Buildings + Beyond Podcast

Iain Walker, PhD

Iain Walker is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He has more than 20 years of experience as a building scientist and consultant, conducting research on energy use, ventilation, moisture, performance simulation, and commissioning/diagnostic issues in residential buildings. His current work focuses on retrofits, zero/low-energy homes and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems in residential buildings through field and laboratory evaluations, modeling and simulation activities, and standards setting. Dr. Walker is the task group leader for the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards committees on building and duct system air leakage and sealant longevity. For the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) he serves on National Standards committees for indoor air quality, weather, moisture design, and equipment air leakage. He also serves on Building Performance Institute (BPI) and Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) Technical Committees, the Affordable Comfort (ACI) conference planning committee and provides leadership and technical input to many local, state, national and international bodies. Read more

We first released this episode in April 2019. Since then, our topic of discussion with Iain has only become more relevant. We recently caught up with Iain and have some updates to share, which are reflected in the resources below and at the end of the episode. Enjoy!

When you fire on a stove-top burner, whether it is electric, gas, or convection, many byproducts are released. This increase in moisture, gas, and other particulates is not only detrimental to the health of a building, but dangerous for human health as well.

To advance our knowledge on this topic, we invited building scientist and ventilation expert, Dr. Iain Walker, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Dr. Walker discusses strategies for controlling byproducts associated with cooking by focusing on kitchen ventilation.

New Resources as of 8/3/21:

Simulation of short-term exposure to NO2 and PM2.5 to inform capture efficiency standards

Effects of Residential Gas Appliances on Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality and Public Health in California

Investigating Emissions from the Cooking of Meals

Ultrafine Particles from Electric Appliances and Cooking Pans

Reducing Exposure to Cooking Pollutants – Policies and Practices

Studies:

Indoor Air Quality: Residential Cooking Exposures 

Measurement of Ultrafine Particles and Other Air Pollutants Emitted by Cooking Activities

Particle Concentrations in Inner-city Homes of Children with Asthma…

Impact of Natural Gas Appliances on Pollutant Levels in California Homes

Indoor Air Quality in 24 California Residences Designed as High Performance Green Homes

Guides/Resources:

HVI Guide

HVI Products Directory

Standards:

ANSI/ASHRAE Standards for Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality

ANSI/BPI: Home Energy Auditing Standard

ANSI/BPI: Standard Practice for Basic Analysis of Buildings

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Robb: (00:00)
It’s summer 2021. And we have a couple of new guests lined up for our August episode, but scheduling and vacations just didn’t work out. So we are posting an episode from a couple of years ago where Kelly talked with Iain Walker about kitchen ventilation. We all really liked this episode and it’s really relevant to anyone who cooks or lives with someone who cooks. We reached out to Iain about any new developments on this front and I’ll recap what he had to say at the end and the outro. And we also have some new links in the show notes for more information. So here’s Kelly’s conversation with Iain Walker.

Iain: (00:42)
They should care because the idea is that when you cook, it’s basically one of the activities that you do that emits the most contaminants into, into your home and by contaminants- there are some pretty straightforward ones. Like there’s lots of water vapor when you’re cooking and if you don’t wanna have condensation on your windows in the winter for example, or you don’t want to make your house get too humid, so you might get some mold growth. Do you want to control the humidity levels in it? It’s a good idea to vent the moisture from cooking to outside. Then you have to think about odors. And of course, you know, some odors are good when, when you’re cooking, right? The, the odor is what makes you know, home cooking worthwhile sometimes and what’s make makes food tastes nice and everything. But if you’ve been frying fish one day, maybe you don’t want the smell of fried fish in your house for the next few days. And the last thing is more from a health perspective, which is that aside from the moisture and odor issues there are contaminants admitted when you cook that can actually impact your health. One of the primary ones is small particles and they come from either the burning of natural gas if you’re using a gas cooktop, or the cooking process itself. And then there are things like oxides of nitrogen that also are emitted from from gas burners. And those contaminants are ones that if they get to a high enough concentration can have some health impacts. So there’s a good health reason for venting most of those things to outside. And so it’s a combination of you want to control moisture in your home, you want to control odors in your home, and there’s a health impact also. And I’m not saying that you shouldnt cook. I personally love cooking and everybody should cook. I think a home cooked meal is probably the healthiest way to feed yourself, but we should do it with an awareness that it’s a good idea to control what we do when we’re cooking. And effectively the best way to do it is to vent some of these things to outside. So that’s the rationale for why you would vent a kitchen ever. And if you’ve ever been in a commercial kitchen, you’ll see that they have enormous range heads with huge amounts of flow and they’re physically large and they have gigantic makeup air systems and if you’re cooking all the time, they make a huge effort to vent the cooking to outside. Of course we cook less in our homes, but the principles behind it are for the same reason. It’s about controlling the moisture odor, and some of these contaminants that can have health impacts.

Kelly: (03:22)
Now, Iain Walker, who you just heard is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL. He works as a building scientist and consultant conducting research on energy use, ventilation, moisture performance simulation and commissioning diagnostic issues in residential buildings. I encourage you to go to the show notes and look at the link to LBNL’s website. It turns out Iain has been doing ventilation research papers dating back to 1990. Whether you cook once in awhile or you cook all the time, whether you live in an apartment or a house, whether you have no renovation budget or unlimited- stay tuned, there will be something in this episode for you. I’ll let Iain give you a little background and lay the groundwork for you. So we’re going to jump right in.

Iain: (04:07)
Kitchen ventilation is not a new thing, right? It’s been around for a long, long time. But it’s only recently that we’ve done anything about it and in a way where we could actually put some numbers to it. And by that I mean kitchen rangers had been used and just, you know, simple vents and kitchens have been around for thousands of years. But actual kitchen rangers with a fan in them have been around for a while. But how good are they and how much of the contaminants they capture has been something that hasn’t really been studied until recently. And what we were really looking for was a way to figure out how well these devices work with a longer term goal of maybe we could make them work better even though they moved less air for example, because there surely is an energy penalty just in the fan power and also heating and cooling all that air that you’re exhausting. Right. So that’s why we wanted to like actually put some numbers on how well a range hoods work and try and figure out is there something about the geometry or the amount of airflow that makes some work better and some not and so on.

Kelly: (05:13)
Great. Yeah. And mostly, the research is looking at single family or low rise multifamily?

Iain: (05:22)
Well I wouldn’t say necessarily- no. I think, I everybody’s kitchen should get some good ventilation so I wouldn’t restrict it. But you raise a good point, which is it’s easier in some buildings than others, right? In a house, having an exhaust fan in your kitchen is not too difficult to conceive of. Right? Maybe you have to cut a hole in the wall or maybe in the ceiling if you’re gonna go out through the ceiling, put some ducting in. Seems pretty straight forward. But in a high rise building, it can be a little trickier. Often highrise architecture is much more sensitive to having lots of holes in the wall. And then if you’ve got many, many stories all stacked up on top of each other, you’ve got to find room for all that ducting in the end. And it does get a little more complex from an engineering perspective, but not impossible.

Kelly: (06:12)
So now say I’m a homeowner and maybe I don’t have any renovation budget, but what should I think about when I go to Cook my dinner tonight?

Iain: (06:22)
Well there’s some simple things you can do if you’re not going to remodel your kitchen or replace the range hood. The first thing, is you should know if your range ofvents to outside, that’s the first question there. There are many hoods over cooktops that just blow the air back into the kitchen and they’re not particularly effective at doing anything for controlling the things I just talked about. As you imagine, they just blow the moisture straight back in. They don’t do much for removing things like particles, oxides of nitrogen and they don’t control odor as much. They often will have a grease filter in, right, that you’ve probably seen, these sort of metal things. If you look underneath your hood, you’ll see this sort of metal grate and so it might stop some of the grease getting circulated your kitchen, But for the other stuff, it doesn’t do much. So first of all, you need to have something that vents to outside. If it’s just blowing back and greasing your forehead, then I’m ambivalent about whether you use it or not. It’s totally up to you. But I don’t think it’s doing very much. So As long as vents to outside, the first thing is to turn it on. And even the very worst hood is going to be better than not using it. So even if you think you have a bad one, try using it. The next thing is, if we’re talking now about a cooktop that’s up against the wall with a hood above it also mounted on the wall, they always do better at capturing from the burners at the back than the front. So if you can cook on the back burners it’s going to be way better. Of course, that’s also the most awkward way to cook. And so most people cook on the front burners for convenience. And so it’s always gonna be a personal tradeoff, but certainly using the back burners is going to be better for your range hood for getting it to to capture what’s on the cooktop. So even if you do nothing in your kitchen, you can at least turn it on and cook on the back burners. And, and that’s, that’s a big step forward.

Kelly: (08:18)
Awesome. That’s great. That’s great advice. And then I guess taking the next step, if I’ve maybe convinced my partner that we should decide to renovate our kitchen and we maybe have some renovation budget now, what should we look at or what should we talk to our builder about?

Iain: (08:36)
So here you’re talking about how do I pick my new range hood effectively? And there’s a couple of things you can do, that when you’re browsing through catalogs or you’re at the hardware store looking at these things. One is to simply look at the physical geometry of the hood. And the key thing is, does it come out far enough from the wall to cover all the burners? And basically the further out from the wall it comes, the more coverage it has generally speaking, the better it will perform. And this is just a simple sort of common sense exercise. If you imagine the hot air and the hot balloon that’s coming off your cooking it, it basically is going upwards. And if the hood doesn’t come out and cover that part of the cooktop, you can imagine that sort of hot air and plume and all the moisture and everything, it just goes in the kitchen and doesn’t get captured. It’s sort of a straightforward geometry thing. So if you can pick one that’s larger that that covers more of the cooktop area, that’s better. The other thing you’re deciding is what height to mount it at and you might think, well, the lower I get the better. Right? But that’s not always true. There’s sort of a range of mounting heights where we get reasonable performance. But you’re often going to be restricted by the cabinets that you choose also. And there are stock cabinet sizes that kind of limit your options there if you’re remodeling. But we usually want to aim for a height above the cooktop of something like 24 to 30 inches, if you will. That’s sort of measuring to the bottom of the hood. And it turns out that most modern kitchens with typical cabinetry, they’re going to have something in that sort of range.

Iain: (10:31)
If you’re using a microwave device, though, that that’s kind of different. The ones with the built in microwave tend to be mounted lower, for starters, and some of that simply because they are physically deeper top to bottom, right. If you’re mounting them under the same cabinet in your kitchen, it comes down lower. They also tend to not stick out very far and that means that they don’t have the greatest performance, honestly. And also they tend to suck air not just from underneath where the cooking is happening, but they often have vents around the top and the sides. And that’s what I would call more like general kitchen ventilation. So they are exhausting air but it’s from the kitchen, It’s not from directly over the cooking, So they’re less effective in that sense. So these microwave devices, sure you free up some counter space, but they are less effective as exhaust hoods for, for your cooking. Although I realize the popular in people liked them. So I would not say never install one, but you should understand that it’s not going to be quite as good as one that doesn’t have a microwave stuck in it.

Kelly: (11:35)
Just consider your alternatives in that case.

New Speaker: (11:38)
Right. And the last thing is that there are some ratings for hoods that are put out by an organization called the home ventilating institute or HVI and anyone could go to HVI.org and look at their ratings. And one of the key aspects of the ratings is to look at the the sound level, how noisy they are. Because in our research we found that as you can imagine, if a range hood is too noisy, people use it less particularly in a, in a modern kitchen, which has no wall between you and the dining room or living room. Like most modern homes are this open plan layout and the ferociously loud range hood, you can’t use it if you’re trying to watch television or the family’s trying to eat and have a conversation or something. It doesn’t work. Right. So you can try and look for quieter hoods. And in the future, those ratings are going to become a bit more advanced. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to start including something that we’re probably going to talk about for a couple of minutes here, which is something called capture efficiency, which is a rating for how well the cooking contaminants are captured and exhausted by the device. That’s not available yet. But a year from now when you’re shopping you should be able to pick a higher capture efficiency rated device also for exhausting your kitchen.

Kelly: (12:59)
Great. And can you dive into that a little bit? You’ve been doing some research on what the capture efficiency is of current range hoods. What does that look like from what you’ve seen in the market now?

Iain: (13:13)
Sure. So maybe I should define what we mean by capture efficiency first. Basically what capture efficiency is about is, when you emitting stuff from your cooking, what fraction of that get sucked into the range hood and blown directly to outside? So a poor range might say it only captures a third of all those cooking contaminants and it’s capture efficiency would be 33% or about a third. A very good range hood might capture 80 or 90%. So almost all of the cooking contaminants get sucked into the range hood and blown outside. And so capture efficiency is that rating that says how much of what I’m emitting from my cooking gets blown to outside. And we’ve done lots of experiments both in the laboratory at LBNL and also going out to people’s homes and testing, and there’s a huge range of performance for capture efficiency. And I touched on some of this earlier. It depends a bit on the geometry. You know, the physical dimensions of the hood in terms of how well it actually covers the cooktop. But as you listeners might imagine, often you have a switch that that changes the fan speed on your hood. And as you increase the fan speed, more and more air flows through it, the capture efficiency goes up. So you get the best capture efficiency at the highest flow rate. Unfortunately, that also tends to be the noisiest way to operate it. So there’s going to be a trade off in your kitchen, about how much noise can I stand. Generally the higher speed, the higher the airflow, the greater the noise and the better you will capture things. And at lower speeds, maybe you can still carry on a conversation, but it’s not capturing so well. And we have developed basically a standardized test method for this that is going to be adopted by HVI and other organizations so that everybody tests the same way. So that, you know, we standardize on things like what is the heat output of the burner that you’re looking at, and what method do you use to measure this capture efficiency and we’re using a tracer gas system for doing this. But it’s all in a very standardized, very controlled way. So all the test labs will get the same result if they test the same device in the same way. It’s all been engineered out to be very, very consistent. And theres several other test labs in the country that have been trying out this test method and also some European test labs also because we think that this way of rating for capture efficiency will probably find its way into international standards as well as being used here in the U.S.

Kelly: (16:03)
That’s great. So you’re working on that now. But can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that we can look for? You know, if I’m going to buy my range hood tomorrow, you spoke about noise and flow rate. What would you prescribe if I was going out and looking to pick something tomorrow?

Iain: (16:25)
If you’re picking something tomorrow, there’s sort of the minimum flow rate below which the devices don’t work particularly well. And some minimum flow rates are actually put into ventilation standards. For example, the U.S. National standard for ventilation says that the minimum flow rate should be 100 cubic feet per minute as a minimum flow rate. So if you’re looking at the flows that you’re going to get for your range hood you want to at least beat that minimum. Of course that’s the minimum, you can always do better. And if it was me picking a flow, I’d want to have at least 150, maybe 200 cfm as sort of the minimum flow rating that I would operate at. It’s a little complicated by the fact that almost all range of type of switch that lets you change the speed and change the flow, right? And on the very lowest flow, they might not be having that 100 cfm, but you probably get that on the medium. And then on the high flow rate you get up to 150 or 200 for a typical device. So you know, there’s always going to be a range of flows at the, at the more extreme end though for high end kitchens we see devices that are essentially looking at look like they should be in a commercial kitchen. Whether air flows are several CFM, maybe six, 700 cubic feet per minute. So like five times or six times what the minimum is. And that, that all seems like, hey, that should be awesome, right? Because now I’m going to get really good capture efficiency and all that sort of stuff, which could be true. But you pay a price in terms of noise for a start.These tend to be noisy to move all that air and the fact that all the air has to come into your house somewhere else, right? All the air that goes out comes in somewhere. And at the very high flow rates, that can be a difficult thing to manage for your home, and you can easily run into comfort issues. For example, if you lived somewhere cold and it’s winter time, all that extra cold air coming in has to be heated, which is, you know, going to cost you some energy. And if you have what we call makeup air, which has a deliberate duct to bring that air in, you have to be careful about where that air comes in. Because if you don’t heat it up in the winter, you get a horrible cold draft on people, so these very high end, very fancy higher flow devices bring a whole world of problems with them that currently the industry is not dealing with very well I would say. And it’s important when you’re picking these things to be aware that it’s not so simple as buying the biggest thing you can and turning it on, there are other consequences that we have to deal with when we do that, but that’s only for these very large, very high end devices. For your more typical thing that you might put in your kitchen, those higher air flows are less of a concern because they simply don’t move that much air.

Kelly: (19:22)
Right. Compared to the overall building size?

Iain: (19:24)
correct, yes. Well it’s not so much building size. It has to do with things like if you are living a very energy efficient home, they tend to be what we call very airtight homes. In other words, they don’t have very many leaks in the building to let air in or out. And if you have one of these very big exhaust fans, often they will actually move a lot less air than they say, cause it’s simply so hard to suck the air in through the very tight shell of the home. And sometimes we also have concerns about what about if you have a water heater in your house that takes its combustion air from your home? So this is not a sealed off unit. It’s not outside or in a garage or anything, It’s actually in the home with you, and that there are plenty of homes that have this, right. If you exhaust too much, you might pull the exhaust from the water heater into the house with you. So, you know, all of those combustion products that I talked about from the cooking, from your water heater, are coming in the house, which is, you know, water vapor and particles and, and carbon dioxide.All sorts of stuff. So there are some issues that we do have to think about if we install very, very large exhaust systems in homes that have what we call these natural draft combustion applIainces in the home with them. I will say though that there are tests you can do to make sure that those devices are not overpowering the ability of your say water heater to draft properly. Organizations like the building performance institute and others have got, you know, test test protocols to, to evaluate this sort of thing. But, but again, I would argue for keeping your life simple and not buying a gigantic hood with a lot of flow, and going with something more moderate.

Kelly: (21:23)
Right. Yeah. And actually it’s interesting anecdotally obviously, but I’m up in Vermont this week and we have a lot of fireplaces and we actually had a situation the other night where the fireplace was running and somebody went into the bathroom and turned the fan on that’s integrated with the light switch. And there was a series of circumstances that made it such that we back drafted from the, the fireplace and smoke kind of came into the room.

Iain: (21:59)
Yes, it’s, it’s a real issue and it can happen and we should avoid it if we can. And again, I think this is an argument for using a more moderate airflow for your kitchen range hood if you can, and I realized that sometimes these are lifestyle decisions, not building science decisions and who am I to decide I can only, I can only advise people to avoid bad situations.

Kelly: (22:24)
Right. Of course. It’s one perspective of the whole construction game.

Iain: (22:29)
Well, I mean this is often the case when we talk about people’s homes is that a lot of the things in a home are inter-linked in these ways, right? The exhaust from the kitchen does great things to get rid of the contaminants in the kitchen, but we have to make sure we’re not messing up the home somewhere else.

Kelly: (22:48)
Right. That’s an excellent point. Thinking about that everything that you’re doing in the home as a full system. And what’s the impact on the whole system?

Iain: (22:57)
That’s right. Your house is a system is sort of a something we often say.

Kelly: (23:01)
And and were the building doctors or something

Iain: (23:06)
Possibly. And as any good doctor, we always have to firstly do no harm, right? We have to make sure that the things we do don’t end up making things worse. Right? But it’s a, it’s important thing but, but, but generally for most circumstances, you’re a moderately sized kitchen exhaust hood is not going to create very many problems in your home unless, and I s as I say, there are exceptions, but you know, some of this is becoming less and less important. This might be aside, but it’s certainly with thinking about, that most high-performance homes these days, they don’t have these gas fueled applIainces that are actually using the air from the house. They’re either using what we call sealed combustion and most high efficiency furnaces. They’re taking their combustion air from outside through its own little duct.

Iain: (23:58)
It gets burned and then the flume goes back outside again. And that furnace isn’t communicating with your home in any way. And so it doesn’t really matter very much if you depressurize the house was an exhaust fan because that furnace is not communicating with the home. Or if you have a, an all electric home with say, heat pumps for heating and cooling and for hot water, then again, you don’t have to worry about it. But, but, but you crazy folks that want to burn wood in a fireplace. I mean there are solutions there too. I mean, again, in a high performance home, a good idea is to have what we call her a sealed fireplace. Where the fireplace is taking its combustion air from outside burning the word and then the, yeah, the smoke and everything goes back outside again and it’s not communicating with your home. And often these things will have, they have a, you know, a nice glass front on them so you can see the flames and the warmth comes through. But you couldn’t reach out your hand and touch the flames. But older homes, you know, like the one I live in, I don’t have that. I just have an open fireplace because I live in California so I can’t use it very often. But you know, you take your chances.

Kelly: (25:10)
Yeah, those are great points. Circling us back to the kitchen a little bit and cause I think that this is actually of interest to a lot of people. And not exactly kitchen hood exhaust but the cooker itself. So can you talk a little bit about our cooktop options and what your thoughts are on those?

Iain: (25:29)
Definitely. So, so they broadly fall into three categories if you want to do some cooking, right. There is a gas burner. There’s what we call an electric resistance element. That’s usually the spiral thing. You can see that glows red hot. And the third one is what’s called an induction cooktop where there’s nothing that gets hot and instead an induction field is induced in your metallic Cook Pot and the pot is heated directly rather than having gas be burned or a hot spiral element. And they are quite a bit different in terms of what happens when you turn them on. And the gas cooking is the one that produces the most contaminants because when you burn natural gas, you get a lot of water vapor which you need to control. There are also lots of particles generated, which are a health concern, oxides of nitrogen that again are a health concern and possibly some other volatile organic compounds that come from the combustion process. And so there’s more contaminants produced the gas cooking than the other ways. So the hot electric element is sort of halfway in between it. We’re not burning anything anymore. So we don’t actually produce any water vapor or oxides of nitrogen, but you never can get those heating elements so clean that they don’t admit some particles, and the particle emission is not as high as burning the natural gas, but there’s still plenty of small particles emitted when you use electric cooking. And finally the induction cooktop because effectively there isn’t something that’s super duper hot. You need heat to volatilize things to create the particles, it creates by far the least particles. It doesn’t create any water vapor, no oxides of nitrogen. So if you’re looking to cook in a healthy way that isn’t healthy because the food you’re cooking is healthy, but because you’re not putting contaminants in the air, an induction cooked up is definitely the way to go in all our testing and testing that other people have done, Induction cooking is definitely the cleanest. There is one other thing to think about though, and that is the oven and we don’t really have induction ovens per se, right? They usually either electric or gas and again, you sort of have the same breakdown where gas is going to produce the most particles and so on and, and the electric less so. They, they can be a little trickier when we’re thinking about venting. When we talk about the capture efficiency for hoods, we’re just looking at what happens on the cooktop. We’ve not looked at including in the rating what happens from the oven. And some of that is because the way the ovens are vented depends on a lot on the particular construction of the oven you’re using or the range that you’re using and where the hot air comes out. Sometimes it’s at the back, sometimes at the front, sometimes it’s a bit of both. And so it was sort of hard to standardize a way to think about capturing from the oven. But even if you’re not using the cooktop and you’re baking some bread or something, it’s still a good idea to turn on your exhaust hood because you’re still getting contaminants emitted into your kitchen. Maybe not as much as a very, very hot stir fry. Right? But they’re still there and you should still vent them. And maybe you just, you just leave it on low or something and do that. So it’s, it’s an important point to notice that, you know, when you’re cooking in the oven, things get emitted too, and the last thing I’ll say about this is sometimes in very, very fancy high end kitchens, you might have multiple ovens and maybe you have a cooktop with an oven underneath it with a hood over it. But on the wall next to it is a second oven. Well it’s not underneath the range hood anymore, but that’s okay because once again, turning your range hood on, it’s also ventilating the whole kitchen. Right. And it’s stopping the pollutants from traveling from your kitchen to other places in the home because as you exhaust out of the kitchen, the air has to come from somewhere and that airflow into the kitchen tends to control the transport of these contaminants around your house. And so even if what you’re doing isn’t directly under the hood, when you turn on the hood, you’re still sucking air out of the kitchen and ventilating the kitchen and moving those contaminants. It’s not as efficient as it is when it’s directly over the cook top, but it’s still something that’s worthwhile. And indeed, there are many other kitchen ventilation approaches that don’t use a range with per se. Right. Sometimes there’s just a fan in the wall or a fan in the ceiling that exhausts the whole room. And again, they work, they’re just not as efficient as a range hood and in order to get to the same levels of contaminants in the kitchen, if you just generally ventilating in the kitchen, you have to ventilate a lot more than if it’s just the range hood, and so those are less effective but it’s not like it has zero effect.

Kelly: (30:52)
Right. Great Point. Yeah. So thank you. There’s a lot of key takeaways here. I would say some of my top ones are number one, use your exhaust fan. Number two, vent it to the outside directly. And my number three is I should get an induction stove so I can make a bacon cheeseburger and call it healthy cooking.

Iain: (31:21)
I wouldn’t, I’m not sure I’m going to agree completely with your point number three about whether what you’re eating is healthy, but in terms of what you were emitting and what you’re breathing. It might be slightly healthier. And, you know, I’m not against gas cooking, I cook with gas myself, right. But I use my range at a lot. And I understand that, that there are people that have, they love to cook and they have an affinity for using gas and I’m never going to tell them to not do it right. But I’m gonna tell them, you know, the air in your kitchen is going to have less contaminants if you use the induction, I mean I think my next cooktop will be induction even though I like to cook a lot.

Kelly: (32:03)
All right, good to know. So, we like to ask this, if we have you back on the podcast in five years, maybe 10 years, what will we be talking about then? Besides how awesome your induction cooktop is

Iain: (32:20)
I think we’ll be talking about a couple of things. I think that the design of range hoods is going to get better. And by that I mean we’ll get the same amount of the contaminants captured and exhausted from the kitchen at a lower air flow. And I like that because it means it’ll be quieter, which people are much more likely to use their hoods. And it means that if we move less air that’s less air we have to heat up or cool down, you know, that goes in and out of the house. And so that’s going to be something that I think we’re gonna see the range of manufacturers looking into. The next thing is, is, is automation, which is, you know, we made this point about range, that it only works if it’s turned on right. But once we have got good designs that capture well and arent noisy because they move less air or else theyre better aerodynamic designs, then I think we can move down the path of let’s automate these devices so they will sense that you’re cooking and turn on automatically and they’re likely to turn on at, at a low airflow and there’ll be a switch that you as the cook can still use. Like if you, if you start to burn something, you could turn it on to high. Right. But they’re gonna automatically operate. So it’s not dependent on, on the cook to turn it on. It’s going to be automatic. And the automation is an extension of, there are some high end hoods out now that have what I’ll call an emergency switch in them. If they get very, very hot, they’re intended to detect a cooktop fire and go into high speed. It’s a safety thing. And those controls strategies are going to get adapted to be more sensitive and use some different ways of sensing the cooking, not just the temperature of the air, but maybe some infrared sensing and things like that. And we’re gonna automate range hoods and I, and I think that sort of performance improvement and automation are going to be the two big changes that we see in sometime in the next five years. These things are going to become relatively mainstream.

Kelly: (34:25)
Okay. That sounds great. You did mention three things at first, do you have a third or are we going to have to wait and see?

Iain: (34:34)
There is a third one and this is something that may be a bit of a stretch and that is that there are some applications where people would like to recirculate. And the reason why I was gonna say it is third and then then I changed my mind is that I understand that with these devices you could certainly put in a good particle filter to move the particles. You could put some active charcoal carbon filters in there to remove some of the vcs, but youre still gonna have a hard time with removing the water vapor. Right. And that’s always gonna be an issue if you cook a lot, you know, and you don’t want condensation and we don’t want higher moisture levels in our homes. And it also has the issue of, it’s really relying on the homeowner to regularly change out all those filters. And from what we know from how people use their homes in particular, looking at how often people change the filters in the heating and cooling systems, we’re pretty sure we can’t rely on people to do that. So this, this is a third option and it’s being investigated mostly for like Super Duper, super tight homes where they want to keep the heat in. If you’re familiar with the, the passive house system where houses are very, very airtight and they are doing an amazing job of controlling all the heat flows. In the winter, they want to keep the cooking heat in the house as heat because they don’t want to turn on the heating system. And so they would like to have recirculating systems that allow them to do that. But I think there’s still, you know, a couple of really serious issues with those where I would be comfortable in recommending them. So they could be the third thing, and there’s certainly a bunch of work being done right now on how do we improve the filtration of these things. How good a filter do we need? And so on. But like I said, they have a couple of key drawbacks, which is they don’t remove the moisture and they do require a lot of maintenance. That means that- I won’t say they’re terrible, I’m just not their biggest fan.

Kelly: (36:41)
Right. That sounds great. So maybe we’ll put that on the 10 year horizon and we’ll check what they’ve got going on then

Iain: (36:49)
Maybe we’ll see. I just always prefer simpler things because they’re harder to break. Right. And you know, you want to buy something that’s gonna work for at least 10 years. And so the idea of, you know, robust things that don’t require you to maintain them all the time seem like they’re much, much more likely to be working in 10 years.

Kelly: (37:11)
That’s an excellent point and I think it is a good end note. So I want to thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the podcast and coordinating this remote recording with our team. Thank you so much Iain.

Iain: (37:27)
Well thank you Kelly. I’m happy to talk about these things as you can probably tell.

Kelly: (37:31)
Great. We’ll have you back on soon.

Iain: (37:35)
All right. Thanks, Kelly.

Robb:
Thanks for listening and thanks to Iain and Kelly. I mentioned at the start that I reached out to Iain about new developments on this front in the, you know, two, two and a half years since we recorded this episode. And he gave me a few interesting notes. One is that there really is growing interest in induction cooking both from a safety perspective and an electrification perspective for reducing CO2 emissions in homes. Also some new research shows that cooking with nonstick pans results in lower emissions, lower particulate emissions than with other cookware. California is considering codes that require higher ventilation for gas than for electric cooking, and this code may also include capture efficiency for range hoods. As Iain mentioned, there is an ASTM standard out there for assessing capture efficiency and range hoods, but this hasn’t yet caught on, if codes start to require it even as an option hopefully we should start to see some rated products. That’d be really cool and last but not least stay tuned for more on automatic raincoats that automatically operate when you start cooking. Iain had mentioned that there’s a lot of product development happening on this front. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven Winter associates check us out at swinter.com. That’s S-winter.com. Swinter.Com/Podcast is where the podcast episode lives and where the show notes live. Check out that page for some of the links I mentioned here, check out our careers page. If you’re interested in opportunities, we’re focused on making buildings better on all fronts, more healthy, efficient, accessible, resilient, affordable. The list goes on and on. We have offices in Washington, DC, Manhattan, Connecticut, and Boston. I counted 18 openings today on our careers page in most, if not all of our offices. So check that out if you’re interested and thanks to the podcast team here, Kelly Westby, of course, who did this interview, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Alex Mirabile, Dylan Martello, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks very much.

Peter Stratton

Peter Stratton is the Managing Director of Accessibility Services at Steven Winter Associates. He has nearly 30 years of experience working with project teams to design and construct buildings to comply with laws and regulations governing accessible design and construction, improving the lives of ALL people occupying those buildings. Under Peter’s leadership, the accessibility team provides services to public and private sector clients nationwide that are designed to ensure compliance with the accessible design and construction requirements of federal, state, and local laws and building codes.

With all of the moving parts during the design and construction of a building project, one wrong move can compromise accessibility compliance. Unintentional oversights are commonplace when project teams don’t realize the importance of accessibility compliance and how it can make or break a project’s success. In the end, the devil’s in the details.

On this episode, we welcome back SWA’s Managing Director of Accessibility Services, Peter Stratton. Peter describes the top ten oversights made by project teams during the design and construction phases that typically lead to noncompliance with accessibility requirements. Learn why they happen, and how they can be identified and avoided in your project!

Follow along with Peter’s list of accessibility oversights below:

Design stage

Construction stage

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Intro: (00:05)
Welcome to buildings and beyond the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. I’m Robb Aldrich and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:17)
We had a few requests for a podcast episode focused on accessibility and really focused on what goes wrong. What are the common screw ups when trying to make buildings accessible. We reached out to Peter Stratton here at Steven Winter Associates. Who’s in charge of our accessibility group. He chatted to folks on his team and came up with a list of about 10 things. And this list was well, maybe different than what some people expected. It wasn’t a list of clearances or slopes that often get screwed up. It was a list about the process of design and construction. What often goes wrong in this process. And really, I think this is a lot more interesting and probably way more useful. Overall, he came up with about five things that go wrong in the design stage and five things that go wrong in the construction stage. And your list starts with details. The first thing on your list was details are provided by the designers, but they’re not referenced in the floor plans.

Peter: (01:32)
That’s right. And that’s a big one. And when I do these kinds of presentations, we always sort of launch the presentation with exactly this topic. And before we get into it, the more common oversights that are made in design, we’ll discuss five, but as you might know, there are many more than five. And we’ll talk about pretty much the most common that we see, it’s not uncommon that architects include at the top of the plan set generic details. When we see generic details provided at the top of the plans, that it sort of informs us. And I think right at the jump, we’ve really got to take a look at the plan set to confirm that the generic details that are often included at the top of the plan set actually fit the context of the design.

Peter: (02:37)
And when they don’t, that’s when we get into problems. So, often an architect, a designer might reference the technical criteria or the accessibility requirements of a local code and sort of copy and paste details, the criteria, for example, into the plan set. And so, we might receive a plan set for a multifamily residential development. And up at the top of the plan set are sort of these generic bathroom details, which are perfectly compliant. But then, when we sort of dig into the plan set and take a look at the design, we realize that we can’t align those generic details with the actual design. And it would be unrealistic to expect that a contractor would design a project off a generic detail when what they’re actually working on is sort of later on in the plan set very unrelated to those generic details.

Robb: (03:49)
So, yeah, it seems like they didn’t really do their due diligence and designing.

Peter: (03:59)
It could be that they didn’t do their due diligence, but it also could be that there was good intention. But the process of design really sort of doesn’t align with the good intention. We’ve got to do a little bit more than just copy and paste generic details up at the plan set. I think one of the first things to do is to ensure that those details included at the top of the plants that are not generic, that they actually fit the context of the design.

Robb: (04:33)
Okay, how about an example? I mean, clearances or ramps or so.

Peter: (04:40)
Yeah, all of the above. We often see elevations, for example, that include dimensions for the installation of grab bar reinforcement in bathrooms. When we take a look at the bathrooms in the plan set, you know, elevation a included in the generic detail that shows the elevation, for example, of the grab bar reinforcement for the later installation of the grab bar on the side wall next to the toilet, doesn’t align with the sidewall that is shown in the context of the design. And so, another example of a generic detail might be, often in the plan set, we see a generic detail for a U shaped kitchen, a generic detail for a galley style kitchen, but the kitchens in the floor plans are not U shape or galley. And so that’s a really good example of something that’s pretty common.

Robb: (05:56)
Okay. Interesting. And next on your list is, the appropriate level of detail is not provided at all. Is this where a designer just doesn’t know or doesn’t try?

