to-end with us and getting that first proof point on the board.

–Jason

*NYCHA is the New York City Housing Authority

Metrics

• Annual Run Rate: $3.43M

Development

• Bug Count (P-0 and P-1): 2
• Shipped this week:
  • Messaging & Inbox: Team conversations now support multiple recipient teams in a single thread; add teams to existing threads too; Vendor messages appear in the unified inbox; claim, reply, and reveal vendors directly from there; Feedback submissions now route into the team inbox
  • Questionnaires: Questionnaire builder is now linked from Program Settings; Questionnaire access is now permission-based (feature flag removed)
  • Public Map: Redesigned left panel with improved sorting and loading states; Mobile: map and selected pin stay visible when a detail panel is open; WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility improvements
  • Notifications: RFP vendor-match notifications now go to all team members, not just the primary contact; Phase-change notifications consolidated into the Phases settings tab
  • Labs (Early Access Program): Introduced “Labs” — opt in to try early-access features before general release; preset themes is the first available
  • Phased electrification chains correctly — heat pumps installed in earlier Scope-over-Time phases are no longer silently dropped when subsequent phases are applied
  • LL97 fine projections through 2050 now available in building search — all six compliance periods (2035–2050) surfaced, enabling filtering and ranking by projected penalty
  • AMEEP boiler rebates corrected — hot water and condensing boiler replacements now correctly show $0 (only steam-to-steam qualifies)
  • DHW measure stacking fixed — low-flow fixtures and pipe insulation no longer show phantom negative savings when stacked on a heat-pump water heater measure
  • Elevator data parse errors resolved — buildings with malformed elevator count values no longer return GraphQL errors

This Week’s Highs and Lows

• So many new features and codebase improvements! The NYCA public map and scope over time are really coming together! (JMB)

Any missing highlights? Please share in Discord comments.

On Deck for Next Week

• Another meeting with Willdan MFEEP folks–🤞 we see some progress on the Viewpoint integration and data sharing (JMB)
• Mike’s 360 (JMB)

Please Leave Feedback

Please note your reaction to this update in the Discord channel. It helps us to know what is resonating, what is unclear, etc. Thanks!

• What are your highlights / low-lights?
• Did we miss a highlight? Something else you want to react to?