Smart home for schools? Las Vegas-based company puts campuses on autopilot

A godsend.

That’s what Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada CEO Andy Bischel called Kohost — a smart building platform that unifies all facility systems, regardless of its original hardware, and runs them on one dashboard for their clients.

With more than 200 integrations, the Las Vegas-based company ties together cameras, access control, alarms, emergency alerts, lighting, public address system, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) and more, so they work and automate as one.

Kohost, which caters to schools, after-school programs and nonprofits, also offers a facilities concierge service and smart ticketing system. Acting as an outsourced director of facilities, the additional Kohost service handles vendors, contracts, billing and costs for those clients.

“We’re taking a headache off the administrator’s plate and putting more dollars and staff hours to their actual mission and helping the kids instead of managing a facility,” said Ethan Fridman, Kohost’s head of business development.

The platform is now serving 135 campuses, including all 16 Boys & Girls Clubs of Southern Nevada. In a case study of four Boys & Girls Clubs, Kohost helped reduce the HVAC runtime by 30 percent, delivering more than $1 million in value while eliminating the need for a facility maintenance team.

“We’re in the youth development space. We’re not in the building maintenance space,” Bischel said at the Andre Agassi Boys & Girls Club. “The more you can stay in your core competency, the more efficient you are.

“These are big, big buildings. We have the Reynolds Club, which is 65,000 feet. And we have the most destructive clientele.”

Bischel laughed after that last comment about the rambunctious kids that frequent his clubs, but he is seriously grateful for the safety and security provided by Kohost, which was paid for by a donor.

“The two elements that we always have to have are safe and fun,” he said. “Safe first, and then we want to have fun. So it was really having an opportunity to kind of double down on the safe side.

“Our facilities are big and you’ve got kids running all over. So having defined programming spaces that are secure all the time is a big element. We can’t do all the other things if our facilities aren’t in a position to provide that safe and fun space.”

SOS/emergency alerts

Kohost features a digital panic button that is accessible to all staff via smartphone. The automated building response instantly locks doors, triggers alarms, sends mass notifications to all staff and coordinates a campus-wide emergency response.

“The SOS system is part of the system that we hope is never used,” Fridman said. “But in an emergency response that the staff could set up, we want the doors to lock in a suspicious person alert. We want the lights to turn on or off. We want the evacuation plans to go on TVs. We want the PA system to play an automated message so everybody knows what’s going on. We want all these people to get a text. And that’s all set up beforehand. So now, one click of a button does 13 different activities.”

Bischel likes the fact that every member of the staff can lock down the entire building in the case of an emergency by simply pressing a button on their phone. So does Nicole Bisnar, assistant principal at Pinecrest (Academy) Inspirada, another Kohost client.

“For us, as a school, first and foremost is the safety and security of our students,” she said. “So there’s definitely that added layer of security to the building. You can lock and unlock things remotely. As an administrator, I can put the entire building into lockdown if I need to. And in this day and age, that’s obviously a concern.”

After Pinecrest Inspirada fully integrated their system with Kohost, Bisnar said the charter school has seen a 10 percent reduction in overall kilowatt-hour usage compared to the same month in 2025.

“Very exciting to see the fruit of the labor,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier with both the system and the Kohost team. The convenience of everything. It’s kind of a one-stop shop for everything. I can control my entire building from one platform.”

‘Puts building on autopilot’

The company was co-founded in 2018 by Mark Day, a Cimarron-Memorial graduate, and Ian Rogers, a Meadows School and UNLV graduate who is Kohost’s chief technology officer and builds all the software. Fridman also is a partner in the company and a Meadows and USC graduate.

Fittingly, The Meadows School was their 100th client.

“We could not be prouder of Meadows alumni Ethan and Ian and the innovative work they are doing through Kohost,” said Joe Coughlin, the K-12 private school’s director of school safety and operations. “Ethan and Ian have been exceptional partners — collaborative, thoughtful and deeply committed to strengthening the platform in ways that directly support educational programs.”

Kohost expects to expand to 160 campuses by the end of the summer. The majority are in Southern Nevada but the platform also serves campuses in Reno, Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas.

The annual cost for the full integrated package is $7,500, and the annual cost for the facilities concierge service is $6,000.

Fridman noted the 30 percent savings in raw kilowatt consumption at the Boys & Girls Clubs year over year covered the cost of Kohost.

“So Kohost paid for itself, plus some,” he said. “For a full facilities, A-to-Z solution that becomes more proactive than any human can be. You’re giving back hours and hours of staff time to focus on the mission and the kids.”

The smart ticketing system for the concierge service ensures that every request is routed to the right person.

“When vendors are involved, we’re getting tickets done in under 4.5 days. That’s our average when vendors have to be called out,” Fridman said. “The facilities concierge has been a massive hit, and then all the costs come down for all of our clients because we’re able to negotiate bulk pricing for everybody.

“We’re bidding out hundreds of vendors a year to make sure that we’re constantly optimizing the vendors.”

The setup process for Kohost starts with a needs assessment.

“We go walk the site, figure out what they need, what their budget is and figure out the scope. Then we help them pick systems that are not only going to work with the software but also work for them without the software,” Rogers said. “We’re that layer on top that really makes everything efficient and work together. It puts the building on autopilot. That’s what our software does.

“We figure it out so that it’s as easy as pushing a button.”