“You have to break it down so that it can be understood by a third grader”

Martin Robertson is one of New York City’s most cele­brated facil­i­ties managers, known for slashing energy use in the energy-inten­sive build­ings he has managed. In 2023, he was named Green Worker of the Year by the Building Service Worker Awards, and his efforts have only ramped up since. Today, he over­sees oper­a­tions at 306 Gold Street, a 41-story, luxury condo with more than 300 units in Downtown Brooklyn where he’s on a mission to cut emis­sions by just about any means necessary.

Robertson manages a 12-person team, keeps the building’s systems running smoothly, and trains the next gener­a­tion of super­in­ten­dents through his work with the 32BJ chapter of the SEIU union. Skylight caught up with him the morning after he’d taken home two Climate Community Leader Excellence Awards from Logical Buildings for his 2024 emis­sions reduc­tions. We spoke with him about how other facil­i­ties managers and super­in­ten­dents can push for energy effi­ciency upgrades in their own build­ings, and what it takes to make progress stick.

This inter­view has been edited and condensed for clarity. 

Skylight: You’ve had expe­ri­ence managing both older and newer build­ings. What would you say the biggest differ­ence is between those projects, when it comes to energy effi­ciency in particular?

Martin Robertson: Huge differ­ence. Newer build­ings are built with the energy mech­a­nism that grades build­ings in mind. Older build­ings were not. So when we think about energy effi­ciency, partic­u­larly in an older building, you’re really looking at what it takes to upgrade that building, which can be very costly, because the older build­ings may not have infra­struc­ture. Whereas, when a newer building is built, they are already thinking about energy effi­ciency. They’re thinking about the require­ments that the city has for reducing carbon emissions. 

My building [306 Gold St] is consid­ered new. It’s close to 15 years old. But this is the oldest condo­minium in Downtown Brooklyn. My equip­ment is a lot larger, it costs a lot more to operate. Little things like that really do impact our effi­ciency, and my ability to stay on top of it.

I’m thinking about the building right across the street — the equip­ment they’re putting in, such as ERVs [Energy Recovery Ventilation systems], really go a long way to save energy, and they’re putting it in from the start. It is a chal­lenge and it is work to figure out how you can manip­u­late the systems that you have in place [instead].

Speaking of ERVs, when we went on a tour of your building, you mentioned that you were excited by the idea of an energy recovery system. First of all, what is this system and what are its benefits? 

An ERV essen­tially takes air that’s been condi­tioned — I want to use ​“condi­tioned” because it could be hot air, it could be cold air, depending on what season we’re in — and it pulls the temper­a­ture out of that air and then redis­trib­utes it. 

In most build­ings like mine, the hall­ways are supplied with 100% fresh air, meaning they’re pulling in all fresh air from outside, at what­ever temper­a­ture it is outside, so there’s what we call ​“posi­tive pres­sure” in the hall­ways. And then the exhaust [fans] in the bath­rooms and your kitchens suck condi­tioned air out, which is typi­cally around 70 degrees, so that’s ​“nega­tive pres­sure” in the apart­ments. That also helps to keep the smells and all of that stuff from commin­gling in the hall­ways, which nobody wants.

On a hot day, the ERV captures condi­tioned air from inside the building and uses it to pre-cool fresh air coming into the building, so the [HVAC] system doesn’t have to then work to drop it 30, or 40, or 50 degrees to get it down to the temper­a­ture that it needs to cool the building. The ERV is pulling the energy out; it’s still exhausting the actual air, it just takes the energy out of that air before it exhausts, and pre-condi­tioning the new air that’s coming in. It allows us to use energy that we’ve already exhausted — we’ve already spent money and resources on cooling that air, so we’re just reusing it instead of just dumping it.

So do you have an ERV system in your building? And if not, how do you go about proposing it, in your role as facil­i­ties manager? 

I would love to install one here, and we are actu­ally going to be getting a proposal to do that. But let’s just say that the cost of the project is, you know, maybe $600,000. Because the building is so big, I would say close to $150,000 is going to be spent on rigging [alone], because this equip­ment is not small. So that’s a huge expense, a lot of permits, a lot of time just to get the equip­ment there. So one of the trials that we’re going through now is figuring out: is there a way to find systems that are modular that can be broken up and put together? Are there oppor­tu­ni­ties to build some of these things on-site?