Peter: (06:13)
It’s interesting and that pans out a whole host of different ways. I think when it comes to accessibility compliance, the level of detail and the scrutiny is so much more intense than we might imagine. It’s often unrealistic almost to expect that an architect or a designer, as a matter of normal course, would over detail a plan set to ensure that compliance is met. So, we do see what the architect might think is an appropriate level of detail, but we understand that when the design translates into the field, that the detail just isn’t enough. And so, for example, we often see, you know, partitioned details and threshold details, but the details don’t include what we need to see to ensure that the threshold, when installed, is compliant in the field. Sometimes the detailed doesn’t include a specification. So, it may include the height of a threshold, but what’s missing is the slope of the bevel on either side of the threshold, which is an important component of compliance when it comes to thresholds. So, we often want to see a higher level of detail in the plan set, but we also understand that may not be realistic, but it’s important to provide and to ensure that compliance is achieved in the field.

Robb: (07:59)
And that’s why you get brought in, I assume, when an architect just doesn’t have all that knowledge of all those details, the nitty gritty.

Peter: (08:08)
Right. We have to focus on the pinch points. We know the common busts in the field, and so we’re reviewing plan sets with the result in mind. In other words, we might identify the detail and think, well, looks good in the plan set, and we understand the design, but we’ve got to include some added dimensions to ensure that what’s constructed in the field is actually constructed in the correct way.

Peter: (08:39)
We don’t typically get pushback. It’s appreciated I think that we have that knowledge, and can sort of transfer that knowledge to the client.

Robb: (08:54)
So for this bullet point, which was that the appropriate level of detail is just not provided in the plans, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a clueless designer. It’s just that the level of detail is so deep that it’s…

Peter: (09:10)
That’s right. That’s exactly right.

Robb: (09:15)
The next one, I can appreciate, plan sets are not coordinated. So the architect may know all the right details and the architectural drawings may look perfect, but the MEP may or may not, or others may not.

Peter: (09:32)
That’s right. And I think that it really comes down to communication. Communication among the team. It’s not uncommon to see a set of architecturals that include compliant design. So, we will see that the control wall at the bathtub is correct. When plans, well, when the architecture set is not aligned, for example, in this case with the plumbing set, the plumbing may show the control on a wall that is different from the architectural set. And so, you know, the plumbing shops are going to be done from the plumbing plans and the engineer or the contractor who’s working on plumbing is going to look at the plumbing shops, and if they’re not coordinated, the result can be a major bust in the field. In fact, in our experience, we have come up against projects where the architecturals are perfectly compliant and the case of the location of the control wall at a bathtub. And then when we arrived in the field, the control wall had changed somewhere in the design process, but only in the architectural set, it was not modified and corrected in the plumbing set.

Robb: (11:07)
One wall was thicker and there wasn’t enough clearance?

Peter: (11:10)
Well, the location of the controls was on a completely different wall, which can really affect compliance in a negative way.

Robb: (11:21)
Yeah. And as a mechanical engineer, there’s tension between architects and engineers, as you’re familiar. And this is just one added flavor of that tension, I guess.

Peter: (11:38)
Similarly, in that bucket of plans sets that are not coordinated, it’s not uncommon that certain things happen in the field that aren’t addressed in the plants. We may see key fob locations or door fobs; I don’t know, I always get that wrong. You know, that little thing that you wave at the door so it opens? Yep. We’ll see, they are added on exit doors, fire, exit doors. So, adding a fob on a fire exit door makes that door an entrance. We might see security cameras installed, not addressed in the plan set, not part of the design, happens later on, and depending on where they are installed, how far they project from walls, they can violate some of the requirements. And some of the criteria that speak to protruding objects. Intercoms might be installed later on, and we assess for operable parts.

Peter: (12:59)
And so if we don’t have the opportunity to take a look at these things that are all part of the process, all part of the final product, but somewhere along the way, as a result of the communication, the accessibility consultant, for example, may not have been looped in. And so, everything that happens in design and construction really should involve communication with someone who knows accessibility, and it might not be an accessibility consultant. It might very well be the architect. So always some level of review is needed when it comes to the installation of things.

Robb: (13:44)
Interior design often happens later.

Peter: (13:46)
And another example and a really good one, often things happen or the interior is modified, or the interior design side is produced perhaps at a later time, may not have been part of the review. And so, we then troubleshoot these missteps in the field, which has its own level of problem, you know, problems associated with, with troubleshooting in the field. And you know, the interior design often drives the project. And so, the interior design set is very important. That is part of the review. It’s sort of critical.

Robb: (14:44)
How about external? Like how about the bridge between inside and outside with landscape?

Peter: (14:54)
Yep. When a project includes everything, which is an architectural civil landscape interior MEP, all of those trades and sets affect compliance of the final product. So, it’s important that a review not only include a review of the architecturals, which you might think, you know, that might be the only thing that an accessibility consultant might want to take a look at, which is not correct. Your design team should have all of the different sets, coordinated and reviewed into your exterior.

Robb: (15:36)
Yeah, that’s a big one. Coordination between the whole design team as well.

Peter: (15:43)
And it’s tricky, especially when you have a design architect, the executive architect, tons of design managers, tons of construction managers. Yeah, no, it becomes, a very big thing to manage and organize.

Robb: (16:05)
That’s their job too, on all aspects. The accessibility piece is one of the key pieces. Right?

Robb: (16:18)
So, this was interesting to me next on your list that designs do not incorporate tolerance. Does that just mean that designers are leaving no room for error? Or what does that mean?

Peter: (16:31)
Yeah, that is what that means. And it’s not uncommon for example, that we’ll see a ramp slope designed to one in 12, which is the maximum slope permitted for a ramp. We would recommend that the designers consider reducing the slope of a ramp to less than 8.3, three or less than the maximum, to allow tolerance in the field. We never want to design to the max or to the min – shooting from mid range is always best if we can do it, but working some level of tolerance into the design is key.

Robb: (17:21)
That makes tons of sense. Height. Like height of switches, height of…

Peter: (17:29)
That’s right. So, switch heights, let’s just talk in general – unobstructed forward reach in the more recent criteria, the maximum height above the finished floor, 48 inches. Now, if we specify 48 inches and show that dimension right at the light switch, chances are in the field without working in some tolerance, there’s a high level of certainty that designing to the max will result in non-compliance in the field. So, in the case of a light switch, for example, we recommend that design teams consider specifying 48 inches to the top of the electrical box. In that case, when we specify top of the electrical box, high degree of certainty, that the switch itself will be less than 48 inches. Okay. So that’s an example of working in tolerance.

Robb: (18:51)
Cool, cool. And one of the issues that comes up during design more is copying and pasting details from previous projects, I believe, right?

Peter: (19:03)
So, copying and pasting details from previous projects means we may be working on a commercial project in New York city. Okay. For example, we went through the review process and we submitted recommendations and eventually the plans are compliant. Well, the same design team now designs a residential project in Florida, and they have submitted that residential project in Florida for review. And we see that they copy and pasted the details from a commercial project in New York city that may have received some amount of federal funding on different overlays that apply to that commercial project in New York city that do not translate to a residential project in Florida. And so, that copy and pasting of the information would result in a design that may not be compliant. As you know, depending on where a project is constructed, there are different requirements that apply. Building codes change based on jurisdiction, funding triggers, for example, federal funding on our project will trigger an overlay of an additional accessibility requirement. A residential project is different than commercial project, so on and so forth. So, we really need to detail based on the jurisdiction, the project type and the various overlays of requirements.

Robb: (20:59)
Yep. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, copying and pasting is so common in all the trades, you know, I look at mechanicals and I see copy and paste errors all the time. So, yeah, that makes sense. It doesn’t surprise me that this is a challenge.

Peter: (21:19)
That’s right. Those are some of the more common oversights made in design. Of course we can talk for hours and hours about the rest that we see, but those are the more common ones.

Robb: (21:35)
So, before we move on to the kind of construction phase, when you get brought on by a design team, are you able to mitigate these issue pretty well?

Peter: (21:53)
Yes we can. Our level of involvement changes based on how we are contracted. We may work for the developer. We may work directly for the architect. We may work for a city agency. That contractual relationship really does affect how much we can affect the entirety of the design. We may not be able to affect the civil design as much as we’d like, if we’re contracted, let’s say with the architect directly, but contracting with the developer gives us sort of a greater level of control over the project. So, it varies. But, we do focus on everything that I just mentioned of course, and more.

Robb: (22:57)
Cool. Cool. So on the construction side, top of the list did not surprise me. Trades don’t follow the plans. In many cases, I think that, back in the day, how long ago was back in the day, uh, 10 years ago, maybe, the focus on accessibility compliance, I think was much less than it is today

Peter: (23:05). I think project teams understand today that accessibility compliance really does drive the project. Everything that happens in design and everything that happens on construction will affect accessibility compliance. And so, we see more of a focus on it today. Not as much as we’d liked though, but I think it’s getting better. And so what do we mean when we say that trades may not follow the plans? We review design and we’ve gotten, let’s say electrical to be perfectly compliant and elect requirements for the location of electrical outlets, which can be very complex.

Peter: (24:21)
And so we’ve worked with the designer to achieve a compliant design. Now the design is finished and we move into construction. Well, the electrical contractor involved in the job can be very knowledgeable or not so knowledgeable. And knowledge varies, right? So, if a contractor was not knowledgeable or doesn’t understand that accessibility drives the project, or hasn’t been trained or informed, it could be that the electrical contractor will install the electrical as they have been over the last 30 years without understanding that the installation of electrical is critical and changes depending on a lot of things. And so we’ve got to drive the trades to the plans. We want to incorporate training of the trades. If that’s possible to do, it’s always a key to closing the gap on compliance in the field. And you know, that’s not something that we want to troubleshoot in the field, right?

Robb: (25:42)
Yeah. I mean, it’s such a range. I didn’t want to sound harsh on trades. I mean, there are some mechanical contractors who I just kind of want to follow around for weeks just watching what they do. They’re so knowledgeable. I learned so much. And then there’s others that do what they’ve done for decades, regardless. They don’t want to hear anything else.

Peter:

It’s a whole gamut, and it’s not only electrical as you know. One of the more common things that we see, and it involves the plumbing side of things, bathroom walls are required to be reinforced. Let’s say for the later installation of grab bars, when it comes to residential, some residential projects are required to have grab bars installed at the time of the design and construction. When it comes to commercial or non-residential projects, grab bars are required to be installed at the time of design and construction. We inspect in the field for the location of the grab bar reinforcing. And so, we’ve nailed it down because we’re coming in and we’re taking a look during framing. What we find sometimes is that the plumbing contractor is installing mixing valves or installing plumbing at showers or bathtubs and installs the plumbing smack in the middle of the grab bar reinforcing, which is a problem because you cannot install grab bars in the area of the reinforcing anymore. And so that’s an example of communication. You know, the plumbing contractor needs to understand that reinforcing cannot be removed and they have to understand how to install the plumbing accordingly.

Robb: (27:39)
Yeah. Makes sense. Related to that, next on your list, and it can be plumbing, can be electrical, can be HVAC, can be a lot of different things, when roughing things in, people aren’t taking into account levels of the finished material.

Peter: (28:02)
That’s right, levels of finished material, It’s not uncommon that a design, is going to include stud to stud dimensioning without, you know, when compliance is measured at, we always say between finished material or at the finished material, finished wall, for example, not stud to stud.

Robb: (28:23)
So next on your list, the specific products or specifications that are not coordinated with the details.

Peter: (28:33)
Right. And so how does that pan out.

Robb: (28:36)
Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what you meant by that.

Peter: (28:42)
We may have reviewed a design and, you know, the title of the category specifications slash products, not coordinated with the details. You know, like I mentioned, at the onset, it sort of pans out in a number of ways, let’s say handrail, the design of handrails, we have reviewed exterior accessible routes, ramps, stairs, walks, we’ve reviewed handrail details, height, radius, elevation, cross-section so on and so forth. Compliance is achieved. Now the project is being constructed. The hand rail contractor is onsite welding hand rails onsite, but does not coordinate that activity with the plants. And so, you may have seen on handrails on ramps or sloped surfaces, there are extensions beyond the top and the bottom of the sloped surface, handrail, extensions, horizontal extensions, which are important. There are specific criteria that apply to those extensions. For example, 12 inch horizontal extension, the 12 inches must be level with the landing surface and the 12 inch horizontal extension cannot include the radius of the handrail return.

Peter: (30:21)
And so the detail is very specific, but welding those extensions on site often results in noncompliant extensions, just because the contractor just didn’t coordinate that action or that effort with the plan set. It could also be that we reviewed details of a threshold or even threshold specifications. The plan set is compliant. Now we go out into the field and a contractor says, I worked on a project in the past that was accessible or ADA compliant. I’m doing air quotes, ADA compliant. And so, in that project, we used this threshold. And so, they purchase thresholds based on what they think is compliant based on a past project when they actually were not compliant because they were not reviewed. And so, installation occurs. We get out in the field, the threshold that we see is not what we reviewed, or the contractor says, it’s sloped on both sides. It’s ADA compliant. It’s what we’ve used in the past. And so yeah. Often problems.

Robb: (31:43)
Yeah. I mean the plans don’t usually get into the specific threshold product they use, or do they?

Peter: (31:57)
They can, you will see specified thresholds specs on plant sets, you will see them submitted separately, and you might see details in the plan set.

Robb: (32:10)
So there may or may not be a submittal phase for that threshold product that may or may not have gotten missed or gotten caught. Okay. gotcha.

Peter: (32:19)
Yes. And thresholds, as you can imagine, are the one thing you’ve got to get, right. Start there. And one of the things that’s very apparent, what can be very apparent when someone is snooping around your project trying to identify problems.

Robb: (32:44)
Oh I see. So that’s a thing.

Peter: (32:48)
That can be a thing. And as you can imagine, a high unbeveled threshold is easy to see with the naked eye. You don’t need to get down on the floor and measure the height or, you know, to see that it doesn’t have a sloped edge.

Robb: (33:09)
Okay. Interesting. Yeah that’s an important one. Interesting. So, things change during projects.

Peter: (33:15)
Things change. Things constantly change on projects.

Robb: (33:24)
Yeah. exchange orders, quote of value engineering. And also now, this is one you put on the list, product availability is a big issue, especially now after COVID where availaility is an issue for anything and everything. So when things change during the course of construction, those don’t always get checked?

Peter: (33:46)
They often don’t get checked. And as I mentioned, everything that happens, accessibility drives the project. If something changes, accessibility is affected. And, you know, I make that statement very confidently, you know, it could be that it changes unrelated to accessibility, but it’s important to communicate with whomever is working on the compliance side of things. It’s important to communicate that a change has been made. Let’s take a look to see if accessibility is affected. We’ve specified a refrigerator. The plans were reviewed the clearance between the face of the refrigerator and the opposing countertop is perfectly compliant, but the project team can’t get the refrigerator because of the delay. The refrigerators won’t be in for months, project team decides we can’t wait for months, we’re going to change the refrigerator. And so, they changed the refrigerator, but don’t have that reviewed. And what gets installed is a deeper refrigerator that affects that compliant clearance negatively. We want to take a look at everything that changes, especially the value engineering.

Robb: (35:24)
Yeah. And you mentioned floor, changing the floor height, going from a hardwood floor to, what was your example? Vinyl. Much thinner.

Peter: (35:33)
I experienced that situation in the building that I live in. The project was designed with ceramic tile and hallways. During the process of construction, ceramic tile changed to vinyl tile in some areas. Changing to vinyl tile, which in my case my building was much thinner than the ceramic tile, effected level changes below thresholds at all the entry doors.

Robb: (36:09)
Okay. Yeah. So we’d have to change the threshold or we’d have to do something to bring it back in. Yeah.

Peter: (36:15)
One thing leads to the other, leads to the next, on and on, and it becomes a very expensive fix.

Robb: (36:25)
Yeah, makes sense. And last but not least on your list, things are not always square and level in the real world.

Peter: (36:39)
Yeah. So, we understand construction is not a perfect science and there will be things that occur during construction that don’t perfectly align with what was designed, which is why we need to build tolerance into the design first. And when we do, we sort of reduce what happens in the field when designs don’t incorporate tolerance. And level, keeping things as level as possible is critical. Again, that pans out in a number of ways. Contractors often measure heights like countertop height at the wall, but when countertops are installed, we are really taking a look, for the most part, at the height of the front edge of the countertop, which is 25 and a half inches away from the wall. If the slab sort of transitions from the wall to the center of the room and slopes, that can affect the height of the front edge of the countertop in that case. Maneuvering clearance at doors is required to be perfectly level and no more than 2% max slope for the entirety of the maneuvering clearance.

Peter: (38:26)
Slabs, if the level is not controlled, and the slab slopes too much, then that throws off the compliance of the maneuvering clearance at a door, for example. And leveling, interestingly enough, how we measure level is important. For the most part slopes of floor surfaces, ground surfaces are measured with a two foot digital level, not a four foot non-digital contractors level. Although interestingly enough, the criteria doesn’t specify the tool required. It has become commonplace to use a two foot digital level. The department of justice uses a two foot digital level when they investigate properties. Okay. The department of housing and urban development uses a two foot digital level. And the thinking is that a two foot level is closer to the width of a wheelchair than a four foot level. And so we’ll pick up convex concave and that sort of non-compliant slope that a wheelchair will pick up as it travels along the road.

Robb: (39:55)
These are really well, I would think mostly, these are really subtle effects. But going back to your previous point, if you don’t really include any tolerances in your designs, I can see where very subtle, kind of minor changes could actually become a deal-breaker.

Peter: (40:17)
You know, it’s subtle Robb, but it’s, it’s really important and it’s critical and it’s important to nail down. And it’s not often that we do, but when we have the opportunity to hear from someone who experiences life in a compliant project, you begin to understand, you know, how life-changing the details are.

Robb: (40:51)
Okay. That’s cool. Yeah, it must be gratifying to hear from people where it really makes a difference.

Peter: (40:58)
It’s not often that we do Robb, but we have. And you know, that’s when it makes it all worth it as far as I’m concerned.

Robb: (41:11)
Cool. So, looking ahead, those were your list of some of the most common, snafoos. Are our design and construction teams getting better if we talk again and in five or 10 years, do you think we’ll be talking about the same issues. Do you think there are some things that will really become pretty well understood?

Peter: (41:32)
I think they are getting better, Robb. Why are they getting better? I think that, you know, the design of construction industry is very well aware of the importance of accessibility at this stage of the game. I think that the codes that the design teams are working with are better aligned with federal laws, and criteria referenced by federal laws, are very closely aligned now with the criteria reference by building codes, which is very important. To speak to compliance with the fair housing amendments act, when it comes to the design and construction of multi-family residential projects, HUD has now approved effective March 8th, 2021, additional HUD approved safe harbors for compliance with the design and construction requirements of the fair housing amendments act. And those additional safe harbors include the recent additions of the international building code, which is critical.

Robb: (42:58)
Yeah. So things are just getting more aligned it sounds like.

Peter: (43:03)
Things are getting more aligned. We are seeing improvements. But you know, I think personal opinion, that an architect really can’t be expected to incorporate the level of detail that’s required to ensure that a project is designed in compliance with requirements. I think it really will always be a separate consultant that is retained by the project team, just like the acoustical consultant, just like the landscape consultant, the accessibility consultant is just as critical to ensure that projects comply in the end.

Robb: (43:56)
Are you seeing design firms develop or get that expertise in-house more or not yet?

Peter: (44:04)
I think that the designers and the architects themselves are getting much better at compliance. But I don’t see firms retaining or developing in-house compliance shops. They certainly may have employees that they may rely on to review designs to ensure that they are compliant. But whether that employee just does accessibility every day, day in, day out, I doubt it. But improvements are being made, certainly.

Robb: (44:47)
Awesome. Yeah. Thanks Peter. I have a much better feel for, well, I have much better feel for how things can get screwed up, and therefore a better feel for how not to screw it up.

Thanks to Peter. He was on the podcast three years ago talking about some background and history of accessibility and accessibility requirements. This is not my wheelhouse. I really learned a lot from both episodes. So go back and check that one out if this was an interesting topic. Buildings and Beyond is produced by Steven Winter Associates, you can find us at swinter.com. That’s swinter.com. We are focused on making better buildings by making buildings more accessible, healthier, more sustainable, efficient, resilient, comfortable, affordable, etc. It’s a long list. It goes on and on. swinter.com/podcast is where you go to find the show notes and other episodes. And check out our careers page. If you are looking for opportunities, we have openings in most, if not all, of our offices, Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Norwalk, Connecticut, and Boston, Massachusetts. I counted 19 openings today, late June, 2021. People are starting to filter back into all our offices now after COVID, or at least after COVID has eased a bit, which is pretty nice. Thanks to the podcast team here. Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, and Kelly Westby. I’m Robb Aldrich. Thank you for listening.

Sarah Nugent, LEED AP, WELL AP

Sarah Nugent is a Sustainability Director at Steven Winter Associates on our Sustainable Building Services team. She oversees certification program management for commercial buildings, and helps guide project teams on green and high-performance building and site design strategies, cost-effective building system operation, and energy-saving maintenance practices. She has extensive project experience with LEED® Building Design + Construction, Interior Design + Construction, Neighborhood Development, and LEED for Cities and Communities Rating Systems, as well as the Collaborative for High-Performance Schools, the NYC SCA’s Green School Guidelines, the IWBI’s WELL® Building Standard and the Center for Active Design’s Fitwel® Building Standard.

We think a lot about high-performance buildings – but what about the high-performance humans in those buildings?

As the future of office-dwelling is on everyone’s mind, there are a lot of questions surrounding how buildings can help or hinder human health and wellbeing. Tenants may be wondering what questions to ask building owners and building owners may be curious about what steps to take and which of the various healthy building toolkits to employ.

In this episode, Kelly chats with Sarah, Sustainability Director at SWA, about the intersection of health, wellness, and sustainability – or the “triple bottom line” in buildings, and why projects need to take a proactive, holistic approach to all three.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly: (00:05)
Welcome to buildings and beyond,

Robb: (00:08)
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:12)
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:17)
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly: (00:18)
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Kelly: (00:22)
Sarah Nugent helps architects, owners, developers, and building management staff implement a healthy, sustainable, and high performance building strategies on their new construction projects. She has experience with LEED, WELL and Fitwel rating systems. All of which we reference throughout our discussion today, she works on projects from high rise, residential to commercial offices, as well as various other space types, including firehouses and museums. Sarah and I have spoken a few times over the past 18 months about how we make sure that the discussion about health in buildings includes, but is not limited to viral transmission. As we increase office presence this summer and into the fall, can we encourage everyone to think about health holistically? So in this episode, we get into a broad overview of healthy building concepts and the programs that promote them. To start out, Sarah lays the groundwork for what these elements are.

Sarah: (01:19)
So when you take a step back for all of the different kind of toolkits within healthy buildings certifications, that’s, you know, my background, is in certification programs, be it LEED, WELL, Fitwel, you know, all of these different rating systems, they all kind of focus on kind of their foundations of healthy building, right? That’s also part of public health schools guidelines, you know, the Harvard School of Public Health for example, has nine foundations of healthy buildings, air quality and ventilation, kind of again, main foundations, main backbones, thermal health, moisture, dust and pest, safety and and security, water quality, noise, and lighting and views.

Kelly: (02:04)
If you already feel overwhelmed, it’s okay. You’re not alone. Sarah highlighted some of the ways the industry has progressed over the last few years

Sarah: (02:14)
In the beginning of LEED version four, people were really nervous about how the material category was changing. You might remember that where all of the building product disclosure and optimization credits, you know, instead of you looking at recycled content, they looked at these disclosure credits and we were really nervous about them. We just didn’t really see, we didn’t know, well, the market wasn’t there yet. We just really weren’t sure. And now looking back, those credits, like those related to disclosures, which can be both environmental disclosures or health disclosures, it’s ubiquitous. If you aren’t disclosing, you’re not on par with your competitors. In terms of the materials disclosures. So say for example Sherwin-Williams, every paint has disclosures, every single paint in their entire line, right. It’s mainstream manufacturers that are doing these things that we just didn’t know if they would catch up and they really have. And so that’s looking back, we were very nervous in the beginning of LEED v4, cause it was just such a wholesale change and that’s actually been something that all of our projects succeed in just by, you know, being a little thoughtful of course, like during specification period, but I think that that really is the, the mainstream coming into our sector. Right. Disclosures and

Kelly: (03:46)
Transparency?

Sarah: (03:46)
Exactly. People want to know what’s going in their building. They want, you know, I do think some of that has to do, you might remember a few years ago when that, like there was that rumor about like Chinese created gypsum board that had formaldehyde in it. Right. And, and I do think that there was a big shift in the manufacturer’s perspective because of that. I do. I really do.

Kelly: (04:11)
And of course, the global pandemic. Sarah and I talked about the questions that have been on the general population’s mind and in your local news stories, like..

Sarah: (04:23)
The air changes Per hour in an MTA train car

Kelly: (04:26)
The general population now has a vocabulary around ventilation and filtration and Merv 13, and can at least ask about the indoor air quality in their children’s schools or in their offices. And this knowledge is making a difference.

Sarah: (04:41)
So I had recently saw a statistic that Fitwel’s increase in registrations was like over 200% in the past 12 months. Yeah. They’ve really skyrocketed in terms of their interest and people out registering projects, which is excellent. And again, they’re the center for active design oversees the Fitwel program, but it was created with the GSA and the CDC.

Kelly: (05:06)
And of course all of these programs are responding directly to this heightened awareness…

Sarah: (05:13)
All of these major programs LEED, WELL, and Fitwel created response programs to COVID. So they all came out with ways in which buildings could react because at the time there wasn’t really great federal guidance. So they, they said, you know, these are the strategies, like the 20 strategies we would recommend that you implement and that you might have seen the Lady Gaga advertisements for the WELL health safety rating. Yeah. So that’s that program. So for, for re-entry, you know, going back into the building, and saying that you’ve been third party verified that you’re building, you know, implemented these strategies.

Kelly: (05:52)
So what we’re asking the audience today and the industry is to consider how can we build on this momentum, the poll of early adopters and the increased knowledge of the general public to take a holistic approach to building health. Sarah explains what this would look like in an ideal world.

Sarah: (06:11)
So my like pie in the sky perfect project would be when we, you know, it’s concept design or schematic design, you know, bring us on as early as possible. And we talk about all these different health metrics alongside the environmental and energy sustainability metrics. Right. That’s my absolute, you know, that would be like the perfect cherry project, right. Because they shouldn’t be after thoughts because it shouldn’t be when the building is getting turned over it that you start thinking about how to implement these strategies. Right. It should be when you are kicking off your project, how are the people who are using this building going to feel right? How are they actually going to be experiencing the building?

Kelly: (06:53)
But of course the large majority of existing buildings or new construction projects, aren’t starting there, they’re sort of minimally, minimally code compliant, which is actually, you can be less than code compliant because it’s whatever somebody actually enforces in the field. Right. So whatever’s enforced in the field that kind of minimally code compliant and that’s like the standard building. And so the question is, is that what tenants are going to be asking for in the future? And especially kind of in that office space right now, like there are risks associated with holding an office portfolio right now. And how are you setting yourselves apart from your competition?

Sarah: (07:36)
It’s a great point because, you know, as re-entry starts happening, I mean, our New York city office is talking about going back for the first time in June, right? Like we’ve been out of the office since March of 2020. Phase one, who knows how many people, but right. So that the future of the office is definitely something that’s on everyone’s radar, how dense, right? Like how dense and office is going to be, what the ventilation rates and filtration rates of that space will be? I mean, I do hope that post COVID some of these strategies, or most of these strategies are still maintained. Right.

Kelly: (08:10)
And so I asked Sarah about where people are trying to get started and where should they get started? People are often looking for a checklist. Right. And in some ways we’ve talked about before people try to look for an equity checklist and then they’re like, okay, I did the equity checklist, so now I’m equitable. And then they put that aside and then they go on with their lives, which is not really working

Sarah: (08:35)
Nor the point of those checklists

Kelly: (08:38)
So in what ways do you think the checklist style is working for health and wellness? And in what ways do you think some clients maybe are missing something because they want it to be too prescriptive or, or is that actually the way to go about it for health?

Sarah: (08:58)
I honestly think that it’s the way to go about it. I do. I do. Because as we’ve, as we’ve discussed, there are so many different elements of health. Right. And so, again, like for so long, we were really focused on just ventilation or just filtration, but there’s so much more. But I think it can be overwhelming. Similarly with when LEED was first created. Right. Like it was overwhelming. People didn’t really know where to begin. So the checklist allows, or these checklist based programs allow you to at least start somewhere. Right. It doesn’t matter exactly where, but at least you’re getting your feet wet. So that’s how, that’s how I see it. And again, like you don’t, you would never need to get certified, but it allows you to say, okay, well, what are we even doing? You know, like what are we actually even implementing in our building? We don’t necessarily need to go through the whole process, but, you know, are we even responding to this topic, you know, of safety and security? Like what are we doing for an emergency situation? Or do we even have a Legionnaires’ plan, you know, for our, for our water systems, they might not. Right. So that’s, that’s also, that’s a precondition for the WELL program is to have a Legionnaires’ safety plan. So it’s things to, you know, to, to really prevent the transmission from the, in the first place, you know? And so I think that that is definitely why it’s a great place to start.

Kelly: (10:17)
That’s a good point. Not everybody has 30 years to do the research themselves.

Sarah: (10:21)
Exactly. And, you know, like LEED too they lean on ASHRAE and they lean on the EPA and all of these other organizations and institutions to, to do the research and you cull from those institutions. Right. And then it’s just a toolkit in your toolbox. That’s, that’s how I think of all of the, all of the systems. Yeah.

Kelly (10:42)
That’s great. So you’ve referenced all of them in this, but give us kind of the basic overview, kind of each one, why you might push a client in one direction versus another, or any other things you think people should consider.

Sarah: (10:55)
So again, with the background of LEED for new construction, commercial in mind, not residential, anything like that. So I would still say that LEED is the best way to, to start your foray into any of this, because it does touch upon all of them in at least an introductory way. And then you can get deeper, right? So you can still have the sustainability aspects with energy and water reduction and things of that nature, transportation while ensuring that your ventilation is designed correctly, you have the right filtration and you’re you know, if you were to pursue the low emitting material categories then you would be able to have that healthier aspect, to not bring in potential carcinogenic materials. So that’s, you know, just any LEED program while still have all those parameters with the Fitwel program, I would say because it is federally created because it’s connected with the CDC, it a great way for people who are really interested in health, but might not have the upfront capital to install a lot of like more technically or technologically connected items. So, you know, just like the barrier to entry of Fiwel I would say is lower. It still has many, again, these like these 12, most of the there’s different versions of Fitwell based on, you know, you’re building typology or you a community, things of that nature. So there’s still 12 categories related to health based on these seven health impact categories. So you’re still getting a good holistic view of health, but I would say in terms of implementation, you can use it for a new construction project or an existing project. But I think it kind of had existing buildings in mind when it was created, you know, you can implement it with policies and procedures, things of that nature rather than having to overhaul like your air handler or things like that. And then I would say the WELL building standard is pretty technically rigorous in terms of water quality, air quality testing. There’s, I want to say 180 points that you can choose from. They also have, I believe 12 categories, it’s air, water, nourishment, light movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind community. So it’s a lot, you know, it’s very robust.

Kelly: (13:28)
And they’re more testing based, right? You have to actually, you know, it’s not enough to make a plan.

Sarah: (13:33)
Correct. Yeah, exactly. It’s not just, you know, I said that I did it, here’s my documentation. The GBCI will go in and do the performance testing, or, you know, you have a testing go in and do the testing to verify that you actually installed low VOC products or that your quality is actually, you know, the PM two point fives are actually below this specific level. Right. Like they will go in and verify all of that. And that is kind of their proof in the pudding. Right. That they that’s why they are so strict, but they also just have a lot of like features related to monitoring, you know, like having permanent air quality monitors or permanent water quality monitors, other credits related to you know, like having your air handler turn off when your windows are up and things like that are more expensive, you know, just it’s going to be pricey, but you know that it’s going to be a healthier building if you do implement them. So I would say it’s, it’s definitely it’s a commitment. Yeah. It’s an investment. It’s definitely an investment. Yeah.

Kelly: (14:31)
What do you think, what of the healthy building standards that you think is important is really lagging behind? Like what do you think people haven’t really caught on or really isn’t considered like normal construction practice right now, that probably should be?

Sarah: (14:48)
Interesting question. Maybe sound. Acoustics. I’m going to say it’s acoustics because there’s, you know, LEED, WELL, Fitwel, they all have items related to acoustics, but it’s yeah. I would say that’s not mainstream at all. You know, maybe between between units in like the corridor. But you know, like in old buildings, I’m sure we’ve all lived in an old building and like the unit above us, you know, they’re bowling or something up there. And so I think that that’s definitely an afterthought. Yeah. And I know you guys have seen how like triple pane windows. Yes. They’re great for thermal performance and the envelope performance, but a co-benefit for sure is the acoustical performance of your triple pane window, right?

Kelly: (15:48)
Yeah. And it’s interesting, cause I’ve seen spaces where they are required to have the higher performance windows because it’s over a train or something like that. I had one, one building that I lived in, in the city that had, it was amazing how the, how good the windows worked in terms of sound attention. It’s wild.

Sarah: (16:08)
Yeah. Yeah. I was in one of the newer NYU Langone hospital buildings a few years ago and there was a hella pad outside and they have triple pane windows and you couldn’t hear the hella pad at all. It was really impressive. Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. Or nourishment too. I mean nourishment, but that’s not really construction. Yeah. I would say those two.

Kelly: (16:34)
Yeah. And acoustics is interesting, it came up at a commissioning training on acoustical commissioning. So how are we testing spaces to make sure that they’re meeting acoustical requirements, e specially if you’re in a performing arts space or a museum or a you know even a hotel conference center. So I think there are certain scenarios in which we realize it’s important, but there are still are, you know, designs that aren’t thought holistic.

Sarah: (17:09)
And that’s still based on what the program of that space is, you know, if it’s a performance space. Right. But yeah, I think in a commercial application, let’s say, you know, going back to an office building or to a residential building, I just don’t know if it’s as ubiquitous. Or the NRC rating might get specified, but does, how does it actually get implemented and tested? That’s interesting about commission acoustical commissioning.

Kelly: (17:39)
Yeah, you know, I’m always a fan of making sure that it actually gets installed properly. It’s one thing to show the arrow on the drawings that say the air is moving this way, but it’s quite another to make sure that it is. Which is why I, like, I definitely like the idea of, well, in terms of making sure that things are getting tested, but of course it’s a risk for people, you know, it’s one thing to follow an item and say that I, you know, I, I installed this specific thing, but it’s another thing to install and hope for the best.

