Buildings + Beyond Podcast

Les Bluestone, Co-Founder, Blue Sea Development

Les Bluestone has been developing, building, and managing affordable housing for 40 years.  His firm, Blue Sea Development, developed and built NYC’s first affordable Energy Star certified home, it’s first three affordable LEED Platinum multifamily buildings, and the country’s first building certified under the Partnership for a Healthier America’s Active Design Verified program. As former Board Chair of Habitat for Humanity NYC, Les was appointed to and presently serves on the NYC Workforce Development Board, is a founding board member of the Center for Active Design, and a member of NYSERDA’s Green Jobs/Green NY Advisory Board.  His passion and focus is on improving people’s lives through housing and on making sustainable, healthy lives possible for people who need it most, but can afford it least.

In a city as crowded and expensive as New York City, there is a growing need for access to safe and affordable housing. With this demand comes great innovation, as well as roadblocks and challenges between construction, financing, and policy.

In this month’s Buildings + Beyond episode, Robb sits down with Les Bluestone, co-founder of Blue Sea Development. Les has been leading the way in affordable, green building in New York City since the 80’s. He gives us a brief history lesson on affordable housing in NYC, and provides us with his outlook of what development and construction will look like in 5 years and beyond.

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 (00:22):
In this episode, I spoke with Les Bluestone with Blue Sea Development. Les has been a developer in and around New York city for about 40 years focused on housing and really mostly affordable housing. I’ve worked with Les on a few projects going back like 20 years. But before this interview, I hadn’t talked with him much about the history of affordable housing going way back, his history and really how affordable housing has changed over the decades. It really was quite interesting. A lot has changed in the past 40 years, as you might imagine – much for the better, but not everything according to Les, which we’ll get into. So we talk a little bit about the history of affordable housing. Also challenges unique to affordable housing as compared to market rate construction and where he thinks we should be headed in the future. Here’s my conversation with Les Bluestone.

Les (01:26):
When I started out in this business, I was in a family business and we were doing market rate and then in the early eighties, things were slowing down or looked like things were going to slow down. And the city was just forming this entity called the New York city housing partnership. And they were trying to find market rate developers to do affordable housing. The theory being is that the city had just come out of its near bankruptcy state in the late mid seventies. So the city had this huge quantity of in REM properties that they had taken back during that period. And so they had all the land, the developers had all the know-how and someone, Kathy Wilde, was the woman who started the housing partnership, had the idea that, you know, if you could partner the city and private developers together that you would get production, like hadn’t been before. Up until that point, you know, anything that was developed as affordable housing for the most part was done by the federal government.

Robb (02:41):
Ah, okay. Interesting. And was New York kind of a leader in that regard or were other, were other places doing it?

Les (02:47):
No. New York was definitely the leader. Yeah. we gave lots of tours and lots of seminars to people from all over the country that you came to to what it was all about and how it worked. So, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a great program. It really was a huge success success. And it got modified over time, you know, it became so successful that the city decided that that it shouldn’t be run by a not-for-profit, it should be run by them and they kind of took over the program. The concept.

Robb (03:27):
So I guess then, or now what are the big differences between market rate and affordable development?

Les (03:36):
Well, back then the differences were pretty huge. As I said, most all affordable housing or anything that was subsidized was built by the federal government and in New York city, you can, you can spot those buildings a mile away. They were all built during this more or less the same period. And you know, eight by eight brick was a common material that they use. They had a formula about the mechanicals and they had a formula about the exterior and the windows. And so when you walk into these buildings, they look very similar, even though they may have been, you know, designed by different architects, they had they had specs that they had to go by. Whereas the market rate, it was pretty much whatever was going on at the time for better or for worse. You know, when, when there was a, a lot of competition the bar got raised and, and, and in terms of the quality of the units you know, amenities and finishes, that sort of thing that really kind of went up and down with the market.

Robb (04:50):
Okay. And now, have you shifted really pretty exclusively to affordable now? Or you still do a mix?

Les (05:01):
No, we haven’t done anything conventional in many, many years. Everything for decades we’ve done is affordable.

Robb (05:13):
Okay. Yeah. So I mean that this program in the right around 1980, I guess, was the start and never looked back?

Les (05:23):
No, I do look back, you know, government can be kind of a bear to deal with at times. And, you know, the thought of buying a piece of land building, what you want to build, how you want to build it without having everybody in the world, you know, involved in it is kind of a nice thought, you know, a little public housing Kalanick, so to speak. So it would be, it would be nice to get back to that, I think in time to time. But, I have to say that, you know, nothing special, but I do see the need for people to have their first homes and to have safe homes and affordable homes. So that’s kind of, that’s kind of in my fabric.

Robb (06:13):
Gotcha. Did you do a mix of ownership and rental?

Les (06:17):
Yeah. We do both.

Robb (06:19):
Okay. Cool. And I mean, obviously, you know, codes and standards have evolved for conventional buildings a lot, but what are the extra hoops you need to jump through when you’re doing affordable? Or I guess it depends where the funding’s coming from.

Les (06:37):
Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, I have to say though, the housing partnership, when it initially started, it was really just about getting the units out there. As many units as we could, because there were such a crisis. There still is, but there was back then too, and not a whole lot of attention was paid to mechanical systems in energy efficiency. But those were the eighties that was not really high on everyone’s radar, but, back then the, the, the world was a very different place. There was a huge boom going on in real estate where everybody with a shovel was a developer. And so the quality was all over the place. There were lots of people that got into it that shouldn’t have gotten into it for lots of reasons. And there were people that were in it that are still in it now and doing the right thing. But the city the city’s involvement and by virtue of the fact that the projects were city owned land, they came with city or, and, or state subsidy. So they had the money and they were issued by RFP. So, so for a developer to, to get the project, you know, we had to put together something that was gonna, you know, make our project look better than maybe the 10 or 20 other projects that were submitted for that particular site. So there were lots of ways to do it but what it created was a competition amongst the developers and, and it ended up raising the bar slowly. It raised it on market forces. And then after a while the city started putting in its own requirements into, into the RFP. So they raised the bar, you know statutorily.

Robb (08:41):
Okay. and that’s still the case?

Les (08:45):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s still the case very much the case. In fact, maybe a little too much the case now. You know, building housing is, you know, it’s, it’s a process, it’s basically a math equation. It’s a math problem. Here’s your land cost, here are your construction costs here are your operational costs, and you have to put all those numbers together and come out to a place where it works. When those numbers start to get skewed, either by market forces, you know, such shortages of material or huge increases or lack of labor, you know, then what happens is in order to build that same unit, that city has to come up with more money, or you have to reduce the costs some other way. So you’re constantly moving these equations. But, there’s been a big push now to sustainability and energy efficiency in the eyes of the city. And rightly so. However, you know, the rub is that, is it better to have a hundred units at the absolute premium standard in efficiency and sustainability, or to have 200 units that’s maybe at, you know, 60 or 70 or 80% of that gold standard.

Robb (10:16):
So I’ve heard that before, like, you know, do we need to build affordable housing? Does it need to be the best? Does it need to be passive house? Does it need to be LEED platinum? The margins I have heard, like are more in the 5% range. Like, do we need, do we need to spend 5% more to make super premium quality affordable housing? Or we can, we make 5% more housing units that is really good affordable housing? But I mean, do you have a sense?

Les (10:49):
the 5% is a moving number. 5% in good times, you know, when all of a sudden there are tariffs on everything that comes into this country and labor is not available, and you’re dealing with COVID that 5% is not 5% anymore. It’s now 10% or 15% or 20%. You know, there was a period, you know, I can remember it when all of the plywood that was being met, this is going back some decades, but, but I can remember that all the plywood that was being manufactured in the United States was going to China because China was in such a growth spurt, and they had so much demand that the manufacturers could get, you know, so much more money for it in China than the U S that it was almost impossible to get a piece of plywood and the prices were absolutely crazy. So those things still happen. Those kinds of commodity, you know, right now we huge lumber tariffs, the the government just imposed aluminum tariffs on Canada as well coming from Canada. So, you know, that number, the 5% is constantly moving. But the, the requirements of, you know, the people that are running these housing programs, don’t always account for that. And, you know, we want what we want and we want it now. And, you know, don’t really always understand, you know, the effects,

Robb (12:27):
But, but is that a new issue or it may be exaggerated now?

Les (12:36):
well, I think their appetite is increased. I think you know, the government always had, you know, it’s requirements, they’re putting in the land, they’re putting in the money and rightfully, you know, they should get what they want out of it. But I think with the dawning or the wakening of people’s sustainability consciousness, the government has like jumped on that bandwagon and is now kind of gone over the top in some ways, at some points in time. And this changes by the way, from administration to administration, you know, the other thing to throw into that mix is that every four to eight years, you know, you take the deck of cards and you throw it up in the air and start all over again, because there’s a new set of elected officials. each with a different agenda and each with different priorities. So there’s not as much flexibility in my mind in government to account for what’s going on in the world. It’s we want what we want. And and sometimes they can get it because they can find the financing, the subsidies, but I mean, like I said, you know, we have to guarantee rents If we’re renting an apartment, we can’t raise it a penny to account for any increasing costs, regardless of what they are. So if the costs go up from, you know, over a period of time, then the government has to usually make up the difference because there’s no simple other way to do it.

Robb (14:28):
Interesting. Okay. So I think a lot of the regulators, a lot of the agencies, a lot of the funding organizations are starting to Institute some programmatic requirements. And, and you’ve done a lot. I think it was just about 20 years ago. It was just about 20 years ago. And I started working for Steven winter associates. One of the first projects I worked on was one of yours, one of the Melrose projects in the Bronx. And I think it was one of the first energy star affordable projects in the state?

Les (15:06):
It was the first in the state.

Robb (15:09):
Okay. Yeah. And, and you’ve done many more since. You’ve done certainly LEED buildings and enterprise green communities, passive house? I think you said you were working on PH?

Les (15:24):
We’re working on a Passive house building now. Yes.

Robb (15:25):
Okay. So you’re not a stranger to many of these programs. What are a couple of the real innovations program-wise that resulted in better buildings? And then also what are the couple big stumbling blocks or, or annoyances that are just really hard to meet or require a lot of money or require a lot of effort or coordination?

Les (15:52):
I think getting back to basics is probably been in my mind the best way, you know, to, to improve the quality and improve the efficiency. The technology, as with all technology is, you know, gets issued and gets put out there, you know, maybe 10 years before we really understand how to use it. Or we understand what its good points and bad points are. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve used new products that are, you know, everybody said we’re the best and this and that. And so much better than that. And so many less problems. And` then five years later, Oh, well yeah, those systems are all, we don’t use that anymore because it had all these problems. And so there we are with, you know, buildings that were built that way. So, so that, I mean, but that, you know, that kind of progression is not uncommon, but, but it was happening and it still is happening so fast and furious that no one’s really, you know, there’s no time to think or to get real track records. Everyone just throws these concepts and products to market and expects everyone to adopt them. And and the government buys into a lot of, you know, hook, line and sinker without really, you know, getting, getting tested and proven, not a lot of data sometimes.

Robb (17:17):
Is there an example that you can cite without the besmirching, some samples?

Les (17:23):
I mean roofing systems, boiler controls, I mean, you name it. so I’ll give you one basic thing, we used to use regularly for all of our rental buildings that were hydroponically heated, we used to use these big cast, iron sectional boilers. And then somebody said, you know, that’s really old, you know, you should really be going with modular boilers. Right. So we went and everybody shifted over to modular boilers. The thinking was that, you know, they were smaller boilers and use you link them up in series. And so they would come on one after the other, as demand required. So except 10 years later it was found out that in fact, you’re running all those water through the modular boilers and it’s acting as a huge heat sink and sending all the heat up the modular chimneys. And it really, wasn’t such a good idea after all, but there are thousands and thousands of buildings that use that system. And we certainly did too. That’s one example.

Robb (18:41):
Cool. So, so on the back to basics example you know, I remember ventilation being mandated as part of energy star 15 or 20 years ago. Yeah. And I, I remember certainly in your buildings and many other buildings, energy star required us to actually test how much air was coming through ventilation systems. Right. Which was a novelty. I don’t want to speak for you, but a lot of the builders, a lot of developers, you know, we’d, we’d put our flow hood up to a register and we’d say, Hey, you’re supposed to be getting 60 CFM. You’re getting 12. And that was one of the kind of examples of programmatic that I felt was, was pretty effective. I mean, do you, other things like that that’s kind of changed your standard practice?

