Roofing Road Trip with Heidi - Ashley Cooper- PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of an interview with Ashley Cooper with Tremco. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast here. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Hello, this is Heidi Ellsworth, partner with RoofersCoffeeShop®, here again for a Roofing Road Trip with Heidi podcast. I am so happy today to welcome Ashley Cooper, the product manager for Knovi Monitoring Technologies, part of Tremco to share with us what's happening on the technology front. And in the last month, I had the pleasure of sitting with Ashley, and really getting to know her. So, it was a roofing road trip, we were there together in Cleveland, but now we're talking on the phone to give all of you a little bit of insight on some really amazing technology that's happening on the roof. So Ashley, welcome to the Roofing Road Trips podcast.

Ashley Cooper: Thank you so much for having me.

Heidi Ellsworth: This is such interesting stuff, and we're really lucky to be working with Tremco every day, and WTI also to see this kind of technology come in, and really start being a part of Tremco warranties, and of the Tremco offerings is pretty exciting. You must be, it's kind of fun for you as a product manager, I bet.

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. I've spent the last several years working in the roofing industry, and now being able to offer a product to clients that can really help them be proactive in managing their roofs, as opposed to being reactive, is super exciting. And especially here at Tremco being exclusive distributor of this exciting new product, it really doesn't get any better.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is great. And Ashley, before we get started more on Knovi and all of that, why don't you tell our audience just a little bit about yourself. I know you've worked in roofing like you just said, but maybe just the fact that you live in Canada, and maybe give our audience a little bit more information about you.

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. So I started my journey in the commercial construction industry over eight years ago, and prior to joining the Tremco team, I was actually working for the manufacturer of this product. And prior to that, I was working for a national roofing company as a service account manager. And when the manufacturer came to me with this opportunity to act as director of their company that they were trying to form with this really exciting new product, I couldn't help but be interested. Working as a service account manager, I saw a common issue across the board, and that was clogged rooftop drains. So being able to offer our clients a solution, as I mentioned earlier, to proactively monitor their roofs, especially when it comes to their drain situation, it was a no brainer for me. I could stay in an industry that I loved. It definitely helped cut down on my travel schedule, and I was able to offer a solution to our customers and our clients. 

So it's been really exciting over the past few months. I got to know the Tremco family actually quite well. When I worked for the national roofing company, I was helping to manage their accounts, and Tremco really became part of who I was, and it was a very natural transition to join the Tremco family. So it's again, as I mentioned, a really exciting product and being able to offer our clients something that helps them proactively manage their roof is so exciting. And here in Canada especially, we have extreme weather conditions, and I can just note that last week we were about 10 centimeters, so I'm not sure what that is in inches, but we were buried in snow, and today it's in the pluses, the sun is shining, and there's not a speck of snow on the ground. So again, monitoring those drains and with the thaw, and obviously causing the excess water on the roofs and around the drains, the smart drain sensors have been going off across the Ontario and Canada past week.

Heidi Ellsworth: Wow. You know what, I think you sent the snow our way because on the West coast is supposed to get a big amount of snow, and we're already seeing it falling, and on the ground, and so I know there are a lot of flat roofs around this area that wish they were also having some of your rooftop drains. So let's get into that. Let's start. But first of all, I would love to know, I think on the audience would too, is that the name of this monitoring technology is so cool. Knovi monitoring technologies. Can you kind of tell us a little bit about how you came up with that name, Knovi?

Ashley Cooper: Yeah, absolutely. So we kind of struggled with it to be honest with you. And after sitting down as a team, we collectively decided let's pick a name, and Knovi actually spelled N-O-V-I is Latin for being in the know. We added the K, because essentially Knovi monitoring technology is being in the know of your roof.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is very cool and very creative. I love it. I love that kind of stuff. So one of the first products that you're introducing is, as you've already noted, is Smart Drain Rooftop Monitoring Sensor, and it's going to be in conjunction with the Knovi monitoring technology. But first of all, can you tell us a little bit more about how this drain, the smart drain, works?