We’ll see if the board is able to raise the funds to do it, because then you also have to think about payback period and return on invest­ment. Sometimes with these effi­cien­cies, you’re more effi­cient, but the payback period is way out. And then it doesn’t always make sense [finan­cially]. While you’re reducing your [long-term] cost, you’re not saving a whole lot of money [overall]. So it helps on one end, but it may not help on the other.

And that’s always the chal­lenge. Think about it. I mean, yeah, we could be 100% effi­cient if we shut off all the elec­tricity. But then what kind of lifestyle would the resi­dents have, you know? We need to have comfort that prop­erly suits effi­ciency. So there is a give and take. It would be great to say, ​“We’ll shut off all elec­tricity when­ever most people are asleep,” but you have maybe 3% of resi­dents that are up and awake at 3:00 AM.

It’s funny that these lights would shut off at the exact moment when we’re talking about shut­ting off the elec­tricity. Are they motion-sensored?

Yeah. Little things like that — there’s a number of things in-house that we can help to reduce cost. Again, small things, but if nobody’s sitting here, why have the lights on? Of course, it’s lovely to come and walk into the room when the lights are on and the room is cool, but all of that comes at a cost. So where we can save a little bit, we try to.

Back to the deci­sion-making factor; I assume when you want to start a big project, you’re presenting a propo­si­tion to the condo board. How do you go into that conver­sa­tion? Do they just trust your judg­ment, no ques­tions asked, or do you have to advo­cate for your point of view?

I gather as much infor­ma­tion as possible. I don’t want to just present the board with, ​“Hey. This is a great idea. Let’s do it,” because they’ll be like, ​“Well, you might think it’s a great idea, but I don’t think it’s a great idea, because I don’t know what you’re talking about.” So it’s a process of explaining what it is that I’m asking for and really high­lighting the cost benefits.

I would say, unfor­tu­nately, it always comes down to the dollar. You could do pretty much anything under $200, $500 — that’s what­ever. But when you start getting into thou­sands of dollars and addi­tional energy costs and main­te­nance costs on this equip­ment, it really needs to make sense. And you have to spend the time to really break it down so that it can be under­stood by a third grader.

No disre­spect to a board or anybody else, but it needs to be simple. I’m doing this every day, but my board is not. They’re not engi­neers, most of them. (I’m actu­ally blessed to have one that is an engi­neer, but most times, board members are just owners.) They don’t under­stand the mechanics of a building and the oper­a­tion. They see their budget, and they want to know: How can we reduce this? How can we keep more money in the pockets of the other owners? And so I have to present them with ideas and ways to do that and explain to them the advan­tages, pros and cons, being very open and fair. I have to be educated on it because I am putting my name and cred­i­bility on the line. So there’s a lot of research that needs to be done.

It comes down to kind of pulling on the resources that are avail­able, running the ideas by various orga­ni­za­tions, getting input from them, and then being able to present a holistic plan to the board, one that they can digest. You don’t want to go so tech­nical. You really want to high­light mone­tary cost, time frame, up-front invest­ment. Those are the things they really want to know — what’s the ROI on this? When are we going to see a return?

What’s unfor­tu­nate, a lot of times is that we’ll show an ROI of, like, 15%, and it doesn’t resonate the same way, because people get caught up on the upfront cost. If you have this money sitting in an invest­ment firm, you’re not seeing anywhere near 15 – 20%. But because the upfront cost may be a hundred thou­sand dollars, board members start saying, ​“To get that, we might have to do an assess­ment. We’re going to drop our reserves.” And they just don’t want to bite off into it, even though years down the road, this would be saving you more than that hundred thou­sand dollars can ever earn you in your invest­ment. That’s the part where it can be discour­aging, but I try not to get discour­aged about it — I go into these projects and these recom­men­da­tions knowing that people are going to see it differ­ently, and I’m working at the behest of the board.

Switching gears a little bit, can you tell me a bit about the energy savings work that you’ve done?