Sarah: (18:14)
And acoustical is another topic that, another item that gets tested in WELL, that’s a great point. Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly: (18:20)
What is the main thing that you want the audience to take away from this discussion?

Sarah: (18:26)
I would say one thing we didn’t discuss really is this, this intersection of health, wellness, sustainability. Yeah. You know, the triple bottom line, right. People, planet, profit or ESG, that can be kind of seen in those different ways. I would say what I would want folks to get out of this conversation is about not having health be an afterthought. Is really implementing healthy strategies at the get-go and not, not reactive, being proactive about, about that. Right? Like you said, with the the WELL health safety rating or the Fitwell viral response module, they were responding to an event, right? Like it’s a reaction to a need, but the need we know is people get sick, right. Or people are stressed out and people need that mental support. So I would say for every building operator or developer, you know, thinking about every building from a health and wellness perspective in alignment with sustainability, and that would be, that’d be the dream.

Kelly: (19:42)
In the episode today, we took a high level approach to the discussion. So I encourage you to take a look at all the great content in the shownotes atswinter.com/podcasts. For example, Sarah brought up noise as something that might be a lingering behind, but according to Harvard school of public health, nine foundations of a healthy building, which is a curation of prior research, they outline some alarming connections between noise and health noise. Exposure can exacerbate the risk of cardiovascular disease noise in a classroom from outdoor sources can impair children’s speech, concentration and reading comprehension. And in a recent survey of 1200 senior executives and non-executive employees, they found that 53% of employees report that ambient noise reduces their work satisfaction and productivity. And don’t forget to check out our other episodes where we dive in deeper on healthy building materials, moisture with Kristoff Irwin kitchen ventilation, with Ian Walker. And of course, Maureen Mahle’s episode, our buildings, our health buildings. And beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission, please visit Swinter.com/careers. We are always looking for new employees. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Rob Aldrich. We thank you for listening and we will see you next time.

Valerie Mutterperl, AIA, LEED AP

Valerie is an Associate Principal with more than twenty years of experience in senior living and other large-scale projects. Since joining Perkins Eastman, Valerie has been involved in a variety of projects across the spectrum of senior living design, including affordable housing, skilled care, and assisted and independent living, either as stand-alone projects or as part of a life plan community. Drawing on her experience with multifaceted and complex projects, Valerie is able to create  positive design outcomes for clients that meet the highest standards.

What role do designers, providers, and policymakers play in making senior living communities more vibrant and supportive for older adult residents? How do these spaces enhance the experience of those living, working, and visiting the residence?

In this month’s episode we chat with Valerie Mutterperl about her experience in senior living design, and the importance of community within senior living. With a growing aging population, and more families seeking senior housing solutions, these conversations are more important than ever.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly: (00:05)
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb: (00:08)
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:12)
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:17)
I’m Robb Aldrich,

Kelly: (00:18)
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:21)
In this episode, I spoke with Valerie Mutterperl who’s an architect with Perkins Eastman based in New York. And she specializes in senior living facilities, many types of senior living facilities, which we’ll get into a little bit. She explained really well I thought, how she got interested in architecture, architecture in general and senior living in particular.

Valerie: (00:44)
I mean, the reason I went into architecture is because I felt how spaces made me feel. I was aware about how spaces made me feel, and I wanted to be able to help shape that experience for other people, whether it was senior living or a school or an office building. And so taking the ideas of natural light or comfort or scale, what’s the scale of a space? Do I feel really small in this space or do I feel, you know, is it the right size for me? Does it make me feel uncomfortable because of the proportions of the room or is the ceiling height, you know, intentionally large because I’m supposed to feel odd by the space and, and wander, or is this just my living room and I want to be comfortable in it. So I think, you know, thinking about those ideas as an architect and thinking about how to translate those ideas into somebody’s home. And I’m not talking about a private family home because we’re talking about senior living communities, talking about buildings that can often be quite big, but they have to function as somebody’s home. So how do you translate those proportions and the scale and the feeling of a home into a building, which is a community.

Robb: (02:16)
As you’ll probably be able to tell from my questions, this is not an area where I have a lot of experience or expertise, but Valerie clearly does, she is clearly an expert in this area. And I really appreciated her very thoughtful answers to my somewhat naive questions before we get into it. Here’s a quick announcement from Dylan about NESEA’s upcoming building energy conference.

Speaker 1: (02:42)
Hello everyone. This is Dylan Martello co-producer of buildings and beyond and a passive house consultant here at Steven winter associates. I just wanted to let you all know about my upcoming session on May 7th at the building energy Boston conference. I will be speaking with my colleague, Nicole Ceci about de-carbonizing domestic water heating in multifamily buildings. You can also catch some other great presentations from industry experts, including sessions by Lois Arena and Lauren Hildebrand of SWA. The conference, which is happening virtually from May 5th to May 7th is presented by the Northeast sustainable energy association, or NESEA. NESEA has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the fields of high performance, building energy efficiency and renewable energy visit nesea.org. That’s N E S E A.org for more info. We hope to see you there.

Robb: (03:38)
My first question is, do you focus primarily or only on senior housing or is it, is this just one of your areas of expertise?

Valerie: (03:50)
So good question. I primarily focus on senior living at Perkins Eastman. I have been fortunate enough to work in many different practice areas throughout my career. However, when I joined Perkins Eastman, that became sort of my specialty focus and it’s a great practice area because it encompasses so many things that people don’t think about. It encompasses master planning often. There can be healthcare components, there can be all sorts of educational components or residential living. So it, it gives one the ability to poke their fingers into lots of different places, always keeps things interesting and exciting. And it’s it’s actually been a practice area that I’ve I’ve had throughout my career, no matter what firm I’ve been with. So it’s really, and it’s changed. So it’s exciting.

Robb: (04:51)
Yeah. How did you first get involved or interested in it? Was that accidental?

Valerie: (04:58)
Yeah, when you’re a junior right out of grad school, you work on whatever they throw your way. And the first project I worked on actually was a nursing home out in Jersey city, it had a particular mission to serve residents of the blind and it was a religious organization. So they preferenced taking residents in that had visual impairment in one shape or form. And the original project I went with my, my boss at the time because the administrator wanted to redo the beauty shop and that turned into a whole two additions to their existing building because it became evident that to provide the level of care that they were interested in providing that their facility was very outdated. For instance, they had four bedded rooms with residents, no private bathrooms. Those are things that can’t do code wise, nor would you want to do them because of just the wellness of the residents and their mental and physical wellbeing and sort of their sense of, of being in a home rather than being in an institution. So there are many parts of senior living. It’s a continuum of care, which ranges all the way from residential for very independent, you know, 55 plus age restricted communities. I’m sure you see them popping up all over the place near where you live. Through, you know, assisted living where people maybe need some, some help with activities of daily living is what we call them. ADL’s, maybe pill reminders, maybe help getting dressed, but can mostly live independently. Through some of the more clinical settings like nursing care or hospice care end of life care. So it’s a continuum and senior living encompasses the broad range of all these things, which could be separate individual pieces, or they could be co located together.

Robb: (07:11)
And the term senior living versus senior housing, is one preferred? Or do you prefer one?

Valerie: (07:18)
It’s an interesting question. We have in the senior living practice been talking about, is that the right name for this practice area anymore? Does it need a more modern name in the same way that providers changed from continuing care retirement communities to life plan communities? Do we need a name change? So I don’t know that they are not the same. I don’t know that they’re not synonymous senior housing sounds friendlier to the consumer as well as I think to the children of the potential consumers. So I think that’s an important, important idea and distinction of who our senior living providers marketing too. It’s not just the seniors, but it’s their children too.

Robb: (08:17)
Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Okay.

Valerie: (08:21)
Right. Nobody wants to put mom and dad in an institution. You know, they want to partner with mom and dad and have them live, not warehouse them, live someplace that they can live life to their fullest, whatever that may be for them.

Robb: (08:43)
Yeah. You sent me some background and this is something, this is an area where I haven’t had much experience at all. And if I have, I was probably just in doing blower door tests or consulting about filtration or ventilation, something like that. But you sent me some background material, which I perused and it was really interesting. And really as a designer, I think that the thing that struck me after reading through the material that you sent was just the deliberately trying to make connections or maintain connections of different kinds with the people living in senior housing, or these senior living facilities or whatever people ended up calling them. And just maintaining connections on, on a few different layers. And I think the first one that jumped out to me was, which is kind of obvious, was just connection with the natural world, connection without outdoors, biophilic design. Is that something that your clients ask for specifically, or is that something you usually try to try to push into a project into the design?

Valerie: (09:50)
I don’t, I can’t recall a client being that specific. There’s a handful that actually know the term biophilia. But it’s a term that we often introduce to take clients beyond the baseline of what you were just talking about, the blower door test and sustainability, you know, most clients today are savvy enough to be able to talk about LEED certification and other sustainable practices in terms of the basis of design, solar orientation, energy consumption, and things like that. I think biophilia is kind of the next step though, when you’re talking qualitatively about the spaces. I mean, not, not just the thermal comfort of the space, because we’ve built a good building that’s well-insulated and can be naturally ventilated and cooled and heated enough in the winter. But talking about a space that has a certain orientation to a view that’s important bringing natural light. And so that there’s wonder, you know, by being able to see a deer walking outside, or maybe you’re in an urban environment and seeing the traffic going by, or the kids going to school or you’re across from a school and you can see them out at lunchtime playing. I think being, being able to bring that environment indoors is also really important for people to understand the time of day and those cues that you get from light from dark. So it seems like it should be a no brainer and inherent in design, just in terms of creating a space and a place that has a connection to your surroundings. But I think it’s important also to have those conversations with clients and make that a priority on the design list so that spaces can benefit from the outside. And, and there’s evidence that, that residents who have that connection are happier and healthier. I mean, I think that goes for all of us in our homes, right. The room that I like to be in the most is the one that’s brightest during the day.

Robb: (12:14)
Yep. Yeah. I have my coffee every morning in front of a glass sliding glass door. I can watch the birds at the bird feeder. Are there different strategies within senior living facilities for this than other types of buildings you think, or is it just a lot of it is similar as far as the biophilia?

Valerie: (12:38)
I think it’s similar. I think that there are maybe some considerations or ameliorating factors to take into consideration such as for instance, if a senior is often seated, you know, what is the sill height for that person so that they can get a good view out your view out of a window standing is very different than your view seated. I think also in terms of which way that view is looking and sun glare, potential sun glare versus shade, creating an overhang, creating the architecture so that you don’t get that glare. And it becomes a place where a person can sit by a window and, and be outside and have that connection to nature is also really important. It’s better for the building. It’s better for the person, but I think in addition, looking for opportunities, not just within the building, but for people to go out and engage with nature and have those experiences is equally important, having a garden or having, having a space where they can sit outside, which maybe had a generous overhang or a pergola or something like that, so that you can not just visually see things from inside, but be outdoors.

Robb: (14:08)
Yup. And maybe it goes right along with it, like connection to the community. Something that seems obvious. But when I was going through the material that you sent, I thought of my, my uncle who lives in, I think you would call it independent living facility. So it’s an apartment. It’s not assisted living. It’s not nursing, but there’s common meals and such, but that facility is it’s, it’s very much separate, you know, it’s, it’s back on its own plot of land set back from the road, not part of a town or village or anything it’s, it’s feels very, it feels pretty secluded to me. And I think there’s a sidewalk, there are some paths where he could walk a quarter to a Dunkin Donuts or something, but I mean, that’s, that’s where the land was. There are probably advantages actually to being somewhat set back from a busy road. But as a designer, what do you think about in trying to kind of maintain not seclusion, but more integration with the community.

Valerie: (15:15)
Yeah. That’s a big topic with a lot of layers to peel back. I mean, look, honestly, the ideal scenario is when you have a client and they’re looking for a piece of property that they would engage us early enough, that we could really delve into some of that, but oftentimes your clients come to you with an idea or a parcel of land that they’ve purchased. I think traditionally many of these senior living communities have been located where there’s a lot of, a lot of space to build in general. Right. and so, so, and people can spread out and the cost of building is, is less than in an urban dense environment. But I think also that comes with advantages and disadvantages. The discussion there is about creating community in this, in this place that you’re building. Right. So how do you create a community amongst the residents that are all going to move in to the independent living community? And oftentimes that’s through commons, which has social functions, wellness functions, you know, aquatics or a gym or a multipurpose room or auditorium, where there can be educational programs for them to engage with. And the residents usually band together and create their own sorts of gardening clubs and all sorts of things. And that, that really comes out of the people that are living there and what their interests are. But there are a lot of providers, depending on their location that have also looked to extend their reach into the greater surrounding community, rather than having their independent living community kind of be an Island of themselves. So creating a place where residents can come in from the outside community and engage in those services or creating partnerships, for instance, with community centers or gyms or things like that, where their residents can go and take advantage of those things too. And that’s great for providers because number one, it broadens their reach. It offers them an opportunity for brand recognition for maybe some seniors that are living at home that are thinking about maybe making a move at some point. So I think, you know, there, there’s, there’s lots of opportunities there for different synergies. The urban community, I think, is something a little bit different because it offers seniors an opportunity to live in an urban environment where they can really just get out, right? There’s retail right there, there’s arts, there’s entertainment. But as a designer, both as an architect that thinks about individual buildings, but also the larger urban fabric, I think it’s incumbent upon us as designers and policy makers, that if people are going to be in these urban centers or potentially age in place in their apartments, to create communities that are friendlier for seniors in terms of transportation network, or, you know, safe walking paths that are level that can be navigated by a wheelchair. And that really benefits everybody, right? It benefits not just seniors, but potentially other people with disabilities, young families with baby carriages. So thinking about our urban environment and how that can be transformed to create more opportunities for seniors to live there in their existing community, or maybe it’s a new community for them rather than going and moving to a whole other community. I think it talks to choice. People need choice in where they’re going to live and where they want to age.

Robb: (19:26)
That’s a great point. Yeah. I mean, it’s all, it’s all connected.

Valerie: (19:31)
Yeah I mean, what did 2020 show us? You know, it showed, showed us when we were all in quarantine, how much, how much we needed to be connected. You know, we had to be clever as a society in terms of creating connections over the past year in terms of zoom and all sorts of other technologies. But I think it also highlighted how isolating it can be for people living by themselves how, how much they need to be with other people. And, and most Americans I’d say almost, you know, 75% of them don’t think about going to a community like this because to them staying in their home is a sign of independence. But during COVID, I think it made people reassess that independence, because if they were part of a community, a senior living community, they might’ve had easier access to services. Not had to worry about grocery shopping because they, you know, would have been on campus dining and things like that. So although I think telemedicine and telehealth, it was a real COVID was a real boon for that. I think it sort of highlighted how difficult it could be and how isolating it is to live by themselves

Robb: (20:57)
In your practice, were there some key where there’s some surprises or key takeaways from COVID as to how you’ll do things, you may do things differently moving forward?

Valerie: (21:07)
Yeah. I think that there was a lot of focus around dining in particular communal events, even within senior living communities, there was a sense of isolation of residents needing to be within their own apartments or their own rooms, depending how, you know, how big their space was and think communal activity and dining became a thing of the past for a while as it did for all of us, nobody went to a restaurant for the longest time. So in terms of laying out dining spaces, how to decrease density, all these things have real implications for providers in terms of staffing. The less dense it is, the more seating you need, things like that. And I don’t know if that will really be here to stay. But certainly this whole idea of, of room service, I think became a greater, a greater push an idea. And it made us think about, and, and packaged delivery. I mean, we all started ordering from Amazon and other places and not going to stores. So I think this whole idea of delivering services and products to people’s apartment front door made us think about, does there need to be some sort of extra vestibule that can become a repository for a tray for packages, so to provide for contactless delivery also thinking about access to the outdoors, right. Do you have grounds to walk on if you’re not leaving your apartment, do you have a balcony that you can go out on and is it a meaningful balcony or does it need to be something like a Juliet balcony that you can, you know, open big doors and have that sense of being outside?

Robb: (23:17)
Yeah. Another topic was connection to family. And again, in the background material that you sent me, there were some examples of multi-generational housing. Is that something you’re seeing a fair bit of as a, I guess, a deliberate alternative to senior living? I hadn’t considered that.

Valerie: (23:42)
I would say I have seen it as a prevalent living option. I think it’s something we talk about a lot. I think it’s something that we see as a trend that adult children think about with with their families, with their parents, you know, is there a space for mom and dad, is that space in the house? Is it a small house? You know, one of these accessory dwelling units that I can place on my property. I think there are more examples of co-housing not, which are not necessarily intergenerational, but co-housing models where residents that are like-minded can coalesce around a community and share and responsibilities, be it cooking or gardening or maintenance or something of that sort. The intergenerational idea, I think has stronger legs and more practical, real life examples of communities that maybe located in places that are near a school near a daycare where seniors can be tutors for the kids, or, you know, there’s, there’s some opportunity for interaction on that level as opposed to the family level.

Robb: (25:22)
So if it’s not deliberate multi-generational or inter-generational housing, allowing better connection to families. So when families come visit their parents or grandparents, that it’s fun that it’s easy. I don’t know a playground for the grandkids or something?

Valerie: (25:40)
Absolutely. I mean, we talk about that often on all of our projects, you know, it could be something like I have one project where we included a wii and mostly it was for the residents as part of their fitness room, but certainly something that you could do with the grandkids when they come over as a fun thing to do, we have other projects that particular project did not have a lot of walkable grounds on the piece of property that it was located on. But we have other projects where there are very gracious amounts of gardens and grounds and there’s playground equipment, or oftentimes there could be a pickle ball court or a tennis court for the residents. So there are opportunities for kids, adult, kids, and the residents to engage at that level. I think creating spaces that are not just in and grandpa’s apartment for instance, are really, really important. Nobody, nobody goes to visit grandma and grandpa and sits in their bedroom. For instance, if they have, you know, a studio apartment, you, you know, you go to their house and you have to have space for private and for, and for public entertaining in a way.

Robb: (27:06)
Yeah. Yeah. And friends too, I guess. Yeah. Friends, family, just being a nice place to visit is certainly very much part of the design process.

Valerie: (27:17)
And I think that all of these communal spaces, it’s really an extension of your house, right. Or your apartment. It’s the, it’s the whole idea of I’m a single person, or maybe I still have my partner in life and we’re downsizing from a larger space, but it’s not just a transaction. That’s physical necessarily. It’s a transaction that involves thoughtful engagement with a community, right, there there’s dining spaces, there’s living spaces, there’s media spaces. There could be a painter’s studio. There could be there’s often wellness spaces, which could be individualized personal spaces, like a spa, or it could be a pool or a fitness room, but it could also be doctor’s offices where doctors come in. So, you know, it’s like an extension of a larger community, but also an extension of your house and all the different types of spaces that you might have in your house.

Robb: (28:27)
Yeah. It’s a different way of thinking. Cool. So one thing that you mentioned to me when we first spoke, which was an element of diversity and all different kinds of diversity, and the one that I think kind of caught me the most was income diversity or difference in wealth because a lot of the senior housing or senior living, a lot of these facilities are pretty pricey. And so, so what can you do? Actually, two questions kind of, are your clients interested in, in reaching a wide range of income or wealth? People are living on savings probably largely. And how can you address it? How can you be more inclusive in design of facilities?

Valerie: (29:25)
Yeah, that’s a really tough one that I think we were struggling with a bit. It’s not just the designer that can answer that one. It’s sort of the providers and also the policy, quite frankly, I think as designers, part of what we can do to affect that is look at the types of spaces that we’re designing. The cheapest space to build is repetitive space. So is it modular design or if it’s not modular design, is there a way of having a, a building block that’s a bad analogy, but having a building block that, you know, if you repeated a number of times, there’s an economy of scale to how you build it, or the types of, of finishes and other materials that you’re using. Because if the cost of construction comes down, then the overall project costs comes down and potentially you can create a more affordable product. So I think it’s really difficult. It’s one that our firm is, is grappling with as are many other firms to create, to, to look at and create an affordable product. But I think we also see that there’s a need and many providers see that there’s a need for this middle market affordable market, because not everybody can pay for the luxury community and live in that because of a certain income level.

Robb: (31:08)
Yeah, yeah. Or mixed, is it possible to design mixed? I don’t know, mixed income without segregating people of different income levels or different wealth.

Valerie: (31:31)
I think there are communities that have, can have different levels of, of product where some of the higher end product can offset more affordable product. I’m thinking of a community right now. That’s looking to build these very luxurious apartments as a way of offsetting, not necessarily more affordable apartments, but services, affordable services that they push out into the greater community. That’s one way. So it’s not necessarily, it could be about providing a variety of housing types in one location, but it could also be about having a housing type that allows you to push services into the community so that people can, you know, get visiting nurse kinds of services and other things like that, or running an adult daycare program for people, you know, seniors that potentially are living at home with their adult children who need to go to work, but they need a place for their, for their mom or dad or whoever it is to be during the day.

Robb: (32:52)
That’s cool. Yeah. More community connection. That’s pretty neat.

Valerie: (32:56)
Absolutely.

Robb: (33:00)
I think the last kind of connectivity piece or question I had on my list was workforce connections. And this is something that I had never thought of before, but, you know, for the people that work at these at these communities I’m sure it varies all over the place, but you know medical, medical staff and cleaning and food service and, and administration. If it’s not just a nine to five, you know, I got to go in and clock in eight hours or whatever for the people that work there. If there are more amenities for people at work, like, you know, a daycare I think you mentioned, to make the employees part of the community also. That seems like something as a designer might be something a designer kind of can affect, but also maybe kind of challenging depending on the client or the facility.

Valerie: (34:09)
So I recently listened to a podcast that had a few thoughts in there that stuck with me as a designer. And one of them was about organizational change and organizations being able to take, take the leap and be innovative that it’s not just necessarily creating opportunity within architecture and design, but it’s your client and your partner that has to be willing to take that leap as well. So we talk a lot about with our clients, for instance, employees, spaces, staff spaces, you know, when we’re laying out a building and we spoke about biophilia and access to natural light, right? Clearly all of the living spaces get natural light, clearly all of the public amenities spaces, the lobby and the, you know, the dining room and the living room all get access to light. And it’s oftentimes those back of house spaces, which unfortunately employee space falls into, oftentimes that kind of gets shoved in the corners of the building that maybe are less attractive and don’t have access to those spaces. So I think, you know, as designers being thoughtful about those spaces and where employees get to spend their time and giving them also access to light, which is really important for every organization, I would say, but oftentimes some of our clients that may have unionized workforces, it’s really important to them to keep their employees. I mean, it’s important to keep every employee happy, but there may be other ameliorating factors that need to be taken into consideration to keep employee satisfaction. I think at a base level, everybody, you know, wants to get compensated well, be that in salary or benefits or, you know, giving them access to meals. I know there’s a lot of financial companies that when we actually were in the office would bring lunch through because it kept their employees happy and it also kept them working through their lunch hour instead of going out and getting something to eat. So I think those are, are considerations that can be made. And, and certainly if you have a provider that is willing to think about providing space within their, within their community, within their facility, for things like daycare, or maybe, maybe it’s even an education room that they can bring in service in those things all contribute to a happy employee, an employee that feels like they’re valued an employee that feels like they can, you know, that there’s room for growth and within their organization. So

Robb: (36:58)
Does it get into other aspects of design that kind of integrate employees into the community? So it’s not just like a staff resident divide? I don’t know if that’s something you think about,

Valerie: (37:14)
Some of that I think is, is about the organization and how, how they want to provide services. I mean, certainly within a nursing home setting, for instance, a traditional nursing home setting, I should say, we oftentimes look to put care at the center, or not of the center, but integrate it into where residents are spending time during the day in an activity space or a living space. Because you don’t want residents in their rooms all day. That that goes back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of isolation. And you want residents to have a social experience, not just a living experience. So I think that’s one way, but there, but there are other other providers that are interested in creating small house models, which oftentimes are more expensive to staff and can potentially take more space. Although we have looked at adapting that idea into more urban environments, which would put the caregiver at the center of just what, it sounds like a small house. So a smaller grouping of residents that live together in a house like setting, right? So you have a cluster of rooms around a dining space and a living space and maybe an activity space, but that caregiver is not just a caregiver. That caregiver is also helping with meal preparation with the residents potentially is helping with you know, housekeeping and maintenance. That’s a different model that some providers have adapted and that creates different kind of design challenges or design opportunities I should say.

Robb: (39:09)
Yeah, man. So that leads into, I guess, a question and you’ve, which we’ve touched on before now, but all of these elements of a little higher quality, more connected senior living, how much of the demand comes from clients versus how much of it are you bringing to the table and I’m sure it ranges all over the map. I mean, do you see a shift with clients who are maybe more and more thinking in the direction of biophilia or quality spaces for workforce or any of the things that we’ve been talking about? Or is it you just trying to wedge in as much as much quality as you can within, within their scope, within their desire?

Valerie: (40:11)
I think it’s I think there’s a wide range and a lot of, a lot of factors, you know, sometimes you get a client that’s really forward-thinking and, and as a designer, I mean, it’s always a partnership between, between the architect and the rest of the design team because, you know, MEP and sustainability and lighting, all of those things are, are equally as important as, as the architect. It takes all of us to do it. So I think it’s really a partnership between your client and your design team and you push each other and propel each other forward. I think there’s also projects that, that start and the, the client has a specific idea of what they want. And there’s an opportunity that the design team sees and you have the ability to, to push that, that client or that organization forward. And they end up in a place that they hadn’t intended. I mean, the reason I went into architecture is because I felt how spaces made me feel. I was aware about how spaces made me feel, and I wanted to be able to help shape that experience for other people, whether it was senior living or a school or an office building. And so taking the ideas of natural light or comfort or scale, what’s the scale of a space? Do I feel really small in this space or do I feel, you know, is it the right size for me, is the ceiling height? Does it make me feel uncomfortable because of the proportions of the room or is the ceiling height, you know, intentionally large because I’m supposed to feel odd by the space and wonder, or is this just my living room and I want to be comfortable in it. So I think, you know, thinking about those ideas as an architect and thinking about how, how to translate those ideas into somebody’s home. And I’m not talking about a private family home, because we’re talking about senior living communities talking about buildings that can often be quite big, but they have to functions as somebody’s home. So how do you translate those proportions and the scale and the feeling of a home into a building, which is a community. So, you know, I think, I think there are projects that come along that you have to push those ideas and sort of infiltrate them throughout whatever the other project goals may be.

Robb: (43:20)
Gotcha. Yeah. You obviously have given a lot of thought to this.

Valerie: (43:27)
I’ve had a lot of time to practice.

Robb: (43:33)
If we were to talk again in five or 10 years, what do you think, or what do you hope we’d be talking about? What kind of changes do you foresee or would like to see?

Valerie: (43:45)
Wow, I don’t think I was prepared for that question. It’s a good question though. What would I hope to see in five to 10 years? I think I earnestly hope that there is a greater focus and I’m not just saying this because I’m talking with Steven Winter on buildings as consumers of the environment. So a focus on creating, not just healthier buildings, cause I think we’ve gotten more savvy about that, but creating buildings that are, are good stewards of the environment, it’s definitely something that I think is more on the minds of more people. You see it more in the news, not just in industry news, but you know, regular consumer news. So I think, I think that would be important. And I, and I do hope that in five or 10 years that we can have a better conversation about the middle market and the affordable market and see what kinds of inroads we, we may be able to make on that front.

Robb: (45:09)
Yeah. Well, we will check in with you in five to 10 years and see how we see how we’ve done. Thanks again to Valerie. I really enjoyed our conversation really interesting to me for folks looking to dig a little deeper into this topic. Valerie sent quite a few links to good resources, many on Perkins Eastman’s website. These links are in our show notes, go to www.swinter.com/podcast. That’s S W I N T E R.com/podcast. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are working to make buildings better, healthier, more accessible, resilient, sustainable efficient. If you do this kind of stuff, maybe check out our careers page. That’s on swinter.com. I counted 18 openings today when I took a look ranging from summer internships to senior positions and most, if not all of our offices, New York city, Connecticut, DC, and Boston. Thanks to the podcast team here. Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thank you very much.

Steven Winter, FAIA

Steven Winter is the founder and chairman of Steven Winter Associates, Inc. He has been at the forefront of the sustainable/green building movement since its inception, helping lead the U.S. Green Building Council organization as Chairman with the launch of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) program and Greenbuild. Steven is still a current Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, where he serves on the sustainable buildings steering industry.

Comradery [käm-ˌra-d(ə-)rē] noun 1 A feeling of friendliness, goodwill, and familiarity among the people in a group.

At SWA, comradery is etched into our company principles – friendliness and community have been key parts of SWA’s business since the company was born. At the end of the day, we are all trying to make the world a more sustainable and equitable place. But what is the value in having close working relationships with colleagues, clients, and even competitors?

In this episode, we sit down with Steven Winter (yes, THE Steven Winter), to talk about comradery – both within SWA and the industry as a whole, and how it has helped us remain successful through day-to-day operations, major company transitions, and even a global pandemic.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly (00:06):
Welcome to buildings and beyond,

Robb (00:09:
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment,

Kelly (00:13):
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:18):
I’m Robb Aldrich,

Kelly (00:19):
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb (00:22):
In this episode, I talked with Steven Winter, the one and only. We’ve been talking about having Steven on for quite a while, and we asked him if there was a topic that he really wanted to talk about. He started our company, Steven winter associates, back in 1972. He’s been at this quite awhile. He’s seen a lot of trends and fads in the building industry, and he’s a pretty good prognosticator, but he didn’t want to talk about any of that. He wanted to talk about people, about comradery and community in the workplace. So this episode is pretty different than others we’ve done before. Before we get into it, here’s a quick announcement from Dylan about NESEA’s upcoming building energy conference.

Dylan (01:08):
Hello everyone. This is Dylan Martello, co-producer of buildings and beyond, and a passive house consultant here at Steven winter associates. I just wanted to let you all know about my upcoming session on May 7th at the Building Energy Boston conference. I will be speaking with my colleague, Nicole Ceci about de-carbonizing domestic water heating in multifamily buildings. You can also catch some other great presentations from industry experts, including sessions by Lois Arena and Lauren Hildebrand of SWA. The conference, which is happening virtually from May 5th to may 7th, is presented by the Northeast sustainable energy association, or NESEA. NESEA has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the fields of high-performance building, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Visit NESEA.org. That’s N E S E A.org, for more info. We hope to see you there.

Robb (02:02):
There’s no question that COVID inspired Steven’s choice of a topic for this episode.

Steven (02:08):
It totally is because of COVID.

Robb (02:11):
Throughout our conversations, Steven refers a few times to our company principles. A few years ago because the company has kept growing steadily, It was determined that it would behoove us to formalize principles that guide our work and guide our company. I’ll mention them very briefly here: be visionary, take ownership, think holistically, improve the built environment, and last but not least –

Steven (02:41):
Foster comradery, or camaraderie – engage with one another to build community. And, and this, this is an important part of our foundation and it’s something we have been practicing, but it’s nebulous thing that’s out there, that lives out there. And I thought it was, it might be something worth spending a few minutes talking about.

Robb (03:10):
Has that been really part of your thinking going way back? I mean, starting the company, building the company, just good relationships with colleagues?

Steven (03:21):
It’s always been that way. We’ve always been from day one. I, and the staff, which were just one or two to start with and then grew over time, we’ve always been friends in addition to being colleagues.

Robb (03:38):
So does it happen automatically? I mean, over the years, how much thought do you give when you’re hiring, when you’re recruiting? Do you pick people based on, you know, I think I’d really like this person, like to work with this person, like to hang out with this person, can you pick people? Is that something that you can judge when you’re, when you’re hiring, when you’re building a team?

Steven (04:05):
Well current HR policy may not agree with this, but, but the simplest answer is yes. Part of the evaluation of an individual, when I was hiring people, I was doing the interviewing, did include an element of their character that was based on how likable they are. I liked you when we were interviewing, and it seems to me that if I found you likable, clients would find you likable. And, and in my experience, companies, potential clients, they don’t hire us only for the technical capabilities that we have, they hire us as people, they hire us because of the people we are and who we are as individuals and characters.

Robb (05:07):
And how about clients? I mean, we’ve all worked with all kinds of clients over the years. Some you love to work with, some you dread just making a simple phone call. It’s like, Oh my God, I got to talk to this person again. Do you pick clients based on good working relationships?

Steven (05:26):
There’s no question about it. Not only the one-on-one business relationship, where we’re undertaking contractual work, but also business relationships at trade shows and conferences. There’s the socializing aspect of those gatherings leads to closer and closer ties and relationships with those individuals even with competitors.

Robb (05:59):
Yeah I had a hard time getting excited for virtual conferences, and I think, you know, some of this is your influence. When I started working for you, I’d go to conferences. And I just go to all the sessions. If there was a session happening, I was sitting in the seat watching, you know, listening to whoever is talking. Now I might go to one or two sessions, and I’m on the trade show. And you know, I’m talking to, I’m talking to vendors, I’m talking to people, I’m talking to colleagues, I’m talking to competitors, like you say. And that, to me, I think you’ve taught me is the, that’s the value, not only do you develop business relationships and generate business, but that’s how I learn. I learned way more, just talking to people on the trade show, trade show floor, then sitting in a seat in a session.

Steven (06:50):
The NESEA conferences that we went to for, you know, decades, is a case in point. You and I were both at those things and look at the relationships that have come out of that. We’ve hired people as a result of those relationships. We’ve gotten our CEO. And you couldn’t do that virtually, but there’s an element of comradery that resulted in those hirings and in those businesses won and lost. It does stem in some measurable part to the fact that we are comrades with those people that we mix with.

Robb (07:37):
One of the other things that I was chewing on was that so many people that work at SWA are almost uniformly pretty passionate about buildings, about certain aspects of buildings, good buildings, resilient, accessible, healthy, et cetera. I think that contributes to the community, to the comradery, do you agree? And even if you don’t agree, how do you find people? How do you attract people that really are interested? And I would say passionate, a lot of us are pretty passionate about our work.

Steven (08:18):
So, okay. A lot of people out there in the world are passionate about their work. In our shop, they’re also passionate about, about their work. That’s cool. That’s good. They’re passionate about the work, but comradery means going one step further, that they are collaborating in their passion, that they are like holding hands, intellectually, in pursuing their passion. And at the same time, they are being friendly to each other, supportive to each other, planning things with each other, that are social as well as business oriented. So it’s passion plus. Passion for the work, plus a feeling of collegiality or friendliness towards one another. That’s the camaraderie part.

Robb (09:14):
But I don’t think they go together to a certain degree?

Steven (09:19):
Well, well, maybe in our shop, I hope that happens, but you can have a dysfunctional company where individuals hate their job and they’re not passionate about their profession, but they have fun together. Right. They have camaraderie.