Ashley Cooper:  Absolutely. So the smart drain sensor is attached to your rooftop drains, and it detects rising water levels around the drains, and sends automatic alerts through our smart gateway. So it's a monitoring service, essentially, for your rooftop, and you will receive an either email notification, or text notification pinpointing exactly which roof drain has been troubled by the rising water. So in that email, or text message, you will receive a Google image where we placed our GPS-activated smart drain sensors and the sensor that's been affected by the rising water levels will appear as red. So the cool part about this is you can actually just fire that email or text message off to your building maintenance provider, your service contractor, and they will have the information right at their fingertips that is pinpointed to the exact drain.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is so cool, and that's going to save, I mean, talk about reducing risk on the roof. That is going to save some people's inventories, because once it floods on the roof, then you have all kinds of damage that goes on, not only just to the roof and the insulation, but obviously down into whatever's below it.

Ashley Cooper: Yeah. I mean, because of my experience working on the service side of things, I've seen roof drains be clogged and go unnoticed for weeks, even months at a time, and the damage goes from being something minor, do something completely major. I've even honestly, here in Canada, seen roofs collapse due to clogged roof drains. Just that excess water, and the weight of water, which people don't realize it can be very catastrophic to your roof.

Heidi Ellsworth: It can. This is going to save a lot of damage that it's going to really help people with their, with their overall risks.

Ashley Cooper: It will.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah.

Ashley Cooper: I just wanted to elaborate on that. So not only is it just the risk, it's the being proactive, and being able to be in the notification, allowing your contractors to pinpoint those troubled roof areas in turn will definitely save you money. I've been in situations where I've had a facilities manager or a property manager call me and say, "I've got a clogged drain. Please send a crew over to our building to have a look at it." Well, by the time our crew gets to site, it's okay. The property manager, or the facilities manager is no longer there. They moved on to another site, and then we spend an hour plus up on the rooftop trying to figure out which drain is clogged, or where the issue is coming from. So this way, we push out that notification pinpointing exactly which drain has been affected, and that's really in turn, that saves you money. You're not going to spend an hour, an hour plus up on the roof trying to figure out which drain it is. You have the information right at your fingertips.

Heidi Ellsworth: That's excellent. That will save a huge amount of time for all the repair, whether it's facility managers, or a national service account.

Ashley Cooper: Yeah.

Heidi Ellsworth: One of the things that we talked about was that for every 20 year Tremco warranty, they're going to get a Knovi monitoring smart drain monitor. How is that going to work?

Ashley Cooper: So we're super excited about this, actually. So with all of our 20 year warranties that are 20,000 square feet or larger, they will qualify for a no-charge Knovi monitoring technology introductory package. So what that means to our clients, at absolutely no charge, they will receive two smart drain sensors, one smart gateway, and one year of monitoring service at absolutely no charge. So how it works is our sensors that are located on the rooftop, they're battery operated, so completely wireless, our gateway gets plugged into a mechanical room. And then obviously the monitoring services are very similar to a wireless network, or a mobile device account. So we run on wireless because it's a little more dependable than the traditional wifi, and the neat part about our gateways is they're actually equipped with a battery backup. So let's say you get an outrageous, snowstorm, rainstorm, and power's down at your building, the battery backup will actually keep your sensors running.

Heidi Ellsworth: Wow. Wow. So again, really kind of looking at all parts of this, making sure that that roof is protected through not only the warranty, but the system that you set up, the batteries, the backups. That's great. That's going to be amazing for facility managers.

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. And we are the only distributor of this product, and there's absolutely no competition in the market space. So being able to offer our clients something so unique, I think is really going to be a value add for Tremco.

Heidi Ellsworth: Definitely. Definitely. So let's talk a little bit about the software. I know you've already kind of told us a little bit about that, but maybe just go a little bit more in depth about the actual software, because I understand that that software is going to be good even when there isn't a problem with the drain, you're going to be able to get some notifications, some alerts on service, some different things. Can you tell us a little bit more how that works?

