Lucas Nahrgang

## Key Points - Principal at RDH Building Science (200-500 employees), been there 11 years - Engineering consultancy focused on climate-responsive, low-carbon, energy-efficient solutions across North America - Energy model of a building costs ~$40k; $15k of that is rebuilding a BIM model in their analysis software - They receive BIM models but must reconstruct in eQuest (30+ year old DOE-2 based software) or OpenStudio — no interoperability - Had an intern build a Revit-to-SketchUp workflow in Python to try to fix data loss in IFC exports ## Pain Points Mentioned - Disconnected tooling: Rhino for BIM modeling doesn't interplay with energy analysis tools - IFC exports from Revit lose crucial data, parametric intelligence, and fidelity — geometry may look right but underlying information is corrupted - $15k per project wasted on manual model reconstruction - Most architects know Python and write scripts to glue tools together — a sign of how broken interoperability is ## Product Feedback - Nugget: 80-85% of 2050 building stock is already built — making sense of the existing physical world will have the biggest impact - Suggestion: go after design-build shops, especially hotel builders - Mentioned drywall robots in data centers as an emerging trend - Energy modeling is a niche but the BIM-to-analysis pipeline problem is universal across building science