Robb (09:39):
Well, maybe they have comradery after work, but not during work.

Steven (09:43):
Oh, maybe not, but okay. Let’s agree to disagree. I, I don’t think that necessarily passion for a professional pursuit necessarily equates to comradery with each other. You know, we can talk about that. Like the three of us have been out socially, we’ve been at events where it’s a birthday party for someone in the office or we have empathy for each other when bad things happen and support for each other. But that has, doesn’t tie into the fact that you and you and I passionate about the work that we do. It’s sorta maybe kind of relates, but it’s not a one-to-one relationship.

Robb (10:45):
Okay. That’s interesting. When I started, I was, and I remain just really so appreciative of just amazing expertise that we have at Steven winter associates, you know, technical expertise, people know about buildings. It’s, it’s phenomenal. And it used to be, if I ever wanted to know before, before COVID, when I could walk down the hall and ask people, if I had a question about buildings, I’d walk down the hall and ask somebody about it. You know, I wouldn’t Google it. I’d walk down the hall and ask somebody about whatever I was interested in. And, and I, it occurs to me it’s certainly, you know, shared interests, shared passions certainly doesn’t equate to comradery, for sure. I mean, you can have people that are in the same field that absolutely despise each other, we’ve all read, you know Tesla Edison kind of thing, or, you know, something extreme like that. But like, like an example, like I’ve asked so many people when I’m doing home improvements to my own home I’ll ask experts in our shop about installation details or things like that. And not only do we have like, leaders in the field, but people that are just genuinely happy to help, just friendly and happy to help, it seems like it, it seems like it, it goes together.

Steven (12:20):
Yeah. The happy to help part, as I say, it fits into the comradery part. But just remember the definition that I’m, I’m trying to come back to is that comradery is a feeling of friendliness, Goodwill, and familiarity among people in a group that doesn’t mean like top of their profession. It doesn’t mean really smart. It means, you know, friendly, you know, comrades.

Robb (12:54):
Buddies. I get it. All right. It’s interesting. I was thinking that shared interests and passions can lead to increased comradery, but it sounds like you, you don’t see that bigger connection.

Steven (13:10):
I, you know, we can go back to the framers of the constitution. I was not there when the August group met to determine what our company principles should be, but they came up with fostering camaraderie and, and how they built on that, how they determined, what that would be is, is something I’m not privy to, that the wording they came up with was engage with one another to build community. And our community is our company. And, and I, I guess, but the, but the excellence, the, the, the shared excellence doesn’t sort of equate, I don’t think.

Robb (13:56):
Okay. Interesting. Okay.

Steven (13:59):
Can I, can I share with you some examples?

Robb (14:02):
Yeah, absolutely. Please.

Steven (14:04):
We used to have company picnics. We still have company picnics when we were small enough to fit every employee and his, or her family into one yard. And that was, that was on a Saturday. It was not on company time. No one got paid to be there. And, and they, they did it willingly. They, they went willingly and they, they shared good times. And they that was comradeship. That was, that was that was camaraderie. They go to each other’s weddings. They go camping and climbing and kayaking with each other. They take vacation trips together and we have the occasional union amongst consenting couples here. And that’s, that’s the that’s that familial, familial family type support, and, and reinforcement of each other at the personal level. Within the context of being members of the same company. And I have to tell you what it does do, it results in trust of each other. It, it it means that people will go the extra mile for each other. It, it means that they, they become lifelong friends. We have more alumni friends than we do staff by a factor of 20 or 30. Because those relationships that have been built are ongoing, that they’ve been established and built, and they’re ongoing.

Robb (15:54):
So is it, I mean, in your view, is this element of comradery? I mean, the examples you gave were kind of extracurricular. But not, not during work, not during, not nine to five.

Steven (16:10):
So those were examples that were, that were extracurricular. It’s true. In the nine to five context, there’s not that much time available for comradery to take place.

Robb (16:28):
I disagree with that. Well, I mean, just, just this just great working relationships. I mean, just if you have, if you build trust and you have great relationships, and I think shared interests and passions can be a strong element in, in some relationships, you know, working together to, to meet a deadline, to get a proposal out, to bring the pieces of a project together. There are so many times where I’ve worked so closely with, with folks at SWA to, to put the pieces of projects together in a, in a really concerted focused manner that, that it doesn’t always work seamlessly, but, they want to see it. They want to make it happen. they’re not just putting in, you know, putting in the hours, we have really kind of committed people. And I think part of that is part of that is being professional and doing what they are getting paid for. But part of it is just supporting each other supporting coworkers.

Steven (17:45):
I, I agree that that is camaraderie that, that counts as camaraderie I don’t think that the, the excellence, however, does tie-in. I mean, anyway, look, we’re, we’re counting gnats on the back of an elephant here.

Robb (18:04):
Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, so this, this will be a stretch, but one thing that I wanted to bring up, and one of the other other podcasts team folks brought up was, was I think maybe even during my interview with you quite a while ago, you told me, you know, you give people plenty of rope. If they’re interested in something, if they have a passion to do projects, you know, you give them the bandwidth to go out, get clients, get projects, do the work, plenty of leeway to, to pursue, to pursue interests, to pursue passions based on what you just said. I think you think that’s pretty distinct from an element of comradery, but, but I was thinking about it, like with this podcast, you know, when, when we, I had been chewing about putting together a podcast for a year or two, and there was just something in the back of my head, I listened to quite a few podcasts. And I know we have some fantastic folks here that could talk very intelligently about some pretty important topics. So I remember, I think it was, we after playing volleyball, we have a company volleyball team, or we had before COVID and we were grabbing a beer after a volleyball game and Heather Breslin and Dylan Martello. And I, I don’t know who said it, but it turns out we, all of us and Alex may even have been there. It’s like, we should, we should do a podcast. And the other one’s like, yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing for two or three years. And so this is, I mean, this is an idea that maybe came out of, came out of comradeship. And that’s something that is still going. And that was, you know, we were given the leeway to pursue these interests as a team working together. I, I think, and who knows, who knows what’ll happen to it in the future, but, but it seems, I don’t know, they, they don’t seem distinct to me. There’s it seems like there’s a lot of, a lot of overlap, at least.

Steven (20:17):
All right. I, I’m not gonna disagree with you. Even though I do it’s it’s the, the part that I wanted to focus on in these discussions was the, the part that was not necessarily a passion for the work at the achieving of excellence in the work it was the fact that, that the individuals support each other and nourish each other so that they can continue their professional lives. It’s a subtle difference, I guess, you know if we weren’t friends, the company wouldn’t survive as well as it has. If we, if we weren’t comrades, we wouldn’t get work done as well as we do.

Robb (21:17):
Can you give some examples of when comradeship enabled better work projects, getting done better buildings, bringing work in?

Steven (21:33):
Well, let’s talk about the actual evolution of the company ownership. You know, the company has gone through an ownership transition, and, and I’m gonna suggest a few things, but the essence is that the ownership transition that has taken place and is continuing to take place would not be possible with, without the level of comradery that we have in the company, because without individuals who trust each other and collaborate with each other and support each other, you can’t have the shared ownership and transition of ownership in a company from the get-go. There was trust in the establishment of the shareholders agreement. There was trust in the individuals determining that they wanted to become shareholders and co-share holders with their colleagues. And there’s continuing trust as the ownership. And the leadership has, has changed, has been transferred. Without people supporting each other, trusting each other, collaborating with each other, the transition that is now in place could not have happened. And without it would not have succeeded. Look around at our competitors and like-minded companies, so many of them have failed during transition. So many of them have not been able to carry out a transition and partly it’s because the individuals did not trust or they were not buddies with each other.

Robb (23:34):
So how about, I mean, so as far as the longevity, corporate longevity, point taken for companies of kind of our size and type. What about comradery itself among other companies? Is that something you have any idea of? I mean, it’s, it’s really hard to gauge from outside the company.

Steven (24:01):
Well, we’ve hired people from Aaron Cranson’s office. We know that people from many the companies that we either teamed with or competed with or whatever, and, and it was clear just in informal discussions that there, it just wasn’t there to the extent, extent that we had it.

Robb (24:22):
So you’ve, you’ve gotten that feedback. We hire people that used to be somewhere, and they say, I like the people here better than where I was.

Steven (24:34):
Take a poll around our existing staff. You’ll hear it all over again.

Robb (24:38):
Interesting. Interesting. So do you have a feeling for how that relates to like longevity and turnover? I mean, certainly I’ve been here again 21 years. I haven’t switched jobs in awhile but certainly people have come and gone while I’ve been here, but there’s a lot of people that have been here for quite a while. And I don’t have an idea of how that compares to other, other firms to other companies. Do you, do you have a sense?

Steven (25:10):
And our HR guru Roisin has looked into it. And apparently our retention rate is not much different than other firms. And it seems that in the early years of their careers, individuals don’t really want to stay for a long, long time at any one company necessarily, they would like to explore what else is out there? What am I missing? And, so when people have been here within the first say five years since after graduating school, a lot of them leave just to explore what’s out there, some come back, but most of the departures have been for individuals, either wanting to go to a different part of the country or wanting to explore different types of businesses or different types of professions. Once people have been here a significant period of time, let’s say 10 to 15 years, then they’re more likely to, to be like long long-term. I don’t want to use the word lifers.

Robb (26:26):
I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it used. So, so is that so when you say 10 to 15 years, do you mean, do you meanthey’re kind of 10 to 15 years into their career or like 10 to 15 years after graduation?

Steven (26:42):
And they join or stay for that long or join after that period of time, they tend to say, okay, you know, I found my place in life. This is good. And, and when they do find that place in life, they tend to contribute more. They building they’re like long-term nest.

Robb (27:04):
Yeah. Yeah. I certainly had quite a few jobs in different fields before I started here. But yeah, not everybody there there’s people that have been here 15 years, who this is their first job out of college.

Steven (27:19):
Yeah. Our CEO for one.

Robb (27:23):
Exactly. He’s he gets mentioned a couple of times. So switching gears a little bit, where we have been doing some work, we’ve been focusing more on DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion inclusiveness. And thinking about this is, is pretty new to me. I think it’s probably pretty new to a lot of us. I think about thermodynamics all day, I don’t think about building community so much. But the focus on deliberately being inclusive and welcoming of everybody into the community, into the workplace community, into camaraderie. We’ve talked a little bit earlier about, you know, when you’re interviewing, you try to gauge whether you’d enjoy working with people. But you don’t interview everybody. And, you know not everybody certainly makes the judgment calls like that, or doesn’t do it correctly. How do you foster comradery when people, you know, when people are here, people you’re meeting for the first time, who you may or may not have interviewed, do you have examples of where SWA folks really were kind of deliberately welcoming and effective in new ways, in different ways? Have you done anything along these lines?

Steven (28:59):
No, I have not Robb, but, you know, ever since we’ve gone through the eye-opening experiences of DEI awareness and Keisha, the consultant, has been very helpful in making us be aware and be informed, as a result of that, people have, have become more aware of the differences that different people have in terms of everything, religion, race, background, origin, age, everything, and open their arms to getting to know them much better. So it’s being aware of other people’s station in life and being accepting of this station in life, leads to a stronger cohesive friendliness that, that maybe was not quite as strong before.

Robb (30:08):
Yeah. It’s always a work in progress, I guess, but, but it’s, it’s really interesting to me. I mean, it’s a whole new way of thinking and I’m still working on it, for sure. So before COVID, I mean, we, we are, we’re a firm with three different, well, four offices with a fledgling Boston office. And you know, several business groups, eight different groups with different admin groups before COVID. How do you think we did as far as kind of bridging offices, bridging geography, bridging groups, so that company-wide, there was a sense of community and camaraderie rather than within the, you know, the dozen people who you work directly with day to day,

Steven (31:03):
It was always difficult. And, and those ones who were more remote bore the brunt of it more than others, like Washington always felt like it was a stepchild. Not that not that people forgot about Washington, but there were too many things going on in New York and Connecticut that often Washington was the last thing to be addressed. And, and we did all sorts of things to try to fix it. We tried infusing camaraderie. We had an office meeting that everyone came to, including a social event at the end of the office meeting that people came to. And those parties went on for, for many, many hours. And it was a clear indication that people loved and, and craved that kind of contact.

Robb (31:58):
Other than kind of, I think twice a year, we used to get, you know, we used to get together twice a year.

Steven (32:05):
Right. And that’s all we could do. Everything else was try to visit when you can try to talk when you can try to engage in collaboration, across the telephone or the computer as often as you can. Yeah. But that’s the way it happens with multi offices.

Robb (32:26):
Yeah. I, I found that, and this is something that I could do more of just, you know, trying to organize webinars or just meetings, or just chat sessions to discuss a topic. And it’s interesting now with COVID, everybody’s remote nobody’s with anybody. For, for the large part. I actually go to the office once or twice a week, but, you know, in some ways, you know, I see people on video meetings, I see people from DC more often than I used to because we’re doing visit video meetings so often, which is good. I guess it’s good. I guess it’s makes me a little ashamed that I didn’t do so much before, but, that’s another question. I mean, after COVID, what do you see happening after COVID? Have we learned ways to do this better to bridge divides in our departments or our office locations? Because, you know, personally, I think nothing’s, nothing’s as good as a face-to-face meeting. I go to the office once or twice a week here. We’re talking in the early spring of 2021. Things still are certainly not wide open yet. We’ll see what happens. But, you know, I go into the office a couple times a week, and even if there’s only a half dozen people at the office, just seeing and talking face to face with those half a dozen people is really nice.

Steven (33:58):
I know it’s contact. Yeah.

Robb (34:01):
And both professionally and, and just personally, you know, I’ll, I’ll walk down the hall and I asked Zoeller a question about insulation, you know, rather than Googling it or looking it up. So I guess, do you think that things will change after COVID? Have we learned ways to tie the community together a little bit more?

Steven (34:27):
So just for example, here we are at 125 people give or take, if in three years or five years, it’s 200, 250 people in four or five offices, get your arms around that, you know, people are not going to see each other very often. I mean, if we were IBM, people would never see each other, you know, what everyone seems to hope is that we’ll be small enough where we can maintain the, the camaraderie, the contact the knowing of each other individually yet still have the, the size and the muscle to be able to be a force in the industry and to offer good careers for all the, all the, all the professionals in the company.

Robb (35:26):
Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s a great point. And I, I thought about that. I thought about this when we were kind of, preparing for this, this conversation, but you is, is a close workplace community. Does it only happen in small companies?

Steven (35:45):
I don’t know the large companies, but I don’t think so. I think the comradery more likely to happen in small companies in big companies. There’s not quite the same amount of loyalty is more concerned about money. You know, individuals wanting to make more money and not necessarily wanting to be everyone’s best friend and, and in a smaller company, the comradery is more likely to be a good breeding ground.

Robb (36:15):
So it sounds like you’re hopeful that the company will grow and that when it grows, it will be able to maintain the community and camaraderie that we have had today. But you don’t know how that’s going to happen. I see why you wanted to talk about this topic, Steven.

Steven (36:39):
No, I I’m there to provide moral support and the gray hair and the, and the sense of history, but the dynamics of it has to come from the individuals themselves. We can take that horse to water, but we can’t make it drink.

Robb (37:01):
One more quick question post COVID, you know, people everybody’s been working remotely, a lot of people may want to continue to working remotely. Do you have thoughts on that, on what that will do?

Steven (37:13):
Well, that that’s, that’s gonna make the social part of it more, more difficult, because there’s less opportunity to have a lunch or after dinner social hour. But I, I think people are social animals and they want to get to know they colleagues better. And there’s been such, such great results from the comradery that has taken place, all the different forms of socializing that I, I don’t see how it won’t continue. It’ll be more and more disparate groups, but definitely more groups. And, and you know, it’s part of our principal. And so it’ll be up to management to make sure that it’s enforced.

Robb (38:04):
So that leads me into another thought, you know, I appreciate it. I’ve been with the company long enough that I definitely appreciate the comradery. I have very great friends that I’ve worked with for years. I love the company. I love lots of people here. No argument that there has been great comradery at SWA. But as we grow, it seems to be we’re recognizing we’re camaraderie is really important for us, but are we switching into mandating comradery? And that seems like like, Whoa, that’s jarring to me. It’s like, that’s not kind of how it works. So I know in our company print principles, it is foster comradery. It’s not mandate comraderies. Right. But, but I could still see it kinda rubbing people the wrong way a little bit. You will be friendly. You will be friends with your colleagues. It’s kinda creepy.

Steven (39:17):
I agree with you if it’s forced or if there’s this, this fake friendliness, then, then that could turn around and bite us. But, but I think it requires probably from the more senior people than the, the junior people. It requires going a little bit more out of our way to, to be fair. For example, every new hire, the day they’re hired, I send them a personal note thanking them for joining the company, wishing them luck and looking forward to talking, spending time with them is also a policy that, that manages is supposed to have lunch with you and junior employees on some sort of a frequency basis. And so that was, those are not forced. That’s not forced labor, it’s just paying attention and, and reaching out, reaching out some of the group managers have, have taken conducted boat tours and picnics and events. That’s not, it’s not that they didn’t want to do it. It’s a fun thing. And they do it and, and gladly, and it’s those kinds of reaching out, potluck lunches, the baking contest, which you win every year. They’re all, they’re all small pieces of the, of that puzzle of, of, of of reaching out to try to accomplish comradery.

Robb (40:56):
All right. Fostering it, foster if you will. Yeah. Yeah.

Steven (41:00):
Is that a fosters that you’re drinking?

Robb (41:02):
No, this is a Bissell Brothers Luxe. One of my favorite beers. Absolutely delicious. We’ll see if that makes the cut in the find the podcast podcast audio. Well, this has been great, Steven. And I, I had I had a list of topics and questions and I, you know, you inspired several others. I think I’ve gotten through all my, do you have any, any other thoughts on this?

Steven (41:35):
No. I was gonna maybe touch on some of the cross team collaboration that’s taken place, but you actually did touch on that. The cross selling, the multi-team assignments and that, that collaboration where these days, and I see all the proposals that go out, I see the list of them as they go out. I don’t read the proposals, but I see who writes them and, and the amount of money. And so on. More and more of those proposals have, have included sections from multiple teams, five or six teams, each contributing to a part of that proposal. And that, that addresses the sort of going for greatness, professional aspect of it. But there’s got to be a lot of teamwork and friendship in order to get those proposals to be to be kind of in sync with each other and, and to blend with each other. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a massive accomplishment by, by the teams.

Robb (42:44):
That is really encouraging. Yeah. And as you say, that’s more professional and business than personal feelings, but this brings us back to where we were a while ago. I think they go together. I think people, people sharing passion and interests can reinforce relationships and camaraderie. Certainly not always.

Steven (43:11):
All right. I agree. I give up.

Robb (43:16):
Cool. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you to Steven. He mentioned a baking contest that I win every year. That’s overstated. I only win cookie contests, and we haven’t even had them every year. We’ve only had a few. I have won all of them, but you know, it hasn’t been every year. Maureen is the one to beat on the pie front. And yes, this was a happy hour conversation, we were enjoying a beer during this conversation. Do we always drink during these podcasts? No, no one, no one can prove that. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Our website is swinter.com, S W I N T E r.com. Check out swinter.com/podcast. That’s where you can find all the episodes and show notes and check out our careers page. If you are looking for opportunities, we are definitely looking for help. I just looked at our careers page and counted 15 positions, all, certainly most, if not, all of our groups are looking for people at this point. Thank you, Steven. It was a really good conversation. COVID has probably made everyone think about relationships a little bit. I have always appreciated my coworkers here at SWA. Fantastic and brilliant people. I’m pretty lucky to be here, but COVID, and, and also this conversation has, has made me appreciate folks even more so, thanks to all of my colleagues and a big thanks to the podcast team here, Alex, Mirabile, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, and I’m Robb aldrige. Thank you again.

Laura Tajima

Laura Tajima works across many of Building Electrification Institute’s cities overseeing and implementing projects to advance equitable building electrification. Laura was previously with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, where she worked on policies and programs to decarbonize buildings and often led the office’s technical analysis and research. Laura has a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University.

Cities across North America are paving the way for wide-spread building electrification. Although there are many benefits associated with going all-electric, there are also many barriers that stand in the way.

Building Electrification Institute acts as resource for cities in their equitable transition to building electrification through education, training, and program support. They work with 11 different cities, providing them with the necessary “tools in their toolbox” to ensure their buildings are as energy efficient, healthy, equitable, and cost effective as they need to be.

In this episode, our host Robb and guest Laura talk about electrification strategies, costs, and the importance of policy as it relates to building electrification and climate goals in cities.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Robb (00:05):
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb (00:08):
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment.

Kelly (00:12):
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:17):
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly (00:18):
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb (00:22):
In this episode, I spoke with Laura Tajima at the building electrification Institute or BEI. Bei supports cities around the country that are trying to electrify their building stock. Back in 2019, my co-host Kelly interviewed Lori Kerr about climate policy in cities and building electrification was one of three or four key pathways that cities need to pursue to reach their climate goals. As electricity gets cleaner and cleaner, moving away from fossil fuels and towards efficient heat pumps can make a lot of sense. Laura herself lives in Colorado, but BEI works all across the country. One of my first questions was where exactly they’re working now.

Laura (01:15):
Yeah. So right now we’re working in about three different regions. So we work in the East coast – New York city being one of them, Burlington, Boston, Washington, DC. We were in the Rocky mountain area. So salt Lake city, Denver, and Boulder. And then we have some California cities as well, too. San Jose, LA, Berkeley.

Robb (01:39):
So I kind of put Laura on the spot for that question to list all the cities that we’re working with. And she realized later on that she forgot to list to Philadelphia. So you can add Philadelphia to the list. Laura herself started out working in international affairs and education. She went back to grad school for sustainability management and she got her first taste of meaningful climate policy work at the New York city mayor’s office.

Laura (02:07):
I started working with the New York city mayor’s office of sustainability initially as like, you know, an intern and loved that idea of the big thinking, you know, being really ambitious, but also kind of having the connection to, you know, local people, local issues, being able to really kind of impact policy that that could change how people are building buildings, change how people are operating them. You know, thinking about programs and supportive trainings and education to kind of help people understand these concepts as well, too. So it was really invigorating and exciting to kind of work on the policies, policy component of things really understanding kind of the, the breadth by which you can really impact the future.

Robb (02:57):
Cool. One of the big initiatives that some cities have played with, which certainly gets lots of press, even in mainstream press, is, is gas bans, natural gas bans. You said you work with Berkeley and Berkeley was, was one of the cities that maybe kicked that off. Can you talk about how, how those work or how cities came about to kind of do something that seems pretty draconian to a lot of people?

Laura (03:28):
Gas bans often kind of get a lot of misconceptions around it. I think that, you know, a lot of people think that this means that, Oh, you know, the city is coming in and gonna take away my gas stove that I’ve been, you know, working with for the last year 20 years. You know, I think that `we see cities kind of leading in this concept is, is really around, you know, requiring electrification where it makes the most sense. So this does make sense in new construction today. I think that we see that building electrification in new construction can be built less expensive compared to a mixed fuel building. And, you know, can have that really tight envelope in order to make sense for building electrification. And also people are becoming more and more aware of the impacts of gas particularly on health, particularly from cooking. And so, you know, as a result we’ve seen kind of these really strong examples of people leading with building electrification in new construction. I mean, we see this of course in areas like New York city. But we also see in places like, you know, salt Lake city and there’s this awesome organization called Pragmatists for clean air, and they are making all of their plan sites, review process, you know, open source, they’re sharing their costs, they’re sharing their data. So we’ve seen kind of that works in new construction, that building electrification works in new construction. I think as a result, you know, the cities are kind of saying this is a win-win, you know, people get a better home. People get cooling, people get, you know, cleaner cooking, cleaner appliances. This is lower cost to build. Why are we not saying you should go all electric in new construction? And so that’s what we’re seeing. You know, we’re seeing cities that are either saying we’re going to outright require it in certain buildings. We’re seeing cities saying we’re going to require it for, you know heating and cooling and hot water, but maybe, you know, they’re going to allow exceptions for cooking or gas fireplaces. Sometimes they’re allowing exceptions for that as well too. But we’re really seeing that kind of saying this just makes sense. And we just need to make sure that we are, we are going in that direction, our buildings that we’re building today that are going to be around for however many years in the future are kind of the best, the cleanest, the most cost-effective as well as the healthiest.

Robb (05:56):
So on the gas bans, were all the gas bans that different cities have had enacted or thought about really just for new construction?

Laura (06:07):
Yes. I think that those that have passed to my knowledge, have all been really kind of focused on requiring a level of of electric within new construction buildings. I don’t believe that any of them have considered major renovations, but, but i could be wrong on that one. If it is, it would be only looking at major renovations. I think that there is a little bit of difference with like the gas moratoriums that we saw in New York that were more driven from the gas utility side, rather than like the city local government side. I believe that did have an impact on existing buildings. But that really came out of kind of a constraint on the supply side, while the local governments in their terms of their policies mostly are really much really focusing on requiring all electric to some extent, as I said, in, in new construction.

Robb (07:03):
Okay. All right. And, you got into this a little bit, Are, are they differentiating? I mean, I’m with you, for say single family, new construction, single family homes, anything, but all electric just doesn’t make sense to me anymore, but when you get into restaurants or, you know, places with commercial kitchens with big intense thermal loads you know, Berkeley and Brookline, Massachusetts are the two kind of that come to mind for me. Did they put in exceptions for, for say kitchens for restaurants, or was it much more a kind of blanket ban?

Laura (07:47):
Brookline actually did a fair bit of stakeholder engagement as I’ve heard with the restaurant industry. And they brought up real concerns about having electric alternatives for some of their, you know, restaurant specialty kind of type of cooking. And so that they allowed commercial cooking and might’ve even allowed residential cooking to be gas in terms of their requirements around all electric. So there’s definitely different flavors if you will, of all electric requirements. And that’s why I keep on saying like, there there’s that variety, you know, some are saying this is only going to be residential. Some are saying, we’re going to allow for residential cooking. We’re going to allow for gas fireplaces, we’re going to allow for you know, domestic hot water in multi-family buildings. So again, I think that there are nuances to these and that’s what I think that is often missed a little bit within the press that you know, I think that the local governments, they work closely with their stakeholders. They are kind of the closest government that understands their, their constituents. So, you know, a lot of times that while they do want to be aggressive and ambitious with our goals, they also of course want something practical. So, you know, they, they try to kind of really balance that out. And, and so they’re not going to try to kind of put something forward that is completely impractical often. So, so again, I think those exceptions do really exist when, when they’re considering these types of policies.

Robb (09:20):
Cool. Cool. And what else on the new construction side, what, what kind of innovative strategies have you seen people try that either have worked, or you’re really interested to see how well they work other than something, you know, press grabbing headlines like gas bans?

Laura (09:40):
As I mentioned, it kind of is this, this cycle, I would say where there are pilot projects that you can really kind of highlight and demonstrate, and this might be through, you know, buildings of excellence type of you know, marketing and awareness and awards. It might be also education around kind of the health impacts of gas appliances as well, too. And we’ve seen different kind of organizations and partnerships with health groups and other local like community groups in order to kind of help bring out that messaging around the health impacts. You know, and then of course we’ve seen really kind of some, some leading developers, as I mentioned lead in terms of showing kind of how that they can do it and showing the data showing the analysis that goes behind it. And so I think that that pilot project kind of component has been really successful and sharing kind of information has been really successful. And now we’re seeing people transition into that, that requirements. You know, I think that, that there are kind of the requirements of saying how you can build, but there’s also kind of the I guess, financial components as well, too. And so, you know, are some places such as, as Seattle is looking at kind of how do we tax the, the oil that is being used for heating and hot water in order to kind of use that as a financial driver for people to kind of continue to looking at electrification but also using that funding to really make sure that it’s going to, you know, low-income housing to kind of support electrification there, where again, it has often the biggest impact and health and safety, but I will say that, you know, part of this is also kind of making sure that these local governments have all of these tools in their toolbox. And what we’ve seen across the country is actually this growing number. And I believe it’s up to 10 right now of state ballot measures or state legislation that actually would prohibit any kind of all electric requirement in local governments. Started with Arizona. It passed super quick in Arizona, but now we’re seeing across the country it was introduced in Colorado, it’s in Utah. I believe it was introduced in Mississippi, a number of them that are happening oftentimes of really similar language. So there’s kind of some, some questions about, you know, oil and gas kind of industries behind a lot of these components and influence state legislatures, but this would restrict the local governments ability to kind of pass these really ambitious policies that I mentioned really impact and improve the lives of the people living in these buildings. So that is something that I think that, that as, you said, like, you know, the gas ban press kind of gets wider as local governments get more ambitious. What they’re also going to be experiencing is this backlash, particularly from the oil and gas industry. And so now local governments are trying to figure out how to band together, how to get op-eds in there, how to kind of change the conversation in order to galvanize against kind of these, you know, immediate impacts of, of these, these gas ban prohibition legislation that’s happening at the state level.

Robb (12:58):
Wow. So something to stay tuned to probably there. Interesting, well, all the gas bands and the really all electric requirements are really focused on new construction. In my experience, existing buildings are much different and larger challenge. What, what are you seeing on that front? If anything

Laura (13:24):
Existing buildings are definitely more challenging. Retrofits of any kind are hard in existing buildings compared to new construction. And of course building electrification is no exception. And it has, of course, these additional layers of complexities. As I mentioned, kind of that cycle of like pilot projects, education, outreach, marketing, and then kind of requirements, I would still, I would say that for the most part, existing buildings are kind of still in that kind of line of how do we make sure that there’s more examples out there today of this being done successfully of this having real impacts on the tenants and residents in these buildings? So we have to scale that, right? We have to kind of understand the underlying challenges of workforce, of costs of education and awareness. You know, I think that, that this of course comes in a few different flavors, you know, I think that we see Denver as a, a leader in a lot of these things, they were actually able to pass a sales tax ballot last year that actually will provide, I believe it’s 20 to $40 million annually for climate initiatives, which is, is going to be critical. But I think that there’s other kind of components too. And it’s kind of thinking about you know, are there other financing opportunities, utility-led financing opportunities, which we’re working in Boulder with exploring. I think that, you know, also of course the workforce is a component as well too, and we’re thinking that in terms of actually Berkeley and San Jose, understanding kind of what does the local supply chain look like in San Jose and Berkeley, you know, where are these contractors coming from, where is kind of the challenge in terms of the supply chain? So the cities are really trying to figure out kind of what are those training projects linked to demand projects that can make sure that people are coming in and being trained and able to take advantage of the economic opportunities that are coming from you know, incentive projects or programs or things like that. So I think that that is a big you know, focus as well, too on the workforce. You know, I think that what we are looking at is saying, and this might be, you know, a component of different programs that we’re looking at in different cities. How can we have certain kinds of workforce training requirements within these demand generating programs and demand generating kind of incentives? So if this is the kind of training requirements, or if these are requirements around labor standards, to make sure that these are good paying jobs or having, making sure that these jobs are going to people who are most in need of it and you know, minority and women owned businesses, you know, how can we include that within kind of this overarching program in order to make sure that people are able to install these well. And these are kind of an equitable transition that we’re looking at.

Robb (16:12):
Yeah. Workforce is in, in parts of the East coast where I work mostly. I mean, there’s just a shortage of contractors, even, you know, you know, during COVID unemployment is a big, is a big deal, but there’s still a shortage of good HVAC contractors. And because of that, their prices are going up. So, you know, electrifying buildings switching from a fuel burning equipment to electric equipment is getting more and more expensive. One of the reasons is just that, you know, supply and demand for the contractors who know how to do it. So yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. I’m not surprised you’re saying that consistently around the country,

Laura (16:54):
You know, we asked people to kind of how they hire and they say, honestly, we looked through the other competitors and that’s where we have to like, get the trained, experienced talent. And I think that that is not sustainable for anyone. You know, we need to kind of have that pipeline going in. And if that is a bit of like the education and awareness, that these are really good paying jobs you know, these have good benefits for you as well, too. And then if it’s also kind of, of course, including additional training, the training, that’s necessarily, as we think about like more, I guess, complicated you know, high tech kind of equipment that people have to understand. That’s of course the other component as well.

Robb (17:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the really puzzling things to me, which I, I haven’t seen a good solution to is, and lots of natural gas is still cheaper to operate, to heat a building, to heat hot water, natural gas is less expensive than heat pumps. And that’s just the way that the pricing works. Right now, in many areas. In new construction, you can mitigate that by just, you know, making the load so low that just, you know, investing in the infrastructure for gas for another utility just doesn’t make sense, but in existing buildings, especially in, where it really frustrates me and others is, is on low low-income low and moderate income folks. You know, there’s push to not leave these low and moderate income people behind, but also moving them off natural gas onto heat pumps could increase their operating costs. And it’s it’s a head scratcher. Have you seen really clever ways to address that, to think about that?

Laura (18:52):
I think the operating cost is as much if not higher of a concern as the upfront cost, right? The upfront cost, you can understand how to use like incentive and financing to possibly drive that lower. The operating costs are, are definitely challenging. And in no way, do we want to be increasing the operating cost, particularly low income residents because as we know a lot, so many of them are energy burden today. So I think that there’s a couple of, of techniques, I guess, what we’ve seen you know, one is the commitment to ensure that the operating costs are lower. And I know that sounds really lofty. But we’ve seen this in, in California, and I know that California is sometimes a higher example to pull from, particularly for the colder East coast, but just kind of as an example, there’s the California low income weatherization program, the LIWA program, and they have a commitment to make sure that the operating costs don’t increase. And they’ve had a number of multi-family electrification projects in which they’re benchmarking the information, they’re including solar, they’re including energy efficiency as well. And they are benchmarking to make sure that post retrofit, the operating costs are going lower. And if it’s not, if they’re higher operating costs for the residents, then they’re going to be committed to going back and making sure that there are ways to kind of drive down the cost with a combination of, again, solar more efficient operation or energy efficiency. So I think that that’s like one example. I think that another example is looking at at rate design which I’m definitely not an expert expert on, but, you know, exploring about, you know, are there heat pump rates, are there electric heating rates that people can think about in terms of implementing that would actually help. Yeah.

Robb (20:38):
Even for folks who may have plenty of money you know, residential, commercial, institutional, there’s just a lot of inertia. I have a building it’s not efficient. I heat with gas. I can afford it. I don’t want the hassle of doing anything. I suspect that’s a huge slug of the building stock out there. Do you, have you seen strategies on that front that, that work?