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. So here at Tremco we have a MyOLI platform, and MyOLI is actually a portal that allows our customers to store information about their roof, to store roof drawings, and now with the ability to have the Knovi monitoring technology tab, this allows our customers, our clients to manage their rooftops from a sensor perspective. So when they log into their my Ali platform now, they'll see the Knovi monitoring technology tab. They'll be able to click on it, there'll be able to see a Google image of their roof and the sensor locations on the roof. They'll be able to check the history of their sensors. So when it comes to cost planning, at the end of the year, you could go into your Knovi monitoring tab and look and see, okay, I've had 15 issues with this drain, we might want to look at replacement, or perhaps it's caused greater damage to the roof, and we should take a deeper look at it. So it's really neat from a software perspective to have that Knovi monitoring technology tab, but outside of just the sensors that are placed on your rooftop, we have the ability to add so much other valuable information to our database that will populate automatic reminders for you, such as your preventative maintenance schedule, your roof warranty. So we can actually upload your roof information, and on an annual basis, send you a contact reminding you that your roof warranty is going to expire in one, two, three, or four years. Likewise, we can do the same for the preventative maintenance schedule. We can set you up to receive a notification in the spring, and in the fall. It takes the onus really out of your hands having to remember these things. We upload it, it's automatically populated. And this is in addition to the reminders that will be generated by the sensors themselves. So the sensors will notify you when your monitoring subscription is due for renewal. As I mentioned earlier, it runs on an annual basis, so in 11 months you'll get a notification you're due for your subscription renewal. We also send out battery depletion reminders. So the batteries themselves have a lifespan of about one year in the sensors on the rooftop, that at 11 months, again we send out a reminder advising you, reminder to come up here and change your batteries, and we suggest for that just add a line item to your preventative maintenance, or your annual maintenance with your service contractor. Batteries are very inexpensive and [inaudible 00:14:45] them out. So it's really a great way, in all essences, to manage your roof from our MyOLI system right into your Knovi monitoring tab

Heidi Ellsworth: That, wow. Now, just to make sure that we covered that too, the timestamps. When there's problems with the drains, it actually timestamps what's going on, too. So you can track a lot of that, just knowing exactly when something happened, or when somebody did something with that drain on the roof. Is that right?

Ashley Cooper:  Absolutely. And again, that stems back to the point that I made earlier about being able to save time and money on your roof. So that's really valuable information, being able to know when the drain was set off, when the issue happened. So definitely it's a cost saving mechanism for our customers.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, great. And great data. And I'm also just really to be able for facility managers to explain what's happening to their senior management, it makes a huge difference for those building owners. And really from the side of a contractor, this is something that as they are working on the roof, working with Tremco and WTI, they can incorporate this into their cells. They can incorporate it into their service program. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity to be able to bring this kind of technology to the roof.

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. The opportunities with these sensors, and with the technology, even the software component, they're limitless. And being able to offer this, yes, it's a Tremco product, and it's part of our product family. But at the same time we will put this technology on absolutely any type of roofing membrane. So it's not to say that because you don't have a Tremco roof that we cannot install this technology. It doesn't have to be a no charge with our 20 year warranty. If you actually want to come to Tremco, and just purchase the technology, absolutely. We can sell it to you. We can install it for you. We'll be working with WTI to do installation, but we'll also be working with any third party Tremco certified applicator as well. So it's exciting opportunity. It's extremely cost effective. If you think about it's price point versus being proactive and managing your roof, as opposed to being reactive, there's so many benefits.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, that's cool. And all that pricing, basically people can kind of look on your website, the tremcoroofing.com/knovimonitoring and get a lot of that kind of information. And we'll have this on the Roofer's Coffee Shop too, so people can find it easily in the tremco directory. But a lot of that information, because it's going to change different systems, and how much you do, but that is going to be available to at least get to the right people, and talk to you about that, right Ashley?

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. So the best way, if you're interested in receiving any kind of pricing, would be to reach out to your local Tremco representative, and they would be able to provide you with specialized pricing. We need to remember that we wouldn't necessarily affix these sensors to absolutely every drain on a rooftop, we'd be looking for ponding areas, troubled roof areas, lower lying roof areas, or older roof areas. But definitely again, a great mechanism to proactively monitor your rooftop.

Heidi Ellsworth: Excellent. Now you and I had talked about, when we were in Cleveland visiting, we talked a little bit about the fact that in Canada, Knovi, which is under the Guardian brand, is actually able to talk to building owners about using the system, and possibly getting discounts on their insurance rates.

Ashley Cooper: Yes-

Heidi Ellsworth: Is that... For folks in Canada, talk a little bit about that, and maybe if there's any possibilities of that coming to the States.

Ashley Cooper: Yeah. So I've been investigating it in the US a little bit more since you and I last met, but I do know for a fact that here in Canada, so one of the number one claim items for insurance brokers here in Canada is water through the roof. So actually we've had a lot of our clients who are installing our smart drain technology onto the rooftop reach out to their insurance provider, and they've actually been receiving an annual premium reduction based on the fact that they now have a loss prevention mechanism on their rooftop. So I can confirm that definitely here in Canada that is factual. We're still working on it for the US. Things tend to vary quite differently between the US and Canada, but I'm hopeful we would end up with the same results in the US, as well.

