Founder’s Story

Travis Smith, a graduate of the Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Florida, envisioned an engineering career that focused on the complexity of large buildings and plants. His drive towards the complex led him to New York City. He worked at engineering firms for a handful of years, but was not satisfied with their approach and was getting burned out. Early on, Travis recognized the future was using data to drive the engineering space. Ultimately realizing his vision had outgrown the companies he had worked for he decided to start his own firm.

Due to the level of achievement Smith Engineering experienced, 5 years later Travis decided to start a second company and in 2016, BEP Analytics was formed. BEP is a hydrodynamic abbreviation for Best Efficiency Point yet succinctly describes the foundation of the company. BEP focuses more on using analytics to improve facilities operations, drive down energy costs, and reduce carbon emissions. BEP’s machine-learned economic asset dispatch saves customers like World Financial Center and UC Davis, tens of thousands of dollars daily.

Travis’ tenacity and passion for his work are just a couple of reasons he’s able to run two companies. Making existing facilities more dynamic, resilient, and efficient has also been an effective business model and pivotal in the success of both Smith Engineering and BEP Analytics. Travis is aware that a majority of infrastructure providers focus on new construction, even though existing infrastructure outnumbers new 100:1. During the beginning of COVID-19, many new construction projects had to halt their work, while Travis was busy working remotely on updating existing infrastructure.

Recent accomplishments:

Prior to the COVID pandemic, Travis was able to complete what at the time would have been a capstone project for many engineers with the successful project at the World Financial Center in NY.  The project was an $11MM project with a $4MM energy rebate. The team was able to reduce the energy demand of the site by 5MW and reduced carbon by roughly 3,000 tons of CO2e annually.  Besides the traditional engineering, the project included BEP Analytics’ Connected Services M&V screens to ensure optimal performance.

The work of engineers and building operators, is normally done in the shadows or basements of buildings and plants.  That changed for BEP Analytics and Travis when he was recognized for one of his latest projects on CBS News and was mentioned by the CEO of Carrier Corporation, Con Edison and the Urban Green Council.

The project was the optimization of One Court Square in Long Island City, NY a $5MM project with a $4.8MM energy rebate. Reducing the energy demand of the site by 1MW and reducing carbon by roughly 1,000 tons of CO2e annually.  The BEP Analytics team was able to implement a new Carrier i-Vu Building Automation System with optimized sequences and a complete graphics solution.

Like all markets there was an immediate pause due to the pandemic, but by 2021 that pause had shifted into an avalanche of opportunity. That growth has not slowed as we continue to support our service customers like University of Pennsylvania Health System at Princeton Medical Center and Savanna, as well as new expansion projects at local hospitals and universities.

While the growth of Smith Engineering has been a challenge and a blessing, the creation of an industry changing technology company with BEP Analytics is the fire that helps drive Travis every day.

Our sister company Smith Engineering