Laura (21:05):
We completely recognize that we have an uphill climb on this there’s misconceptions around electric heating. Everyone thinks about electric resistance heating. Say, I don’t want that. You know, I guess inertia is the right way to capture that. There’s only so far that voluntary programs can go, right, in talking and go out these great incentives and programs and workforce and training and education and all of that. There, there is so far that that goes right. It really comes down at some point to put in requirements. And we have seen these kind of through building performance standards or, you know, the New York city local law 97 2.0, if you will. That started in New York city and DC, St. Louis passed it this past year. We’re seeing this in at least, you know, five to 10 other cities being developed currently, and States as well, these building performance standards, which kind of, of course put this cap on how much carbon or energy you can emit with certain target dates, usually going out to about 2050 or so. And if you’re above that cap, you know, you pay a penalty or you have to figure out how to get below that cap. This is kind of, I think, where we see the biggest kind of step forward around existing buildings, because you’re right, like there’s so much inertia. And, and to some extent there has to be a long term vision of saying, this is where you have to be eventually to allow for that time of saying, how do I transition my building? How do I wait for the kind of the end of equipment life to kind of transition those to higher, efficient electric options. And that hopefully kind of will direct kind of the industry a little bit past that at inertia to say, I don’t want to do this, but, but maybe I have to do this. So I’m going to figure out how to do it by, you know, whatever timeline it, that local government sets. So, you know, I think that for the building performance standard, which again has been really taking off, I think across the country, in terms of local policies, kind of having that long-term vision, that long-term requirement, I think that having some clarity about saying, you know, this is an all electric requirement, or this is like a fairly electric requirement, if you will, you know, to have that certainty to kind of point to in the long term I think will really help kind of in terms of driving people towards that, you know, voluntary programs can’t do. Though saying that, voluntary programs are, are critical in these next five, 10 years, especially to kind of help people get there.

Robb (23:46):
It’s impressive to me to see that, that these are being enacted. I mean, I think it takes a lot of political will to to get something like that, moving, you know, not just new construction standards, not just building codes, but yeah, this building was built eight years ago, it has to meet some standards now it’s yeah, it’s very different.

Laura (24:13):
Yeah. I mean, they are re I completely agree. They require a lot of, political will a lot of commitment from the city. A lot of stakeholder engagement, you know, we are seeing these taking, you know, a year or more to develop, oftentimes because of the number of different types of stakeholders that, of course they’re involved in existing building have to be included, listen to feedback incorporated having that real kind of creation process with them in order to develop a policy that people will get behind that people think is, is reasonable. That people think is also ambitious. So it does, it’s a huge lift, but I do think, you know, this is basically putting a line in the sand of saying, this is how we envision our buildings by 2050 or 2040 or whatever we have to start getting there in a real way.

Robb (25:03):
So if people want to find out more about you about what you’re up to, or what their cities or States might be up to, where, where can they find out more info?

Laura (25:17):
Sure. So we have really exciting website, as a five-person team, you all kind of, kind of roll up your sleeves and help with. So I I’m actually in the current process of updating it, it’s very exciting. So it’s Beicities.org. It has both all of our cities, as well as a summary of the work that we’re doing with our cities. And it also includes some example resources that we’ve been actually developing. So these can be like customer economic analyses our market segmentation, so that cities have a better understanding of the buildings in their in their area, analyses on the supply chain educational presentations and things like that. So that’s all all on our website or will be on our website shortly.

Robb (25:59):
Cool. Yeah. We’ll put links to, certainly to your website and any other resources you think might be really relevant. We can put those links in the show, in the show notes.

Laura (26:10):
Great. Yeah. This has been really exciting. Yeah. What we need is more people to kind of understand that this is a massive challenge, right? This is going to be really hard. But this is where we have to go. And I think that what we need is just more and more people to be maybe excited by that challenge, not, not deferred by that challenge, but willing to kind of really roll up their sleeves and trying to figure out how to overcome some of them. Because, you know, we’re not, we’re not completely naïve. We know how hard this is, and we know how hard is to especially consider how to do this equitably. And so, you know, we just want more partners, more people in the mix more people from different kinds of experiences and backgrounds in the mix to kind of help figure out the solutions over them, because this is where we’re going to have to go eventually. And it’s just a matter of time.

Robb (27:06):
Thanks for listening. And thanks again to Laura. BEI’s website is Beicities.org. That’ll be in our show notes, obviously with lots of other interesting links and other stuff. And if you’re interested in climate and climate policy in cities, check out Kelly’s interview with Lori Kerr from 2019, that was a good one re-listen. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are focused on better buildings, healthier buildings, more sustainable buildings, more accessible, efficient, resilient, comfortable, better all around, really check us out @ swinter.com. That’s S w I N T E r.com. This is swinter.com/podcast is where our show notes live and links to the other episodes and check out our careers page. If you’re looking for opportunities, we have postings now for all our offices, Boston, Connecticut, Manhattan, and DC. Thanks again to Laura and thanks to the team here at SWA, Kelly Westby, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks.

Chef Christopher Galarza

Chef Christopher Galarza is the Owner and Culinary Sustainability Consultant at Forward Dining Solutions, LLC. Chris founded his company in hopes to educate the world about the electrification of kitchen systems and alternative cooking technologies, and to push sustainable cooking practices into the mainstream consciousness. Chris sits on the Advisory Board for Pittsburgh Technical College’s Culinary Program, is a Member of La Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, and currently is working with Interface Engineering on a project for Microsoft! Read more

Imagine this: you’re a chef or cook in a high-stress commercial kitchen setting. You’re making split second decisions with little breathing room, and each quick decision can get you cut or burned. On top of that, you’re in over 100-degree heat, breathing in toxic air from your gas stovetop.

This is an experience Chris Galarza could relate to, from working as a professional chef in various commercial settings. After making the switch to an all-electric kitchen utilizing induction equipment at Chatham University’s Eden Hall campus (the world’s first fully self-sustained university campus), he witnessed the positive difference in the physical and mental health of himself and his staff. He now advocates for electric cooking being a much healthier, safer, cost-effective, and energy-efficient option.

In this episode, Kelly and Chris talk through some electric-kitchen-myth-busting, and ultimately answer the question “is moving away from gas and fire in the kitchen really that radical an idea or does it just make perfect sense?”

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly (00:05):
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb (00:08):
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment,

Kelly (00:12):
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:17):
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly (00:18):
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Chris (00:23):
I may not be the person that changes the world, but I hope to inspire the person that can.

Kelly (00:29):
That was chef Chris Galarza. I happened across Chris virtually after my colleague, Karla and his friend, Rachelle Boucher at Kitchens to Life presented a cooking demonstration for residential induction cooking. Seeing Chris’s impressive background and passion for sustainable food prep, I knew we had to have him on the podcast. Chef Chris is a culinary sustainability consultant and the owner of Foward Dining Solutions. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in culinary management by age 23, Chris was acting chef at Monterey Bay fish grotto. The number one seafood restaurant in Pittsburgh. He has been opening sous chef for off the hook. The catering chef for Carnegie Mellon university and was chosen over thousands as one of 12 culinary apprentices at the prestigious Green Briar resort. Chris then helped create and lead the kitchen at Chatham university’s Eden hall campus.

Chris (01:23):
Which is the first fully self-sustained university campus in the world. And it has one of America’s first, all electric kitchens, boasting induction ranges, electric flat tops, electric ovens, steamers, tilt skillets. You think it, you name it. We got it. We had a farm that had 30 plus acres in cultivation. We tapped our own trees for maple syrup, raised our own bees and trout, our own orchard mushrooms. We did everything we could, and it was a culinary playground If you will.

Kelly (02:02):
Chris is now dedicated to creating sustainable culinary playgrounds for other chefs across the country, but he wasn’t always so focused on sustainability.

Chris (02:12):
My journey through sustainability, kind of the seeds were planted in culinary school when my professor, her name was Sally Fry. And I say her name because she was the one that even brought up the term sustainability, what it means, how important it is. And I thought it was a, it was a cool thing as like a fad, like, okay, cool. That’s really cool. Trying to give back to the earth. I get it. And then when I got to Chatham university, I really fell in love with the concepts, with what it took to be sustainable, how important it was. You know, I developed my own definition of sustainability. Like what it meant to me. And to me, sustainability is to give back to the earth as much as you take from it. And right now that’s not happening. So I tried to try to use up the ingredients as best I could try to compost everything we could. If something was deemed trash, try to find another life for it. And from there just embracing the electric kitchen, which at first I was hesitant about. And now, I mean, obviously it’s inspired me to create my own consulting company where, you know, although we consult on any, any number of projects on regular gas kitchens, I really love to consult and push people towards the electric kitchens. There’s no real experts out there on the commercial sense. So I’m hoping to help nudge the culinary landscape in that direction. And what also helped inspired this, I guess, business is that I’ve had people reach out and ask me questions about what it takes to run an electric kitchen. What is an electric kitchen? How do you work in this space that really is foreign to the Americans. And then through research, finding out that most of the world is already on board. So I started seeing a gap in knowledge where American chefs are behind their European, Australian and Asian counterparts because they’re using these technologies that they’ve had it for over a decade, almost two decades in some, in some places. And at some point like American chefs are going to start becoming less desired where we once were the gold standard. So it was a combination of all those things that helped lead me to the path where this is important.

Kelly (04:42):
That’s awesome. That’s a great sentiment. And I love what you mentioned about using up everything you can in the kitchen. I think it speaks to sustainability in a different way, but it’s definitely the angle that I personally have felt attracted me to sustainability. You know, why are we wasting so many things? How can we cut waste? So I’d love if you could give everybody an example, just to see us in your chef hat, a little bit of where you reused sort of something that other people thought was, was waste.

Chris (05:14):
So I’ll go real quick to when, when I used to teach kids, I used to teach a bunch of high school kids who would come through once a year to the campus. And we would have this one day where they were going to the garden, they’d pick all the produce, they’d bring it to me. I’d clean it and make sure it’s all ready to go. And I would teach them a three hour course in how to identify fresh fish, how to break down fresh fish and what to do with it. So we would break down this fish, you would have this carcass and most people would just throw away. What I did was I made a, I made a fish stock. And then while they were, you know, while we were going through the class, the fish stock was going, I took their vegetable scraps that would also thrown away toss that into the fish stock. While the fish stock was continuing to simmer, we cooked their meal, they’d sit down and eat, I’d at that point, have them collect their scraps, bring it up. We would discuss what you can do with the fish stock. We can just have them smell it, look at it, identify the characteristics of a good stock and then have them taste it and how bland it could be possibilities of what, of what it could be. And then we would strain it and it make soup with it. So in that one, three hour class, I’d show them how to take this, this animal who for all intensive purposes died and we’re lucky enough to receive those nutrients. And it’s incumbent on us to make sure that that animal has the utmost respect and is used to the fullest extent of our ability. So we were able to eat its flesh. We were able to make a broth from their bones, instead of throwing out the leftovers, turning into soup and having another meal with it. So that fish sustained us for two, three different meals. And that’s kinda like the best example of using up these ingredients that will be tossed away. Other things we’ve done is pickled pineapple stems or pineapple cores rather it pickles. It pickles fantastic, you wouldn’t think so, but it breaks down the, the fiberous core. It has an amazing crunch. It’s sweet. It’s acidic. It’s fantastic. And then from there we’ve also turned like carrot peels and, you know, leftover stuff from like near par soup production and we grind that up and pickle that, and then we’d have, you know, a relish. Yeah. So there’s a million things you can do with with food.

Kelly (07:46):
Yeah, that’s so great. I always feel guilty throwing things away. So I recently we made Apple peel chips and they were absolutely delicious. So you’ve definitely inspired me. I never knew what to do with pineapple cores. So there you go.

Chris (08:00):
I’ve also made a salmon crackers from salmon skin. That was a lot of fun. You take the skin, dehydrate it, you fry it. And, and really about 400 degrees Fahrenheit and it puffs up like a cracker.

Kelly (08:13):
Nice. All of those sound delicious. And I think when people think of you know, sustainability, that would be perfectly aligned with chefs, it would be kind of using all of the ingredients. Not that everybody does, but of course, it’s more cost-effective for you. But one thing that I think that the sustainability industry has always maybe touted as kind of oppositional with the culinary industry is the electric kitchen. So just like you talked about, the induction stove top and can you get a little bit more into your experience with that? What was your hesitation? What was your, what was your perception of it before you started working at Chatham? And then how did you come to kind of learn to use it, to to use it with your staff, you know, to make the same quality or maybe even better food in some ways?

Chris (09:09):
Sure. Yeah. So going into Chatham, my perception of electric cooking was what we all think of initially is those coils that take forever to get hot. That just don’t, it takes forever to cook food. It slows down everything, things burn it’s, it’s just a terrible, terrible piece of equipment. It’s God awful. I remember getting into apartments when I was a kid and being like ugh electric, and that wasn’t even cooking. It was just so bad that like I knew, and, you know, I knew a little bit about induction because of, you know, being in the industry you’d come across, like the bake shop would have a little induction, you know, hob that you would plug in and take it wherever you, wherever you want. But it was never something that like we used continuously or we use religiously. It was just a novel thing that you can just take anywhere you want instead of having butane or anything like that. And that was cool. But that, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea what it does, how fast it does. So I was like, okay, well, you know, never one to shy away from a challenge. I said, all right, well, we’re going to make this happen. We’re going to figure out what we can do. And you know, not a problem, whenever it gets installed, we’re going to get trained on it anyway. So we’re all good. So the kitchen gets built. We go into the kitchen, talking to the rep, he’s trying to show us how it works. She’s like, all right, here’s a knob, turn it on and turn off and make sure your pans are magnetic. I’m okay. Is there anything else you need to know? And he said, this he’s like, Hey man, I just sell it. I don’t know how this stuff works. Really. You know, you figure it out you’re the expert. I was like, great. And that was the notion we got from every one of our vendors on every one of the pieces of equipment. You turn it on, you use it. What else do you want? I don’t really know. Like I just sell it. So that was the first big hurdle, is how do we learn to work with it? And we learned to work with it fast because you know, I’m supposed to be leading this kitchen. And none of my staff is really classically trained or anything like that. So we’re like, okay, I need to figure it out and act like, I know what I’m doing.

Kelly (11:19):
Fake it till you make it.

Chris (11:20):
Yeah. Right. So first thing I realized is how fast the induction unit works. So our instinct is to get in the kitchen, put our pan on the burner, crank it on high, and then, you know, go do what we had to do while the pan gets hot so we can start cooking. And so that’s exactly what I did. I get in the kitchen, get a big pot going, oil, put some garlic in there, crank it on high, turn around, before I can grab my onions, I turn back around and it’s completely burnt. Like black, not even like Brown, it’s black. And I was like, Oh, wow, that really fast. And then we started doing some tests whenever we had downtime. How fast is the boil water? How fast does this work? How fast does this work? Is this okay? Is this not okay? And we started to piece together do’s and don’ts while using induction, we started kind of dispelling our own myths that we had come up with. You know, while we were imagining what this induction kitchen was going to be, because when we got in there, it was August of 2015, and the kitchen didn’t get built until, well we didn’t move until April of 2016. So we had some time to just kind of imagine what it would be, do some research. And we kinda were all apprehensive. And then after working with it for a little bit, we realized that this is definitely superior to what we were doing, but I’d stay late and, you know, practice different things and, you know, just observe what the staff were doing. And then we would kind of get together a lunchtime, talk about it. And then from there we kind of just taught each other how to, how it works. And then I would start training them on things I’ve read and things I saw. And over the time we just made it work. And then over the time we just fell in love with it, to the point where that we would go help another account and It would almost feel snobbish walking in like, “Oh, you’re still using gas?” Because we will put the pan on and crank it on high and it would take so much longer to get hot so we can start cooking what we need to cook. It was kind of like when you’re used to driving a Ferrari and then you’ve got to drive a Honda civic, like that’s how it felt.

Kelly (13:44):
Yeah. And that was one thing in in Karla and Rachelle’s demonstration, and she calls herself an electric kitchen super fan, which maybe you would call yourself as well.

New Speaker (13:59):
Oh for sure. and Rachelle is Awesome.

Kelly (14:00):
Yeah. It’s so good that, that, it’s such a, it’s a small community of people electric kitchen, super fans across the country. That’s very fun.

Chris (14:08):
Yeah. So Rachelle and I, just through talking, we realized that, like, she and I are two peas in a pod. We love this stuff to the degree. She’s an expert in residential equipment. And I’ve never been a personal chef outside of what I did for president Sheresh at Carnegie Mellon, but I prep everything in my own kitchen and bring it up and just we’d warm it up. So I know everything there is to know about commercial cooking. And if you put me into trying to talk about appliances for residential, wouldn’t know what’s going on and vice versa. So we’ve been, we’ve been kind of like trying to build each other up because there’s no one else doing what we’re doing. So I love that woman to death.

Kelly (14:55):
That’s great. Yeah. And I watched the episode she did with, with Karla from our office. And she had a demonstration with boiling water and talked a little bit about you can’t turn the pot on and then turn around and do your chopping, and then throw the thing in you. You have to turn it on right when you’re ready to use it. Cause it goes up so quick, you turn your garlic into waste. Usually, you know, there’s this sense of the chef’s world and everything so hot and it’s a little bit dangerous and and things are flying and things are on fire. And in this situation, it’s a lot less hot in the kitchen. And there’s a few other reasons why it’s actually a little bit better in a lot of ways for your staff. And that’s something that you’ve been thoughtful about in terms of sustainability of of your staff and turnover.

Chris (15:50):
Yeah. There is significant dangers in working in a professional kitchen that I didn’t notice until we switched over. So there’s a significant concentration of carbon monoxide inside a traditional kitchen, it can exceed 200 parts per million. If you’re outdoors, you’re at two and a half parts per million at most, if it reaches a certain point that it’s like the federal standards is like nine parts per million is maximum. After that everyone’s indoors. There’s something wrong in the kitchen, we exceed 200 parts per million that is incredibly dangerous. And we do that day in and day out 12, 14, 16, 18 hours a day. You know, that’s, that’s dangerous, you know, with these flames accidents happen, I’ve seen towels catch on fire, aprons, catch on fire. There’s a risk there that you wouldn’t have. And then as you mentioned it is also incredibly hot.

Chris (16:49):
You have this ambient heat because what’s happening is you are trying to force these these slabs of metal to get hot by throwing fire at it until it decides to accept that thermal energy and get hot. But what happens to the flame? What happens to that heat that wasn’t accepted by the pan? It gets wicks off the sides and goes into the atmosphere. It goes into the kitchen, goes into your space, and then you become incredibly hot. I’ve been in kitchens where I checked my thermometer and it’s reading 130 degrees in my pocket, you know, in my arm pocket. You know, we’ve been in this might be TMI, but there’ll be, there’ll be moments where we would be in, in the rush. We get to the rush. We all go upstairs to try to like cool down. You know, some of us would even throw up and then go back down to work because it would be so hot. Your body can’t, can’t handle it for too long. And that’s the environment that most chefs work in, that that’s the reality.

Kelly (17:47):
And that they assume they HAVE to work in because that’s their trade.

Chris (17:50):
And then when i got to Chatham, this electric kitchen, here comes winter. Never really worried about it. I’ve worked in kitchens where I’d be in a beanie during winter, because why not? You’re comfortable. And we’re all in winter coats and gloves while we’re working, because it’s working so efficiently, we’re cold. We’d have to figure out ways to keep the kitchen warmer. That’s how stark the differences. We’ve actually had data from my kitchen. I’m looking to pull that up now where the ambient temperature never reached above 72 degrees. That’s the hottest it got. And that was in September. When we’re talking about eliminating waste, when we’re talking about nothing gets thrown out, that includes our heat. So the heat that comes off of the pan that, that comes off of the food, that goes into the hood systems gets captured, gets mixed with a food grade, propylene glycol. And that’s what warms the building. So yeah, so don’t even throw away our heat.

Kelly (18:49):
That’s amazing. And I think that speaks to, you know, you, weren’t just looking at your components within the kitchen itself and obviously who had an all electric kitchen, but you were brought in, as the chef were brought into the discussions with the building engineer and operators and occupants to talk about how can we look at this holistically? And I remember you mentioning being brought into discussions with the engineering team about how much energy you energy the kitchen was using and what you could do together to work together, to reduce it.

Chris (19:27):
Yeah. So we would talk on on a weekly basis on how much water we were using, the energy we were using comparatively to the solar energy that we were creating. We would have these discussions on how much water is being used in the kitchen. We’d use about 1500 gallons a week, when things were slow how to get that number down, what we were doing to curtail that, what our practices were, and we realized some pitfalls in how we were working. So most kitchens, you would go and grab something out of the freezer, thaw it out under cold water. And we’d realize that when we do that, we’d add X amount of water into the system because we also cleaned our own water. So if we’re just dumping water into the system, one is diluting the microorganisms that we’re using to help clean our water. And two, we have nowhere to store that water or get rid of that water. So we had to be really strategic in how we worked which is another hurdle that we had. And this isn’t, you know, average. We were probably, I don’t know of any kitchen that does it. I don’t know of any chef that knows water and energy consumption that they had. And those are the conversations that we had on a weekly basis over the years fine tuning it. And it was a whole other world. You know, you go to culinary school, you have these dreams of being a chef working for, you know, whoever it is you admire and that you never realized that like, you’re going to be mostly in an office. And at some point probably talking to somebody about water and energy, but it was, it was exciting to learn all this stuff. I was just in this bubble and I was just enjoying and soaking as much of it up as possible. It was just so much knowledge in that place. And so much knowledge in this world that we’re living in with, with people who are discussing sustainability, people who are awake to the fact that the way things were needs to be changed, needs to be adapted, needs to be updated, you know?

Kelly (21:31):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think we’ve talked about this. There’s a sense in, you know, in the culinary industry at similar, probably to the sense that I get from, or that we get that we run into sometimes from the construction industry of you know, we’ve been doing it this way for 25 years or 50 years, and why would we change it now? Like if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Chris (21:59):
Oh, I’m so tired of people saying that.

Kelly (22:02):
Yeah, exactly.

Chris (22:04):
Yeah. People are stuck in that, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. The problem with that is people who think that way, never look to see if there’s something that could be done better, right? I’ve never talked to somebody who said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it who actually actively looks at their base of operations and tries to figure out what’s the most efficient way to run things. If there’s any technology out there to make them more efficient, make them more cost-effective. No, I’ve never seen anyone do that. Esssentially what they’re saying is this is the way I do it because I’m comfortable doing it. I don’t care about anything else. I’m just comfortable doing it this way. And that may work for some people in some industries. But when you are producing food, when you are in charge of a large group of people, you know, and you are watching them sit in this uncomfortably, hot kitchen, breathing in methane day in and day out. And you realize that, because most chefs don’t realize that, you’re like, why am I putting my chefs in this death pit, to take it a little bit extreme, because there can be, there’s a much better way out there. And as, as a business owner, you’re always looking for a way to, to kind of, you know, pinch a penny. And If I come to you and I say, Hey, I can save you so much money on your, on your overhead simply by switching your equipment from gas to electric, you will now increase how much food you could put out at any given time, because the equipment now works faster, your chefs are now more comfortable in the kitchen, therefore you have less conflict which could potentially mean that you have lower turnover. You are now not paying as much in your utilities because on average an electric kitchen runs at 50%, the efficiency of a gas kitchen, which means if you’re paying a hundred dollars, for instance, say, you’re paying a thousand dollars for your, for your gas bill. You’re not paying $500 for your electric bill. You know, that’s, that’s kinda like what, they’re, what, what they’re saying. It costs a lot less money to run, and you will now no longer have to buy harsh chemicals to clean, hot soapy water, cleans everything. You, you essentially reduce the overall time of cleaning, which means your employees are now leaving early. And if I tell you that you can save all this money immediately, why wouldn’t you do it? Yeah. The people who say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When they’re presented with these facts, that’s when the real answer or the real reason comes out. I don’t like that. That’s not the way we do things. That’s not the way I’ve done things. And that’s really what it comes down to is that people are uncomfortable with change.

Kelly (24:53):
Yeah. Maybe that is broken actually. You know, when we take a step back that that is a major problem. And so thinking about, can we provide holistic solutions that check a lot of different boxes? And we’ve talked about this too. You know, employee engagement is something that’s very critical in the in the consulting world. It’s obviously very critical for you. I’m curious from your staff at Chatham or, or in your experience, do you have any anecdotal evidence or, or otherwise about turnover or retention rates with relation to you know, comfort in a kitchen?

Chris (25:34):
Well, so that’s twofold. So as far as like my own turnover, we had low turnover. I mean, we were a small campus and I had staff that was there from most of my tenure there. I was there for five years and I probably had to hire maybe five or six new people over the time that I was there. We had people who wanted to stay because it was a laid back environment. It was a comfortable environment. People got along. And I think that a lot to do with thermal comfort in the kitchen. And actually ASHRAE came out with a study that went to tackle this, this exact question, thermal comfort in the commercial kitchen. And they have the number of kitchens that are in the what they would call like the optimal zone is far fewer than the kitchens that are beyond that. And they studied it over the winter months and in summer months and they, and they broke it down through cooking preparation and dishwashing, and you’d be surprised at how many kitchens go beyond hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s just, it’s an uncomfortable environment. You know, I often say like, it takes a certain kind of crazy to enjoy what we do, because you are put into a hellish landscape, it’s usually a high stress environment, fast paced environment and there’s little room for air. You’re working with fire and sharp knives, and it’s all happening in breakneck speed. You gotta make these split second decisions that can either cause you to get burned or cut all in an effort to feed another human being and to enjoy that you gotta be crazy, right? I mean, I enjoy it, but like, it’s a unique environment that most people would not understand or want to be a part of. It’s it’s just tough. And if this technology that’s coming out, this induction technology that’s in America that we are able to harness right now can make the environment easier. Imagine how much more we could do if we are able to keep our staff comfortable. Do you think, you know, arguments would break out as much? Probably not. People are more comfortable, they’re more relaxed. There’s, there’s a number of different factors that are changed just by switching out a single piece of equipment. I’ve never came across anything in the kitchen that by making one change can lead to a cascade of positive effects.

Kelly (28:30):
Thinking about kind of that triple bottom line, there are benefits immediately in terms of cost reduction. And there are benefits in terms of employee turnover, which is a cost reduction and, and health and wellness of your staff and and something that’s good for the environment as well. And that actually, obviously from the folks, generally listening to this podcast, the all electric movement is is sort of an obvious path forward, but thinking about thermal comfort in in most office spaces and things like that, I think people are talking about a little bit more now. But that’s so interesting in terms of, you know, when you have a space that’s very uncomfortable, how does that impact the interaction between human beings in the space? That is definitely something that I haven’t thought a lot about. So that’s really interesting.

Chris (29:23):
I’ve, I’ve joked with friends. Like I want somebody to do a study on the effects, on mental health from a traditional kitchen to an all electric space and seeing what the implications are, because it takes a toll on you to work in a place like that. And then to turn around and go to another place in the same environment, doing the same thing that you love, except that it’s much more comfortable. It’s much safer. I feel like it’s got to be a stark difference. I know it’s helped me a lot. I used to be, you know, a traditional chef, right. The hothead, and now I’m a completely different person. I’m much more relaxed.

Kelly (30:04):
We’ll have to check with your wife about that.

Chris (30:07):
That’s part two of the podcast.

Kelly (30:10):
That’ll be part 2. So Chris, we talked about some of the benefits of electric cooktops. You don’t have that carbon monoxide that you get from gas burning, but obviously there’s still particulates and other emissions that come off just from heating up oil and cooking itself, and that needs to be exhausted. I know you have a sophisticated hood system. Can you tell us a little bit about that hood system and then kind of the economics of that for you and where you saw savings potentially over the long term?

Chris (30:43):
Absolutely. So, yeah, so we, we had a Holton Marvel hood system and what was unique about that hood system that it had all these sensors, these little tiny pinprick holes that would just blow out air all the time. And there was a whole control panel with touchscreen. It just, it seemed like it was insane. But after really working with it, you get to realize the, the genius that went behind the creation of that system. So let’s start with the pinpricks. So the pinpricks around that are constantly blowing air. What that does is it creates a more efficient, positive and negative pressure to help more efficiently pull any grease, any smoke, any, any heat from the area immediately out. And it knows to do that because it turns on and off based on our own usage. So it knows to do that, because it has these little sensors that are constantly scanning the cooktop. So in a sense, is the temperature going up? It knows, okay, theyre going to be doing something let’s kick on the hood system accordingly. And then it starts to suck up what we’re doing, like we’re seeing this piece of salmon. Once the internal duct work reaches, whatever we deemed the temperature range to be say, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s when it really turned on and got everything out of there. From there, once everything was gone from the space, it turned itself off. And that was it. So what happened beyond that is that it kept sucking it up. And instead of expelling it out into the atmosphere, it captured that heat captured that a waste, if you will mixed it with a food grade propylene glycol as I discussed, sent down to the, to the, to the tanks where we then had the 55 degrees Fahrenheit propylene glycol coming up from the geothermal wells, and then we would run the warmed propylene glycol over that pipe and bringing that up to 72 degrees Fahrenheit and all that was really cool.

Chris (32:57):
And what was, to me, the thing that like made it like go from cool to essential was that we spent $300,000 on that system and a comparable system, a traditional hood system would cost a hundred thousand dollars. Why that’s important is that because we were projected to pay it off in 14 months through energy efficiency alone. So just by not using it as much, because it knew when to turn itself on and off, we were supposed to pay it off in a little over a year. The reality of the situation was that we paid it off in nine months. Wow. So this piece of equipment that costs over a quarter million dollars, we paid off in nine months just because we weren’t working it. And for those listeners who don’t understand how hood system works, first chef walks in say, it’s five, 6:00 AM. They turn on all the lights to turn on the hood system and it stays on until the last person leaves, so continuously. And if you have a 24 hour operation, your hood systems stay on for 24 hours, seven days a week nonstop. With this technology, What we’re able to do is if you walk away from it, the hood system stops. So you are not paying for that energy. You’re not paying for the machine being used, which means the machine’s not working nonstop. You’re not replacing parts as much. You’re not paying for all that energy, you’re saving money and that’s how we’re able to pay it off. So people use the price tag a lot of times for this technology to say why they shouldn’t do it again. People who don’t like change, tend to find all sorts of excuses as to why they shouldn’t get it. But in reality, they’re just that they’re baseless. And it sounds harsh to say, but it’s true.

Kelly (34:34):
Yeah. And absolutely. And I think once you once you see the results for yourself, it becomes much more obvious that that was the right choice, right? Circling us back to the induction cooktops for induction. I know a lot of people are resistant to it. We kind of, we briefly mentioned some of that resistance earlier and some of the myths that maybe you’ve busted over time. So I know we all have a love of Myth Busters. So let’s jump into that a little bit. What kind of some of the things, you know, people talk about all the time, like well, I’m going to have to replace all of the pots and pans and everything to work with an induction stove. What have you found?

Chris (35:25):
So what have I found? I found that that’s more than often true, and that’s not a negative. So you have to make sure that your pots and pans are magnetic. So yeah. They tend to cost a little bit more, but again, the return is where is where you really see the benefits. So traditional pans, a lot of people get the cheap pans or, you know, when you put it on these flames over time, they start to work. They start to not sit flat, they start to teeter over a bit. And then eventually, have this black soot that gets built up over time as carbon on the outside of the pan. After a while you throw out the pan buy a new one. What I’ve found is that that usually happens anywhere between two to five years. You just get all new pants. It just, it is what it is. It’s, it’s cost of doing business. But I found with induction is again, after using it for five years, I have my exact same set of pants, no warping, no carbon, no needing to replace them. They’re pristine, they’re brand new. And cost of those pans essentially paid for themselves because in the time I’ve had those pants, I would have had to replace them at least once by now.

Kelly (36:44):
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great point that I hadn’t heard before. You know, you do have to replace some, if not all of them in the beginning, but that they’ll last longer once you do just based on the type.

Chris (36:55):
And if you’re not sure, grab a magnet, toss it on there. If it sticks, you’re good to go. Cast iron is an incredible partner to work with when using induction. It is heavy. It retains heat. It’s magnetic. You can toss it in the oven, you can put it on whatever you want. It works fantastic. So if you use primarily cast iron, then you don’t have to do anything. Your pans are already set for induction. If you’re using aluminum or, or, you know, things like that, you’re not, you’re going to need to replace them.

Kelly (37:30):
Great. And you talked a little bit about the surface. When we spoke before I know people have concerns about, okay, what happens there may be used to previous kind of electric cooktops where the service would, would crack pretty regularly. Obviously that would be a big issue with an induction system. I know, you know, there’s you had mentioned things getting thrown and towels catching on fire. And so I assume things are pretty crazy in, in the commercial kitchen. How has the cooktop fared kind of through all of that?

Chris (38:07):
So and I actually put this into my presentation that I do when I speak with architectural and engineering firms and prospective clients. Is that when you think of the glass top, you’re thinking glass that you have in your home or you’re thinking tempered glass. The problem is that those aren’t true temper glass over time will, will crack or warp. What induction units use is a tempered ceramic glass, which is significantly stronger and more resistant to warping. I have had giant stock pots on my stove top for, you know, days on end, not a crack, not a scratch. I slip sliding pots and pans around to make room for what I need to do again. No problem. They’re very strong. They won’t warp, and I can send you a picture of my, the actual, the actual glass top that I have. It is not a scratch on it. They’re very, very durable. You’d have to take a sledgehammer to it. If you want to crack it, I’ve had other people ask you know, what’s the point you can’t Sautee on it. You know induction cooking exaggerates speed. Let’s jump into that a little bit. So the first one is you can’t sauté on induction because once you take the pan off of the unit, it is no longer connected to the heat. Also chefs love to preheat their pants for sautéing first off. Absolutely true. When you take the pan off, you’re no longer connected to the heat. Just like when you take the pan off the flame, you’re no longer touching the flame, pan still hot. Also chefs love to preheat their pans for sautéing because fire doesn’t get the pan hot enough, fast enough. Induction does. So there’s no need to preheat. And I actually have a video up on YouTube where I have a cold pan. I take a thermometer to it’s reading in the sixties. I toss, you know peppers in it. I turn it on to high in literally 10 seconds. It’s sautéing. So, yeah, and then there’s definitely linked to that. So there’s also people say that induction cooking is exaggerating, it doesn’t get hot as fast. And it’s, it’s all a bunch of marketing BS. Again, I have another video online where I put a pot of water on crank it on high in about 30 seconds a minute. It’s already simmering getting ready to go into a roaring boil. When I’ve had I had the Pennsylvania legislature out to campus, we were doing a tour and I was explaining how the technology works. I put a pot of ice on cranked it on high. And as I was talking to them, explaining how it worked about this is from ice in about four minutes or so it melted in and it was boiling. And I feel like I’m a little bit remiss. I just realized that we were talking about induction and all that stuff, and I really prope never rly explained what induction is all about. So do you mind if I explain that real fast for your listeners? So in the way induction works is if you think about a piece of, if you think about your microwave at home, it uses these tiny little waves to, to oscillate mater molecules in your food at such a high rate of speed that it creates heat from the inside, out, cooking your food. What we’re doing with induction is we’re using electromagnetic current to oscillate the Ferris molecules in the pan to essentially make the pan that the heating element. And that’s essentially induction in a nutshell, it, the beauty of induction is that, you know, when you’re using gas, when you turn it on high, everything around that surface is now hot. With induction, what only gets hot is the pan and what the pain is touching. So you put your hand all around it and it doesn’t, it’s not hot at all. And because of how the tempered ceramic glass is, is made it cools down very quickly.

