A narrow practice, kept deliberately.

The firm’s advisory line is intentionally small: building intelligence and energy performance, for owners and developers of American buildings, from Miami. It is continued from the firm’s origins in analytics and kept because the work compounds — every engagement sharpens the group’s wider programme, and the programme sharpens every engagement.

Scope

• Building performance and energy diagnostics, with measurement and verification aligned to IPMVP — savings are measured against an agreed baseline, not asserted.
• Edge-intelligence readiness: siting, thermal and power budgeting, and network segregation for systems that run on the premises they serve.
• Owner-side technology governance: vendor selection, substitutability assessment, and data rights — the owner’s interests, argued from the owner’s side of the table.

Method

Three disciplines run through the work. Measurement first: performance claims are verified or they are not made. Substitutability, honestly stated: every layer of a specified system is classified by how readily it could be replaced — swapped, re-procured, or re-ported — and represented to the client exactly as it is. Data minimalism: systems are specified to collect the least necessary, because what is never collected cannot leak, cannot be demanded, and never needs defending.

Where the methods come from

The practice draws its engineering from Pontessera Group’s programme in Southeast Asia, where a first large-residential deployment in Phnom Penh is in preparation for 2027: thermal siting in tropical conditions, custody governance for field hardware, and locally run intelligence that never leaves the building. American clients get methods that have been specified, priced, and argued over in harder conditions than most American buildings present.

Engagement

The practice takes few engagements, by referral, and does not advertise. Correspondence: thomas@pontessera.com.