Les (19:38):
Oh yeah. Yeah. The ventilation certainly was and is an eye-opener. So, so before the ventilation was totally unregulated, so to speak, it was, you know, it was designed for, by engineers depending on how it got installed, depending on how good the design was. It either worked or it didn’t work, usually didn’t work. And you know, so now, now we test it. Now it’s required to go through, you know, much more rigorous design. And then now we bump against the code, because the energy efficiency standards all say it should be this. And the code says it should be that. And so this is a problem that we’re now running against, but as far as, you know, other things that we that have changed the way we do business or the way we build I have to say, there’s a saying, and I say this to people, you know, when people say, well, you know, they don’t build them like they used to. And my retort is always, it’s a good thing that they don’t. But, so take energy star. In fact, it was on on that same project that you started on where energy star started requiring combustion gas testing. In fact, they did not start, this is a great story, which I’m sure you’ll remember. You know, it was not a requirement when we signed and got certified signed on and got certified for that development for energy star. And then all of a sudden after the project was complete, we heard that NYSERDA, who had been administering energy star in New York state, was going back to the houses on unbeknownst to us and contacting the owners directly. This was an ownership project and going and testing all the gas appliances in the house, the water heater, the boiler, the stove. And you know, we got very upset because this was not part of our agreement to go and do this. And, and they were coming back with results that were scaring some of the homeowners. They were saying that their carbon monoxide levels were much higher than should have been allowed. Now, you know, we’re buying boilers and appliances from national manufacturers. We’re not, you know, we’re not building them in our backyard. So we kind of just assume that these national manufacturers are doing the right thing. Well, so we call in fact in that particular job, I think it was GE was the ranges that were that we used, and we called GE and told them what had happened. And they sent a technician down and they went through every single house and adjusted every single burner and every single oven to get them to conform to the, the carbon monoxide levels that were required. And we said, well, God, okay. Then we’re glad we got through that. And now they’re safe. And we’re never going to do that again. We’re never going to use GE gas appliances again. And then we went to another job and we went, I think it was Whirlpool. And and this time we knew about the requirement. So we had them tested and the levels were off the charts.

Robb (23:06):
And we’re talking about ovens, right?

Les (23:09):
The, the ranges in the ovens. Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. And all the boilers and hot water heaters were pretty good. There was really no issues with those. It was really just the kitchen, the cooking appliances. So when we got through Whirlpool, they, they to send someone down, they fixed everything. And we said, look, you know, we got them fixed this one time. What what’s going to happen with these things in five years from now when we’re not around and no one’s monitoring them. And my partner And I just to each other, let’s stop this. And, and we shifted over at that point to electric, electric ovens and electric stoves. Just this way, we would not have to worry. It’s not as energy efficient as the gas or cost-effective, I guess. And some of the cooks, you know, were not too thrilled that they didn’t have gas in their homes as opposed to electric, but at the end of the day, we didn’t have to worry. And, you know, we were making our homes tighter and tighter as a part of this requiremen,t as a part of the, all the requirements from the different programs and different certifications. So, you know, this, let us sleep at night and knowing that at least we weren’t contributing to, you know, the air indoor air quality issues.

Robb (24:31):
You’re ahead of the curve on that, in that regard, because electrification is all the rage. A lot of programs are actively discouraging fossil fuels of any kind in homes.

Les (24:43):
Yeah. And it, and it actually is much more expensive, not much more, but it is more expensive to do. First of all, electric appliances cost more than gas appliances do. There’s just more stuff in them, I guess. And` to increase the electric service and run the cables to carry the loads for these appliances you know, is a big increase, whereas with gas, it was not. So there’s a case in point also where every, you know, now we’re all going to electrification, which is great. It costs more, you know, something’s got to give, no matter what it is, but is something’s got to give.

Robb (25:33):
Yeah. And, and on the electrification front, if you go all the way and you don’t have any fossil fuels on site, now, you’re now you’re saving money. And I’ve heard a lot of developers who get it, get it, you know, as the loads get smaller and smaller, yes an electric system like a heat pump or something might cost a little bit more to operate, but if the loads are low to begin with, and you don’t have that infrastructure cost, you don’t have the, you know, the health and safety concerns of combustion. It can, it can make a lot of sense.

Les (26:05):
I mean, look, you, the amount of heat that’s put off by the refrigerator and your, your big screen TV and your computer monitors, and even your laptops, that little fan blowing out of the side. Right. You know, you could probably heat an apartment or a house, with those things.

Robb (26:23):
Yeah. Yeah. And on the ranges, I, I’ve heard, you mentioned which we chatted a little bit about induction. I mean, that’s kind of the high end electric range, thats a challenge?

Les (26:32):
Yeah. It’s a challenge for the population that we serve. You know, our homes are going to low and moderate income families, and one is, you know, the education piece is getting people to understand that they have to use cookware out of certain materials and they can’t use other types of cookware, you know, causing them to have to maybe go out and buy a new set of pots and pans and utensils. And that’s, that’s problematic. In fact, you know, so here’s a technology that really did work. And that really helped us. One of the requirements very early on was programmable thermostats back in the day. Right. We used to have, you know, just a basic thermostat and now everybody had to have a program, digital, programmable thermostats. Well, I would say for the first 10 years, maybe 15 years that we were using them, probably the biggest heating complaints that we had were people who were trying to program their thermostats and couldn’t do it right. And it was just screwing up everything, the heat would go on, it would come off. It would be the wrong temperature. They couldn’t figure it out. So we would program the thermostats for people as best we could. But then we ended up shifting over to nest thermostats and the callbacks just disappeared overnight. Just absolutely disappeared. They were very simple to use. because of the self programming feature, the algorithms, no one had to set any buttons or times or dates. They could just set the thermostat the way that they like to use it on and off. And then the thermostat would remember it, combined with its occupancy sensor built in, would set the thermostat, set the temperatures to the right temperatures for them at the times that they needed it. And it was really a great thing. We’ll never go back to conventional thermostat. That’s for sure.

Robb (28:50):
That’s interesting. I can sympathize. I mean, when I was out in the field doing lots of ratings doing testing, I often would have to sit and figure out how to set the thermostat. It took 10 or 15 minutes to puzzle through the press this and that. So on the sustainability side, on the energy efficiency side, I’m suspecting that the homeowners or the tenants probably don’t care that much about the labels about certifications. Is, is that accurate?

Les (29:27):
You know, that’s it’s a mix. There are some people that come at it and they’re really excited about it. some are very knowledgeable, which is kind of encouraging. Some are not knowledgeable, but they’ve heard about it. And, and the fact that their home is something that’s beneficial to the environment is, you know, makes them, makes them happy. So, and then there’s a group of people that really could care less.

Robb (29:57):
Okay. Okay. But it sounds like a lot of the program work or a lot of the certifications come from agencies that are providing funding, is that fair?

Les (30:12):
Yeah. One, one thing that we do now to help you know, encourage or to educate as well, first of all, we, we produce a manual for each tenant or each homeowner that talks about the whole building talks about how it was bill talks about the features that make it maybe different than other buildings. And talk about sustainability, indoor air quality, you know, green living, as they say, and teach them a little bit as much as we can. And then we w we walked through the apartment with, and the building with them pointing out the features. We found in the past that when we gave people information that it usually got filed and no one ever opened it up until we said, did you open it up when they call about some issue. So when we found that, when we take people through and show them show them an aerator show that, you know, take the aerator off, show them the flow without the restrictive aerators, show it to them with it and explain why that’s an important thing. It imprints on their, their minds. And, and they have that image so that when it comes up later on, they, you know, they understand it and they said, Oh yeah, he told us about that. And it also gets people interested a little more in, in, you know, just about general environmental issues.

Robb (31:58):
Do you do that with, with tenants as well as homeowners?

Les (32:01):
Yeah. every tenant.

Robb (32:05):
Is there with the COVID situation, are you seeing a heightened interest in indoor air quality, health and safety?

Les (32:14):
Yeah, in fact, I was on two webinars yesterday. One about designing buildings for seniors with COVID in mind. And then another one about a standard called Fitwell about a a viral component to their certification. But so, so there is definitely, you know, people are looking at it and, and getting back to your original point. One of the first, the first pieces of the puzzle is about ventilation.

Robb (32:53):
Oh, okay. Yeah. Hmm. So in the city, most of the projects, if not all that I’ve worked on with, you have been in New York city.

Les (33:07):
Some in Westchester, some in long Island.

Robb (33:09):
I was always impressed. You know, I’m be driving to the Bronx with my car full of blower, doors and stuff. I mean, you run a pretty tight ship and a lot’s got to go right. what are the big challenges, doing major construction in the city? or maybe you don’t have much compared to, but if you compare it to Westchester or compare it to long Island, I mean, what are the extra logistics? What are the extra hoops you have to jump through to do work in the city?

Les (33:40):
If you’re talking about the same affordable housing government sponsored type construction in terms of regulatory, well that the state has its set of requirements. Or the towns have their set of requirements that you have to meet. And they tend to be a little more navigable than, than the city’s requirements, I would say. Or you can approach them with some of these issues that I’ve just mentioned, you know, conflicts and things that need to be resolved. The city is, is much, much, much, much more difficult to get through to someone who can make the decision about is this yes or no, but, but that, but that being said, I have to say, in all fairness to the city, it depends on who the people are more so than even the administration. You know, who’s sitting there behind the desk, in the building department or the department of environmental protection or whoever, whoever it is that you, you get lucky enough to get, can make all the difference in the world. We, we did a building in the Bronx called Arbor House where, where we have a a hydroponic farm on the roof of the building. It’s a residential building. And there were all sorts of reasons by code that way that cant happen. Some is about zoning, some had to do with fire regress. But we wanted to do it. It’s something that we had wanted you to do for awhile. So we went to city planning, we prepared all our answers to the questions, which we knew that they would bring up. And we had, you know, sheaves of material and waiting for them to ask the questions or to say it was, you know, you can’t do this. And when we got there at planning, the, the people were so cooperative and loved the idea and was so helpful that we told them what we were concerned about. And they said, no, that’s not really an issue. You can do that. And here’s how you do that. And, and then, so we got through the planning thing and we were like, we were dumbfounded. And then we went to the building department and we got a deputy commissioner to meet with us. And we talked, you know, we had this rooftop farm, and, and one of the things is you have to provide egress in a multi-family building to the roof for fire and access for the firemen to come in from the top. And you know, again, we were concerned about how would they treat this situation? And it was exact same situation. We lucked out again. And the commissioner who we met with, you know, she said, no, if you do this, this, and this, you’ll be fine. And, you know, that doesn’t happen very often. But more to the point is, is just about, regardless of whether it’s the city or, or outside the city, it’s really about, who’s sitting behind the desk that you speak with.

Robb (36:45):
Interesting. Interesting. Was that the building where you, where you tried to do the CSA, that kind of fell flat?

Les (36:53):
Yeah. well, it’s still going actually, it’s been revived. But, but yes. Yeah. The CSA fell flat. We, you know, to provide, we try to provide fresh produce to the, the, the low-income families that were in the building. And and we spent a lot of time and effort to get them to accept the government food stamp programs, the EBT program so that they could use that source of funding that they got some of them to buy it. Well, it turns out that most of the people had not really grown up with fresh produce, you know, they, in that particular community. So they really hadn’t developed a taste for it, or didn’t know what to do with it. And then the other group, you know, maybe were working two, three jobs to just try and make ends meet, and they were, you know, looking for something just so that they could throw in the microwave and, you know, heat up between the times that they worked and the times they were home. Yeah, boy. Yeah. It was, it was, that was a real eye opener for us, for me personally. Anyway.

Robb (38:06):
So looking ahead, if we talk again in five years, what do you think we’ll be talking about? What do you think the big changes will be, or 10 years?

Les (38:18):
First of all the envelope of the building, I mean, that really should be, that should really be what really focusing on, if I had to say where the money should be going, it should be going to the envelope, always. you know, you know, the systems come and go like the boilers I mentioned, and then everything else, you know, the appliances you can swap out. And the controls, the same thing, you can take out one set of controls and put a new set. But the, the building shell is forever. So let’s spend that money on something that’s passive, you know, that you don’t have to really do anything to it, and try and build something that’s as durable as possible. So that the maintenance is, you know, diminimous. And and then whatever technologies come along, they come along and if we want to adopt them, we adopt them. If we don’t, we don’t, but the building at least has that going for it is that the loads are reduced and the comfort is increased because of the building shell.

Robb (39:33):
Yeah. Back to basics. That’s one of the first things you said.

Les (39:37):
Yeah. And one of the things that I think that I, I also see is modular. I still see a lot of potential for modular building. And you know, there’s a lot, there are a lot of stumbling blocks. There’s a lot of acceptance that still needs to happen on behalf of the financing community even the city sometimes. But you know, building, something in a controlled environment is just so far superior to building something out in the field. I mean, I grew up I started working in construction and I was a laborer. And then I was a construction superintendent. And I can remember, I mean, too many months and years of standing there freezing my butt off my fingers, you know, numb, you know, teeth chattering and, and watching, you know, you know, all the trades doing their job in the same state as I was, you know, and when you’re trying to keep yourself warm or, or the, or the con the converse is, you know, it’s a hundred degrees out, you’re sweltering, you’re trying to keep yourself cool. And you’re moving at half speed. You know, stuff happens, you know, the quality just has to be affected by that, you know? And also not to mention the weather, right. You know, you know, we, we build these buildings, they’re wide open, you’re getting rained, snowed, poured upon. And then you close them up and you have rain and snow still in your building while you’re building it, you know, it’s not a good situation.