It’s about educa­tion, first and fore­most: Educating resi­dents about the impacts of their use.

For any building, you come in and try to eval­uate the ​“low-hanging fruit,” where we can have the biggest impact for the least amount of cost. A lot of times this has dealt with lighting; a lot of build­ings have become hip to the impor­tance of LED [bulbs] versus every­thing else. My building has already done a lighting project, so now it’s, ​“What’s next?” 

Currently, I’m on this water campaign. Water is a big one, and it’s one that winds up costing the building a lot of money, and it doesn’t always repre­sent itself in a leak. Take ghost flushing, or phantom flushing — the toilet bowls that kick on in the middle of the night. It’s actu­ally often happening, the toilet is leaking into the commode and then that water is just going down the drain. That’s money that’s wasted, but because it doesn’t cause damage, a lot of people don’t see it. In fact, you’ll never see it unless you really monitor your water bill. And it’s a simple fix. So changing out flap­pers is one thing that we’ve done. 

In addi­tion to that, I spend my time educating resi­dents about what happens if they can wash their clothes overnight instead of during the day, or turning on the dish­washer later in the evening. All dish­washers now come with a timer. A lot of people don’t recog­nize it or use it, but that timer is there so that you can set the machine to start two hours after you put dishes in, later at night so that you’re not getting hit with the higher elec­tric rates. 

All of those things revolve around educating resi­dents, reminding them, and showing them the bene­fits of changing how they do what they do. 

I steer away from telling resi­dents to take shorter showers — that won’t go over well in New York City or even in the U.S. — but I person­ally have a European device in my shower that senses when the water comes on, and auto­mat­i­cally times how long I’ve been in there. I use that mainly for my wife because she would get in there and take a longer shower. It’s just a visual timer — it doesn’t ring an alarm — but when you visu­ally see it, you think, ​“Oh my gosh. I’ve been here fifteen minutes. What am I doing for fifteen minutes? I can’t be that dirty.” 

It sounds like many of the things that you describe when you talk about energy effi­ciency are ways to empower indi­vid­uals to just under­stand how much they’re using. On our tour, I was very impressed by how you orga­nized your trash room, so resi­dents know where things need to go and how to sepa­rate things out — so that the work of under­standing the building system doesn’t fall on them at that crit­ical step in the process of dealing with waste, and making the clean choice is the easiest path for them. 

That is absolutely what I believe in. I believe in empow­ering my team and empow­ering resi­dents through educa­tion. Naturally, people want to do the right thing — I don’t ever approach it like people want to waste, but I think we don’t under­stand how much we waste. 

We use signage — pictures speak a thou­sand words. Our room is set up very clearly with signage, with pictures, with notices that go out peri­od­i­cally about how to prop­erly recycle, so they have the infor­ma­tion, as well as ensuring that it’s prop­erly repre­sented in the compactor room, so when people go in, there’s no ques­tion [of where items go.] So that people don’t have to get frus­trated with how to recycle – because recy­cling can be very frus­trating. ​“Is this plastic recy­clable? Is this not?” 

But we want to recycle as much as possible, and make it as simple as possible for you, and we’ll handle it from there. 

Same thing with ghost flushing. People hear these sounds all the time, and when I bring it up, they’ll say, ​‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about that since three months ago.” Never got around to it because it’s not impacting them, they’re not seeing it. 

But as soon as you say, ​“Hey, this is what might be happening in your toilet, please check it out,” they’ll say, ​“Oh, yeah, Martin. Here it is.” We got thirty, forty main­te­nance requests on ghost flushing just by pushing out information. 

I’m curious what convinced you that decar­boniza­tion was worth the effort in the first place and how you see your­self and your role in the context of the city’s climate goals.

For me, it’s defi­nitely very personal. I believe that our planet is ours on loan, not to own. That’s kind of a saying I’ve adapted, and I live by it.

I believe that we have a respon­si­bility towards the next gener­a­tion. Because of that, I really despise igno­rance and I despise waste. In this envi­ron­ment, there’s no reason for us to be igno­rant. It’s super selfish to have waste. 