Kelly (41:55):
Yeah, absolutely. And that actually brings me to an interesting photo that sticks in my mind from Rachelle again to go back to that is she has a plastic squirt bottle right next to a pan that’s on, on an induction stove. And I, and I thought to myself in the past, I’ve definitely taken, you know, bread out of a plastic bag or something. And then it starts to burn from, and, you know, God knows what’s coming off coming out of that plastic burning inside my house. So thinking about safety, especially for clumsy people like me you know, putting things close to that, obviously the pan will still be hot, so be careful.

Chris (42:42):
But because of the way that metal is, you know, the reason metal is such a great conductor is that those the molecules are lined up in a linear structure. So energy can flow through it with ease, which is why it conducts electricity very well, which is why it gets hot very well, which is also why it gets cool very quickly.

Kelly (43:03):
So you’ve gone from chef to electrical engineer and a chemist

Chris (43:09):
Yeah, I wear many hats. What’s, what’s fascinated me and kept, kept my love for food alive is actually the science of cooking. I find that much more fascinating than actually cooking. Obviously I love cooking. That’s my first love. Don’t tell my wife that, but what I love about cooking is understanding the chemical processes that are happening. What’s what’s happening the thermal, like from taking a piece of chicken from raw to cooked, there’s so much going on in that, in that span. Theres a whole nother world. If you look past the actual food itself you know, people talk about molecular gastronomy, which is if you ever see those, you know, chefs making like caviar out of whatever that term got coined for those things, but really molecular gastronomy is a study of like, what happens to food like during the cooking phase. So from its raw state to its cooked state, and that’s what I’ve fallen in love with. It’s true molecular gastronomy. And when you’re talking about induction, it allows you to look beyond the food and now look at the equipment and understand what’s happening and how you can maximize the equipment to make it work for you and make it, and I’ll make your kitchen much more efficient.

Kelly (44:28):
Yeah. I was interested to see that the Atlantic ran an article all about electric kitchens and, and pros and cons. And talking about proper ventilation of kitchens, you don’t normally see our nerdy information and kind of a major publication and New York times talking about it. And so they talked a little bit, there was a chef that said induction is okay, but you can’t, you can’t do wok cooking in, in an induction stove. And that was one thing that you mentioned. So that was the, the myth I wanted to circle back to and end on, especially for folks maybe who have just read that article and are left wondering.

Chris (45:09):
I appreciate you bringing that up. They were absolutely right a few years ago. The problem with that is that these companies want to get into America. So they are going to make any advancements that they can to get into this market. So when chefs say it’s not good for wok cooking, guess what they created induction woks. So now, instead of having a flat surface, it’s a surface that fits perfectly a wok. So now you can have that wok hay, which walk hay essentially is this level of heat that you reach when you’re cooking with woks, where the bottom is the hottest. And as you go up to the top, you have different levels of temperature. So you can build your dishes up that way. So if you ever see someone working with a walk, they’ll start cooking in the center and then start pushing the food up to the side because it has various different temperatures that they can finish up those ingredients as they’re doing whatever they’re doing down on the bottom. But yeah, so they have that and if there’s anything else that people are coming up with to say that it doesn’t work well for that, these companies are going to fix that. But yeah, we’re working with a company with the Microsoft project that I’m a part of that created a wok just for them specifically for their food, for their kitchen and design, they’ve tested it and they loved it. And I was one of the things that was instrumental in having them go towards a hundred percent induction.

Kelly (46:36):
And that’s excellent for looping us back to your story a little bit. So you were a chef at Chatham and then you started to convert to this consultant role. So tell us a little bit about how you made that transition.

Chris (46:50):
So how this happened was completely by accident. So I was working, it was September of 2018 I believe that Microsoft reached out and I talked to their chefs, their chief sustainability officer and they asked like, Hey we’re working with an engineering company that coincidentally also built your campus, but they’ve been pushing us to do this electric cooking. And we did a little bit of digging and found you. And we wanted to kinda, you know, ask you your opinion, you know, unbiased. They said, we’re not on board, but we kind of want unbiased opinion. So we’re going around to just find out what is the truth about this stuff? And is it, and is it worth it? So I had a conversation with them was about one hour I shared with them, you know, everything I’ve been sharing with you guys, how much, how much we love it, how much I fall in love with the equipment, how much it’s changed my life for the better personally, like I’ve, it’s changed my outlook on how I view this world. But regardless of that, like when working with it share with them, you know, serial number, model numbers, who made what pictures of what everything was, what we do with it, samples of menus, everything. And we talked about it for about an hour and they said, okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And that was it. I didn’t hear from them at all. And then you know, we go on Thanksgiving break. I come back and like Monday or Tuesday after Thanksgiving I get a call or I get an email from Hormoz Janssens from, from, from interface engineering. And he wanted to thank me for the Microsoft conversation. I said, sure. Yeah. He’s like, yeah, I heard that there was a chat between you and Katie Ross at Microsoft and the team about induction. And I want to thank you because one, one hour conversation with you, they’ve committed to going all electric.

Chris (48:50):
I said, that’s fantastic news. Thank you. And he’s like, well, you don’t understand. We’ve been trying for three years to get them to do this. And you talked for them for one hour. I was like, okay. He’s like, would you be interested in consulting for us for other projects? We have Stanford university. We have, LinkedIn’s been interested. We have a bunch of different places that have been interested. And the problem with that is that they’ll say, okay, you’re thinking about pushing us towards electric. Can you get me an expert to talk to so we can talk through our concerns. And he’s like, the problem is there is no expert to talk to. So, you know, you are in the right place at the right time, would you like to do this? And I said, absolutely. You know, it’s something that I enjoy talking about and I enjoy educating. So let’s do this. So I, I created Forward Dining Solutions, where, you know, it was essentially my own little consulting firm just to help out, you know, Interface. And, you know, at some point maybe I’ll do something with it. And, you know, I started thinking about a lot more, January rolls around and I get the ball rolling on this. June, I get, you know, my EIN number and everything. I’m like, wow, I really do have a business. This is crazy. And a week before my 30th birthday, I get that contract for the Microsoft project. I sign it, I send it in and I’m like, wow, I’m officially in business. And after that, I’m like, this is what I want to do. Like, I had so much fun talking with Microsoft, talking with interface, we’ve been doing, you know these presentations at NBBJ and WRNs, you know, and like other places like that and getting people all excited. And every time we go do one of these presentations it’s always kind of shocking because I’ll talk to, you know, whoever is our contact. And then me and Steve gross, who’s the the associate principal and senior energy analyst at, at interface. He and I will go in, he’s like, Hey man, like, this is crazy. Like this, this is a huge group. We’re doing it for like 300 people. I’m like, okay, cool. He’s like, and then the person would come in and say, Hey, just so you know the owners of the company essentially are going to be here. They really want her to do this. They’re all excited. And they’ll say, this is by far the largest group we’ve ever had. And it consistently happens everywhere we go, which isn’t toot my own horn and say, Oh, they’re excited to talk about stuff that I’m taught that like, I’m passionate about. No, it’s to say that this movement, this conversation on induction cooking, on kitchen electrification is a huge topic. It’s something that people are struggling with with their own accounts. That like, this is the best way forward, but people don’t want to do because there’s no nothing proven out there. So I’m excited to help bring people on board and show people that this stuff really works. And I’m excited to be on the ground floor to do it. It’s just, I get really jazzed up about it. So I’m hoping that, you know, I can do this full-time I can do this and really make a change. I’ve reached out to other podcasts. We’re going to be just trying to get the word out, because this is a topic that isn’t going anywhere. San Francisco starting June 1st, there will be no gas allowed in new construction period. Berkeley has done it. Oakland has done it. San Jose has done it. There’s talks about changing legislation in Massachusetts. So they, so they can pass these laws to ban gas. This is coming, there’s no stopping it. The exciting part is, do you want to be against it and really slow things down? Or do you want to be able to really steer these policies, steer this technology where it ought to be? Do you want to be part of the people who are being responsible? Not for just the environment, but what is best for our industry. And that’s where I want to be. You know, I want to, like, I sit on the advisory board for Pittsburgh Technical College. And I talk to these chefs, these young chefs about what’s out there. And, you know, I talk to them about what they want to do. And I hear, I want to go, you know, to France and work, you know, for a few Michelin star restaurants and bounce around. And after working at the Green Briar, you know, for that caliber of cooking, I can tell you that when you get there, they’ll give you one day of training. You know, they’ll say, here’s, here’s the material, study it, you come in, someone will walk you through the kitchen, how the station works after that, you’re on your own. And if they have to train you on menu and everything like that on how everything works day to day, where things are, and now they have to teach you about how the equipment works, you’re not going to be a candidate for them because they don’t wanna have to teach you the basic stuff of how does induction work. They don’t have time for that. There’s a reason theyre the best in the world. And it’s not because they’re, hand-holding everybody. So I’m seeing these chefs who want to go to these places around the world. And I’m thinking to myself, they need to be aware of what’s out there and it can’t be burning garlic. So all these things are bouncing around in my head. And I’m just wondering, I hope I can make it. I hope I can make an impact. I hope I can make a dent in what’s going on out there because there’s so much riding on this. Not just, not the company, but electric cooking in general. I really do think that that’s, that’s the, the biggest piece. If we can get that hammered into, to America, that this is like not radical, it’s a sensible change then. I really do think we can make a huge difference.

Kelly (54:49):
Yeah, that’s incredible. We had a great conversation about where the industry is. And when we have you back on the podcast in five years, what will we be talking about then? So you spoke to a couple of things, but what do you think we’ll be talking about in five years?

Chris (55:03):
Ooh, great question. We’ll be laughing about how insane it was to work in a hundred plus degree kitchens, sweating bullets in the middle of winter. And what we’re going to be excited about is the new wave of technology coming out.

Kelly (55:23):
Yeah, absolutely. That’s an excellent point. And I think thinking about translating our conversation from this can’t happen to, how can we make this happen, is going to be just so liberating in terms of how we can solve our future problems, whether they’re from employee engagement, from, you know, de-carbonization of the country or, or from our own personal health perspective, how can we change the conversation from, we can’t do this to, how can we make this happen? Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today, Chris.

Chris (56:01):
Absolutely. Thank you so much. I had a blast.

Kelly (56:05):
Me too. Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. To learn more about sustainable commercial kitchens. Check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission visit, swinter.com/careers. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Robb Aldrich. We thank you for listening and we will see you next time.

Andrew Linn

Andrew Linn founded bld.us with Jack Becker in Washington, DC in 2013. bld.us integrates traditional construction methods with new technologies and organic materials ideally suited to the Mid-Atlantic region to create an architecture of accommodation. Based in Historic Anacostia, bld.us seeks opportunities in economies–of scale, of scope, of density, of means, and of materials. Andrew has 16 years of experience in the Architecture industry, and has been a lecturer at University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation since 2017. Read more

We’ve all heard of “farm-to-table” in the context of our food, but what about “farm-to-shelter” in the context of our homes? As we try to become more conscious about the food we eat and the clothes we wear, we must also consider the materials we use when constructing our homes. While many acknowledge the need for better materials in buildings, very few modern day designers have successfully completed a project that consists of healthy and sustainable materials from top to bottom.

Andrew Linn and his partner Jack Becker of bld.us are doing just that. They started by building their own sustainable (and compostable) structure – the Grass House – located in Washington, DC. This project holds a special place in our hearts, because we worked as the sustainability consultants for the house. In this episode, Robb talks with Andrew about the materials he employs in his projects, and their positive sustainability and health impacts.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly (00:05):
Welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb (00:08):
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly (00:12):
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:17):
I’m Rob Aldrich.

Kelly (00:18):
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb (00:21):
In this episode, I spoke with Andrew Linn, who is an architect based in Washington, DC. We talked about sustainable materials and products he uses quite a bit. And we talk specifically about the Grass House project, which is actually his office in Washington. As you’ll hear Andrew is really a believer in many of the products he uses, which is very cool. We often try to avoid too much discussion of specific products on this podcast, but that is not the case in this episode. A quick disclaimer, this isn’t necessarily an endorsement by Steven winter associates, these are Andrew’s opinions, but I really enjoyed talking with him and I learned quite a bit. We’ll provide some links in the show notes for folks who want to dig deeper. I also wanted to mention a couple of podcasts we had – a two-parter we had back in the summer of 2019, where we interviewed Charlie Stevenson. We talked more in depth about sustainable materials. So if that’s an interest, you might want to check those out. Here’s my conversation with Andrew.

Andrew (01:29):
I have always wanted to be an architect. I grew up wanting to be an architect and I worked for some of the best offices I could imagine working for when I was in school. And when I left school, I realized that even those offices were hampered by the material pallets that they were able to work with. And so my college best friend and I set out to find a healthy building material palette. So we moved to DC where we felt like there was already an appreciation for the landscape and for the materials that come from the landscape, there was also and is in DC, a an awareness of an attention to code and regulations and designing for those most in need. So we felt like DC was the place to to build our practice. So we moved to DC, founded, bld.us and began looking at the materials that were available to us, although not always the most popular, that were the healthiest for the environment and for the users of the buildings

Robb (02:48):
I just realized your URL, your website, the URL is great. It’s bld.us. And you, you say ‘build us,’ that’s how you say it.

Andrew (03:00):
Yup, like a proper Roman name,

Robb (03:04):
BLD is your, is the initials of your firm? Is that isn’t that right?

Andrew (03:12):
We began as Becker Linn design, my name is Andrew Linn and my partner is Jack Becker. So we began as Becker Linn designed, but we’ve begun just referring to ourselves as bld.us Both in website and a name because we like the ethos that it promotes. We’re about building community. We’re about building using American domestically sourced products. So bld.us is a really nice idea to strive for.

Robb (03:45):
I see. Very easy to remember URL. So when we were talking about doing this podcast a week or two ago, you used a term that I don’t know that I’d ever heard before, which was farm to shelter. I’ll farm to table. This is farm to shelter. Is that something that you coined that something you’ve been thinking about for awhile?

Andrew (04:12):
I hope I haven’t coined it, but I haven’t heard it much. So it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case. You know, half of the TV that I find that’s available has something to do with cooking. And even if it’s not a cooking show, they find a way to bring it in. And people are very interested in where their food is coming from, how it’s getting to them, who’s taking it out of the ground and how they’re being compensated for taking it out of the ground. That same attention and awareness has gone into the clothing that we drape around ourselves. And it only seems logical that that type of of awareness would also extend into the built environment. So there are different ways of tracking the health of a building like the living, building challenge and like the well rating systems. But they’re very challenging. We’ve tried to work within those requirements and in DC middle-class housing, it’s really not feasible without subsidy of some sort. So we’ve been looking for a farm to shelter, material palette that is affordable to the middle class that doesn’t require a whole bunch of soft costs, sunk into applying for different ratings and different certification systems. And we’re just looking to bring affordable, healthy housing to the people that need it, and who are reliant on Home Depot and Lowe’s. And nothing Home Depot and Lowe’s, they are getting with the program almost quicker than many of our clients.

Robb (06:04):
Yeah, it was kind of interesting for me to hear that, that term, just using local sustainable materials, the farm to shelter, we’ve all heard farm to table. It was, it was a pretty clever term. I thought. So the project that we started talking with you about, and Steven winter associates worked with you a little bit on it is is called grass house. And is it your office? Is it your primary workspace studio space?

Andrew (06:43):
Yes, it is.

Robb (06:44):
Okay. And it’s, it’s an outbuilding. Could you describe what it is, where it is?

Andrew (06:51):
Yeah, so the grass house is basically a compostable accessory structure built behind an 1892 queen Anne Victorian house at the foot of the Frederick Douglas House in the Anacostia historic district. So this is East of the Anacostia river. It’s the only historic district in ward seven and eight of DC. Even though there are a few others that deserve to be historic districts. But that’s where we work from. We do a lot of work there. It is a place that has a pretty diverse, eclectic set of styles within its historic district. But that’s within a time span of about the 1880s to the 1910s. So we’re working within that vernacular and trying to design and build a building that is as healthy as possible. We ended up with a LEED platinum rating on it and is as sort of affordable or at least speaks to different affordable moves so that we could use it as a showcase and bring in different potential clients and different people who were interested in it, different neighbors so that they could see possibilities. So we have a fun stair. We have a fun window detail, we have a fun bathroom countertop detail. And we usually tell our clients that they could pick one or two of those details to really play with in their house. But in addition, where we’re trying to showcase as many different, healthy building materials and natural finishes as possible.

Robb (08:39):
Yeah. So folks can go to BLD dot U.S. And there are pictures there, which are, which is pretty cool. The first thing I noticed when I looked at the pictures was this is a very small building. What was it like a 250 square foot footprint or something like that?

Andrew (08:58):
Correct. And for that reason, we went down and we dug out a basement, which in general, we’re not typically fond of, but we wanted to maximize the square footage that we were able to have, but we wanted to keep the overall massing as small as we could.

Robb (09:17):
So you used a term a couple of minutes ago. I think you said it’s a compostable structure, which I understand, but does that term have great optics? The first thought is, Hmm, it’s gonna rot quickly. Do you run into resistance with that, with that phrasing? Does it test well?

Andrew (09:43):
I mean, the people that I’m quote unquote testing it with are very into the idea because we quickly explain that the techniques that you use to build the building require you know, attention to detail and you pull the wood or compostable material up off the ground a little bit, and you protect it with big overhanging eaves and use a nice breathable rain screen system so that the whole building can breath. When you approach a building trying to find the places where it will fail which are almost always related to water or moisture in some way, when you approach the design with that as your priority, the fact that the materials that you produce it with are compostable, it isn’t an issue. So at the grass house, we have slate and copper roof, you know, you’re not going to find a more durable roof than ours. We have big overhanging eaves. We have a breathable exterior cladding system. We have a concrete base that comes up two and sometimes three feet up, up off the ground, so that all of our bamboo and wood framing system is away from rain. And we collect all the water that you know, falls off of our roof and we harvest it in a cistern. So when you have control over the water, or at least when you have respect for the water that is trying to degrade your building, you’re able to make the building out of healthier materials.

Robb (11:23):
So you mentioned bamboo, and that’s where the name grass house comes from. I believe, maybe I assumed that, but I believe that’s where that came from. Can you talk about the wall system a little bit?

Andrew (11:37):
Yes. I’d love to. I love BamCore. I’m one of their biggest fans. BamCore is essentially the mass grass to mass timber. So it is a lighter weight version of the same principles that are being applied in mass timber. And as many of us have come to realize, mass timber doesn’t have great implications for the single family and low rise residential markets, but BamCore does. And that’s exactly where BamCore is at its best. So Bamcore has been refining this panel system, and what the panels allow us to do is build without studs. And that gives us continuous insulation cavities, which gives us incredibly high performing wall systems that allow us to contain either the hot or the cold air that we’re creating. So we’re able to input very little energy into heating or cooling a BamCore house. You’re able to reach passive standards almost effortlessly because you’re removing all of the standard thermal bridges which is what exterior insulation envelopes attempt to do, And do, but bamcore does it in a, in a more integral more high performing way.

Robb (12:59):
I don’t have any firsthand experience with this product, but it’s a panelized approach. So like all the walls come on a truck or a pallet, or a couple of pallets, all cut in the right dimensions and labeled, and you piece it together on site pretty quickly, I imagine?

Andrew (13:22):
Very quickly and a real benefit of bamcore over other systems like sip systems or pre-manufactured systems is that these are panels that you and I could lift. And I don’t know what you look like, and I know that you could and I could lift them because it’s essentially a piece of drywall. So you’re able to remove drywall, you’re able to remove studs, you’re able to remove OSB sheathing, and you have these packets of precut wall panel delivered to the site. You pop them up off the truck and up onto the site almost like an Ikea structure. They used to have you screw them in, and now you’re just nailing them in. So very simple and very simple to take apart, you know, someday in the future. These panels are unbelievably durable. They they’re made from bamboo, which is in some cases as strong as, you know, different types of metal, stronger than different types of metal. And that allows for the panels to have sheer strength to them. They’re Bulletproof. They perform extremely well in hurricanes. The makeup of these walls and these wall sections allows you to have thinner or larger wall cavities. So these, these walls are just as high performing and cost-saving as they in Florida as they are in Vermont.

Robb (14:55):
We can put some links in the show notes, because, I mean, I talked to you, you described the system a little bit, but I didn’t get a full picture until I looked at some pictures and as the podcast is only audio, we can certainly link to it, because it was pretty cool. I didn’t get a full picture of how all the pieces went together until I went to the website. And it seems like a lot less material. Cause my understanding is they are trying to grow bamboo domestically, but they are not yet. So a lot of this, a lot of the material gets shipped a long way, but there’s much, much less material. It looks like. Is that a big piece that goes into it being a carbon winner?

Andrew (15:36):
It’s a huge piece. There’s less material, there’s less material waste, and bamboo is the best carbon sequestering organic material that exists. So the more bamboo we can use, the better. Bamboo, unlike wood retains the carbon that it sequesters even while it’s being harvested, because it gets clipped like grass, not mowed, not clear cut, but clipped. And so a clean bamboo Grove is healthier and taking out calms that are ready to be harvested, makes very clean bamboo Grove. So the more bamboo we can use, the more bamboo we can plant and store in the built environment the, the more carbon we’re going to be able to sequester. So even though right now bamcore is bringing bamboo in from places like central America and South America, which are still relatively close given that we get doug fir from Washington state or Oregon. They’re working on creating a domestic supply of bamboo, but there’s already so much bamboo around the world that we just need to find more ways to use it in the built environment

Robb (16:57):
And insulation. You can use any insulation with this panel system, but you went with wool, which again, I don’t have any firsthand experience with. Not mineral wool, but like sheep’s wool, is that, is this the first time you’d used it? Or is this one of your kind of go-to materials?

Andrew (17:14):
It has become a go-to material since working on the grass house, because we, we love working with it so much. It, it doesn’t out perform other materials more than the other healthy materials that we’re looking at. So bamcore is exceptional compared to wood stud framing, wool is exceptional compared to fiberglass, but being able to touch wool, it feels so good. It feels good to stuff it in the house. It feels good to know that you can breathe it, that sheep’s wool absorbs VOC that are in the air, but does not produce any, it expands over time. It wants to return to the state that it was in when it was on the sheep. So those cavities, you know, are going to be full and they’re not going to have any sagging spaces.

Robb (18:09):
Oh it expands over time?

Andrew (18:13):
It expands over time. Every piece of wool that comes off of a sheep, it grows in a certain way on that sheep. And then we pack it into a bag and we send it to a construction site and then we pack it into a wall cavity and it wants to return to that, the shape that it was in when it was on the sheep.

Robb (18:32):
Okay. Kind of elastic. I mean, I certainly have wool clothes that do not expand over time. They do the opposite, but it’s a different, different thing we’re talking about.

Andrew (18:43):
Yeah. That wool has been processed and it’s been cleaned in a different way and it’s been strung out into yarn and then it’s been, you know, sewn into a textile or a fabric. And here it’s, it’s, it’s being cleaned and treated with an anti pesticide in as simple and sort of light of a way as possible, almost like when you’re making a pastry and you’re trying to handle the dough as little as possible so that you can keep the air in the dough that that’s the way that they, they treat this wool.

Robb (19:19):
And here again, it’s, I don’t have any experience with it, but it seems that raising livestock for an insulation material would be pretty carbon intensive, but I assume you or somebody has crunched the numbers and found otherwise, is that accurate?

Andrew (19:37):
That’s well, that’s accurate when you think that the alternatives are recycled denim that has already gone through some pretty awful, you know pieces of life or, or not recycled and just denim, which will sag in the wall, cavities you know, fiberglass is not produced in a great way, mineral wool, which is invaluable in cities and certain applications, has a pretty bad reputation in the communities that it’s produced in. So it’s not like there are great alternatives out there. There are certainly nice ways of raising sheep that, that are good to the sheep, good to the ground. And, and in some areas that we’re working in people are advocating for livestock rather than maintenance of grounds, large-scale grounds using lawn mowers and things like that. So you know, there are, there are trade-offs but the, the way that the wool performs is exceptional, the material that I could see that could enhance the use of wool would be mycelium.

Andrew (20:50):
And I know that Ecovative is working on, and has always thought about different ways that they could use their mycelium product, which is the roots of mushrooms in the built environment, because then we could really be growing our insulation. But sheep’s wool is an incredible performer. There’s an abundance of it right now. A lot of the wool that’s produced is not acceptable to textile manufacturers, and there isn’t really a use for it. There isn’t a market for secondhand or third hand wool in the U S yet, but if people start asking for it, then I think it would be a great solution to stuff that into wall cavities, bamcore wall cavities.

Robb (21:33):
Cool. So in the roof, you had to go more conventional, I think you said you had to use foam, is that right?

Andrew (21:42):
We are insulating our roof with foam. Yes. And that’s so that we can have a pretty small roof cavity. We had a 20 foot height maximum because we’re an alley house and we wanted to fit two stories in. so it’s a, it’s a relatively tight insulated cavity, but it allowed us by staying tight there, it allowed us to vent and insulate on the top above the decking, but below the actual roofing. So we were roofing with slate and that sits on top of a black locust sort of raft of eaves and timber members that hold pieces of exterior insulation. And that sits on top of this unvented roof cavity.

Robb (22:29):
So, I mean, is there any reason other than kind of R-value per inch? Is there any reason you could not use wool in the roof?

Andrew (22:38):
No. Wool would be exceptional and they’re making wool in bats. They’re making wool as loose fill, so it can be sprayed in blown in which would be a perfect application for a roof for an attic. I would love to only use wool and cork and my mycelium as my installation materials for the rest of my career. And I think it’s amazing that we could be you know, having house stuffings with our clients and their families with sheep’s wool in the same way that communities used to do roof raisings or things like that, just so that they know that what used to be the toxic poisonous phase of the construction period when you’re stuffing your walls with fiberglass or foam is now a thing that the whole family can participate in because it’s so healthy.

Robb (23:34):
We’ll see if we get any comments about calling fiberglass toxic.

Andrew (23:39):
Well, it is not something that anyone wants to breathe in. That’s for sure. And the fact pregnant women, aren’t supposed to be around construction sites during certain phases. Like we would like for our compostable houses to be able to be built with, with pregnant women as their GCs, you know, it’s unacceptable for, for our buildings to be poisonous for a certain phase. And to assume that they’re going to just air out, that’s how, that’s, how we feel about that.

Robb (24:10):
So talk about the siding a little bit, and again, I encourage people to go, go to BLD.Us, to take, take a look at some pictures. The siding is pretty cool and the whole siding assembly.

Andrew (24:23):
Thanks. The cladding is produced by Resawn timber company. They are a very cool Pennsylvania based company. That’s doing research into different methods of finishing wood. Sometimes the charred wood using the Japanese technique. Sometimes they’re mixing that with certain stains and oils and finishes. They’re using a lot of wire brushing and they have these really cool assembly lines that are sort of pizza pizza oven style, but they, you know char in two different temperatures and wire brush into and staying in one and they’re able to get these pretty nice finishes. So we, we have a very simple product from them. It’s Atlantic Cedar. We worked with them to source Atlantic white Cedar, which they hadn’t done before. It’s it was considered sort of too shabby before. And now it seems like there’s a demand on their website for Atlantic Cedar, because it’s more local than red Cedar, or even the Cyprus that comes from the Southeast. So we have a really nice black Cedar siding, and that is sitting on furring strips that are at diagonals because our cladding is at vertical. So we wanted to pull our cladding off of the main building structure using the fern strips. And, and those diagonal furring strips are crossing at our corners. So sort of like how stone is coined. We’re pointing our furring strips at the corner.

Robb (26:02):
Cool. And yeah, you used a lot of other local materials, I think mainly wood for interior finishes? And I think there was a bench detail that looked pretty cool on the stairway, like you mentioned, was, was a very cool design element. How much of it came from you deliberately going out to find something to do what you wanted to do and how much of it was, Hey, I have a great source for black locust or Willow or Walnut, or how did, how did, how did those pieces come together?

Andrew (26:45):
So we’re trying to put together the ideal healthy building palette for the mid Atlantic and certain of these materials just perform better in certain applications than others. And that’s the case, whether it’s bamboo or Willow or wood and the different subspecies of each of those. So Willow is great for interior guardrails and screens. And so that’s why we wanted to use Willow for our three different interior guardrails. And we took different strategies as to how those were designed and built so that we could learn ourselves. And so that we could show clients what’s possible. We knew that on our exterior, we wanted to use black locus because it is a very local, very abundant wood that performs just as well, if not better than mahogany and epay and all these other tropical species. So if we’re going to be importing bamboo, we want to do it for the right reasons. If we don’t need to import wood, because we have this other tree that’s everywhere and just not use that much, we’re going to use that. So all of our exterior wood, all the big members in the roof and the bench and the sort of pergola over the front door, that’s all black locust. And we loved working with it. It’s kind of a fussy wood. It, it moves and it, it turns a little bit, but if you can sort of brace it with itself. So we’re kind of making little weaves out of it, then it locks into place. And it just it’s, it, it wears over time really well. It doesn’t, it’s not impacted by water. And, and we expect it to be just fine for 50 years or so. On the interior we’re finding uses for a few different trees that we knew we needed to take down in the neighborhoods. So seven blocks away from the grass house. There were a few trees hanging over a commercially rented parking lot where food trucks are parked. And those trees were only being held up by some grapevines that were like huge and, and holding them back. And so we felt those trees, one was a Mulberry and one was a Walnut, and we use the Mulberry for all of our handrails and on the stairs and a few other interior details. And we use the Walnut for our beautiful stair slabs. The Walnut was basically purple. So it was, it was great. And we used one of its big branches as our handrail up on the second floor. And we use some leftover wood for the bathroom countertop and the toilet seat, and we really, it, we used it like a Buffalo.

Robb (29:49):
Cool. Yeah. So I’m just thinking about all, about the panelization for the walls, for the main, you know, the systems in the home. And I think, you know, in talking with you earlier, panelization is a a pretty strong interest. On the other end of the spectrum, though, it’s just kind of this custom details using local trees, which it’s kind of entirely different than standardization and panelization, but they seem pretty complimentary. Can you talk about your goals? How far you want to panelize versus customized?

Andrew (30:37):
Yes. And it’s a great question. And you can kind of think of it like the Tesla cyber truck, which is, you know, rolling off the factory assembly line with as few pieces as possible versus a really high end sports car that has hand detailed hand on details, handmade details. We don’t, and bamcore doesn’t want to take anyone out of business or, or take laborers off the site. I should say we don’t want to remove work and remove workers. We want to be able to build more affordable housing because there’s a shortage of affordable housing in a healthier way. And so if we can redirect the labors of the workers away from places like painting walls, and we know that painters have higher rates of cancer because they’re interacting with paint all day long. If we can take them away from painting because we’re charring and finding other ways to finish our interior wood panels instead of drywall then we can redirect them and have them working on some of these nice handcrafted details using wood. And we can have more of a carpenter like industry like we used to have a hundred years ago when chestnuts were popular and when houses were hand-built and when craftsmanship was appreciated by people. And you can see it in the food industry that craftsmanship and quality and materiality has become very important so much so that these companies like McDonald’s and, you know, the, the big, fast food chains are having to become their version of farm to table. So we’re hoping that construction can tend away from the materials that we are left with after world war two and tend towards the materials that make sense for the health of the inhabitants and the health of the planet.

Robb (32:48):
So if we talk again in five or 10 years, what do you think we’ll be talking about? So what systems here do you think will become standardized? What new do you think we’ll start seeing more and more of down the pipe a few years?

Andrew (33:08):
Yeah. So I think that bamcore is ideally suited for producing housing in large quantity. So, you know, ideally it’s not subdivision tracks, ideally it’s denser housing than that, so that we’re not having to eat up the entire landscape, but if it is subdivision tracks, if a developer is going to do that, then I hope that they’re building with bamcore. Not because they want to be green, but because they know that they can market the energy savings to their customers. And that will allow that and an acceptance in cities of bamcore in the low rise residential sector, which I think will come more naturally, I hope will lead to bamcore having a real impact in bamboo having a real impact on the framing systems of of low rise residential all across the country. I think sheep’s wool is going to be sold on the shelves of one of these big hardware stores in the next five years, if not, probably much sooner than that. I think cork cladding has exceptional potential right now. There’s a need to put cork into use across the world because there’s all these cork plantations around the Mediterranean that are no longer supplying wine bottles with cork because they’ve turned to metal and cork is a fantastic exterior insulation material, which is now required by code and can double as a cladding system. So bark is a, is another great exterior cladding material. But bark has a little more boutique, a little a little less performative in that it’s not insulating, and cork is, is just exceptional at it. So I hope that the popularity of cork as an insulative material as a cladding material, as a flooring material will start to come back because it was very popular in the U S before world war II. And before the foam industries were required by the needs of a war. So yeah and if those, if those three major products, bamboo, wool and cork are finding their way into more intelligent uses of wood, then I think we have a really a really bright material palette for everyone to get their hands on.

Robb (35:43):
Well, thank you. Thank you, this has been a great conversation.

Andrew (35:48):
Of course, thanks for having me,

Robb (35:52):
You for listening and thanks to Andrew. Check out the show notes for links to some of the info we talked about buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We’re focused on making buildings better, more sustainable, more healthy, also accessibility efficiency, resiliency, comfort. Check us out @ swinter.com. swinter.com/podcast is where the show notes live and check out our careers page. If you’re looking for opportunities, we have positions posted for all of our offices, Boston, Connecticut, Manhattan, and Washington, DC. Thanks again to Andrew and thanks to the podcast team here at SWA Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks.

Victoria Lanteigne, MPP, WELL AP

Victoria Lanteigne is a Universal Design subject matter expert with over 15 years of experience leading inclusive design initiatives. She is passionate about elevating the connection between Universal Design and high-performance building initiatives, including sustainability and health, and has spoken on this topic at Greenbuild, the AIA National Convention, and Design DC, among others. Victoria is a WELL AP and WELL Faculty member and has served as a WELL Community Concept Advisor since 2017. She has a BA from Michigan State University, a Master of Public Policy from the George Washington University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Design from North Carolina State University.

Disability inclusion in the built environment is extremely important. But, it shouldn’t end there. How do we ensure that we are being truly inclusive of all types of people, taking into account a wider diversity of backgrounds, orientations, and abilities? The answer is Universal Design.