Robb (41:28):
Yeah. We’ve worked on a lot of modular projects and I agree there’s huge potential there. It’s has its own set of challenges, but there’s really, yeah, there really is big potential.

Les (41:40):
We haven’t, we we’ve been doing panelized buildings. So most for the last 15, 20 years actually. And we liked that system a lot because getting back to the cold, I don’t have to worry about a Mason, you know, freezing his fingers off while he’s trying to set a full cross joint brick that I have to then worry about, you know, is it going to leak? Is it not going to leak? So we like that. We also have been using modular bathrooms. And the quality of that bathroom was so much better than what we could ever build in the field. I mean, aside from the finishes one of the things that concerned us was the air testing, because we have to do the air infiltration tests for the, for each unit we’re for the building, you know, a sampling of the units. And in many apartments we have bathrooms that are back to back. And so that bathroom is our only barrier to, you know, a tight apartment. And so we made the manufacturer do blower door tests of the bathroom in the factory, and then have them certified by an outside agency. And the last job we did, the guy could not even get a reading on his blower door tests. So, you know, now I could never build that in the field ever.

Robb (43:11):
Right, right. Yeah. So that was a great thing. Excellent. thanks Les. Any last thoughts?

Les (43:21):
I mean, you could, you could get me going pretty easily, you know, which buttons to push if you want, you know, there’s no, there’s no genius to what we do. It’s just about people wanting to do the right thing and, and people letting people do the right thing encouraging them to do the right thing. I’m more of a fan of a carrot than a stick. I think a lot of the requirements and code issues that are now being discussed, you know, can be kind of draconian. And I don’t think, again, people are really thinking about the, the effects of them. Housing is a crisis situation and when you make things really difficult and you make things impossible to meet the need, then what happens is people take shortcuts. People will scrimp someplace else to meet, be able to do that. Or they’ll go someplace else and build where easier. And meanwhile, the housing doesn’t get built and the people still are in need. Julia child said it best, you know about moderation, including the case of moderation, So there are times when you, you really want to go full out, but, but I think basic from my mind is getting people into decent affordable housing that you know, is not doing harm or is doing maybe less harm than the housing that was built last week is always a good thing. And getting more people into that housing cause the demand and need is so high that, you know, some of the choices that have to be made on, I’m willing to make in that favor.

Robb (45:13):
Great. Makes sense. We’ll see. In five years, we’ll see.

Les (45:19):
Check back with me when I’m retired. I hope.

Robb (45:23):
Awesome. Thanks very much. My pleasure. Thank you for listening. And thanks again, to last more, some more info about what we talked about is on our show notes page is winter.com. That’s swinter.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are focused on making buildings better in many ways in more ways, actually as time goes on, check us, check out our careers page. If you are interested, we have positions and maybe all of our offices, DC, New York city, Connecticut, and Boston. And thanks to the podcast team here. Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.

Sean Maxwell, ATTMA Australia & New Zealand

Sean Maxwell is the Australia and New Zealand Scheme Manager of ATTMA, a global association of building air-tightness-testers. He formerly worked with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. in New York City before moving to Australia in 2015. Now, Sean works with Pro Clima Australia as a Technical Manager. He is also a committee member of Standards Australia, works to improve building codes and standards, and helps regulators and stakeholders see the value in building envelope commissioning through air tightness testing.

Standard construction (both in America and Australia) is sometimes a “race to the bottom” of who can satisfy the building code at the lowest cost. We know this doesn’t always result in better buildings, so we have to educate the industry and encourage a commitment to quality based on solid science. This is what our guest, Sean Maxwell, devoted his career to after moving to Australia and finding himself underwhelmed by the presence of building science principles in the local codes and standards.

This episode raises a few important questions: How do we improve the quality of construction? How does the effort differ in Australia vs. America? And how does the “carrots and sticks” approach to code enforcement relate to building performance, and is it effective? Listen and start thinking!

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. So Sean Maxwell is a good friend of mine. He used to work for Steven winter associates in the cubicle next to mine, and we would stay up late trying to come up with creative ways to test ventilation systems. Who knew what you could do with a little cardboard, a little tape, and maybe a quick call to Gary Nelson from the energy conservatory. Sean has been in the building science industry for over 15 years and has had a wide variety of roles involving testing building systems, helping building owners, address issues, publishing industry leading research about ventilation and air tightness in multifamily buildings, and training others in the industry. Sadly for the New York city multifamily market, Sean moved to Australia, Australia, mate, Sean explains how finding a job wasn’t as easy as he thought.

Sean (01:09):
When I first got here, I was looking to connect with other testers doing things that I used to do back in New York. So retrocommissioning and testing things, some research in building envelope leakage, and compartmentalization and ventilation, those sorts of really fun subjects. And once I got to Australia, there was just hardly anyone doing it.

Kelly (01:35):
It was tough finding a job, but Sean started doing some air barrier consulting and soon needed to purchase his own blower door.

Sean (01:42):
So I was looking for a quote for a blower door and I got a quote from Thomas Vanremstunk. One of my old trusty friends who is from Germany. Pro Clima Is a German company. And he gave me a quote for a blower door and then said, by the way would you like a job? And so I was the first one hired out here and my title is technical manager, but it’s more like it’s almost a bit of business development in that trying to encourage a building science industry. So pretty much that’s been my focus – encouraging people to care about air tightness and encouraging them to care about moisture management.

Kelly (02:33):
So now Sean has been a technical manager at Pro Clima for almost four years. He was explaining to me that his job is obviously to sell Pro Clima products, but that day to day, it’s really about educating the market. I’ll let him take it from here.

Sean (02:49):
Currently, standard construction, It’s true in America And it’s definitely true in Australia that there is a race to the bottom for whoever can satisfy the code with the minimum cost and the fastest, the cheapest that you can do satisfy the code. And so there’s a race to the bottom and Pro Clima is only going to sell high performance building products to an industry that cares about high performance. Because if people don’t care about building performance, then you’re never going to sell anything. So we need to educate the market to say, look, these condensation problems that you’re seeing are a result of either too much air tightness with no consideration of ventilation or a poor choice of building envelope materials. There’s lots of, lots of reasons for that. So Australia is going through this painful period here where they’re strengthening their energy code and then noticing these unintended consequences. It’s like a buzz phrase here. Condensation is the other hot topic. So they are learning these lessons that America learned 15 years ago, 20 years ago that you can’t just change one thing in, in the building envelope, like add more insulation and then not pay really strict attention to quality control, like insulation consistency and continuity, and building air tightness, and not end up with major problems. We had a conference here that we’ve been involved in volunteering for, AIRAH, which is the Australian Institute of refrigeration air conditioning and heating, which similar to ASHRAE in the U S and they have a forum each year which has been a lot of fun and a great time to trade ideas with the people who think in a, in a pretty progressive way here. Think about building science, it’s called AIRAH building physics forum, and it’s pretty cool. So I heard through a couple of podcasts Dwayne Johnlin. I heard him on the building science podcast first and he’s, he’s great. And I took so much inspiration from the way that they approached building code in the state of Washington and the Seattle area that I thought this would be a great example for us to copy or take inspiration from to drive how we’re going to do building codes, regulations, standards, labels, things here to drive the industry really inspirational.

Kelly (05:37):
Yeah, that’s great. And we had the host of the building science podcast on as well. And I had talked with him a little bit about Dwayne JohnLynn. We had talked to him when we were updating the New York city energy code. So it’s something I think I’ve mentioned here on this podcast before is most of the things that you’re doing are not new. And so if you can look at what other people have found, even if the research is, you know, little bit of a different location, a little bit of a different climate, there are a lot of translations, I think. So leveraging the mistakes, leveraging the time and money and effort and research dollars that were spent in, in other locations, it’s really important to pick our heads up and see what’s going on around us.

Sean (06:26):
Yeah. there was a lot of opportunity for cooperation, for sure.

Kelly (06:32):
That’s great. And you mentioned codes. We had we had Gayathri on the podcast and she actually mentioned your work trying to get some air ceiling changes to the international energy code. The, that she kind of pushed through on and ultimately was able to pass. And I was wondering, are you still involved in code development in Australia?

Sean (07:01):
We did some good things over the past couple of years, we got blower door testing into the code as an option. It’s not mandatory. It’s sort of like for a while in the IECC the commercial code says you can do a whole building air tightness test, or you can do a bunch of things related to air sealing and definition of air barriers in your building plans and testing to prove it. So it was sort of two, two paths the testing path that was only one option. And so that’s what we got into the building code for both commercial and residential which is good. It’s an option, which some would say, Aw, darn, it’s only an option and it’s not mandatory, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. And it just lays the groundwork for future progress. So we would consider that success.

Kelly (08:04):
Yeah. And I think there, you kind of alluded too that there’s differing opinions on what makes sense, but I’ve definitely seen that in standards and codes, that progress can be made by soft introductions of, of items and then kind of requiring them as a next generation step. So the next code cycle or the next standard cycle, sometimes then you can shift it up to a requirement.

Sean (08:31):
Yeah. There’s progress. So really I’d like to think about building codes. There’s only one way of changing how things are done. That’s the whole purpose. That’s what your job. And my job has been this for my whole career. It’s been basically how do we improve the quality of construction? So I started out with energy star homes more than 15 years ago, doing blower door tests and insulation inspections and duct tightness tests and ventilation measurements, things like that. I easily have done a thousand blower door tests and that has been our job. You do commissioning now on a much larger scale crazy complexity of projects that you deal with. But that’s pretty much our job, Isn’t it? Just quality control.

Kelly (09:23):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so are you saying that there’s there’s codes and standards and then quality control are kind of the two methods?

Sean (09:33):
That’s what codes are, is quality control. So it’s, it’s sort of a minimum. I mean, that’s definitely a minimum quality control. I often smirk and say, well don’t be proud of something that’s built to code because building code is the worst building you can legally build. And it really is. I mean, you can’t build any worse than that and not get in trouble. So there’s nothing to be proud of.

Kelly (10:04):
I actually say further than that, the worst building you can actually build is whatever the enforcement of the energy code is. So it’s actually, it can be worse than the energy code or worse than any other code, as long as those portions of it are not enforced. So that kind of gets to my, my feelings about you know, quality control and enforcement versus having something written down. And I think that’s, from my perspective, kind of in the commissioning world like what you’re talking about now, you sort of live in the space between the drawings and what’s written down on paper and then what kind of comes to fruition and real life and what gets turned over at the end of the day to the building occupants.

Sean (10:48):
Yeah. The energy star homes program. If we just start there, I would say it’s a pretty modest improvement over energy code. Back when I was doing it 15 years ago, it was something like 15% better than code, or maybe 20% better than code. So not that much more stringent, but the quality control meant that you were actually inspecting the installation installation. So it was grade one, grade, two grade, three installation installation, and duct tightness testing and air tightness testing, which those basic steps of quality control like doc tightness testing, which now is building code in many U S States. Of course you should be building your ducts tight. And of course you should be building your your building envelope tight. It’s just sort of assumed or sort of willfully ignored that most standard doesn’t actually do these basic steps of quality control. So yeah. You can’t assume that what you’re getting is even building code you’re, you’re totally right.

Kelly (12:05):
Yeah. And that’s an excellent point. I think I like to give everyone credit. There’s a lot going on in the, in the construction world. And you know, there’s a lot of people moving around in buildings, especially kind of the larger buildings and you’re installing things floor by floor. And did you do that thing before the drywall went up? I’m not sure. And, and sort of a tendency to keep going that I think allows people to sweep things under the rug or sweep things behind the drywall as it were, but but yeah, having those requirements to, to take a look behind the walls, I think are important and kind of moving, moving onto that, you talked, you talk about carrots versus sticks. So let’s get into that a little bit. I would say, you know, maybe I think I know what you mean by carrots and sticks, but maybe define it for us.

Sean (13:02):
I guess you could say carrots and sticks are like incentives and penalties. And a lot of what we talk about, so building codes are basically entirely sticks and in a lot of cases, they’re sort of broken sticks. Some that aren’t really useful at all. So a lot of prescriptive requirements and building codes, if you were to only meet the prescriptive requirements in some building codes, I’ll just give you the example, the, you can download the national construction code 2019 from Australia. The section three point 12.3 of volume two of the residential code. It’s silly how useless this section of the code is for actually getting a building air tightness result. It says things like a roof light, which is like a skylight, a roof light must be sealed or capable of being sealed. And if that’s not ironclad language, I don’t know what is – just kidding. It’s just like, it’s completely useless to actually getting a result from someone. When I’m here I can’t keep pointing to the U S as this pinnacle of how things work correctly, because I know there are a lot of problems there, but at least some of the codes are at least more descriptive about what’s required. So if you look at the prescriptive, there’s a table of prescriptive envelope sealing requirements in the residential in the IECC. So there’s a whole table of things that have to be sealed. And there’s a thermal envelope criteria and an air sealing criteria that have to be met. So if you compare that page versus the couple pages in the Australian code, it’s very big difference in the results that you can expect and the results, obviously that we’re seeing. There’s a huge difference,

Kelly (15:01):
Right. Sticking to the stick for a minute. And the broken stick you, you mentioned. If you could propose, say one to three things for code updates, what would those be?

