Building Efficiency Podcast

Brodie Boland grew up in the mountains outside Calgary, left university for three years to lead the global student organization AIESEC, and spent about fifteen years at McKinsey & Company helping real-estate and infrastructure investors decarbonize their portfolios — "boardroom to boiler room." Today he’s co-founder and CEO of Upgraid, a building-intelligence platform that sizes up almost any building in North America from satellite, permitting, and weather data before an ESCO ever walks in the door.

In this conversation with Jim Schafer, Brodie makes the case that the ESCO industry has an opportunity to grow the pie, not just divide it. Deferred maintenance is piling up across the MUSH market, energy constraints are raising the value of efficiency, and the real bottleneck is speed: there’s going to be more work than the industry can do. He explains how AI can compress the expensive pre-sale phase of an energy performance contract, why his early customers had to relearn how they sell, and why Upgraid leans on purpose-built models instead of large language models. Along the way: what made a McKinsey candidate memorable, an apartment in Kyiv in December 2004, and the Signature Four.

In this episode:

- Calgary, the mountains, and three years leading AIESEC

- Colombo, the 2004 tsunami, and Kyiv during the Orange Revolution

- Fifteen years at McKinsey: real estate, sustainability, and "boardroom to boiler room"

- What made a McKinsey candidate memorable — and why the spark matters

- What Upgraid does: building intelligence from satellites, permits, and weather data

- How ESCOs use it to target, prepare, accelerate feasibility, and propose

- ESCO skepticism, and a "tale of two worlds"

- Qualifying prospects and training new sales hires

- Where the models fall short: process loads

- Growth, not zero-sum: why the ESCO market can expand

- Compressing pre-sale costs and shortening sales cycles

- Purpose-built AI vs. large language models

- The Signature Four

Guest: Brodie Boland — https://www.linkedin.com/in/brodie-boland-590354/

Host: Jim Schafer · Nenni & Associates

Ryan Baker's first job in the energy business was filing paperwork. Sixteen years later he's a senior business development engineer at Ascendant Facility Partners — a regional ESCO spun out of the BFW/Marcum Engineering family in Paducah, Kentucky — and he's spent the years in between as a project manager, a lead engineer, and a sales engineer on everything from Navy work in the Florida Panhandle to landfill gas and cogeneration.

In this conversation with Jim Schafer, Ryan explains what “a refreshing conversation” means to a school superintendent: an engineering-first plan that fits the district's five-, ten-, and fifteen-year horizon instead of a one-off project that looks good on paper. He's candid that the low-hanging fruit is gone — LEDs no longer carry a project — and walks through what fills the gap now, from lighting controls to design-build to real-time meter data. The two also dig into hiring: what a clearly defined career path actually looks like, why flexibility keeps coming up, and why a say/do ratio of one-to-one is the whole retention strategy.

Ryan grew up in Evansville, Indiana, worked crawl spaces and attics for his stepdad's HVAC company through college, and moved home after a five-year federal stint to raise seven kids.

In this episode:

- Sixteen years in the ESCO space, from the file room to sales engineering

- Crawl spaces and attics: what a family HVAC business teaches an engineer

- What Ascendant is, and where it came from — BFW/Marcum Engineering, Paducah

- “A refreshing conversation”: long-term planning over one-off projects

- Why the low-hanging fruit is gone, and what fills the gap now

- “Here's your top five — we're going to take care of three of them”

- Russ Litsinger, and re-centering an ESCO on the customer

- What early-career engineers want: flexibility and a defined career path

- The say/do ratio, and why intentional development slips when things get busy

- The next 5–15 years: turnkey, design-build, and private equity in the ESCO space

- Real-time meter data, AI, and “we've got all this data — now what?”

- The Signature Four

Guest: Ryan Baker — https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-baker-54831928/

Host: Jim Schafer · Nenni & Associates

Most people arrive in the built environment through engineering. Abby Lauck arrived through a hospital.

She studied nursing, switched to health services management, and became a project coordinator at Major Health Partners in Shelbyville, Indiana, working on a replacement hospital and reporting into the VP of facility operations. CMTA was the engineering firm on the other side of the table. Six years ago she joined them. In this conversation with Jim Schafer, she explains what actually changes when you take off the owner's hat — and why, in a hospital, a lower utility bill isn't an engineering line item but an expanded oncology program.