I love improving my build­ings. I love being able to show my board that we’ve been able to save money in various areas. One of the reasons I teach for the union is I love being able to share and empower super­in­ten­dents who may not feel that they have the same amount of support that I may have been able to muster with my boards at their build­ings — I love showing them how they can gain that support, how they can gain that trust. And a lot of it comes from you being educated your­self about what’s going on so that they can put the weight of their deci­sion-making behind the recom­men­da­tions that you’re doing — empow­ering them with the knowl­edge, and the skill set to do it.

Honestly, I think I got inter­ested in this when I was educated by my wife about the food co-op. Before we got married, she was a member.

Which co-op?

Park Slope.

That’ll get you into saving the world for sure. How did it impact your outlook?

She was a member of the food co-op, and she said, ​“Well, we’re married now, so you have to be a member of the food co-op, too.” I was like, ​“I’m not working for free. What are you talking about? I don’t have time for this. I’m super busy.” Right? But then I go there, and I’m working, and just the conver­sa­tion, the feel, the commu­nity, the idea and the concept was just mind-blowing. Like, this is what the defi­n­i­tion of commu­nity is. And then, in terms of my faith as a Christian, I was like, ​“Okay. This is what actu­ally doing the work looks like.” But it doesn’t have to be confined to faith or reli­gion — you don’t have to put it in a box. It’s about caring for one another, caring about the commu­nity, and the uplifting of the commu­nity uplifts you. Having that infor­ma­tion makes me want to imple­ment its concepts [in other parts of my life,] to make sure that I’m doing my part. 

I also have a very strong feeling about my role as a facil­i­ties manager — I 100% believe that my job is as impor­tant as a fire­fighter, as a police officer. I tell my team, if we let some­body up in the building and we haven’t prop­erly vetted them, that could be the differ­ence between life and death for that person. 

And that [sense of duty] over­flows into what impact my building is having on the environment. 

For people just starting out on this process who are in similar roles to you, what is a good first step to take if they’re not ready for major retrofits?

I think there should be regu­la­tion. The city should mandate that you have a basic super­in­ten­dent course to know how to prop­erly run your building. People are going to kill me for this, but I think there should be regu­la­tion in New York City for resi­dent managers, for super­in­ten­dents. Typically, what happens is you go from being a porter to a handyman, from a handyman to a super. But the differ­ence between the role of a handyman and a super is so vast that you set your perfect handyman up for failure when you just throw them into a super­in­ten­dent posi­tion. You’re not equipped to be a super just because you’ve been a handyman. That’s just the bottom line. 

I believe that all supers, like in other posi­tions, should have to go through some sort of super­in­ten­dent training. For the union, it’s MFBO (Multifamily Building Operator) or MFBA (Multifamily Building Analyst). There’s also a GPRO O&M, which is spon­sored by Urban Green. What those courses do is they share a basic overview, showing you how to deal with indoor envi­ron­mental quality, indoor air quality, HVAC, lighting, elec­trical. It doesn’t delve deep into it, but it’s every­thing a super needs to know, as well as simple steps that you can take to improve the health and the energy usage of your building. Very simple things. You learn elec­trical. You learn how to change out, you know, switches so that they’re sensor based. You know, learn how to put timers on things and where you should put timers. You learn where you should put a sensor, where you should not put a sensor. 

I don’t have any sensors in my mechan­ical room. You shouldn’t. Somebody could be under a machine and the lights go off, and now they’re stuck under the equip­ment. So sensors are good, but you don’t want a sensor everywhere. 

So the first step, I think, for any super is, again, educa­tion — learning what you should and should not do. These courses benefit the building. They benefit the super­in­ten­dent. They benefit the manage­ment company. They benefit the board. They benefit the resi­dents. So I don’t under­stand why more prop­erty managers and boards are not screaming for this, espe­cially if they’re in the union, because it’s free.

If you’re oper­ating a building that’s not in the union, YouTube University is great. Let’s be real — we are blessed to be in an envi­ron­ment in a time where you can liter­ally go online and pretty much learn the basics of anything. It doesn’t take a lot of time, and it really would help to move the process forward — because the more people know, the better they will be at getting things done, and moving these things forward.