Sean (15:17):
Mandatory air tightness testing would be a very, very basic and effective step towards better envelope commissioning for this country, and what the number is and what the number you have to meet is what the target is and what leakage limit it is, or what pressure you have to reach. I’d say some of that stuff. So the way that Dwayne John Lynn and the state of Washington did it, and I think is very admirable, is to say, just get the testing started to start testing. And so many things will start happening from there. What happens when you start doing testing is you realize it’s not that scary, and you might actually learn something and that will improve the buildings a lot faster than, you know, more stringent code or, or regulation will. So I took a lot of inspiration from that. So mandatory testing should be in the code. I would say I don’t actually know what it’s like in America with ensuring that ventilation is actually measured, and that’s not a, not a code requirement, but it would be a regulatory requirement on a local level that local jurisdictions say, you have to show that your ventilation systems are actually ventilating. I Mean, I’m from New York, where we did a lot of ventilation studies and found that it was very seldom that ventilation systems, especially in large buildings were working correctly. It was amazing when they were, and it might’ve been just because of the weather. It might’ve been favorable at the time, but it’s really difficult to make them make them consistently work and deliver even just extract the same amount of air from every apartment at the same rate is very difficult.

Kelly (17:15):
Yeah. And I’m sure we have something, a blog post about this or something, but you’re specifically maybe that you wrote about central ventilation systems and multifamily buildings that are sort of notoriously not pulling air from the right spaces and causing indoor air quality issues in apartments.

Sean (17:40):
Yeah. It’s just really difficult to make them work effectively universally. I mean I got to say, to give some understanding to all the builders and mechanical engineers out there that are trying to delivering this thing that, that used to be okay. Like they just put the fan on the roof, connect the duct work to it, put all the registers down this 30 story building, and then it’s supposed to be working. So they’ve done what’s according to the code or as far as it’s enforced, but then once you go there and you take measurements, flow measurements from each apartment, you see that rarely are they actually delivering the nominated ventilation rate from every apartment, very rarely. And that’s it’s just really complicated. It’s just hard to do, so pretty much the, the conclusion we came to is that the more you can get control over all these variables especially in large multi zone buildings like multifamily or a multi-unit residential, the more you can compartmentalize the individual units so that they’re not communicating and creating these networks of air flows that you can’t really predict or control, the more opportunity you have to actually control the ventilation in and out of those units.

Kelly (19:13):
Right. And we can I think we have your study actually on where does make up a air come from. So I’m speaking kind of basically to that there’s the ventilation system itself that you need to make sure it’s working. The fan is actually working. There’s actually a belt If there’s supposed to be, or even better it’s direct drive fans, the duct work is sealed. There’s no gaps or holes in the duct work, basic things like that. And then what you’re saying, the other portion of it, which is compartmentalizing the the apartment itself. Speaking of that, when you’re talking about getting, implementing things in the code, the ventilation test and the air barrier test, are you talking about single family homes or, and, or getting it in the residential code or are you talking about kind of all buildings?

Sean (20:10):
So it’s in the national construction code 2019 as an option for both commercial buildings and residential buildings. So it’s not mandatory anywhere. But what it is taking a step in the right direction where some individual stakeholders, some para regulators you could call them, like green building council has the Greenstar label for mostly commercial buildings. And soon there’ll be a residential single family, detached residential label from green building council they would say, well if you’re going to participate in our program, then you need to take this option, which is a way of progress. So it’s not mandatory, but it’s at least giving, showing a path forward, which is helpful.

Kelly (21:06):
Right. But I mean, you, you were saying what you would recommend to be added to the code for next cycle or future cycles.

Sean (21:14):
Yeah. So number one would be mandatory air tightness testing. And then I would say that I would also recommend mandatory duct tightness testing both in commercial buildings and residential. It’s code for commercial buildings, but very large systems. Maybe it’s 3000 liters per second, so pretty big systems, but I would say you have to do it for any system. I would say that would be a huge step in the right direction.

Kelly (21:52):
Yeah, that’s the same here. It’s only applicable in New York, at least even in the 2020 energy code. That was one thing I would have loved to see is mandatory duct tightness testing for low pressure ductwork. But right now it’s only required on ductwork greater than three inches, I believe.

Sean (22:11):
I mean, there’d be some other things that I would recommend not just in the commissioning things, but I, it’s pretty amazing to me that single pane glazing is still the norm here for most of this country. And then Australia wonders, there’s whole working groups. My colleague, Jesse Clark from Pro Clima here is a wizard with moisture analysis. He’s on the condensation working group for the building code. They have a condensation working group. Let that take note of that. And I think it’s no wonder that you get condensation in a lot of buildings in Australia because we have no attention to building air tightness, no attention to ventilation, at least as installed. And you might write it on the code to say, you need ventilation, or you need this much ventilation, ASA 1668 is the ventilation standard. But there’s no mandatory, constant ventilation like there is in ASHRAE 62.2. So you’re not diluting moisture from the space. And then there’s thermal bridging all over the place. The biggest thermal bridge I can think of is single pane glazing everywhere. And you get condensation, these brand new buildings going up in Sydney, lots of construction going on all in all the big cities in Australia. And they wonder, why are we getting condensation everywhere, this condensation problem, but some of the building materials that are being used there’s foils everywhere. Can you believe they use these reflective foils in walls on, and it’s just standard construction to use these reflective foils on the outside of walls. Maybe you don’t think about this that often I’m doing mostly mechanical work, but they use these for the building envelope here. It’s standard practice to use a cheap S aluminum foil backed polyester.

Sean (24:27):
They call it sarking here. And it’s a foil backed membrane that they put on the outside of every wall while they’re doing construction here and it stays in there. And then this is a very, very effective vapor barrier, and it’s on the cold side of the installation. So if you have any air leaks, which again, they don’t do any air tightness testing and you start adding more insulation, you start creating a dewpoint on that cold metalized surface in these walls. And of course you’re going to get condensation. Of course. So that would be another thing if I could just, you know, write a big red line in red text, no foils on the outside of the building envelope in some climate zones, it’s just obvious.

Kelly (25:20):
Okay. That the new code is written by Sean Maxwell.

Sean (25:25):
And there are a lot of other people who think the same way. I mean, so Jesse Clark here, have you ever heard of Wufi?

Kelly (25:32):
Yes, but maybe you should explain for our listeners

Sean (25:36):
Sure. Wufi is w U F I. So it’s moisture analysis for building envelopes and a lot of work. It’s really, really excellent work that’s been validated by real world data again and again, and again, it’s been around for a long time. It was started in Germany. Jesse Clark has been to Germany a few times and been to the Institute to talk to them. Hartwick Console, One of the creators of Wufi has been to Australia to speak and lead workshops on, on Wufi. And they are sort of puzzled as to why we’re still using things like foils in walls in climates like Sydney and then not doing anything related to building air tightness. So some really basic steps of building envelope commissioning are missing.

Kelly (26:44):
And to talk about the issues with codes. So talk to me a little bit more about the green building council there and what they can do to maybe incentivize better performance, or if there’s other incentives there to kind of pull the carrot out.

Sean (27:04):
Well. So we had some folks from green building council come when we had our trainings with Attma, the air tightness testing and measurement association. So it’s a way to unite all of our air tightness testers in this country and make new testers to expand this industry. And that’s been, been good. We invited green building council to meet some of them. Some of the really committed ones, the level two testers who can test larger buildings or more complex buildings. And we just looked around the room and said, you know what, all of us, everyone in this room right now is standing here because of a green building council and people like them. They are for all of their faults, they are definitely driving the market towards a better place. They’re trying to push what’s considered sustainable. What’s considered a energy efficient and trying to push that definition to be more stringent. And that’s really admirable. And we have to give them a lot of credit for that.

Kelly (28:13):
Great. And where do you see that interplay between the sort of setting the green standard and then you know, holding the minimum. Where do you see those two things interacting and what do you think belongs in, in one bucket or another?

Sean (28:31):
Well, so green building council has tried to do they’re trying to use carrots and sticks themselves. So one of the sticks that they’ve put in one of their, in their more recent versions of Greenstar – that’s their label like LEED is the the program from the USGBC. So they’ve tried to put air tightness testing in the commissioning credits which it is it’s building envelope, commissioning, which is good, but the way it’s happened is that most projects because no one has the awareness of what this means, A project will say, well, you want Greenstar on this? Okay. There’s a 10% premium on, on this because we have to use more expensive flooring materials and different paints and more paperwork and stuff. That’s a lot of what happens with green building labels, but then the commissioning process, the commissioning credits basically get lumped in with the mechanical contract and the mechanical systems contract. But this is the situation where the mechanical contractor now has this credit, that they don’t know what it is and they don’t care. They just want it done. They just want to know how much is this going to cost, because I just want this out of my hair. It’s just a problem for me. And so unfortunately the air tightness test gets put right to the end of the project. And then you get a terrible result because no one’s paid any attention to building envelope, and then everyone’s pointing fingers. And so I would say to GBCA, I would say, take some inspiration from the city of Seattle, just do an air tightness test. Don’t put a limit on it. Say, all we want you to do is do a proper test and do a whole building test where you get a real sense of the building envelope as a whole functioning, as it would in real life.

Sean (30:46):
And then write down the number. No one’s going to criticize you for what the number is, but we just want you to be there to see it, to see what the problems are and to learn for next time things you can foresee and avoid next time. Because what happens is they’ve said you can do the you can get the credit and you can get good practice or best practice credits by only testing 10% or 20% of the building envelope, which again, bringing this back to scale of a house. If you said, we’ll give you a credit for only testing one bedroom in your house. And if you can say that that bedroom is has a permeability of 3 air changes per hour or less for that one bedroom, then you get credit for doing best practice air tightness for that whole house.

Sean (31:39):
You’d say, what that doesnt make any sense? You’re only testing one bedroom. That’s not indicative of the whole house. So if I could scratch a whole bunch of those things out these requirements, and then put it sort of start from the beginning and say, let’s do something more constructive and educational and incentive the industry in a different way. So get rid of some of these broken sticks that you have and start doing things like incentivizing, say schematic design reviews, design development reviews for a building envelope that would be actual commissioning, and then you would actually get better, better buildings that way. So a definition of an air barrier, just to schematic design, schematic outline of where they, what the separation between conditioned and unconditioned spaces, is that sort of what you would think is the most basic thing that of course happens, It doesn’t happen in most projects. I tested a warehouse building where they had a big refrigerated warehouse and then an office building attached to it. Well, there were holes so big that you could literally crawl through them into the refrigerated warehouse area. And I bet the people in the office are cold because they’re being refrigerated. This building had a permeability of like 22. So that’s really, really bad. And so they were worried that they weren’t going to get their Greenstar credit. Well, the thing that you should focus on is the early intervention. So plan reviews, some inspections all the testers have seen all these problems before. And if they’re walking through, you should be incentivizing them to walk through and point out all the problems that they see. Cause that’s where you’re gonna make the actual gains.

Kelly (33:40):
Yeah. You talked a little bit about getting certain things into the code and getting certain things into the green standard. Would you say that like the final test is something that’s easier to be regulated as kind of a stick under a code and that these sort of early design reviews and inspections along the way are something that are easier to be regulated as kind of a carrot under an you know, a green program.

Sean (34:08):
Yeah. That’s, that’s the way it is. Yeah. So it’s, in fact that’s really the only place for a numerical quantitative test is in something like a building code where you say, this is a number that you have to meet and then do the test and show me the number, show me the certificate and that’s proof that belongs in the building code, all the other stuff, which is the whole process of actually designing and building a building. That’s not something that is easily very cleanly and clearly defined and regulated. So it’s more industry development and education. So the awesome thing about air tightness testing is Kelly. You’ve been you’ve done many tests yourself, right. And with the blower door over the years, many apartment air tightness tests. Do you remember your first one? Yeah. And was it, was it cool or was it just exactly what you’d expect?

Kelly (35:04):
I think it was pretty cool. And I think, I didn’t exactly know what to do. I’m actually like reasonably sure that I was testing with somebody else and we had to phone a friend cause we didn’t actually know how to work the blower door and the friend might’ve been you. I’m not sure. The quantitative testing is interesting, but the qualitative testing is really interesting. Right. So that you can run the test and then you can go around and find the leaks. Sometimes it’s, it’s more straightforward than finding the issues in a mechanical system. Sometimes it’s not, but but it’s like straightforward, right? Like you put the fan in the door and then you can see where the leaks are. And I think actually the more gratifying thing for me is when you have construction teams in the room and, you know, you’re sort of showing the cracks and where there might be issues. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, I don’t think so. Like I don’t think so. That goes to that. Doesn’t go to the apartment next door. That just is internal. Like we’re not worried about that. And then you turn on the fan and it’s like, Oh, okay. I guess it is coming from, you know, the apartment next door or the outside or whatever.