Abby is a marketing and business development manager at CMTA, a national high-performance building design firm with more than 50 offices. In 2024 she became the first-ever recipient of SMPS's Rising Business Developer of the Year award.

In this episode:

- What CMTA does — MEP design, technology, and a performance-contracting arm

- Crossing from the owner's side to the consultant's side, and what it costs you

- Healthcare: whether the client brings the problem or the firm brings the solution

- How 20 years of post-occupancy building data becomes a competitive advantage

- Performance contracting and alternate funding in a K-12 market facing budget cuts

- Forrestal Elementary — a net-zero-pursuing school on Naval Station Great Lakes

- Life after LED: geothermal, solar, storage, and clean-energy tax incentives

- AI as an asset rather than a replacement — and why dismissing it is now a hiring gate

- What she listens for in an interview, and who lasts ten, twenty, thirty years at CMTA

- Adaptive reuse, aging infrastructure, and the "COVID kids" who want the office back

- The Signature Four

Guest: Abby Lauck, PMP — https://www.linkedin.com/in/abbylauck/

Host: Jim Schafer · Nenni & Associates

- (2:30) What CMTA actually does — MEP, technology design, performance contracting

- (4:30) Taking off the owner's hat: the hardest part of becoming a consultant

- (6:00) Healthcare: does the client bring the problem, or does CMTA bring the solution?

- (8:00) Twenty years of project data, and getting ahead of the next problem

- (10:30) Energy as a service, off-balance-sheet financing, and why healthcare is complicated

- (13:00) Beyond healthcare — K-12, higher ed, local government, libraries, federal

- (14:00) Forrestal Elementary: a net-zero-ready school on a Navy base

- (15:00) After LED lighting: geothermal, solar, and battery storage

- (16:30) AI as an asset — "it's not going to replace our workforce"

- (18:00) Interviewing: what Abby listens for

- (20:00) The quality of the questions a candidate asks is the interview

- (20:30) Retention: who stays at CMTA for decades, and who doesn't

- (23:30) Smart buildings and designing the right infrastructure for AI

- (25:30) "Not AI replacing your job — somebody who knows AI"

- (27:30) Adaptive reuse and aging infrastructure

- (28:30) The COVID kids are entering the workforce, and they want the office

- (30:30) The Signature Four

For the first time on the Building Efficiency Podcast, Jim turns the mic on two of his own colleagues — Nenni & Associates recruiters Ryan McGushin and Trevor Morrison — for a mid-year "state of the energy industry." Both came up the same way: Northern Illinois University, then straight into the recruiting grind, where they've spent a combined ~27 years placing talent across energy services and the built environment.

The throughline is private equity. Roughly 75% of the firm's client base is now PE-owned, and that capital is rewiring everything downstream: which companies scale from regional to national, how fast they hire, and what they screen for. Ryan and Trevor get specific on the modern hiring bar (humble, hungry, smart), the in-office-vs-remote tug-of-war and its hidden compensation math, what an A-caliber candidate sounds like on the phone, the red flags that make a recruiter walk away, and why interviews really go sideways.

In this episode:

- Why private equity now backs ~75% of the client base — and what it accelerates

- How a 35-year-old ESPC model is spinning off design-build, DBOOM & data-center deals

- The widening talent gap: why selling these projects is no longer an entry-level job

- "Building the plane while flying it" — hiring for adaptability in a PE-backed world

- Post-acquisition reality: demotions, culture shifts, and checking the ego at the door

- In-office, hybrid, or remote — what works, and what the commute really costs

- The tells of an A-player: motivational congruency and a say-to-do ratio of one

- Red flags on both sides of the table, and why interviews fall apart

- Rapid fire: career advice, underrated leadership skills, and lessons for hiring managers & candidates

Deep-dive episode page (chapters, clips & primers): https://www.buildingefficiencypodcast.com/ep145 ⟵ confirm final slug

Connect on LinkedIn: Ryan McGushin · Trevor Morrison · Jim Schafer ⟵ add profile URLs

Hosted by Jim Schafer · Nenni & Associates

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## In This Episode (timestamps)

Rounded DOWN to the nearest :00 / :30 so a click lands just before each topic. The 0:00 welcome is omitted per house style; precise marks are in parentheses if you'd rather use them.