On this episode of Building’s + Beyond, Robb chats with former SWA employee and Universal Design expert, Victoria Lanteigne. Victoria has devoted her career to the advancement of Universal Design, educating herself and others on the concept and its limitless applications. In her interview, she discusses trends, tactics, and examples from the field, and challenges practitioners to re-think their definition of the word, design.

Articles written by Victoria on Universal and Inclusive Design:

Previous Podcast Episodes on Universal Design:

Additional:

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly (00:05):
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb (00:08):
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly (00:12):
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:17):
I’m Robb Aldrich,

Kelly (00:18):
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb (00:21):
In this episode, I spoke with Victoria Lanteigne, and we talked about universal design, really how universal design might improve equity and inclusion in the built environment. Here’s Victoria saying a little bit about her background.

Victoria (00:39):
So I have been working in the field of accessibility and universal design for quite some time. I’d say about 15 years, and I come to this field with a little bit of a different background or perspective. I actually have a background in public policy and I started off my career working in disability policy with a civil rights organization, specifically working to lead a consortium of multifamily housing developers to provide guidance on federal accessibility regulations, as well as state and local accessibility codes. And I learned very quickly that the federal laws that we have in place are really addressing accessibility from a pretty minimal standpoint. So almost looking at inclusion and accessibility from a bare minimum. So I became really interested in universal design as a tool and a methodology to go above and beyond what was required by our federal laws and codes.

Robb (01:43):
We talked about the roots of universal design being in accessibility or disability inclusion, but many people, and certainly Victoria among them, have lofty goals for universal design. Victoria just started a PhD program at North Carolina state university. And her goal there is to research how universal design can improve equity and inclusion beyond just disability inclusion. Universal design can be a big topic and we started discussing some basic definitions, but we quickly got into how those definitions are evolving.

Victoria (02:23):
There’s a lot of schools of thought around universal design. For me, I, I do of course acknowledge the origin and the roots universal design has with disability inclusion. You know, initially it was defined as a an effort to create products and spaces to be usable by the greatest number of people possible regardless of age ability or individual status. So even in its origin, universal design was really focused on comprehensive inclusion, but when we looked at universal design and practice, it was often centered on disability inclusion. And I think that’s really important. And I always like to take a minute to acknowledge how important disability inclusion is and why it’s so important. You know, when we look at the number of people living with disabilities worldwide, the number is 15%, here in the U S we have 61 million Americans living with disabilities. And if we hone in on that number, one in four adults today is living with some form of disability. So yeah, the numbers are really quite staggering and the numbers are only increasing. And I think it’s really looking at the fact that we have a broad definition of disability. So the Americans with disabilities act defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. When you have such a broad definition, we are of course talking about mobility and sensory disabilities, but we’re also expanding this to look at intellectual disabilities, cognitive disabilities, mental and emotional health. So things like anxiety, depression are all considered to be disabilities under the law. And as this definition of disability broadens, there are more people identifying as living with a disability. And some of that stigma is going away, which it should be, and that’s important, but universal design, you know, as you were saying, is very different from accessible design in the sense that it allowed this space to address disability from a more comprehensive approach, as opposed to focusing on the bare minimum structural compliance piece of accommodating wheelchair users, which is largely what our laws are centered around.

Robb (05:03):
Yeah. And I think that’s a lot of what people think. That’s what I used to think. You know, accessibility means, you know, ramps and turning radiuses and, you know, things like that. I read the links that you sent me, some articles which we’ll link to in the show notes. And I went through and just kind of tried to pick out all the different types of ability inclusion. First of all, it’s not just physical, and it’s many types of physical, but like you were saying emotional sensory, which I guess sensory is a subset of physical, but vision and auditory and mental and neuro-diversity. And I think you mentioned nerve diversity refers to people on the autism spectrum primarily. And so this is so much more than just people and wheelchair access. It’s, it’s so much more, which I think is lost on quite a few people.

Victoria (06:04):
I agree. And I think this is really the, the heart of how accessible design differs from universal design. And for those of us that are either practitioners or we look at these two concepts from a policy lens, whatever brings you to focus on these different design strategies, we understand kind of the nuance difference, but it’s hard for those that may not be working in close to this on a daily basis. But to me, accessible design is really talking about compliance. It’s that piece around our federal laws, building codes. It’s very prescriptive in nature. You know, we’re talking about an inch here, a quarter inch there, a bevel, you know, things that are not a lot of room for tolerance. There’s a very low design opportunity. So, you know, you either follow it and you comply or you don’t. And again, that accessible piece is largely based on accommodating mobility disabilities. So I often like to think about accessible design is what we must have. It’s the baseline bare minimum. And on the other side, we have universal design, which is not regulated. And because of that, the guidance can be very limited and or conflicting. We’ve got a lot of decentralized places where universal design guidance comes from, but on the flip side, universal design is not prescriptive. So there’s a huge opportunity for how to implement universal design. What universal design can look like in practice, and this is really where the opportunity to become inclusive of, of disability, but then inclusive beyond disability as well. So I like to look at universal design is what we could have as opposed to what we must have. It’s a design goal, it’s a strategy. And it, it takes a lot of collaboration and innovation to really get it, get it right to where it could be. I’m looking at universal design as a tool to explore how we can bring more equity into design and by doing so, how we can advance equity through the design of the built environment. And, you know, when we think about the origin of universal design being rooted in disability inclusion, we also can look to more contemporary definitions of universal design. One that I particularly subscribe to is a process enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health, and wellness and social participation. So this is a definition that comes from the idea center out of the university of Buffalo. And when we think about these goals around universal design, that center on performance, health, social participation, these goals mirror a lot of the goals that building performance initiatives have around sustainability around healthy buildings. So this really begins to position universal design in a way that can begin to address aspects of civil rights issues across the board, further kind of digging deeper into this definition. The university of Buffalo Idea center came out with eight goals around universal design. And around these goals, we have a lot of opportunity to begin to build out design strategies that start to address equity. And as a couple of examples, you know, some of the goals are, are talking about things that maybe already are part of universal design, so comfort and body fit things like ergonomics, right? Size and space shapes, clear floor space, but can we take it beyond that to start thinking about visual ergonomics, audio ergonomics, physical ergonomics. So really thinking about that next step understanding and awareness are two additional goals. So here wayfinding and spaces become critical perceptible information as well. So having information that is understandable from multiple aspects. So again, thinking about the fact that we might come to a problem from different experiences and with different ways of solving that problem. And as an example, in our prep call, we were talking about Ikea directions, right? Love them or hate them, they’re kind of like this example of, of universal design in a way, because the man with the hammer is going to be the man with the hammer, no matter what country you’re in. Right. and so that ability to kind of pick up and look at those directions and find them to be user intuitive is, is an example of that. But then let’s think about how we can build on that even more. So can we have the same definitions be available on an audio recording so that somebody that has vision can listen to that on an audio tape? Can we have the manual that also has tasks broken out based on children’s involvement and parents involvement to get, you know, the whole family involved? Can we think about ways that make this experience even more inclusive depending on who’s approaching the problem and the different ways that you have to solve a problem?

Robb (12:20):
I recently helped some some friends colleagues who were moving into a new home, I helped them move in and they asked me to assemble some of their kitchen cabinets. And I haven’t felt so incompetent in a long time. I was stymied by putting together all these cabinets by all the instructions. There’s no text anywhere in the instructions and I appreciate that’s to be language neutral. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. One fitting had three holes and I didn’t realize it had three holes and I used two of the holes, but I was supposed to use a different one of the hole. And it wasn’t clear to me from looking at the pictures, it was an attempt to be certainly more inclusive, but I found it infuriating.

Robb (13:20):
And I guess it’s a question in my mind. I mean, we’re, we’re talking about being inclusive of all these different people with disabilities and also beyond disabilities, you know age and gender and religion and language, do you have to start sacrificing? Can you please everybody, well, maybe not necessarily, but is there, is there a give and take, do you see kind of sacrifices with, you know, certain elements, and is it kind of a balancing act for designers or consultants or people implementing these strategies?

Victoria (14:00):
I look at universal design as a design strategy. So it’s not a template it’s never going to be the same across every project. I think what we need to move more towards is a collaborative approach to creating spaces that reflect the context and environment that that project is based in. I think it’s about really thinking about the users who’s using the space, what’s the function of the space and how can we kind of go through and accommodate as strategically as we can, the different ways that people will be impacted by an experiencing this space. So I think it’s different with every project. And I think this is where the challenge with universal design can come. It’s not about more, is always better. It’s really about choosing your strategy around inclusion,

Robb (15:16):
And it’s not, it’s not prescriptive, like you said. It’s not kind of checking boxes. It’s really trying to be mindful and maybe artful in being as inclusive as possible.

Victoria (15:27):
That’s exactly right. And so thinking about creating a community center in maybe an underserved area, that approach to inclusion is going to be very different than embedding universal design in an international airport. Right. So I think that, and I think that’s okay. And I think that’s how it should be. I think that when we have guiding principles that are built out in a way that provokes thought and innovation from designers and their collaborators, that’s what we really want. That’s the space that we want to get to with universal design. So not, you must implement this in every situation. It’s, Hey, have you thought about how you’re going to account for cultural diversity in this project? Here are some options. This is what’s worked, figure out together how that can best be reflected in your project.

Robb (16:36):
So is that kind of, part of the research that you’re planning, is to evaluate strategies or approaches how well they work in different situations?

Victoria (16:52):
A little bit. Yeah. I mean, I say this I’m kind of laughing because I’m what seven weeks into my first semester. So it’ll be really interesting to revisit this three years from now and see how aligned I am with where I say I’m going to be. But, you know, going back to the gaps that exist around universal design, there are a lot of them, primarily as one that you’ve mentioned, which is people associate universal design with disability inclusion. And I think that that should always remain. I always want to be very clear about that. That should always remain a central tenant of universal design. However, how can we continue to hold that space for disability inclusion and use universal as a framework to start addressing equity and design for equity in a more broad manner. And so what I would like to do through my research is a kind of a gigantic literature review of all of the universal design guidelines, strategies, legislation that exists across the world and find out where we are. Who’s practicing universal design from the standpoint of disability inclusion, who’s pushing the envelope. Where are those pushes coming from? Are they coming from practitioners? Are they coming from academia? Are they coming from case studies, legislators, who’s really holding space for universal design in different ways. And then how can we identify indicators within the built environment that will help practitioners understand what designing for equity looks like and what that means? Because from my research, at least, you know, we do have building standards that exist that talk about equity and that address equity. I think we’ve made a lot of stride. I also think a lot of what exists is focused on programming, affordability, operations. There’s not a lot that really talks about design strategies. And so what I’m really interested in doing is pulling out what those indicators are, how we measure, how design of the built environment impacts equity and putting that in some kind of manner or format to be helpful for practitioners to do this implementation.

Robb (19:47):
Yeah. Like just a relatable framework or context.

Victoria (19:52):
That’s exactly right. Some of these avenues might look at gender and gender identity and how the built environment addresses gender as an example, all gender restrooms, right? So this is an example of a restroom that serves the same purpose for everyone, regardless of your gender identity. And so thinking about about strategies like that, that can start to really look at full, comprehensive inclusion.

Robb (20:27):
Would that freak some people out or be off-putting? I think maybe, depending on how you do it

Victoria (20:35):
I mean, it will. I think that whenever we’re talking about a topic of inclusion, equity, there will be some supporters and advocates and will be some that pushback. That’s just the political nature of this type of conversation. And so I think the goal is to create spaces that again are not solely accommodating to a specific population, but it’s creating flexible, usable spaces that are inclusive of all. And so, as an example, creating an all gendered restroom that has privacy, you know, partitions, or here in DC, we see a lot of kind of the individual single user restrooms that have you know, door that you can close for full privacy. And then in the common area is like a hand-washing station. So it does offer a level of privacy and quite honestly, I mean, people don’t even think twice about it.

Robb (21:43):
Yeah. I’m thinking of college. I’m thinking in some dorms in college, it was just everybody on the floor just decided they didn’t care. Anybody could use any of the bathrooms. So it was non-gendered and then other dorms, some people did care. And then, you know, you had to walk down the hall to the, to the men’s room or the women’s room.

Victoria (22:01):
Yeah. I think that’s an example of not having it embedded as a design strategy. So that’s, that’s the backing into inclusion. That’s not putting inclusion in as part of the onset strategy. And as a great example, we were, I was just speaking about this, you know, some of the office buildings here in DC, the organizations that have more of like this ethos around inclusion and equity, a lot of them are creating all gender non-gendered restrooms and, you know, rather than do it thoughtfully, they pick the restroom. That’s the least used on some obscure floor. They put a sign up that says, you know, it’s handwritten and it’s like all gender restrooms. Well, that’s not, that’s not a universal design strategy. Right. That’s, that’s taking the easy way out. And that is not what we, that’s what we cannot be doing moving forward.

Victoria (23:08):
And on that note, we’ve seen a lot of, particularly when I was working with Steven winter associates and working on Peter’s team, we had clients that were interested in pursuing universal design because somebody was joining the organization that had a disability. Right. So that was the motivator. It was like, Oh, no, we’re not accessible. We’re not ready for this. Can you come in and can you kind of help us prepare any motivation to incorporate inclusion is welcome and it’s certainly supported, and we want to support that, yet it’s still not the same as embedding universal design at the onset as part of that design strategy. And that comes as early as concept development. You know, I mean, teams that I’ve worked with, I tell them, bring me, bring me along on the interview. Right. Let’s talk about this and embed it with the client’s vision of this space. So those are two very different approaches.

Robb (24:19):
Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. How about wayfinding? I mean, wayfinding is a big deal, certainly for disability inclusion for visual or language. Are there strategies to be more inclusive beyond disability inclusion for, for wayfinding?

Victoria (24:46):
Absolutely. Wayfinding, I think is a huge component of universal design. It’s also just a lot of universal design or just really smart design strategies. So you see a lot of overlap and I think that’s that’s okay. And wayfinding is, is something that I find endlessly fascinating. And in fact, I have a good friend, who’s a wayfinding strategist, and she always says, it’s frustrating because when I’ve done my job well, nobody knows that I’ve done my job, right. And it’s this element of having these really smart strategies embedded in the way users navigate space. And so this is incredibly important for people with disabilities. It’s also incredibly important in general, for anyone navigating this space, good wayfinding reduces anxiety. It reduces you know, kind of the stress of navigating spaces that may otherwise be stressful. So it’s used really artfully in public transportation and airports, places that are high volume and high stress, wayfinding becomes critical. It’s also really important when, you know, we’re thinking of serving a global or international population where English, let’s say in the U S English might not be someone’s primary language. So how we have symbols or images that will relay the information that’s relevant and important to relay so way finding becomes just incredibly important, I think for everyone. And that’s why it’s a great example of universal design.

Robb (26:34):
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s true. Reducing stress, reducing anxiety. We’ve all been racing for connections or just, you know, lost in a train station trying to find the right platform. Yeah. It’s it’s no fun.

Victoria (26:53):
I still never understand how the A,C and E go to different stops on the New York subway. Like why and how do I know which one’s going, where I don’t get it, It’s very stressful.

Robb (27:13):
Until you know it until you know what you’re doing. Yeah, yeah. I can, I can totally see that. Absolutely. Gosh, any other kind of cool examples for universal design beyond disability inclusion?

Victoria (27:28):
Yeah. The one one more I’ll mention, and again, this relates to the eight goals of, of universal design that came out of the idea center is cultural appropriateness. And I think there is so much room here to start thinking about how we address culture and cultural identity through the built environment, you know, particularly again, I, I mentioned really understanding the context that your project is is within, but then also this opportunity to really when it, when it fits to bring in the community as part of this approach to, to co-design or participatory design. And in, in my opinion, and I may be biased because I’m a non-designer, but I do believe that in order to get equity, right, we have to have an interdisciplinary approach. And that means having designers, architects, maybe policy makers, community activists, community members, the list goes on and on. We can’t expect to tackle such a broad and important topic like equity within one discipline. And so here’s really where this is asking, I think a lot of the way designers and architects work, which is we have to have more people weighing in on the design process. And that is something I’m really excited about continuing to build out through, through my work with project teams.

Robb (29:19):
Cool. Yeah. So I guess looking ahead big picture, looking down the road, what is your end goal? You know, universal design, isn’t prescriptive by its very nature, so codes or standards for universal design seem like they wouldn’t apply. So I guess, is it just a raised awareness? Is it just better examples? In five or 10 years, what would you like to see happening as, as more regular practice for design of all types of buildings or spaces or communities?

Victoria (30:11):
Sure. Yeah, I think, I mean, beyond the goal of getting through this PhD program in one piece and really coming out of it with solidified research around what designing for equity means in a tangible manner. So beyond that, I really want to bring this research back to both practitioners, but also to policy makers. My goal is not to codify universal design. I don’t think that will work. And I don’t think that is aligned with the spirit and intent of this methodology, right? I think rather it’s raising awareness and really using universal design as a framework to talk about how we can bring more equity into design, and then thinking about how we develop legislation that supports the exploration of how we can continue to do this in a more consistent manner. And by that, I mean, can we get some legislation passed? That requires us to look at how we address the design process to incorporate equity and inclusion as an example, and you know, other countries are doing this, it should be no surprise that the U S is a little bit behind on this, but, you know, we’ve got Norway which has committed to achieving universal design by 2025. In Europe, the the council on European initiatives have signed on to advance universal design. And so these are steps that governments have taken not to codify universal design, but to show support and to, to begin to earmark budgets, to begin to have the conversation. And each of these governments are working on building out what a universal design approach means within, within their jurisdiction and how that can be implemented. So certainly here in the U S that would be a goal. I think probably it would be more realistic to start with a1 local jurisdiction. New York city itself has been quite active around universal design. It’s really, probably one of the, the city has probably one of the most comprehensive set of documents that guide practitioners around universal design, which is really exciting. So it’s not required by law, but the government agencies in New York city have developed these types of standards and guidelines. So we’re seeing some movement but I’d like to see more.

Robb (33:13):
Yeah. What could legislation do to, I guess, require universal design, which by its nature is not standardized or prescriptive?

Victoria (33:25):
A lot of universities are doing this. A lot of universities will have within their building code or, you know, design and construction mandate, whatever they are calling it. They will have a requirement to comply with universal design principles, and then they will have the seven principles of universal design that kind of are these high level governing, you know, ways of thinking about design. So flexible use intuitive perceptible information size and fit these very general concepts. So that is a way that universal design can be kind of mandated, but the act of implementing it is left to the design team. And I think, again, it’s about raising that awareness around strategies that exist and thinking about it in an innovative way, that makes sense for your project within the context that it’s in. And I feel like there’s just so much room to grow with universal design, where we are going to be a week from now is going to be a completely different space 10 or 15 years from now, but we have to start somewhere.

Robb (34:54):
Yeah that’s that makes sense. That makes sense. It’s my engineer brain wants some hard and fast things, but even, even just requiring consideration or even some kind of documentation that look, you’ve considered this, how have you considered universal design in this project? That in and of itself can be very, can be very useful.

Victoria (35:23):
Well, you know so the WELL building standard version two has now a feature focused on accessibility and universal design and LEED version four, as I’m sure, you know, has the social equity pilot credits that has an inclusive design credit, right? So we’re seeing this connect with building performance measures, which is really exciting. I think that’s critical that we’re understanding the link between inclusion and building performance. And so, you know, and I worked very closely with the folks at international well building Institute, I actually was involved with developing that feature. So the question that they ask me a lot is how, okay, the project team wants to know how they would know if they did universal design. And then, and then the second, the second question is how do they know if somebody is a universal design expert, right. And, you know, there are rating systems around universal design. I think that’s probably a strong word for what exists. There, there are a few that, that are kind of just becoming to gain popularity on the market. In my opinion, they don’t really stretch universal design to these other aspects of inclusion. So it lies mostly in disability inclusion again, which is important. So I am really interested in seeing how that could expand. And, and that is a challenge. So I think awareness is key here that, you know, it would be my, my dream to go in and speak with a group of architects. And for them to understand that there is no right or wrong way to implement universal design. It’s not either you did it, or you didn’t, it’s really about thinking and problem solving and using the built environment to support human performance, regardless of your ability or background, you know, who you identify or how you identify. And for that, I think we’ve got a long way to go.

Robb (37:50):
Yeah. Yeah. I agree, the ball is rolling, I think, and it’ll be interesting to check in in a few years and see where we’ve come on this.

Victoria (38:02):
Yeah. If you would’ve asked me two years ago, if I would be in a PhD program researching this, I would have laughed and maybe said no way, I’m done learning. But yeah, I, I mean, I have such a conviction that design and the built environment can impact aspects of equity. And so I really want to work at drawing out what those aspects are, putting some parameters around them and getting it back into the hands of practitioners.

Robb (38:34):
Awesome. Good luck.

Kelly (38:36):
Thank you. I’ll need that.

Robb (38:41):
Thanks to Victoria. She sent us several links for more information. So certainly check those out on our show notes page, if you are so inclined switcher.com/podcasts, that’s S, winter.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates, where we are focused on making buildings better accessibility and universal design are certainly among the services we offer also efficiency, healthy buildings, sustainable buildings, resilient buildings. Check us out swinter.com and please check out our careers page. If you are looking for three, or you have openings in all of our offices New York, DC, Connecticut, and Boston. Thanks again to Victoria. And thanks to the podcast team here at SWA Heather Breslin. Alex Mirabile, Jayd Alvarez. Dylan Martello Kelly Westby, and I, Robb Aldrich. Thanks.

Jeremy Hays

Jeremy is a Principal at Upright Consulting Services, Strategic Partner at Kapwa Consulting, and the former Executive Director of Green For All, a national nonprofit he helped found in 2008. His consulting practice draws on years of experience working with diverse stakeholders to design and implement equitable models of economic and workforce development in the environmental sector.  In his nonprofit career, Jeremy worked with scores of cities and communities across the country to pioneer inclusive approaches to creating shared prosperity and healthy communities.

Jeremy is passionate about translating commitments to racial equity and sustainability into measurable outcomes and increased capacity for change agents in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Social equity is key to the work that we do in the built environment. Far too often, marginalized communities receive more of the burdens and less of the benefits of 21st century living – especially when it comes to housing. As an industry, it is our responsibility to address these disparities and come up with solutions that are inclusive of all people. But first, we wanted to grow our own understanding of the issues and hear what others are doing to prioritize social equity in the built environment.

Our guest for this month’s episode of Buildings + Beyond is Jeremy Hays. Jeremy has a wealth of knowledge, experience, and perspective that stems from a combination of social and environmental justice. We learn about how cities are incorporating equity into their sustainability plans, why diversity of perspectives can create better solutions, and how actively thinking about equity can help the transition to a green economy.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kelly (00:00:05):
Welcome to buildings and beyond.

Robb (00:00:08):
The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment.

Kelly (00:00:12):
By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:00:17):
I’m Rob Aldrich,

Kelly (00:00:18):
And I’m Kelly Westby. Do you get solar panels or do you get asthma? My guest, Jeremy Hayes uses this question to highlight how communities with more people of color and more people with lower income receive more of the burdens and less of the benefits. Jeremy discusses, how the approach we take to climate change policy needs to include equity at its core, or we will inadvertently perpetuate the systems of inequity that are in place today. And when we work together, we can create bolder policy that addresses these issues holistically. Jeremy is the Principal at upright consulting services. His consulting practice draws on years of experience working with diverse stakeholders to design and implement equitable models of economic and workforce development in the environmental sector. We had a great conversation, so I’m just going to dive right in. So thank you, Jeremy, for being on the podcast with us today.

Jeremy (00:01:17):
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Kelly (00:01:20):
And we’d love for the audience to get a little bit more about your background in getting into getting into this space. So how did you get into this line of work, kind of your equity consulting work that you do now?

Jeremy (00:01:34):
Well, you know, I’ve been working at the intersection of equity, sustainability and economic development for most of my career and I kind of fell into it if I’m totally honest, I started off you know, being quite concerned about equity issues. I grew up poor and lived in both public housing and subsidized affordable housing. And as I got to be older teenager, I was kind of angry about that and, you know, looking for ways to you know, make some change in the world. I didn’t use those terms, but I found community organizing and that was really healthy outlet for, you know, thinking about how to change some of the things that I had been frustrated with growing up. And so I really started off as an organizer thinking broadly about how to bring about positive change for low-income communities and communities of color. I’m white, but I grew up in low-income neighborhoods that were predominantly people of color. And then, you know, I, as I was sort of rounding out high school and getting into organizing and going into college, I just kind of fell into the environmental movement. It was certainly aligned with the values that I grew up with in my family, but it came about because the organizations that I was involved in had people that were, that were really concerned about the environment and that’s what they wanted to work on. And so I have always kind of been working in the environmental movement and trying to connect it to broader issues of racial and economic justice.

Kelly (00:02:54):
That’s great. And what is the difference between sort of environmental justice movement and the kind of equity and the environment kind of space that you’re in now?

Jeremy (00:03:09):
Well, ultimately, I’m not sure there’s huge difference or that there should be. I think the movements towards these concepts came from different places and kind of caught on, and people are using slightly different language in different places, but there are a lot of similarities, you know, the environmental justice movement was really born out of historically marginalized and disproportionately impacted communities, mostly communities of color that were saying, you know, why do we get all the burdens and none of the benefits of 21st century living, you know, all the toxic waste and the bad air et cetera. And we’re really fighting to correct the conditions that brought about, you know, increased rates of asthma poor living conditions, et cetera, in, in communities of color, where they were bearing the brunt of these environmental hazards. I think in cities, and I work mostly with local government and city government, and cities started talking about sustainability before they started talking about environmental justice. So cities were beginning to work with this concept of, we want to do something for the environment, we want to be sustainable. We want to be thinking about a clean future. We want to do something about climate change. And in some cities they’ve connected that in a traditional sense of sustainable development to concerns about economic development and social equity, but it really took the environmental justice movement pushing hard on cities and the federal government and others to be recognized and to start to weave concerns about environmental justice into, into policy. And, and I think one of the things that is interesting about the moment that we’re in now is that cities and the people that work with cities are starting to really come around and adopt at least principles of environmental justice and trying to center some of those concerns in the way that they think about sustainability and policy-making. Probably still not enough as we would ultimately like. But there has been a lot of movement at least over the past 20 years that I’ve been kind of watching this stuff.

Kelly (00:05:06):
Yeah. And taking a step maybe a little bit back, actually. How do you define equity?

Jeremy (00:05:13):
Well, that’s a great question. And you know, one of the things that that we do is that is work hard with people that we’re working with to come up with their, you know, particular definitions of equity that work for them and their organization. So one of the things we say is that, you know, there’s not a cookie cutter approach here. This is a complicated issue and people really need to get into it and sort of coming up with an understanding of what equity is and what it means to your organization, to your city, and understanding what the inequities are and what the historical systems are that brought those about. That’s all part of the process of doing equity work. So while there’s no single definition that’s in use everywhere, there are some definitions that and some elements of definitions that are becoming increasingly common in, in cities and in some of the organizations that work with. And actually the one that I that I use the most often comes from a colleague of mine often consulting partner, Desiree Williams Raji, who is the founder and principal at a group called Kapwa consulting. She was an equity strategies manager for the city of Portland, Oregon for a long time, and has worked through the urban sustainability directors network to help other cities really think about how to center equity in their sustainability work. And she has this great definition that she borrowed or kind of adapted from the environmental justice movement and other work that was happening in the field and is built on that. And the way that she describes it is this, there are three kinds of dimensions of equity that we need to be aware of when we’re thinking about this work. One is procedural equity, which is a fair and equitable process. So this is about voice and participation in decision-making. You know, what we hear from communities and organizations that are advocating is, you know, “nothing about us without us,” this idea that if communities aren’t at the table making decisions, they’re likely on the menu. So that’s procedural equity and it’s about having that voice and inclusion in the process, especially and most importantly from communities that have been historically excluded from the decision-making processes and that bear a disproportionate negative impacts that received sort of more, that burdens less of the benefits of some of those policies. So that’s a procedural equity frame. Yeah. A lot of good work around that. And that’s why we talk about community engagement and community outreach and partnership as being part of that. Another dimension, the second of three, that Desiree uses in her work with cities is to say, there’s also this concept of distributional equity, and we need to be thinking about what do you get at the end of the day, right? The burdens and benefits and how those are distributed. Distributional equity is about impacts and about outcomes. So questions around distributional equity, are The policy goes into place. What do you get? You get asthma, or do you get some solar panels? You know, do you get a bill reduction you know, or do you get a longer commute to work, right? Like, how are the benefits, the resources with any given decision sort of distributed equitably and important within that concept is understanding what the current conditions of inequity are. Because equity is not fairness. I think most people have seen this popular image, right, where that often there are people trying to look over a tall fence and, you know, everybody gets the same size box and that doesn’t work. And so you have to actually kind of distribute resources with attention to where there are deficits and disparity.

Jeremy (00:08:27):
The third concept with equity that we’d like to use is recognizing that you can have a great process. You can have people come together and do a great process, include lots of voices. And then you can actually design a policy and implement it in a way that really is attentive to distributing benefits of that policy to people who need them most and addressing historical wrongs. But if you don’t change the actual structures, the systems, the institutions, and the way that they function over time, you’re always going to be playing catch up. And so the third dimension is structural equity or what Desiree calls intergenerational equity, because this is about changing the decision-making and accountability structures within institutions, so that they’re defending and extending equity gains over time. Sometimes I say, if we do structural equity, right, we could wash out all the good people from an institution, like all the folks who did all the training and learned and did all the hard work and made all the policies. We could take them out and replace them with brand new people. And the decision making and accountability structures in that organization would still help us take care of people that have been wronged in the past, and that are suffering today. So those are some of the other concepts that we work with, but that, that simple breakdown has been so helpful for cities and for other organizations that are working on equity issues, in large part because it is a complex issue and the word gets thrown around a lot. And one of the things that we noticed is we can go into a room with, you know, a dozen different people back in the days when we used to get to go into a room with a dozen different people. And we can all be talking about equity and saying the word equity, but we might all be meaning slightly different things. And so really getting into it and starting to break it down and take it apart and be really clear about what we mean is really important.

Kelly (00:10:09):
Right, absolutely. And you actually had talked about a couple of different definitions of equity and one that really resonated with me was about outcomes. I don’t remember exactly what it was. I don’t know if you remember off the top of your head.

Jeremy (00:10:24):
Yeah. In your outcomes. No, that’s exactly right. Yeah, one of the, one of the things that we say is when we do equity right, I mean, equity means that your identity no longer determines your outcomes, right? Like if we live in a world that’s racially equitable, right. We won’t see disparities between these different racial groups. I mean, the fact that, you know, African-American women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. You know, you can dive into the research there, but ultimately what it comes down to is the reason for that is because they’re black and they live in a society that in which the game is sort of tilted against black women. And so that shows up in the data as much more likely to die in childbirth. And we see these disparities over and over again, when income on incarceration rates on health outcomes, et cetera.

Jeremy (00:11:14):
And that’s what we’re working with. We’re really trying to understand, well, what are the systems that produce those disparate outcomes and how do we begin to change them? And that concept of systems is another important piece of equity definitions. There’s a lot of really important work that needs to happen everywhere in America to address people’s understanding and sensitivity to different cultures and people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to unpack and take apart individual bias, implicit bias, and we could do all that work and we could still be perpetuating inequities because of the way that different systems have sort of worked over time to create disadvantage and disparity for people of color and women and LGBTQ and disabled people and others. And so what we’re really trying to figure out is like, what are those systems? And one of the concepts, again thatmy colleague Desiree uses is let’s talk about broken systems, not about broken people, right? Like, let’s think about this, not as like there’s a deficit among this group of people, but really to dive into that and try to understand, well, why is that? And how did we get there and how can we change it over the longterm going forward?

Kelly (00:12:23):
Yeah, absolutely. You’ve spoken before about how there’s an inherent link between progress in sustainability, in a city and progress and equity and linking them together, we can actually create bolder policy. Do you have some examples for that?

Jeremy (00:12:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that point is just so evident. I mean, I feel like it’s been evident for a while, but it’s becoming so much more clear as cities are increasingly understanding because of black lives matters and other movements. And I think you know, every generation gets smarter and more aware of the dangers and the pain associated with racial inequities and are set on doing something about that, that we’re just seeing more and more how focusing on racial equity is woven throughout all the priorities that we have across society. And sustainability is the place where that in many ways has always been part of the foundational concepts of sustainability or sustainable development. And yet we’ve sort of had to play catch up on that third E you know, a lot of cities have been really good on, you know, the three E’s of sustainability, our environment, you know, economy and equity. And cities kind of started a lot of them with sustainability departments and thinking about the environment and making lots of progress on reducing carbon emissions, and then started saying like, Oh, you know, we might be able to create some jobs and sort of tilt our economic development strategy towards this huge amount of work that we have to do to take our cities towards carbon neutrality or carbon zero and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And then kind of, you know, coming along behind for many years was this equity that was saying like, wait, we should also make sure that we are correcting historic disparities, that we’re building in opportunity for people who have been left out previously. And that this future that we’re talking about building, this healthy and sustainable future, is available to all is shared by all. And importantly is built by everyone is, you know, draws on the genius and perspectives of everybody within our community. And so that has really thankfully finally is coming to the fore in, in a lot of places. And what we see is that when we’re more holistic about our climate policies and we include equity dimensions and economic opportunity dimensions in them, we get a bunch of benefits. Some of those are that we get, you know, smarter policy and we can talk about that in a little bit, but one of the main benefits off the bat is we get broader constituencies of support for the types of climate policies that many in like the environmental movement or the mainstream, you know, green movement have been pushing for, for a long time. And I do have this example from my home city in Portland, Oregon, where Portland’s been a very progressive place on climate issues for a long time and has developed climate action plans is one of the early cities to develop climate action plans.

Jeremy (00:15:11):
And was also one of the early cities to start thinking about equity in climate action plans because of the work of the Bureau of planning and sustainability and people like Desiree Williams Raji, and others that work there. But, but like a lot of cities, Portland couldn’t really come up with with the amount of money to invest in making a climate action plan real, like we have these lofty goals about making our city carbon neutral you know, and having super efficient buildings and electric transportation and other things, but it takes resources to get there. And it takes the involvement of a broad community to be able to support the types of policies that are actually gonna make that stuff real and take it off of the plan that’s on the shelf and put it into practice. And what we saw recently was that as the city started talking more about equity and started engaging directly with communities of color and listening to environmental justice advocates and beginning to share information back and forth and develop better relationships of trust and understanding there was increasing capacity in recognition of the opportunity to change policy, to serve the needs of community color. And when I say that I’m talking about that that recognition came from communities of color. And what we saw in Portland was that communities of color came together and created a ballot initiative that said, we want all these things. We want healthy cities, low carbon emissions. We know the climate change problems are going to hit our communities hardest and earliest. We think that there should be investment in getting to the place where it’s a clean energy, low carbon city that includes communities of color and has them sort of in the front of the line to be implementing and benefiting from these changes. And so those communities put together a ballot initiative that suggested a small tax on big box retailers, so large businesses that operated nationally, but had a presence in Portland and took that to the ballot and ran a campaign and ended up passing that with 65% of the vote really overwhelming support for that.