Sean (36:17):
Yeah. Once you get some experience with doing the testing, you start to learn where the problem originates. You start to think going back in time where the design over design oversight was the really awesome thing about a blower door test is that it’s numerical, it’s quantitative. So you can get a number which is useful, but it’s also, like you said, it’s great to have the whole project team there and to be able to show them Holy cow show them all these leaks. So we did a test with a green building council here in downtown Sydney. It was eight story building and helped a sustainability house, Suhou do the test. I was just a hand to help them. And as part of it, I brought my fog machine. And as I was expecting, the roof parapet is often a weak point in a lot of commercial buildings.

Sean (37:16):
So we were out on the veranda, outside the roof, parapet on the top floor and with the building under negative pressure, I stood outside with the fog machine and shot fog at the roof parapet. And sure enough fog gets sucked in through the ceiling, through the roof, through the ceiling. And then coming out of all the light fixtures in this meeting area on the top of this building. I bet 10 years from now you will see little traces of dust on those light fixtures where the air is leaving, leaving those light fixtures and leaving the dust as it goes because it’s going out and up and out the top of the building or vice versa in the summertime. But to see all the people there from the design team, the consultants from green building council to see them walk around and say, what, why is there fog coming out of these lights right now? That’s crazy. He’s outside right now. And we’re inside, and fog is coming out of the lights. Why is that happening? It’s so eye opening to see this process you can touch and feel the air leaks like some of them are so big that you can take a piece of like toilet paper, like single-ply toilet paper, pretty much. The only thing it’s good for is showing air leaks. So you can put it on use a piece of single ply toilet paper and then hold it against these air leaks. And you’ll see it’s fluttering in the wind. And it just makes someone’s eyes go wide and say, wow, that’s supposed to be a fire separation there. This is supposed to be a smoke extract smoke exhaust, like a pressurized stairwell here. And here is a piece of toilet paper whistling in the wind. That’s a problem. And it’s just, it’s so it’s a quantitative test, which is very powerful for regulation, but it’s also qualitative in that you can touch and feel and find and fix air leaks. So it’s pretty, pretty awesome process.

Kelly (39:29):
Yeah. And actually you were, you’re kind of talking about fire separation and we’ve talked about lower door testing on the whole building and blower door testing on an individual apartment. And I’m curious to get your thoughts. So you are a proponent of testing individual apartments. Can you describe for everybody kind of obviously the exterior envelope, if we’re talking about energy, the exterior envelope is, is matters a lot. Can you talk about what the impact is on the apartment level envelope and where, you know, why you think that test is just as important or maybe could be used as well.

Sean (40:11):
Sure. Well, I’d say theres very little correlation between the exterior envelope air leakage number that you get and the individual apartment compartment test. So I was contacted by some people in California who wanted to do a research project to say, if you do a sample of apartment tests can you somehow correlate that with a whole building envelope leakage? And I’d say, definitely not. Maybe you might be able to draw some conclusions based on different construction types, like like building really broad construction systems like concrete or steel frame wood-framed he might be able to see some differences between them, but for the most part, there’s very little correlation between compartment testing results and the whole building exterior envelope results. And you’re right, that the one that most directly relates to building envelope energy use is exterior envelope leakage only not the individual compartment tests, but there’s a couple of reasons why I am a proponent of compartment testing.

Sean (41:18):
Number one was maybe it’s shortsighted. But I’d say I, I was thinking this is definitely more digestible to a building industry that if they to do a test on a whole building if you did test on individual units, the cost of doing that as a fraction of the cost of doing a whole building test in some buildings, but as testing industry capacity grows doing a test on even a very large building is not that difficult. So that’s maybe not a great argument, but from doing research over the years at SWA in New York we found many of the building large multifamily building problems were related to poor compartmentalization. So ventilation systems work much, much better when they serve a bunch of independent compartments rather than what happens with a large building is you get this where there’s poor separation between the compartments.

Sean (42:25):
You got lots of very complex networks of air leakage. And so, and you can see this in the middle of winter on a cold, still day in winter in New York, you’ll see people on the top floor have their windows open because it’s so stinking hot on the top of the building. And then the people on the bottom floor are cold because because of stack effect, the air is getting sucked in the bottom of the building and making the people on the bottom cold. And so the building super turns, the heat up changes the set point so that the people on the bottom are satisfied. But as a result, the people at the top are way overheated because all this warm air from the rest of the building is then spilling out the top. The only way that the people on the top are going to get relief is if basically all of the air from the building is evacuated, and finally they reach a comfortable temperature at the top. So it just makes that whole stack effect dynamic is made much, much worse by poorly compartment buildings. So for fire safety, for energy use for sound transmission, for pest reduction for noise, there’s so many really, really good reasons to compartment compartmentalize your multi compartment buildings that w whatever the fastest way to get reduce energy use is in the code. It just makes a lot of sense for so many other reasons to be tightly compartment doing units.

Kelly (44:07):
Great. And taking us back to Attma, you mentioned kind of earlier that you worked for them one day a week, do they regulate kind of exterior envelope testing, or do they get involved in compartmentalization as well?

Sean (44:21):
You could Do compartment testing, You could do either through them. So a single zone test would fall under Attma TSLOne. Basically the way to think about it as a level one tester knows how to use one fan in a single zone, simple, small building. So an apartment house, a small commercial building, one fan, a level two tester knows how to use two fans or more so a larger building requiring more equipment, a leakier building a building just because of its size needs more than one fan. That’s another level of usually level of complexity with building envelope, calculations, equipment preparation experience, lots of reasons why that’d be level two and then level three would be a, it’s basically a PhD in air tightness testing. So currently there are no level three testers but that’s how they, well, it’s basically that a lot of the level two testers should be considered level three. They just haven’t gotten around to haven’t needed to yet really clearly defined who’s qualified as level three

Kelly (45:36):
And it just the Greenstar standard that’s requiring ATTMA my testing, or is it referenced in the code?

Sean (45:47):
So ATTMA itself probably won’t be referenced in the code just like in the U S in the IECC hers rater or BPI tester is not referenced in the code. But it might be understood by local code officials that that’s, who you accept a result from is a RESNET hers rater and that you shouldn’t, you should treat with suspicion, just any random blower door test that you get from someone who’s not a part of, one of those schemes. So it won’t go into the code, ATTMA Specifically, but it would be what we’re trying to do is build relationships with individual stakeholders. So a green building council with individual councils, which are like small, smaller than County level government bodies here in Australia. So local, local governments that might incentivize things, and we’d say, or say a pilot program, if you want to start incentivizing this best practice do it for every registered certificate of air permeability test from Attma, you can get a credit or a refund of say a hundred dollars or something to drive the cost of the testing down and make it more attractive.

Kelly (47:06):
And so if you had the entire audience of Australia now, what would you like the general building industry to take away from this discussion?

Sean (47:17):
So if there were one thing that I would say one good place to start, it would be at the very beginning for any project team, it would be witness a test by an Attma tester. So same advice for someone from building codes board for someone from individual governments, from green building council, from individual consultants, from homeowners, from builders, just witness an Attma test, and you’ll learn so much about how the process happens. And then even more importantly, the things that you’ll find the problems that will be revealed by this whole process. And you’ll also get a number that you can compare then from your building to the next building, to the next building, to building code. So it’s really powerful process very well regulated. And this is a piece that you can be put into the regulatory framework, and it’s also really constructive useful feedback for everyone involved in the project.

Kelly (48:24):
And do you do you do sample test for different people to witness?

Sean (48:30):
So through Pro Clima, my employer, I’ve done tests for individual builders in Australia to show them here’s where you are currently. And here’s some things that you can fix. And then, I mean, for any, anyone who is trying to push building performance product sales or whatever it is you could say, look at the things we found with the blower door and here’s how you can fix them. And by the way, we can sell your products to help you fix that. Absolutely. So for, for builders, builders or product sales, it’s a great sales tool for consultants. It’s a great tool to say, look, we could have helped you find these problems on your building plans and help you avoid them next time. And then for, for manufacturers to say, look, we, our systems, have we have this panelized system that goes together with tight fitting joints, here’s this brochure of our new system, a curtain wall system or whatever it is, the air tightness test as a sales tool is an amazing ally.

Kelly (49:45):
Right? Absolutely. And so Sean, if we have you back on the podcast in five years, what do you think we would be talking about then?

Sean (49:56):
Hmm, well, what we’re going to be talking about is some of the awesome data that’s going to come from ATTMA. So pretty much the whole reason that I started talking to them is that I guess four years ago, five years ago now was that they made this tool called ATTMA lodgement, which is an online database where you submit your results and it goes, it goes through some quick quality checks to say, what’s your R squared, what’s your N it does some data checks to say, does your test result make sense? And then it spits out a registered air permeability certificate. And when you do that, you contribute your data to lodgement. It goes into a database. Now this might blow your mind. I hope it does. They started this database four years ago or something, and very quickly, it just, it was a runaway success.

Sean (50:58):
So they have now in just over four years, over 750,000 test results in their database, 750,000 test results, 750,000 test results. It’s crazy. And they’re making it easier and easier and easier all the time. So it’s amazing for so many reasons. Cause you have all this data to then draw some really solid conclusions about build quality about policy effectiveness, about building systems that are being used. So in the UK, you lodge what type of building system it is. So whether you’re building with wood-framed or timber, they call it or masonry construction, steel framed. You can draw some pretty clear conclusions from this stuff when you have data sets that are that large. So it’s crazy how big this is. So what’s the most interesting thing you found in the data? Well I think it’s pretty, this is a common point of argument and discussion is that if you look at the results you see so in the UK, you have to define what the air permeability is before you do your project.

Sean (52:11):
So say a common target is a permeability of five, which is about five ACH. So you say we are going to build this building with a permeability of five, that’s our target. And then we’re going to do the test. And what you see is that most of the, the results are about between 4.9 and five, which tells you that either the builders are really good at getting right on target or they are just slightly missing the Mark and then do just enough to get them over, down to that five limit. You can look at that in two ways you could say, well, the builders are clearly, they only do exactly the minimum required and the just scraping by which in some cases it’s true, but it also, you could look at it in another way, which is to say, this is clearly a market mechanism and market driving mechanism at work here.

Sean (53:02):
It is incentivizing a best practice here of this air Tightness target. And then how you meet that target is up to you. Whether you want to use a better membrane or better tapes or a rigid air barrier on the outside, or a self adhered WRB, whatever, whatever strategy use it’s your choice to do that. And so it unleashes the power of innovation, I think. And also, so I think seeing some broad datasets for Australia, it would be really, really awesome. So looking at different building types and there are some things, some certain practices, I won’t name them now that we think are pretty poor. And we just want to use this data to show what works and what doesn’t. So in five years from now, I’ll be able to show you some pretty cool results.

Kelly (54:00):
Okay. So you have that data in there already, but you’re waiting for more.

Sean (54:04):
We don’t have much data. There’s about a thousand test results from Australia so far. But a lot of the data is, you know, good performers, people who are actually trying, which doesn’t give a fair gauge on what standard practices.

Kelly (54:20):
Gotcha. So that’s 750,000 is around the world?

Sean (54:23):
Those are just from the UK. Doesn’t that blow your mind?

Kelly (54:28):
That does blow my mind. Yeah.

Sean (54:29):
So it’s basically, they’re getting close to 100% testing of all buildings in the UK

Kelly (54:38):
And that’s whole building testing, or that includes dwelling unit testing as well?

Sean (54:42):
Both.

Kelly (54:43):
Got it. So, okay. I was going to say, that’s not really a five year plan if you already have it.

Sean (54:47):
Well, we don’t have it. The UK has that regulation in place to require that. In Australia, what we’re doing over the next five years is trying to work with these stake holders to say, look, here’s a path we can see forward and if a stakeholder might be in an individual state that says, alright, it’s optional to do an air tightness test in our state. But if you want to use this energy modeling path, the performance path, you have to do a test to prove that you met the target that you set for yourself at the beginning. That’s one way to do it. And then I just can’t wait to see all the data.

Kelly (55:20):
All right. That sounds great.

Sean (55:22):
Yeah. I’m really excited about it.

Kelly (55:24):
Well, we look forward to hearing all about it in five years when we have you back on the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.

Sean (55:32):
It was awesome. And I miss all the really awesome people at SWA and all the great work that you guys do. And if I were back in America I would love to work with you guys again, but I would still be pushing you all to join Attma as well.

Kelly (55:52):
That sounds great. And you are welcome back. Anytime Sean. 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 in our mission, visit www.swinter.com/careers. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex, Mirabile, Heather Breslin, as well as my cohost, Rob Aldrich. We all thank you very much for listening. And we look forward to seeing you next time.