- (0:30) Meet the guests: Ryan & Trevor's NIU-to-Nenni come-up — precise 0:57 / 2:48

- 4:30 — Private equity now owns ~75% of the client list (4:52)

- 7:30 — Why energy became a private-equity target (7:41)

- 10:00 — ESPC evolves: DBOOM, CPACE & data centers (10:03)

- 12:30 — The talent gap: why selling got harder (12:53)

- 16:00 — The ideal team player: humble, hungry, smart (16:04)

- 18:00 — Post-acquisition: ego, culture & integration (18:18)

- 22:30 — In-office, hybrid, or remote? (22:34)

- 28:30 — The hidden math of the commute (28:46)

- 30:00 — Spotting an A-caliber candidate (30:24)

- 36:30 — Red flags recruiters listen for (36:45)

- 45:30 — Why interviews go sideways (45:45)

- 50:00 — Rapid fire: advice, leadership & lessons (50:15)

Five years after his pandemic-era first appearance, Charlie Zitnik returns to the show. Charlie and his partner Steve Goehl lead energy-and-renewables work inside D.A. Davidson's 150-person Public Finance group, financing energy-efficiency projects for ESCOs and prime contractors across the MUSH market.

Jim and Charlie sit down to unpack the "four-legged round table" behind every successful public-finance deal—and why the ESCOs whose projects make it across the finish line are the ones that bring finance into the room on day one, not at the goal line.

In This Episode

(04:00) Why the renewables conversation shifted from efficiency to redundancy

(05:30) What "MUSH market" means, and who D.A. Davidson serves

(08:00) Dodd-Frank: Why ESCOs can no longer give financial advice

(10:00) The Round Table: Issuer, lender, ESCO, and financier

(11:00) Tax credits burning off and the long tail of geothermal

(14:00) "Where projects go to die" — What happens when finance arrives late

(18:00) The new ESCO account executive: A six-month runway

(21:30) What sets D.A. Davidson apart (and the famous Steve Goehl cards)

(25:00) The industrial revolution in healthcare: Biology + AI

(27:00) Why "as-a-service" financing still hasn't crossed the chasm

(29:30) The Signature Four

Quoted

"Where all projects go to die is finance. If you've done your diligence on the front end, you have a response to that."

"We're not adversaries. You need four legs to hold up the round table."

We covered David’s unique journey from studying jazz and playing music to building a career in software and ultimately becoming a leader in energy infrastructure and public-private partnerships at Brailsford & Dunleavy. We got into how universities are approaching major infrastructure challenges today, especially around district energy systems, and how P3 models are evolving to focus more on execution, transparency, and true partnership. David also shared insights on what makes a winning project team—from finance and development to engineering—and how institutions are thinking more strategically about long-term assets, costs, and collaboration.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Kate Heidinger, CEO of Allumia. Kate and I dug into her career path from solar finance and water efficiency to leading a growing energy as a service company focused on small to mid-size commercial projects.

We talked about how Allumia partners with utilities leverages technology and data transparency and makes energy efficiency accessible without upfront capital. We also spent time on something that really matters right now. Hiring. Kate shared what she looks for in talent, why problem solvers and adaptable generalists thrive in this industry, and how company culture plays a huge role in scaling smart, resilient teams.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Gabe Phillips. Gabe and I dug into his journey from electricity trading to founding Catalyst Power Holdings and how he's helping commercial and industrial customers decarbonize through retail, energy supply and onsite generation.

We also hit on one of our favorite topics: hiring, including why Gabe sees the highest success rates when new team members come through personal networks and the role people and culture play in scaling an energy business.

I sat down  with Bryan Lang. Bryan and I got into his journey from engineering consulting to JP Morgan Chase and now leading Solutions Engineering at Bedrock Energy. We talked about the rapid growth of geothermal, the technology they're developing and the market momentum behind it.

And of course, we dove into hiring why Bryan believes you should hire the person, not the paper, and how cultural alignment beats certifications. Every time.

We sat down with  with Steph Cuthbert and Mark Nunzio from RVE. We dug into their unique paths in engineering. Steph shared how she's built her entire career at RVE, leading the firm's water and wastewater division.

And Mark talked about stepping into his new role, leading the MEP division across several regions. We talked about culture collaboration. What and what keeps people at RVE for the long run. We also dove into the hiring process. What makes a great engineer, how they identify talent, and how RV's core values guide who joins the team.