Jeremy (00:17:17):
And what’s impressive there is that I don’t think the city of Portland or even the environmental organizations in Portland would have ever been able to get that done on their own, but once communities of color were in the lead, and they were talking about the benefits to communities these other ways in terms of jobs and economic opportunity in terms of better health outcomes, in terms of, you know, better learning opportunities and career pathways and connecting that to these investments in clean energy and low carbon infrastructure, et cetera. That’s when we saw that there was a much broader coalition of support for bold climate action, and we were able to get it done. And I think that’s a great example of sort of what’s beginning to take place around the country.

Kelly (00:18:00):
Yeah. And I think it’s such a great example because I think it speaks to this idea of a diversity of perspectives creates more holistic solutions, and like thinking holistically about the problem, we can create win-win wins. Even though I think sometimes we have, especially maybe these days we have kind of a scarcity mindset sometimes. You know, if something wins, then somebody else loses. If there’s time for sustainability, maybe we don’t have time for equity, but actually kind of when we focus on or when we kind of bring people together with different perspectives, we can actually create a solution that can benefit everybody.

Jeremy (00:18:41):
Yeah, you’re so right about that. Kelly and the Portland clean energy fund is the name of that ballot initiative, by the way, it’s the Portland the clean energy and community benefits fund and your listeners can check it out and look online. And there’s a coalition that came together around that, that, that tells a story of, you know, sort of how they thought about this and how they put it in place. But I want to be clear, this is this fund that passed on the ballot and is being implemented now, and it’s implemented so that there’s money that’s raised, and there’s a community taskforce that is very intimately involved in how those dollars are invested in reaching our climate equity goals here in the city of Portland. The price tag, the number on that, it’s between 40 and $60 million per year, that that initiative is putting together and investing in our climate equity future here in Portland. That is an enormous amount of money when we think about all of the climate action plans and cities around the country that have come up with brilliant ideas and sort of put them on paper for the longterm, but don’t have anywhere near to, you know, 40 to $60 million to invest in making those plans real much less, 40 to $60 million a year. And it was really both the courage and the genius of a really diverse set of people coming together, rooted in communities of color and the priorities of communities of color that made that possible. You know, that made it possible to say, I believe we can do this. I believe we can dream big. I believe we can put together the coalition that’s needed to pass this over the objections of these, you know, large national chains who don’t want to pay like a 1% business license fee is what is what where the money comes from. And so it’s really impressive to see what’s possible when we do put equity at the center lead with equity, we’re able to make much more progress than we’ve been able to make when it’s just the people that wake up in the morning, thinking about carbon emission reductions that are, that are going out to design an advocate for policy.

Kelly (00:20:31):
Right. Absolutely. And I feel like that is also a beautiful example of what you said before, which I don’t know if everybody caught, but I think that this is such an amazing thing to just put in your mind of, “do you get asthma or do you get solar panels, ” right? This is how do allocate resources to not just say okay, you don’t get the bad stuff, but how can we give some of the good things to the communities that have been disadvantaged in the past?

Jeremy (00:20:58):
Yes. And you know, this is increasingly becoming a priority for cities. And so I find myself a lot talking to cities and the organizations that work with cities and advise cities around climate and sustainability. And just trying to remind them that the landscape is shifting. You know, in some cities, climate has been a top issue for a while. In other cities, it’s never sort of risen to the top of the list. But I was recently involved in an initiative that went out and identified a couple dozen cities to help advance their climate priorities and said, you know, you look like you’re doing a great job, we’re gonna put in some energy and some resources and help you meet your climate goals. We’re really happy to be working with you. And when the leaders of that initiative went to the mayors to sort of alert them to their generosity and the support that they were going to be kicking in, the majority of those mayors said, that is great. I’m really glad to hear it. And what, what have you got on equity? Because I’ve got constituencies that are talking to me about affordability, you know, crisis and homes, and that are, you know, talking to me about that lack of good paying jobs. And they’re talking to me about how much time people working, people are spending away from their families and these long commutes and expensive, you know, paying for gas. And so what are you going to do about that? Because that’s what I’m, you know, dealing with sort of front and center, right? Like that my next election may hinge on how well I address those issues and I want to do something on climate, but I really benefit if we can tie our climate priorities to the priorities of these communities that are, you know, sort of getting sick of being at the back of the line, you know, suffering under these disproportionate outcomes and tired of getting ignored. And we’ve seen a lot of that pop up around police violence recently with the black lives matter movement. But inside of that, and alongside of that, there are communities that have been organizing for a long time to say, we want the future to include us. We want the future to correct these historic wrongs. And if you’re talking about a clean energy, zero carbon climate future, that sounds great. Let’s see how we’re in that. Let’s sit down and talk about how our priorities get folded into and centered in that work. And so you’re seeing a lot of cities now that are putting out, you know, RFPs for traditional energy stuff or partnering with organizations or hiring for positions within the sustainability department that are looking for expertise on equity, on racial equity, on economic opportunity. And I’m thinking about really how to, how to address these systems head on.

Kelly (00:23:26):
Yeah. And you’ve mentioned, I know we’ve, we’ve brought up equity sort of generally, but solving for racial equity lots of other items follow and that things get better for everyone. Actually, if we think about racial equity, even though obviously we have to look at a lot of different lines, but I know that’s why things do come back to to that.

Jeremy (00:23:51):
That’s right. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up Kelly. That’s one of those additional core principles that we talk about when we, when we help cities and, and help organizations think through their equity definitions, we talk about those three dimensions of equity, the process, the actual outcomes and the longterm structures and institutions and how all of those need to kind of be thought about and then ultimately work together. And then we have these principles, you know, think about systems. And one of those principles is lead with race. So when we’re doing equity work in cities where we’re focused on leading with race, the government Alliance for race and equity, Gare, great organization that is made up of cities and counties around the country that are, that are taking a proactive approach to racial equity. They point this out in their materials really well and have some research that says we need to lead with race for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is, is that it’s a difficult conversation for most Americans, most white Americans in particular. And that if we aren’t really explicit and leading with a conversation about racial inequity or racial disparity and, and measures to address racial equity, head-on, it tends not to be picked up. Like when we say, Oh, we’ll get around to that later. Or, you know, like we’re talking about equity, you know, in general, we still see the disproportionate outcomes for people of color in the country. So it’s important to lead with race. Because it doesn’t have a history of getting addressed unless we’re really explicit about it and putting it at the fore. But one of the things that we’ve also learned is that we lead with race because it’s where most of the disparities, it’s kind of the strongest variable, right? When you look across a bunch of different identity groups and look at sort of asthma rates or economic opportunity or other things, race keeps coming up as the strongest determinant of your future, right? So people from the same economic backgrounds that are racially different actually end up, this was, you know, this was one of the key findings of this seminal study on toxic waste and race that dr. Bob Bullard did back in the nineties. He said, you’re, you’re more likely to live next to a toxic waste site if you’re a person of color that regardless of income, right? So it’s information like that, that shows us this is really important. And what we found is when we address race, when we solve for racial disparity, things get better for everybody. So we try to point out that leading with race doesn’t mean only talking about race or, you know, not focusing on the disparities that women and veterans and disabled and LGBTQ folks also face in the economy and in society.

Kelly (00:26:19):
And I’ll jump in quickly there because I was actually called out on this podcast earlier, we had the commissioner for the mayor’s office for people with disabilities and we try to use the person first language. So people with disabilities, that was just something that that came up on our podcast earlier.

Jeremy (00:26:36):
That’s important. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly (00:26:39):
Yeah. And I think even just having those, having that thought, I can tell from the way that you talk about it, definitely thinking about these concerns, people first, something that struck me earlier that you had said about, you know, don’t talk about broken people. Like these are people that are living in the, within these systems that are broken and how do we solve those systems? You know, there’s nothing wrong with the people within them. So I think you definitely speak to that in your work.

Jeremy (00:27:04):
Yeah. It’s really an important concept or we get you know, we get a lot of stuff that just doesn’t work. One of the examples that’s come up in my work a lot has been, you know, focusing on economic opportunity in the green economy. And so we’ve talked about, you know, green jobs and I worked with a national non-profit organization called green for all, but that helped sort of really think about like, what are the opportunities in a green economy and in a low carbon economy to create jobs and opportunities for people of color at risk youth and others that have kind of been left out over time. And one of the things that we saw early in our work was that there was a, almost a an immediate default to, well, we need more job training programs, right? We need more education programs and job training programs for these disconnected youth and people of color or formerly incarcerated, right? Folks who have real barriers to employment. And there was this kind of instinct that if we just filled the deficits among, you know, certain people, like got them the education and the support and the services that they needed, which they need, right. Folks have barriers to employment because they’ve been dealing with these systems for so long, that that everything would be okay. And what we found out is like we could train up a lot of people and give them all kinds of skills and all kinds of ready. And we see people, you know, just incredible people doing really heroic work in terms of learning new skills and picking up, you know, new careers and hustling and hustling. And still, we don’t see the situation changed because we haven’t addressed this larger issue of exclusion within the broader economy, right. And access, especially to good paying jobs and, you know, jobs with prevailing wage and, and you know, benefits and other things.

Jeremy (00:28:47):
And so that’s where, you know, it’s just so important that we don’t let ourselves default into thinking about like, Oh, we have to, you know, fill these gaps in these individuals. We need to fill gaps in the system that are allowing people to fall through the cracks and focus there. And part of that work is helping people out with what they need getting what they need. But if we just do that and we don’t focus on, what’s been keeping them down or what put them in that situation in the first place, then we just, aren’t going to make much progress.

Kelly (00:29:13):
Yeah. That’s an excellent point. Do you have other examples? We talked about Portland, other examples of where climate policy like the city engaged really with disadvantaged communities directly, and they were able to come up with sort of creative and impactful solutions together?

Jeremy (00:29:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking that. It’s good to get to the specifics there. This is happening all over the place. And it’s really impressive to see that these relationships are being built and that cities are increasingly prioritizing conversations with historically marginalized communities and communities of color and disproportionately impacted. And we’re starting to see that really show up in policies and changes. So I’ve got a couple of examples where I want to point this out and kind of drill down a little bit. So recently Denver, Colorado went through a a process to come up with a pretty comprehensive proposal for climate change action in the city. And to put that on the ballot and to attach a proposed tax or a couple of different revenue mechanisms that would allow the city to pay for these things that the city wanted to do around, around climate change. And as part of developing that, that overall vision for what’s, what’s going to happen in the city of Denver, they put together a real diverse stakeholder task force, right? It was called the Denver climate action task force. And, they met over a series of public meetings and this, you know, included, you know, members of city council and business leaders and community leaders from communities of color and, and labor and et cetera. And then that stakeholder group also held some public conversations and went out and they, you know, you can look at their report and see all the ways in which they tried to tap into the genius and perspective and hear the concerns and priorities of impacted communities. And what we saw come out of that was pretty impressive to me. I’ve been looking at climate plans and cities for a long time and this one is impressive for a couple of reasons. One is, it makes very clear, right at the beginning that this climate plan should have equity at the center of it. So there’s a, there’s a, a statement and something very early on that says, you know, the task force is committed to making Denver a more equitable city and recognizing some of those historical situations that have, have created where they’re at. Their definition of equity says equity means addressing broken systems, connected to racial injustice and historical inequity. And then they get right down into the details. So in the final recommendations and the plan that’s going to the ballot with a proposal to raise some revenue from the people at Denver to take them into this climate, you know, low carbon future and address climate change. And in the building section in particular, they have this language in the plan that says, you know, climate work in buildings must be done in a way that enhances quality of life reduces energy consumption and eliminates household energy burden on low income household. Every solution outlined below must be implemented with these following things in line. So they have a lot of the types of things that we’re used to seeing in terms of energy efficiency programs, clean energy programs incentives, you know, regulation supports financing. But what they do is they wrap around this this idea that these programs should not increase costs on vulnerable low-income households, right? We should be thinking about how to make households more affordable at the same time that we’re upgrading them, we should create opportunities for people of color and native Americans to work in the clean economy, include occupant comfort and health throughout, and ensure that policies don’t compromise low-income tenants or put risk on communities relative to displacement. So these things are important for a couple of reasons. I mean, we’re, we’re beginning to see how the city is sending a signal to the marketplace and to others that work on building energy policy, how these are going to be priorities and how we’re all going to have to bring our collective genius to sort of figuring this stuff out, right. It’s like another piece of the puzzle. It’s how do we reduce emissions and also increase equity at the same time? And that just takes, you know, some hard work and some figuring that out. But one of the things that there, I think that they’re referencing here is that this is important because this is what the people of Denver want. Right. And if we’re going to raise the money and build the political consensus, that it’s time to do something about climate change, this is what the actions have to look like. Right. And I think that’s that’s pretty significant. We see this happen in other places too, you know, Washington DC recently developed and passed a building performance standard. And a lot of cities are moving towards this of having done their energy benchmarking and developed incentive programs to help buildings reduce their energy use. They’re now starting to say, we really want you on a pathway towards bringing your energy consumption or energy use intensity down to a certain level on a certain timeline. And in, in Washington DC, there was deep engagement with the affordable housing community and the folks that work with folks that are living in affordable housing and are dependent on that housing for stability, community stability, and access to economic opportunity, et cetera. And they worked back and forth. And we see now in the development of the compliance pathways and alternative compliance pathways and the implementation of that building performance standard, we see attention to and respect for the concerns and priorities of the affordable housing community. But we also see, and I think this is really important, that those folks aren’t going to be left behind, you know, that we’re not going to lock away potential carbon emission reductions or energy savings, because we just say, well, we can’t figure out how to serve those communities with the best energy efficiency technology. So we’ll just like, you know, maybe they don’t have to do it right. And that happens a lot In the work, or it has happened a lot in the work. And so one of the other benefits of doing equity work is that we’re much more certain that we’re going to bring everybody along. If we kind of put the folks that need the most help and might be have the most barriers to making the changes that are needed to make across society. If we put those folks right in the center of our thinking about how to drive this change, you know, sometimes we focus on that low hanging fruit, and what ends up happening is like, we get all used to picking low hanging fruit. We never like, you know, think about building ladders or other things. And that the rest of that fruit just stays up in the tree, you know, and we never get back to it cause it’s not low hanging, we’ve built ourselves around this low-hanging fruit. And I think part of what equity is saying is, you know, let’s do the hard stuff first. Like we’re good enough. We can figure that out. And you know, the low-hanging fruit may, may still be there and there’s a tension there and we need to work that out over time, but you’re starting to see it in policies like in that building performance standard in, in Washington DC.

Kelly (00:35:50):
Yeah. And I think you had spoke to this before, too, that there’s an analogy to the the sort of anti-racist movement. If you, if you’re not thinking about equity in your policy, because the systems are obviously already in place to make to the, you know, the systems and structures are already in place to, to make things unequal, if you’re not actively thinking about it, then you’re just playing into the systems that already exist and you’re going to perpetuate it.

Jeremy (00:36:19):
Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s a really important concept, you know, recognizing that it’s not just about our intentions or kind of like what we believe or think about other people, you know, prejudice and bias are really important to identify and to root out, but at a certain point, these systems are in place and they’re operating. And if we don’t kind of bring equity to the, to the forefront of our minds, we end up inadvertently reinforcing, reinforcing those systems. Ibram X. Kendi has a best-selling book out now called you know, how to be an anti-racist. And one of the foundational concepts in that book is you’re either anti-racist or you’re, or you’re very much not, right. Like when you’re participating in a system that is a system that is creating benefits for some people and burdens for other people and historically excluding and marginalizing some people and giving voice and power to other people. If you’re not actively taking apart that system, you’re inevitably reinforcing it just by participating in it and kind of going along with it. So that’s one of the concepts that we work with is saying like, look, we’re not, name-calling, we’re just trying to point out that this stuff doesn’t happen all by itself. You know, and important for all of us to take a very proactive approach to thinking about what this looks like. I mean, one example I’d like to give from my own upbringing when I first started getting into energy efficiency and incentive work I was looking at the kind of incentives and how dollars were spent and looking at total resource costs with utility you know, the ways in which utility dollars were meant to change consumer behavior and move us towards greater energy efficiency. And I was looking at the ways some of those dollars were spent and it’s like, Oh, I see you get rebates for energy star refrigerators. And, you know, that’s good. You want people to have energy star refrigerators. But the thought that occurred to me was like, you know, when I was growing up, we got our refrigerator out of the want ads. Like we got a used refrigerator from somewhere, cause it was cheap. Like we didn’t buy a brand new refrigerator. And even if we did, like, I’m not sure between, you know, my single mom and hustling to school and daycare and everything else that we would have filled out all this paperwork and gotten it in the mail just right to get, you know, $500 back on a really expensive refrigerator. So to me, I, you know, I had these questions about what what’s happening here, like who, who is benefiting from our investments in energy efficiency when they all sort of take on this shape and flavor. Now, I think we’re doing really well in recent of, of being aware of that and really thinking about how to deliver benefits to folks that need them most, and that are least likely to participate in most likely to get, get locked out. But that concept that you, that you brought up, you know, you’re either, you’re the part of the problem or you’re part of the solution, you know, that, that old concept, I think it, it yeah, it has, it has some merit.

Kelly (00:38:56):
Yeah. And there was an LA times article about UCLA researchers looked into where the, where those dollars were going and it was looking at a policy. I’m actually curious your thoughts on that. It was looking at where electricity was consumed the most and definitely high consumption in the wealthier areas. So sort of wealthier folks may be getting more access to the energy itself. And then getting more funding through these rebate programs, these rebate programs that they looked at were related to, I believe electric vehicles and solar panels. And you had mentioned something the other day about, you know, is it equitable to put EV charging stations everywhere? Or is there another framework we need to see? Do people in different locations need access to a low carbon alternatives in different ways?

Jeremy (00:39:59):
Yeah, I think, well, I think that report is great and the write up in LA times is good. So I’m glad you’re going to share that. And this sort of goes to just thinking about like, what is our framework for thinking about what our climate future should look like for understanding what the problems are that we have now and understanding the roots of those problems or that the history of how those problems came to be. And I think the question around EV charging stations is, you know, not so much, should they be everywhere or not? They ultimately should, or we need to electrify transportation and think about smart ways to do that. But sometimes when we’re introducing one of the other principles of equity, which I hadn’t mentioned here, so we’ve got those three dimensions and then principles, like, you know, it’s about the systems and lead with race. One of the other principles that we work with is that equity work is accountable to impacted communities, right? And part of what that means is that communities that have been disproportionately impacted and historically marginalized, they’re the ones that get to define what the equity priorities are, because otherwise we get strange outcomes, right? We get confusion when, you know, sort of historically privileged people are designing policy and they’re saying, Oh yeah, we’re going to do equity. And I know what that means. I’m, you know, putting EV chargers out in the world. So equity means like everybody gets an EV charger and maybe in the long, I mean, certainly in the long run, it’s important that we all have access to low carbon transportation, but if you’re have a limited amount of dollars to invest in solutions and in meeting community needs, it’s incumbent on us, especially with an equity framework, to ask what are the priorities in this community and how do those priorities align with our climate objectives?

Jeremy (00:41:41):
So one of the things that we know when we go out and talk to folks in low-income communities of color and sort of ask people like, you know, how’s it going? You know, what’s going on with you? Like, where does it hurt? You know, where’s the pain today. We usually get some version of, you know, the rent’s too high, my paycheck’s too low, right? Like that, that’s where I’m feeling the most pain. And you know, there’s also health issues and, you know, lots of issues, right. But I don’t have access to an EV charger isn’t as high on the list of some of those other things, which doesn’t mean we can’t put if you chargers into communities, but the question is how do we put EV chargers everywhere in a way that addresses that rent’s too high paychecks too low? Like, can we get folks, you know, manufacturing, these EV chargers and, and being a part of installing them, you know, can we get folks that are part of the installation process and building that infrastructure that are bringing home good money from good jobs? There’s some great work that’s happening in Los Angeles. Actually, there’s a there’s a local EV charger manufacturer in the Los Angeles area. That’s done some installations, Dodger stadium and elsewhere that is focused just exactly on this, on engaging people from communities of color in the business end of manufacturing and installing these. And you know, what happens when that’s happening, when people are having their highest priority concerns being addressed by climate actions and climate solutions, they tend to be a lot more for them. You know, some of the rap on EV chargers is, you know, that’s yuppy catnip, and here comes the gentrification. Once you see one of those go in the neighborhood, you know, things are changing and, and, you know, it’s not gonna be too long before you get moved out. But in neighborhoods where people have participated in, you know, the economic benefits of electric vehicle infrastructure, the attitude is really different about the benefits of that and what it means for the communities that it’s going into. So I think that’s one of the important points that we we’ve tried to make around this concept of doing equity work means listening to impacted communities, understanding those priorities and finding elegant and thoughtful way to, to come up with win-win solutions. Right?

Kelly (00:43:48):
Yeah, absolutely. We actually did another episode too on kind of workforce development with some folks that work on specialized training for high school students, local high school students in New York city. There’s was along the lines of technology and building and controls, but yeah. How do we connect people to the jobs that are created by the policy that we’re making, that’s benefiting everyone.

Jeremy (00:44:14):
Yeah. That’s so important. And also making sure that the policies kind of have connection points, right. Again, like not always, you know, not relying on supply side solutions in the labor market. Like, well, if we just train these people and develop them, which has to be done, and it’s really important and has helped lots of people improve their lives and, and find new and exciting ways to kind of live out their own hopes and dreams around a green future. But again, if those people are just working and getting trained, right, or those programs are working in training, you know, at risk youth or high school youth or whatever, and there’s not something on the other side that says, Hey, we’re the city we’re spending money on this, you know, energy efficiency program, or we’re going to upgrade all of the buildings in the city, or Chicago just led an RFP for people to supply electricity to the city that’ll help them meet their goals of a hundred percent renewable electricity in the next several years. And what Chicago did was they were very clear. Like we want people to come in and help us meet our goal of having renewable energy. But part of our goal for having renewable energy is that there are also economic benefits that that energy is produced locally. And that the component pieces that go into this are benefiting people in the Chicago region, that there are specific opportunities for minority owned businesses and people who have been left out of economic opportunity, especially in the green sector to be a part of this. And so that really helps. And the city of Chicago is saying what’s important to us about the way that we spend this money is not only the carbon emission reductions in the clean energy, but the way that we get there. And that the way that we get there includes people of color includes racial equity, includes opportunity for young people and workers and businesses in the city of Chicago that are struggling right now, and that need prevailing wage jobs, you know, living wage jobs and business opportunities. And we’re trying to create a future that includes both of those. And you’re just starting to see that more and more across the board in cities.

Kelly (00:46:11):
Yeah, absolutely. And so is there a role that, you know, we have as building scientists, experts, consultants, you know, maybe architects or engineers or developers that are listening, is there a role kind of would you say this is more on the policy level or is there sort of a building by building role as well?

Jeremy (00:46:33):
I think both. And I think those things hopefully are related, you know, I hope that people that are designing policy or talking to engineers and architects and contractors and others that are making these solutions real because that, you know, we’ve all seen policy, that’s not connected to the practice. It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t work right. So I think good policy people are listening and, and there are a couple of roles that I think are important for kind of the building scientists and consultants and experts that are working on sustainability and green buildings. You know, I keep talking about these principles and maybe we should lay them out for your reader somewhere, but you know, one of the other principles of equity work and there are just five, I’m not hiding the ball here. I just didn’t want it to lay it all out. So there’s just three dimensions, then it kind of five pillars. There’s this principle of power, you know, that doing equity work is a lot about understanding power and sort of who has power and who doesn’t. And in particular like how power operates in systems. And one of the things that we know about power is that it’s often invisible. It’s not always explicit. You know, there are ways in which people have influence and shape outcomes in ways that aren’t always clear. And so part of our work that we all need to do is to say, well, where do I really have influence? You know, where do I have the ability to kind of set the agenda? One of the things that Desiree talks about the definition of power, she borrowed this. I wish I could remember the person that she heard it from is, you know, power is the ability to define what’s real. I think that might be Glenn Harris, the founder of of an organization called the Center for Social Inclusion used to work in the city of Seattle, but power is the ability to find what’s real right. To say, like what matters and what doesn’t what’s on the agenda or in the analysis and what isn’t, what’s sort of like outside the scope, right? So building scientists have a lot of power to say, I know you asked me to look at this, right. But I know you care about this. I’ve read your climate action plan. I know what your priorities are. We do this all the time in subtle ways, right? We have our ideas about, you know, the best way to achieve this or leaning in that way and others. And so recognizing that we also have the ability to ask some questions and to bring things into the scope and just say like, well, I see that your climate action plan says that you want to be doing these things in a way that, you know, benefits historically disadvantaged communities. Like here are a couple of ideas I have about that. How do you want to bring this in? Or even just to ask, what are your priorities in this project, you know, for, for how we think about racial equity in, you know, scoping this, building it out, designing it. There’s also ways in which continuing to ask questions all the way down to just the simple level of doing the work, right. So, which is not simple, but I’m talking more like on the contractor end. So if we’re going into a building and I’m proposing a set of upgrades and we’re bringing on a contractor to perform those upgrades, one of the questions that we might ask the contractor is where do you hire your people from, you know, or would you be interested in meeting some training providers that work with the, you know, people in this neighborhood that have barriers to employment?

Jeremy (00:49:39):
You know, maybe just a little introduction between some of the folks at the community organizations that are working to help people with economic self-sufficiency and career pathways, a conversation between them and the kind of support that they’re giving their job trainees and you, and learning about your organization and the kinds of jobs that you may have coming online, you know, this year, maybe because of the money we’re spending on this building, or, you know, in the future, those types of things can be powerful as well. We all need to just start looking for opportunities to kind of, you know, change the system a little bit. And sometimes the system is as simple as, well, you know, I’m a contractor and when I need another person, I just go on Craigslist because, you know, I can usually find somebody that has some construction experience that’s out of work and, you know, hire them up there. And saying well, maybe, maybe, you know, you could hire from this program, which, you know, really you know, does a good job of training folks and reaches into these communities that have been historically excluded. And that could be part of the way that we think about success in this project. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities for folks that are working on the project, but it starts with just getting comfortable with these terms and concepts. You know, I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I can talk passionately about it, cause I’ve been running my mouth about it for years and race and racial equity are difficult conversations for people to have. And so, you know, reading that book, talking to your partner about it, talking to your boss about it, doing the Brown bag, lunch, you know, asking tough questions, being okay with not having the answers. You know, this is not easy stuff. In some ways, fixing racial inequity in America makes the problem of climate change, look like, you know, a cakewalk, right? Like all we got to do is like reduce carbon emissions and we know where they come from already. And like, you know, we have some technologies that would actually reduce them, like no problem. like picking apart all the ways in which our various systems have been built over time and layered on top of each other to create real suffering amongst some communities and, and sort of outsized opportunity and benefit and privilege in others that’s going to take some work. And so just being up for the challenge is, is a big part of what, what all of us can do.

Kelly (00:51:47):
Yeah. And one of the things that I’m hearing you say is, it’s a process. There’s no equity checklist that you can just check the bunch of boxes. This is a process and a mindset shift. And we have to be looking at things in different ways, kind of like the idea of universal design that we’ve covered before in this podcast as well. It’s just, you know, how can we look at things a little bit differently? How can we ask a little bit different questions? And how can we bring different people to the table?

Jeremy (00:52:18):
Absolutely. It is. I just couldn’t have said it better. It is absolutely a way of thinking and a mind shift. Right. And it is absolutely not a checklist. In fact, interestingly, one of the things that we’ve noticed, so racial equity in cities, you know, we, we started formalizing this practice in a lot of cities in Seattle was way out ahead of this. They had a thing called the racial race and social justice initiative in Seattle, which did some great work and has influenced some of the national approach in cities and sustainability departments. And one of the early tools that we developed was this racial equity toolkit or the racial equity lens. Right. And it was essentially a set of questions that we wanted to remind project managers and policy designers to think through that simply asks like, well, you know, who’s going to be impacted by this and what kind of racial or ethnic groups were going to be impacted and, you know, what are some potential unforeseen consequences and what are the issues that they’re suffering with right now already?

Jeremy (00:53:14):
Like where, where are the people that are going to be impacted sort of situated on the broader landscape? Are there disparities? Do they have voice in this process or have they in the past? So a whole lot of questions that were designed to just help us think about race a little bit, but what we found out that started happening, I owe this observation again by a consulting partner, Desiree Williams Raji at Kapwa consulting, you know, what she noticed is that in the busy lives of, you know, project managers and advocates and associates, what would happen is people would grab that racial equity lens or that racial equity toolkit off the shelf, and they would run through it and just like answer the questions. Okay. Yep. Answer that question, answer that, you know, like done and pulled it up and put it back on the desk and move on with the project. And it’s like, that’s not the point. And so nowadays what we’re doing is we’re saying, well, no, I’m not going to give you the set of questions. You’re going to come up with the questions. What do you think are the important questions to be asking in order to understand the ways in which inequity might be at play here and how your project would play into that and how it could actually help mitigate and correct those systems? And what we find is when people, you know, do that work, that extra work of kind of working through and generating the questions themselves, it starts to result in the type of mind shift that people need to bring into their work every day. You know, every decision, every interaction like it just, you know, it takes time, it’s a skillset, but you’re right. Total mindshift.

Kelly (00:54:31):
Yeah. And that definitely reminds me of, you know, lots of LEED checklists discussions of, well, I checked the boxes, so we’re sustainable now.

Jeremy (00:54:42):
Checklists are helpful, you know, checklists the save lives in hospitals and there’s a place for them. But sometimes, really, really complex problems. It’s a, it’s a both, and, you know, we know checklists, but we can’t just rely on the checklist. You know, you still gotta do your deeper, you know, analysis and diagnostics, and you still have to train yourself to be observant about what’s going on and to see things that you, you hadn’t been trained to see before. Right. And that’s, and that’s really hard. And one of the core skills is being open to asking questions and not having the answers, which I think is harder for people from some disciplines than others. Some of us have been trained that we, you know, we need to have the answers and questions that go unanswered or are not good. And actually in this work, sometimes, you know, sitting with the right question for a while produces profound results down the road. When, you know, we, we sort of come to see things in a different way because we’ve been sitting with a question that’s been hard to answer for a while. And that’s, and that’s where the change is really happening.

Kelly (00:55:38):
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve read it was a leadership book, but it said, you know, there’s no growth without feeling uncomfortable.

Jeremy (00:55:50):
That’s going to be true around this work for sure. And that’s part of the reason we have to be so explicit about it. Cause honestly, like, you know, a lot of folks would rather not do this work, you know, and a lot of white people in particular would just rather not think about it and you know, there’s all this guilt and fragility and you know, other stuff that gets in the way, and then people of color are dealing with all of the pressures of actually living in a world that is, you know, the scales are tilted and the playing field is not level and you’re excluded and you’ve got personal microaggressions going on. And so, you know, people of color don’t want to be like having to educate white folks are leading on the development of the overall equity strategy or just be the ones that are constantly bringing it up. Like that’s not their job. So yeah, this is like, it’s, it’s hard stuff and it is uncomfortable. But again, like the more that we sort of say, well, that’s the thing I can do. I can lean into that discomfort a little bit. You know, I can, I can be a little more courageous about bringing these questions up and trying to center race and equity in the work that we do, even though right now, I don’t really see how it all fits in and I feel clumsy and I feel awkward and I’m afraid I’m going to get judged. You know, like just trying to, you know, bring enough enough sort of steadiness and courage to, to be a part of this change that’s sweeping America right now. And, you know, we all need to know to get in on this we’re 50 years past the civil rights movement and 400 years of slavery. And like, you know, it’s time to make this stuff happen. And the climate movement talks about the future. And I think the people that work in the climate movement are some of the most visionary people in America. And we need all of us to have a vision that includes, you know, practical things that we can do on, on racial equity and, and having that be at the center of this, the work that we do in the future we see for ourselves.

Kelly (00:57:36):
Wow. That was a good call to action. Speaking of the future, we like to ask everyone, when we have you back on the podcast in five years what do you think we’ll be talking about then?

Jeremy (00:57:49):
Ooh, boy, that’s a good question. I the future is hard to see, especially in 2020, you know.

Kelly (00:58:00):
Right. Five years, talk about 5 days…

Jeremy (00:58:02):
Yeah. You know, I really hope that we are certainly well past sort of whether, you know, we should be centering racial equity in our climate work and in our economic development efforts. And I, I hope that we’re also sort of past the the, the early stages of like, well, how do you do that? And how do you get situated for that? And, you know, I hope that what we’re doing is we’re talking about the amazing examples that we’re seeing, of you know, what really works like in that we’re learning all the time about ways that we are correcting this system. And that we’re, you know, we’re just simply, you know, centering health and happiness and opportunity and, and a sense of, you know, wellbeing and peace for everyone. And that that’s really part of the way that we’re measuring success. And so that our conversations in five years, or maybe, you know, they’re inclusive of like, what do we do about carbon emission reductions and what do we do about disproportionate rates of asthma? And what do we do about deep racialized economic disparities, or what do they look like? But that we’re also talking about, you know, what’s the latest solution that is really centering this wellbeing, right? And this opportunity and this, you know, this vibrant participation in American life what does that look like? And, and how can we build on that? You know, that we’ve sort of brought these things together. And that we’ve, I don’t know what the language will be, but I’m interested to hear, like, what is the language that we’ll be using to measure our success and to talk about who we want to be as a society, as a culture going forward. Because I don’t think that, you know, in some ways, like we need to talk about reducing carbon emissions and we need to talk about correcting racial disparities, but we’re, we’re about so much more than that. Right? And so in some ways like that stuff is just trying to correct the broken systems that have gotten us into this place of, you know, danger and despair sometimes. And I hope in five years, we’re feeling like we’re solving those problems. And we’re, we’re really thinking hard about, you know, the, the upside of our collective work and energy and, you know, putting our genius towards, towards solutions that you know, that are, that are really happy that aren’t just fixing broken stuff that are actually like taking us into the future that we want to have.

Kelly (01:00:26):
Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Jeremy.

Jeremy (01:00:29):
Absolutely. Kelly, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Kelly (01:00:35):
Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond to learn more about the intersection between sustainability equity and economic development. Check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe that our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us on our mission, visit swinter.com/Careers. Thank you. And we’ll see you next time.