Zak Accuardi, NRDC 

Zak Accuardi works in Los Angeles as a Transportation Advisor at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He coordinates with cities across the U.S. to advance transportation policies and projects as part of the American Cities Climate Challenge. Previously, Zak has consulted on transportation policy and climate change mitigation across a variety of organizations and sectors, and worked as a Senior Research Associate at TransitCenter, where he co-authored several national policy reports including 2018’s Inclusive Transit.

The transportation sector poses significant opportunities for and challenges to reducing US greenhouse gas emissions as the Country’s highest-emissions sector. As a result of stay-at-home orders issued in March and April in cities and states across the US, we’ve seen a visible difference in smog in part due to less driving. Streets in cities also comprise more than 30 percent of all land in many cities, and therefore more than 80 percent of public space. Yet for much of the past century, we’ve been designing them to prioritize moving cars quickly, which is neither safe nor efficient. What if we designed streets with different priorities and invested in high-quality public transportation?

In this month’s episode, Kelly and our guest, Zak Accuardi, discuss the attributes of public transit service that make it possible and desirable for people to use transit more, and why this can be so impactful in US cities today.

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 (00:14):
Focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb (00:18):
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly (00:19):
And I’m Kelly Westby.

Kelly (00:22):
My guest on this episode is a former environmental engineering classmate of mine. Zak Accuardi. Zak has an impressive background. He’s a researcher, writer, editor, and strategist dedicated to building sustainable inclusive communities through institutional reform and policy change. He started his career at Gotham 360 an energy consultancy in New York city before getting his master’s in policy and technology. He consulted for the world bank on sustainability indicators and performance tracking and conducted research for project draw down. Then he focused in on sustainable and inclusive transportation at the Transit Center. He now works for the natural resources defense council (NRDC), advising cities on transportation policy and project implementation as part of the American cities climate challenge. We recorded this episode a few months ago and listening back to it now, I realize I missed the opportunity to dig in and discuss the topic of racial equity. While Zak and others in the sustainability community and some of my colleagues here at Steven winter associates have been embedded in a discussion about equity and social justice for their entire careers. I personally, haven’t focused on the connection between my work as it relates to equity and inclusion, but in light of current nationwide discussions and our own internal discussions on racial and social justice and bias, I don’t want to gloss over the link between transportation and equity. Since I didn’t explore the connection in the episode, I wanted to highlight some of Zaks work at the transit center in this intro. Zak Is the author of a 2018 report called Inclusive Transit, which was one of the first national policy reports to summarize and highlight specific opportunities for local transportation agencies to plan and set policies designed to advance racial equity in the U S cities. I wanted to highlight the intro of this report, which says access to high quality public transportation can make cities more inclusive by increasing mobility and opportunity, particularly for people with low incomes and people of color. The role of a community is essential to fair and just transportation planning and decision making processes. This can lead to prioritizing transportation investments that better enable people to meet their day to day needs – getting to work school, the grocery store, the doctor’s office and social and leisure activities, allowing people to meet these needs creates long-term economic opportunities and helps them escape poverty. In addition to transits well-documented environmental and economic benefits, public transportation can be a powerful tool to advance racial equity and social justice in American cities. We’ll link to the full report in the show notes. And as it turns out, transit center has its own podcast called High Frequency. We’ll link to that in the notes as well. Now, turn to jump into my discussion with Zak, which focuses more on the sustainability aspects of his work on transportation.

Zak (03:23):
Yeah. So transportation is, I think, I think has a history of being a little bit neglected among people who care about climate change and energy use. And I think that’s true for a few different reasons. I think it’s, it’s, it’s complicated. Transportation energy use is really complicated, but I think it’s really important and it’s, it’s a big opportunity to to reduce energy use, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that really supports a lot of other societaly important goals and priorities. So so I’d say first of all, streets in, especially in, kind of major cities are some of the most important public space that we have. They represent the vast majority of public space, including parks and other things that we kind of more traditionally think about as public space. And yet for, for years, for probably the past five, six, seven decades, we’ve been designing streets with about one singular goal in mind, which is prioritizing moving cars very quickly. And that’s resulted in streets that look very different than they would if we’d designed streets to prioritize making streets and making cities nice places for people to live. The implication is also that energy use is really high, that people drive a lot more than they otherwise would. But there are a bunch of other problems that this creates. So one is that more than 40,000 people die each year in the U S in car crashes. And that includes people who are driving. And that also includes people who are walking or biking. This is an enormous public health crisis, and yet it’s become normalized as this thing that we just that we just think about as kind of an acceptable cost of, of creating a society that really relies on cars, but this isn’t just a problem because people are unsafe. It’s also a problem because owning a car is really expensive and we’ve made car ownership kind of a necessary precondition to having economic opportunity, having the opportunity to get a job that pays well. Where you have a reasonable commute where you can afford to live in a place where you have a commute that, you know, is possible to do every day and that you can afford to do every day. So, you know, there’s this real strong connection between transportation access and housing affordability. And in cities today it’s really, it’s really hard to both afford a great place to live for you and for your family. And to be able to have a commute that doesn’t require a car, which can cost, you know, on average something like $10,000 a year. And if you’re a family that’s living at, or anywhere close to the poverty line, that is a huge percentage of your income.

Kelly (06:43):
Yeah. Great. Those are all excellent points. And I think you’ve already taken us to kind of a much bigger perspective. I think a lot of times when, when I hear things talk to, when I hear transportation discussed kind of from a sustainability perspective we’re talking about, you know, electric vehicles to, for the most part or at least I guess that’s, that’s sort of the buzz thing in, in general space, not necessarily within the industry, but looking at what, how you can make an impact on the entire community for more of a urban planning perspective, I guess it is your take on it, an urban planning perspective of integrating transportation with the community both on the social justice side and on the efficiency side.

Zak (07:30):
Right. Exactly. And I think that, you know, I, I frame it that way because I think that those really are, you know, the most urgent problems that cities are facing that we need to to be working on. But you know, I’ve obviously come to this work from a perspective of reducing energy use, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And, you know, I deeply believe that that, that is also urgent, even though it’s not something that cities themselves feel every day cities are at the forefront of reducing energy use, reducing emissions. So it’s also, I think, important to say that the transportation, as of, I think 2017 is the sector of the U S economy that represents the biggest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions. I think it’s 29% of us greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Most of that coming from driving from personal car use this obviously means that that’s a huge part of the climate story in the U S it also is a huge public health concern. One thing that’s been, been really stark the last few days in LA, since the state issued the safer at home directive is how clear the air is just from people driving less.

Kelly (09:02):
Well, yeah, and you, you definitely have a different perspective of it in, in LA or I guess a very, maybe an exacerbated perspective.

Zak (09:11):
Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s right. I mean, the air quality and, and smog here is is, is, is famous or infamous maybe. And, and the difference is so stark. And obviously, you know, we don’t want to like turn, turn off driving in LA overnight, because again, that would mean that people couldn’t get to their job. People couldn’t get to, to see their friends, couldn’t get to their school, et cetera. But we need to provide viable alternatives for people where people feel safe. People feel that it’s, it’s convenient enough to walk, to bike, to take public transit to the things the places and the people that they, that they want to that they want to be seeing.

Kelly (09:56):
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. And I think giving those kind of multiple layers of importance to the issue, there’s sort of the immediacy of things like smog and health in, in urban centers. And then there’s obviously the global impact of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions over time. So thinking about multiple scales under which this transportation issue is incredibly important.

Zak (10:23):
Yeah, it is. And I guess the last thing for the thing, I’ll say, you know, this is transportation is an issue where all of these things intersect and they all kind of point in the same direction, which is that it’s really important to invest in, in transportation options besides driving alone, to make those options possible, to align kind of land use and housing policies with that goal as well. And, you know, I mentioned that transportation has become the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U S that’s happening for two reasons. One is that in building energy use, we’ve actually done a reasonably good job so far at starting to kind of bend the curve and start to shift the trajectory of of the growth in energy use and the carbon intensity of energy use in the electricity sector. And otherwise, obviously we have a tremendous amount more work to do, but in transportation we’re going the exact opposite direction. People are driving more and more over time. And setting aside electric vehicles and electrification for a moment, you know, the, the amount that we’re driving, continuing to increase is it’s a really hard problem to solve because transportation system is so, so complex. And so there’s a lot more work to be done before we’re ready to to really start shifting that trajectory.

Kelly (12:04):
Great. And that’s an excellent point. I think sometimes I have a bit of a skewed view during all of the discussion in New York city, where buildings are 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions taking a wider view across the entire country is really important when we try to say, you know, what, what across the country and what globally do we need to be thinking about and looking at, and buildings are certainly a much smaller percentage overall across the country.

Zak (12:36):
I should say, at least one or one or more of your listeners would call me out on this. I’ll say transportation is only the biggest sector if you define commercial and residential buildings as separate sectors, if you combine them together, they’re still bigger than transportation. So for your audience, I should definitely be clear about that. The reason that transportation energy use in New York is so small is because the subway exists and because the New York city bus system exists. And because collectively people take you know, close to, when there’s not a coronavirus epidemic, there are eight and a half million trips taken on the New York city transit system every day between the bus and the subway. So you know, that that’s the scale of public transit use in New York is the thing which makes it necessary to focus on buildings in New York, because transportation is already on this, you know, dramatically more sustainable trajectory than in any other U S city.

Kelly (13:46):
We know it’s a big deal. Now, our listeners are convinced you, you make a good point on, on all of the levels of concern, what are what’s something a city can do about it? And I’m not sure if it’s best to take the perspective of an existing city like LA that has a lot of driving or a perspective of if you’re building a new kind of town center or city center. Can you speak to kind of, what are the, maybe top three things that you should consider designing?

Zak (14:15):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s I give this a little bit of thought before, before this conversation. I think there’s, my first answer is kind of a cop out answer, which is that it’s not just one thing. It’s not just three things. It really is about focusing on how we design both streets and our built environment to support people, not having to drive everywhere. It’s also about electric vehicles. So I don’t wanna, I don’t want to minimize that, but it’s also electric vehicles are also less of my expertise, so I have less intelligent things to say about them. So it’s really kind of making that making that kind of jump from the kind of planning, the kind of design that kind of policy-making that we have done for a long time into kind of systematically prioritizing investments that help people make the choice to walk, bike, take transit, et cetera. But I will also provide a real answer to your question, and I’m going to focus the focus, the kind of three examples on things that the interact with the built environment.

Kelly (15:40):
And I think just to point out, as you were saying that we had a universal design episode and we talked, we alluded to this a little bit and our building codes are going towards a more performance based metric. I think we talked about universal design as, as like being a performance based code. Like I think this again is a, is more of a performance based mandate. What you’re, what you’re talking about, you know, can we design smartly, not specific prescriptive requirements necessarily, although we can get into those, but can we design in a smart way that encourages the kind of behavior that we’re looking for?

Zak (16:17):
Absolutely. And there are actually some good examples in a kind of a growing list of examples in cities around the country who are taking kind of a performance, performance driven approach to looking at transportation transportation behaviors in the built environment. So I think that’s a good segue into these, into these three policies and that the connect transportation to, to the built environment. So one is, one is looking at kind of the development review process. So for for a new building, or like a substantial renovation for a building, thinking about how we in in, in evaluating kind of a development proposal, look at what the transportation impacts of a project are. And historically that’s, that’s done by looking just at what is the adverse impact to traffic. So literally how, how fast do cars move on the adjacent streets to, to a new development project. And that turns out to, without going into all of the details that turns out to be like the exact opposite of measuring, whether a project supports kind of sustainable equitable transportation investments. It’s just about moving cars more quickly. It’s antithetical to safety goals, it’s antithetical to greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. And what we actually want to do is ask in the development review process, is this new building, this new development going to enable people to get to the building through a diversity of transportation options. So that can mean like looking at kind of a menu of different things that a development can do which include, might include building less parking, providing amenities for people who I can bike, making sure that there are like great there’s, there’s great sidewalk infrastructure, not just on the development, but, but maybe nearby. And so that kind of development review process is a really important, important lever. A second one is looking at what you might call commuter benefits programs. So the building itself and how you construct it is one part, but then there’s, how do people use the building and how do you keep track of whether the employers or the other tenants in the building are actually achieving the kind of goals that are, that are built into the development itself? So this would be things like making sure that employers are are providing employees, not just with free parking or the opportunity to, to have free parking, but also kind of equivalent benefits that will allow them to, or, or support them taking transit, riding bikes walking, et cetera. So it, it, this is solving a problem, which is pretty common where an employer will offer free parking, but actually not even offer a subsidized transit pass which might be uncommon in New York, but it is very common, common in in cities around the country.

