NexusCon 2026 is almost here! As the connected buildings community heads to Detroit, the Aptitude team is looking forward to sharing practical lessons from the field and joining conversations about where the industry is headed. Here’s your guide to where you can find us at this year’s show.
Beyond the conference sessions, Aptitude is bringing connected building technology to the NexusCon Demo Stage. At 6:30 p.m. on October 5, the team will demonstrate how an Autodesk Tandem digital twin can help streamline VAV troubleshooting, offering a practical look at how digital building information can be put to work.
Jacob Jackson, Senior Design Manager, will present “Integration Failed Before Install: Fixing Design-Phase Coordination for Smart Buildings” during the Intent, Intact session on October 6, from 9:30–11 a.m.
Most conversations about system integration focus on what happens during installation and commissioning. In this session, Jackson will explore a different reality: many integration failures are baked into the project during design.
Drawing on real-world project experience from the general contractor perspective, Jackson will unpack some of the most common coordination gaps that derail smart building initiatives, including integration requirements that aren’t reflected in MEP drawings, sequences developed without a clear data strategy, and unclear ownership between trades.
Attendees will learn practical strategies for introducing integration checkpoints during design, aligning data and sequence requirements earlier in the process, and defining responsibilities before construction begins.
Through project examples and lessons learned, this session will provide actionable takeaways that owners, designers, contractors, and technology professionals can use to reduce risk, avoid costly surprises, and set projects up for successful integration.
On October 6 from 1:15–2:45 p.m., join Derek Seitz, Operations Director, Emory Burch, Senior VDC Manager, and Jacob
McDonald, Digital Delivery Engineer, for “Same Asset. One Name. Every System.”
A building may already have plenty of asset data, but that doesn’t mean the data is organized in a way that supports operations. The same piece of equipment can have different names across the BAS, CMMS, digital twin and other systems, leaving teams to manually determine which records belong to the same asset. Derek Seitz, Emory Burch and Jacob McDonald will explore how a consistent asset identity can help solve that problem.
Using lessons from Aptitude’s own work, the team will show how asset naming can become part of the construction process rather than a cleanup exercise at the end. Their approach starts by identifying assets early, creating a naming structure that works for both people and systems, and maintaining that structure through commissioning.
For owners, the takeaway is straightforward: establish a unified asset registry, make systems traceable back to the same record, and put someone in charge of maintaining that information through handoff and beyond. The goal isn’t simply better data. It is creating information operators can trust and use from day one.
Whether the conversation is about creating a single source of truth for building assets or preventing integration gaps before construction begins, both sessions come back to a common idea: successful smart buildings start with better planning and coordination.