Heidi Ellsworth: Wow, that'd be great. That'd be great. So let's just chat a little bit about some future technologies, because I know that your team is working on a lot of new stuff, including ways to measure snow loads, and perimeter safety. So maybe you can share some of those futuristic products that will be following up the smart drain.

Ashley Cooper: Absolutely. So the way that I reference the roofing industry is it's always been something that's kind of archaic. And if you think about our homes, we now have smart outfitted our homes. We have everything from control for home automation, to Ring doorbell systems, and it seems that we often just forget about our roots. So now I reference it, it's like taking technology and adding it to our rooftop. It's smart outfitting the exterior of our building, and not just the interior of our building. So we're at the tip of the iceberg with this technology. We looked at the drain situation and thought, "You know what? This is something that we need an immediate solution for." Because we saw, time and time again, that clogged roof drains were becoming a catastrophic problem. So we're starting with the smart drain system. It ties you into the smart gateway, the monitoring service, and the MyOLI platform. But the exciting thing is we've got a lot of new sensors that we'll be introducing to the marketplace over the next year, plus. And with the new sensor technology you can just plug and play right into your existing gateway. One of the really exciting technologies we're hoping to release sometime next year is our smart beam technology. And what that is an infrared beam that goes around the perimeter of your rooftop, and every time that it's tripped, it's going to similarly send you a timestamped email, which would be a Google image advising you exactly where that is beam was broken. Now, a bird won't trip the alarm system, or the infrared beams. It's load bearing. So you're not going to get a notification every time a bird goes through the beam. And the neat part about it is we also have the snow beam, and here in Canada we do tend to get quite a lot of snow. So what you can actually do with our snow beam, is you can set that infrared beam that when your snow hits a certain level, it will send you a notification, oh, come up here, we now need to do some snow removal. So those are just two of the technologies that we will be releasing at some point in 2020, but as I mentioned, the smart drain was a no brainer, and definitely something that our industry needed. So we started here, but I foresee over the next year plus, we'll really see our sensor line grow.

Heidi Ellsworth: That is great. You know technology is so important to the future of the roofing industry, and what you are doing, Ashley, and what Tremco is doing with the Knovi monitoring technologies, it's just thought leadership. It's progressive, it's really going to solve a lot of problems for building owners, and facility managers, and create a lot of opportunities for roofing contractors too. So I have to tell you, to me this is very exciting, and I really appreciate you sharing all this information. I think we do need to have, some of our contractors are probably wondering, how can I do this, and how can I be a part of it? They're going to be as excited as you and I are. And so you and I just talked about it, and it's a matter of those, our contractors, everybody's listening who's interested in this. Please go to the Tremco site and look for your rep locator. So your sales representative locator at tremco.com, and on there you'll be able to then put a call in, or an email in to talk to your local representative from Tremco, and find out how you can be involved with this. And there is a lot of great stuff not happening just right now, but coming up as Ashley's already shared. So Ashley, anything else on Knovi, or anything coming up in 2020?

Ashley Cooper: No, I just thank you so much for the time, I'm really excited about this. Tremco has always been an industry leader, and it naturally makes sense that they're now bringing technology to our rooftops. So really excited to be working with the Tremco team, and hopefully all of you as well, and growing this Knovi monitoring technology brand right across North America. So thank you, Heidi, so much for your time and really, again, just excited about this opportunity and to work with all of you very soon.

Heidi Ellsworth: Ashley, thank you. We are too. We love working with Tremco, we love having them on Roofer's Coffee Shop. So I really encourage everyone to go to the directory, the Tremco directory on rooferscoffeeshop.com, and you'll be able to learn more about Knovi. We'll be having blogs and updates on this new technology as it rolls out. And I would really encourage everyone also to continue to listen to the podcast. We have our Roofing Road Trips with Heidi podcast, which is today. We also have Stories From the Roof. We have partner podcasts, we have a lot of ways to learn through our RLW read, listen, watch initiative, and we invite all of you to join us. So again, Ashley, thank you so much and thank all of you in the audience on this podcast for listening. Have a great day.