Zak (19:49):
And that just creates a bad incentive. So it’s basically saying we, we, we support you as an employee if you drive, but but if you’re going to do something else, then you have to forego this, this benefit. And then the third one, the third one is is related to the first but a little bit, but a little bit more broad, which is focused on focused on parking specifically. And I think there are a variety of really important parking reforms that cities the cities can undertake, but the most simple and the most, perhaps the most powerful is eliminating parking minimums in new development. So in in a new development, most cities, well, the overwhelming majority of cities require some minimum amount of parking to be built. And that raises development costs, which in turn, you know, the average parking space cost tens of thousands of dollars to construct. So in a residential building, that means that you’re adding tens of thousands of dollars to every unit’s costs. So you’re exacerbating housing affordability, but it also means, again that you’re providing a strong incentive for people to drive by just making it as easy as possible for them to do so. And so eliminating those parking minimums is good for housing affordability, but it also makes it easier for developers to align good transportation incentives with the, the, the built environment.

Kelly (21:27):
So you mentioned in the beginning a little bit about getting involved in the American cities, climate change, climate challenge, sorry, project, what are the goals of that? And can you describe it a little bit? And I think we’d love to hear if you’re seeing a tangible impact or not from, from that.

Zak (21:46):
Absolutely. So the American cities climate challenge is a project spearheaded by Bloomberg philanthropies and led on a day to day basis by my organization, the natural resources defense council, and another organization called delivery associates. So our two organizations co lead this project whose goals are helping mayors and city governments go further, faster in achieving their Paris climate emissions reduction goals. So, right right now, in this, in this moment in the U S where federal leadership on climate is, is absent or, or in many cases going in the wrong direction cities have really stepped up to the challenge and have, have taken on ambitious goals to to kind of fill that void of federal leadership. And so cities were participating in the American cities climate challenge applied to the program and were awarded basically a suite of different types of technical support. So from our, our two organizations that I’ve already mentioned, but also over a dozen additional kind of best in class national organizations who provide technical support and other subject matter expertise across the spectrum from land use transportation policy and from electric vehicles kind of many, many different transportation from many different forms of support for cities working on transportation. Although we also have a similar kind of package of support for cities working on reducing energy use in buildings and reducing the carbon intensity of the electric grid. It’s pretty, pretty, pretty comprehensive. Each city has, has identified about four kind of priority projects that are getting support on both the transportation side and the buildings side. And so we work hand in hand with city staff on each of those projects across 25 cities to help them implement them. The project started last year. It runs through the end of this year. So it’s kind of a two year sprint to get as many of these projects implemented and producing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.

Kelly (24:31):
Wow, great. And what what was something you’ve already made progress on a specific example?

Zak (24:39):
I work with several cities. I’m actually going to give an example from from a city that I don’t work with, but, but where I grew up, which is, which is Portland, Oregon they came into the climate challenge planning to implement a couple of kind of pilot bus only lanes. So they wanted to expand the, the number of places in the city where where buses are kind of treated, treated like royalty and like and where the, the capacity of the bus to move, you know 40, 70, you know, lots of people at once in one vehicle to make sure that, that, that, that kind of efficiency is recognized by, by helping the buses move, move more quickly through traffic or kind of avoid traffic altogether. So we were able to work with the, with the city of Portland to not just identify two or three places where, where bus priority could be improved, but the city actually decided to increase their ambition, where, to the degree where they’re now improving. They’re, they’re now planning to implement bus priority treatments, street treatments and I think 24 locations throughout the city. So they’ve really kind of up the ante in how ambitious they are ready to be, to really make sure that buses, which are the most, most efficient way to move people on kind of scarce city street space. Not just in a couple of places here and there in the city, but really through a comprehensive program.

Kelly (26:27):
That’s great. And so I assume that does the two fold – one, it makes traveling by car less attractive, but it also makes traveling by bus move quicker and, and make it more attractive.

Zak (26:39):
Right. And we, you know, it’s, it’s fair to fair to frame it that way because city street space is pretty scarce. You know, it’s, it’s really hard when, when you have, you know, 40 feet of street space every foot that you use for one thing you can’t use for another. And again, going back to the very beginning of this conversation, we have for a long time allocated the overwhelming majority of our streets to the single purpose of moving single occupancy vehicles as fast as possible. So that means that everything else, including bus lanes and other kinds of street design elements that help buses move quickly, but also including sidewalks also, including bike lanes that make it comfortable for people of all ages to ride a bike, everything else in this kind of zero sum game of allocating street space has has cut in the short end of the stick. So cities cities are working kind of one, one step one street at a time to kind of reclaim some of that space and restore some, some more balance to just to the streets.

Kelly (27:56):
Great. And I assume there’s some research behind how many people then start transferring to buses, if you provide the space and the buses can move more efficiently. People are either convinced because they don’t want to sit in their car stuck in more traffic, or they’re convinced because the bus has moved quickly, but what kind of research has been done or what are your recommendations based on, I don’t know if you know any of the specifics offhand or or if you can point us to additional resources/

Zak (28:31):
Totally. So my former employer transit center has done some really great research kind of synthesizing. What are the things about about a public transit system or about public transit service that make it possible and desirable for people to use them? Many, many, much more research has been done in the past by a variety of other institutions and organizations. But I think transit center has, has done a really nice synthesis. So what they find is that that people use public transit when it is fast, frequent, reliable and walkable. So when you have a S a safe, comfortable walk to a bus or a train stop when you can walk to it and feel confident that there will be a bus or a train arriving very soon. So you don’t soon enough that you don’t have to check a schedule beforehand. That means at least every 15 minutes, but obviously the more frequent the service the better. And you want to be, be confident that the, that the best of train is actually gonna arrive on that timetable. So even if it’s scheduled to come every 10 minutes, if it’s not reliable, if it’s pretty common for for there to be a gap of 20 minutes or more, then that’s gonna make you less likely to use it. And then of course in terms of speed, if, if the bus is coming every three minutes, but it moves at a snail’s pace, then that’s not going to do you much good either. So, so you’re totally right when you implement a bus lane as an example, you actually solve for fast frequent and reliable, when there’s a bus lane, it makes it really easy to run a lot of buses because they’re not stuck in traffic. So they move faster, which means that you’re actually getting more financial efficiency from every bus because the driver is covering more ground in, in any given minute. It also means that you can be more confident because traffic both slows things down, but also introduces a lot of uncertainty in travel times. You can be more confident about how long the the trip is going to take, because without, without a bunch of cars clogging up a lane, you just, you just, it’s just more predictable. And then there’s no better enticement for drive somebody who’s driving, who is stuck in traffic to start taking transit, then seeing a bus whiz by at twice or three times the speed while they’re waiting for waiting for the next light. And so that makes a huge difference when people can really see see that taking the bus is gonna save them time. And so that’s definitely a place where we see a lot of a lot of good healthy behavior change.

Kelly (31:47):
One thing I wanted to circle back to on something that you’ve been working on, I’m curious to know with the American cities climate challenge, was there anything that you ran into that you were surprised that didn’t go as well as you thought it would, or maybe the uptake would be easy and either the local mayor said that’s a terrible idea, or the people were resistant or it just took longer any kind of challenges like that.

Zak (32:16):
Yeah. I’d say there’s some challenges that you expect. And some, some that are surprising, I would say with the cities and the mayors that we’re working with across these 25 cities the, the mayors tend to be really supportive, really game to try new things. They want to lead, that’s why they applied to be part of the program. And so, you know, we’ve had really positive experiences working with city leaders to make this stuff happen. So that’s been I think that that’s always a source of of strength and an optimism for me. And you expect to get opposition from from communities when you’re doing really anything that threatens on street parking, for example, which is a kind of the, the proverbial third rail of of urban street design. People feel deeply that they that they need to have ubiquitous free access to on street parking. And that is something that they’ve been they have been kind of conditioned to feel, because again, that’s, that’s how we’ve been designing streets for a long time. And I think one of the interesting challenges that cities are equal or eager to solve, and that we, I think have done some some healthy thinking around it is how to help us the agency implement a kind of project that they haven’t done before for the first time, how to build capacity in a city agency that hasn’t existed before and which, you know, we hope in which they hope they’ll be able to, to, to leverage, to continue doing good work. So I’ll give a concrete example, which is which is building which is building kind of quick build a bus or, or it could be a bike lane. So there are kind of, full-scale what you would call it, a capital jacked on, on a street where you’re pouring concrete, you’re ripping up the asphalt, your kind of totally tearing the street apart and rebuilding it from scratch. And those are super expensive projects. They take many years of planning and design and engineering. And those, you know, those will be projects that costs millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to, to plan and implement over their lifetime. So there’s another way of doing projects, which requires a lot lighter weight materials, much less expensive doesn’t require tearing the street apart where you can make quick changes. You throw some paint onto the street to kind of demarcate different areas where different types of people in your go, you see this in New York, a lot, New York has been one of the pioneers of this approach where in, in New York paint, that’s kind of a tan, a tan color indicates that that’s a place where people can walk. That’s an extension of the sidewalk and where you might use kind of flexible posts to to protect that space. Or you might use planters or some other kind of big immovable object and designing a project like that gives a lot of traffic engineers heartburn because it kind of goes against a lot of what the what they’ve been taught over the course of their careers. But but these kinds of projects at the same time have like very clearly demonstrated safety benefits and they allow cities to make changes at a much more rapid pace. But it still requires a lot of learning and a lot of kind of experimentation for any given city to figure out how to do projects like this, which will ultimately allow them to transform and re-imagine streets at a much faster pace. And so that, that tends to be, that’s like a kind of different kind of challenge than getting getting city leadership or departmental leadership bought into these kinds of changes is really helping cities learn the skills and their kind of core competencies that are necessary to implement the kinds of projects we know we need at scale.

Kelly (36:58):
And the program brings a resource. I always think back to developing the energy code in, in New York, or just participating in the advisory committee. I didn’t develop it, but looking at what other cities are implementing and not just staying within your own bubble to try to find solutions that have worked in the past is a really successful way. And so having you as the, not you specifically, but your team, of course, as the go between to try to translate this information and how does or does it not apply to another area? Is there anything around that, something that maybe worked in one city and you thought this is a great idea. And then in another city, it just fell flat.

Zak (37:43):
I think there are, I mean, there’s some easy examples. Like there are some cities who are talking about and who are actively working on implementing congestion pricing, which is a live conversation and then a major project in New York, but also several other cities around the country. And that’s, you know, that’s a policy solution that that really wouldn’t be appropriate or wouldn’t be like a priority in in a smaller, medium sized city where traffic congestion is like not not anywhere close to the top of the list of problems that cities face. So there, there are things like that that are that are kind of obvious. And then I guess there are, there are less, there are less obvious ones give an example of like land use, land use policy. So we work with a couple of cities on on land use policy reform in relation to our transportation work and its land use policies are just so wrapped up in local history, like how, like what are building setback requirements and potentially minimum unit sizes. And that’s an area where where you can’t, you really can’t use like a cookie cutter approach. You have to look at like the specifics of what’s there. What’s in the existing zoning code. Before you before you start to figure out what are the kind of specific policy change opportunities that’ll help us achieve its goals.

Kelly (39:33):
Great. That’s awesome Point. I want to circle back to one other thing you said that I’m curious about, you mentioned the number of people that die per year in car crashes. I’m curious if how that relates to, like, is there sort of a per capita per rider mile comparison to deaths by public transit? This is just out of my own curiosity.

Zak (40:00):
Yes, there is. I don’t know that I don’t know the data off hand, but I do know the kind of top line conclusion, which is that that public transit places with more public transit have safer streets. And the more people who ride public transit, you know, the, the, the safer the streets will be. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that there’s kind of like a virtuous cycle between having safe walking streets and having people ride rough ride transit more. And that’s, I think going back to your earlier question about what gets people to ride transit that’s like it’s kind of a chicken egg thing. Like you need safe streets in order to get people to ride transit. And the more people who ride transit, the more safer streets are going to be, there are a couple of reasons why that’s the case. So one is that the, the, the core of the transit workforce is the people who actually drive buses and who drive trains. Those are, those people are working one of the hardest, highest stress jobs in the country. There are people who have done studies on that, looking at job stress and, and driving a bus is, is, as you might imagine, when you start thinking about it is deeply stressful. You’re, you’re in traffic, you’re driving this huge vehicle. You’ve got people boarding, the bus are, who are paying you, and you’re supposed to like give them a ticket and you have all this, all of these things going on and people are asking you questions. They want to know where to get off the bus. Bus drivers play this really, really crucial role, which is both customer service, but also making sure that everyone stays safe, which is all to say that in order to be a bus driver, you have to be like a very well trained professional. Like your whole job is being a really good driver in a really stressful situation. That’s very different from, you know, the licensing and training process that the average driver gets, which is like, you might go to driver’s ed, or you might not, and you take a driver’s test in one state, which you never have to retake in any other state. So, and state testing requirements vary as do licensing requirements. And so who knows how much training anyone has, and even the most stringent licensing requirements for a driver’s license in the U S are pretty lax. There’s almost zero retesting at any point. So, which is, I’ll just say that, like the average driver in the U S is probably a pretty bad driver. And the average bus driver is going to be a really excellent driver. And so that, that pays a lot of benefits in terms of how safe people are going to be walking or driving on the street.

Kelly (43:00):
Great. Those are all good points. Yeah. Thanks for, for all your thoughtful answers. We like to end a little bit in a longer look ahead direction. So looking towards the future, what do you think we’re going to be talking about when we have you back on the podcast in five years?

Zak (43:20):
In five years, there will be a new list of American cities who have really kind of rewritten the rule book for how urban transportation systems look. They will have taken systematic approaches to prioritizing kind of more human transportation options, enabling people to walk and bike in ways that allow them to feel safe, creating significant new investments in public transit that make public transit, you know, the, the best option for for longer trips in, in urban centers. And they’ve rethought the built environment as we talked about in the context of, of parking in the context of of, of land use housing affordability, more density to create built environments and create the conditions for healthy built environments that allow people to make healthier, more, equitable, more sustainable transportation choices.

Kelly (44:51):
Wow. So really setting the bar low for the future for the future of the industry.

Zak (44:56):
Its a high bar, it should be.

Kelly (44:56):
that’s awesome. Yeah. And and if any of you mayors out there of cities that aren’t involved in the challenge yet are getting excited, hearing hearing Zak talk about the future of buildings. Then now’s the time to get started if you want your city to look like that a couple of years,

Zak (45:17):
Time to start is, is yesterday.

Kelly (45:20):
Yeah. well, that’s awesome, Zak, thank you so much for coming and being on the podcast.

Zak (45:26):
Thanks so much for having me. It’s great conversation.

Kelly (45:29):
Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond to learn more about transportation and inclusive cities. Check out our show notes at www.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 and Heather Breslin, as well as my cohost. Robb Aldrich. We thank you for listening, and we will see you next time.

Jonathan Spooner, Co-Founder and CTO, Stacks + Joules 

Jonathan brings a trove of experience in technology, innovation and marketing to the Stacks + Joules team. Having led innovation teams at Intersection (a division of Alphabet) and launching multiple high-tech businesses he has a wide breadth of knowledge. His entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan, budget, oversee and lead all sizes of businesses across the span of his career. A lifelong DJ having played multiple gigs around the globe he also co-founded the internet’s first DJ mix site. Jonathan speaks frequently on emerging technology innovation, and his insight has been featured in the New York Times, Ad Age, Fast Company, The Motley Fool and the Wall Street Journal, among others.

As technology in the built environment increases, the workforce demand for those who can properly operate these buildings also grows. On today’s episode, Kelly talks with Jonathan Spooner from Stacks + Joules, a nonprofit learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Stacks + Joules helps train and employ young people to have careers in building automation and energy management systems. Kelly and Jon discuss a common gap in the industry – job training and workforce development, particularly for building operators. They consider how we can “leverage the genius that exists” in urban schools, lift out the digital gurus who know about networking and technology, and help transition them into the building industry where they can thrive.

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):
When we came up with the idea for a workforce development episode last year, the world was in a very different place, especially in terms of unemployment levels. But the main gap that we discussed in this episode remains – the gap between all of the technology that we are and want to put into buildings and the people available to connect, start up, commission, operate and maintain those devices and systems. On this episode, we have Jon Spooner, Jon’s entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan budget oversee and lead all sorts of high tech businesses across the span of his career. In John’s latest endeavor, he has taken his technology background in a slightly different direction. He and Mike Conway co-founded stacks plus joules, which is a nonprofit project based learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Their specialized curriculum engages young people and gets them the valuable skills they need to Excel in the building automation and energy management sector.

Dylan (01:19):
Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually with sessions airing every Wednesday afternoon from June 24th through July 29th. This year, I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the U S be sure to tune in online and see my session and others by registering at naphn.dot com. That’s N A P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show.

Kelly (02:03):
Jon, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Jon (02:05):
Thank you for having me.

Kelly (02:07):
Great. And I so I got introduced to stacks + joules by a friend of mine, Robin, give her a little shout out on here. And I just was able to have a discussion with you and you were so passionate about what you do that I was thinking we have to get you on the podcast. So so kind of with that framework, what was the issue that you saw in the industry that you thought, “Oh, man, we really got to tackle this one.”

Jon (02:36):
Yeah. I mean, it, it really came from came from actually two separate separate sources. So I, myself and my co founder, Mike, we each we’re actually best friends from second grade. So we we’ve known each other for a long time. And, and he’s been in the education realm for 25 years and I’ve been more in the technology realm. And so we’ve been, you know, over the years, staying in touch and trying to bump our heads together, to find some way to bring, you know, the technology piece and the educational piece closer together. And, you know, we we’d stayed in touch and, and gone back and forth. And then I started really working with the Link NYC project in New York city which was basically bringing free wifi to the streets of New York. And this project was really, really amazing, huge scale, wonderful opportunity. But what we realized while we were working on that project is we had one of those link, you know, there these nine foot tall totems that are on the sidewalks in New York. And all of a sudden we got a call from a New York city police department. And they were like, Oh, Hey, we have a taxi backed over one of your link things. Can you come get it? And we were like, what, wait a minute. What? And all of a sudden, like our support center, people were having to like pull out their mom’s AAA card to get a tow truck, to go up to Harlem, to pull a taxi off of our, off of our tower. And what we would came really to the forefront of this is we might have all these amazing engineers who can build the incredible thing. But what we were missing was the second layer, the maintaining and upkeep of that technology, because one of the big things that I’ve learned in my career in technology is technology on its own is great, but technology in the wild requires tons and tons of iterative updates and maintenance and so on and so forth. And so we were really starting to see the, you know, kind of the second wave of the techno boom, as being this opportunity for, for technical specialists to come in. And as we were looking for these kinds of technical specialist roles, whether it be in, you know, in all of any of the kind of technical disciplines, Mike’s brother actually works in the BAS field and he had gone to Mass maritime and he was very, very steeped in the building automation world. And so that all of a sudden struck us as this really interesting intersection point between the growth of IOT and the internet of things and how tech is really coming in and starting to influence a lot of industrial processes. And then also the, the energy and sustainability elements to to building on a mission as well. And we saw that as two really, really vibrant kind of through lines for this industry. And the last piece of the puzzle is we were like, okay, we see this industry. It has a lot of demand and it has a lot of need for, because a lot of the workforce is graying out and how do we replace that workforce? We go to the high schools. And, and that, that really is where I think the master stroke of this whole thing came together is we went to an unexpected source of talent. And that’s really the big change that we did to this whole thing is, you know, currently there are massive energy companies that are still trying to run their own training programs. They’re trying to hire, they’re trying to build in and workforce. And, you know, they’re, they’re focused on one segment of the market, but then, you know, looking at high school students who are coming out they’re digital natives. So all of this IOT technology is really second nature to them, and they are incredibly motivated by having an impact on their community and having an impact on the energy and climate future. So having those two motivations, as well as a very good job and career growth trajectory to this industry, those three things kind of added up to be an excellent opportunity to take in and train high school students in, and also meet the challenge that the industry is facing in terms of making up that workforce gap.

Kelly (07:18):
Great. So you found a problem where the technology meets the built environment, which it sounds like your link problem was a similar sort of technology meeting, the built environment issue and then, and solve that as a, as kind of an educational issue with your partner there.

Jon (07:37):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and that, that is, I mean, that’s one of the things that we’ve really started to see as we’ve gotten into this world and really seen the breadth of the industry is that, you know, when people are looking at, at LEED and all these ways that are prescribed about how to build a building and then do it in a sustainable factor. And then, you know, I was actually, I started to learn more about LEED recently, and I learned about the fact that LEED not only requires for the building of a building, but also once you take that building apart and throw it away, how do those materials go back into the system and how are they dealt with? And I thought it was fascinating because I really see workforce as part of that design equation as well. If you’re going to look at the sustainability of a building as being, what are the materials I’m bringing in and what are the materials at the end of the life cycle of the building, you also have to look at like, okay, we’ve built this amazing energy efficient building. Now, do we have the workforce to maintain that efficiency? Because that’s one of the big challenges that we find across this industry is, you know, much like our, our plight with the link is we had the high level engineers who could come up with the amazing design system. It was getting the people to go through and reset the preferences, or update the software and be able to do the work that, you know, presently is available and needs to be done.

Kelly (09:07):
Absolutely. And I think maybe I relate so much to that because I think commissioning exists in that space between, my background is, is commissioning. And we did an episode on that for this podcast as well, but it’s sort of living within the space between where the design happens and where implementation and then turnover and then operation. And so how do you actually get the value from, you know, we can propose a value from technology, but if it’s not being used or it’s not being maintained, then there is no value to it. And so you actually, you know, have to figure out a way to make sure that the industry is prepared to maintain, to get any value out of all of the products that we’re sort of all the sensors and things that we’re throwing into buildings.

Jon (09:54):
Yeah, a hundred percent because I mean, all the sensors and all the technology and all the AI in the world can be put into a building, but if it doesn’t have the person who can actually keep things going and keep the system running, you know, that that’s what’s necessary, is there still needs to be a human piece. And I mean, this kind of segues right into this the current situation we’re in with COVID and with social distancing and all of these things is, you know, the way that the world is headed right now, automation and action at a distance, and being able to control things remotely and such, that’s going to become everything that is going to become the major part of industry’s adjustment to this whole episode. So while we’re definitely training these students and in understanding the built environment and how that, that can exist, you know, we were training them pre COVID. Now all of a sudden this has taken on a whole new level of importance because now there’s no attention to air handling inside of hospitals. There’s attention to all of these other automated systems and automated processes that the built environment needs in order to maintain safety and so forth. Those are all going to be in demand once again, and having, you know, building this workforce to address that demand in the future. I know things are going to be uncertain for the near term, but once we do, and we will get out of this, there is going to be such a backlog of work of buildings that haven’t been dealt with during this period of time, but then also companies that are going to want to automate and move things to nonhuman touch type interactions. And so that, that’s where I really see a lot of the opportunity coming is from from lots and lots of companies looking to automate a lot of processes that took a human before.

Kelly (11:52):
Right. Potentially moving from A kind of, you know, nice to have a sort of fancy upgrade to a, you know, method of resiliency during a catastrophic event. And I would say we talk a lot about it in terms of future proofing especially, you know, for folks who are in, in New York city and Washington DC that are looking at, you know performance based existing building energy or carbon or energy caps for buildings. it’s too late, if you only have kind of a once a month bill for your energy consumption, that’s way too late for you to make any response to it. And so having an integrated system that you can control remotely, or at least monitor remotely the energy consumption over time, and you can kind of make tweaks to your building to ensure that you’re well within these caps, I think is going to be even more critical critical now.

Jon (12:53):
Well, and I mean, the other thing that may be forthcoming, and I don’t really know, but if, if the pause in New York extends into summer you know, heat, HVAC and such is going to be such a very, very loaded issue and having buildings that can react to peak demand and things along those lines, that’s going to be another massive, massive differentiator. Cause if your building can be tuned to actually turn on when, when there’s, you know, peak demand is past, It really does change the whole economics of the building and work within the constraints of, of the energy companies. So yeah, that’s, what I really see is, is especially with the summer, I know New York city has already started to talk about stockpiling air conditioners. I just think that we need to be ready to address the huge need of workers in the HVAC field as well. So yeah, and once again, having automation brought to that, that industry will be we’ll be helping them make, make their way through COVID as well.

Kelly (14:01):
Absolutely. And super interestingly, I know a lot of our clients have talked about the demand in commercial buildings, really not reducing very much, even though they’ve gone from, you know, thousands of people being at the building to, you know, 10 people being in these, you know 500 to a million square foot buildings in New York after, after people vacate it. So I think it’s a call to action, certainly for, for, you know, what are we doing in the buildings right now and what can we do to be more grid responsive in the future. You focus in on high school students specifically. Can you tell tell us a little bit more about, you know, why that is? Why is that the prime market that you’ve kind of gone after?

Jon (14:49):
Yeah actually, I would label it as market because honestly we are looking at this as a, a business positive move, because I mean, the one thing to know is stacks and joules is actually, we’re a nonprofit workforce program. So we do have a nonprofit at the center of our, of our, of our group, but we are looking at this as like, you know, this isn’t just help giving a hand to a community, This is looking to a community to help the industry refill it’s dwindling workforce. So it is not something that we looked at as like, Oh, how do we extend a helping hand? No, how do we leverage the genius that exists in these urban schools and lift out those digital natives who know all there is to know about connecting and networking and all, all these aspects of, of technology. And they can easily go into the building industry and thrive because of the, on, you know, the influx of technology, how technology has just changed the entire industry. And, you know, they’re, they’re showing up with those skills already. They may not have all the skills of, you know, X amount of years of HVAC training and X amount of years of experience in the lighting market. But those skills, HVAC and lighting, they can get certified towards and they can still learn while they’re working. It is the networking, the understanding of IP addresses all, all those kind of standard internet ideas and concepts. That’s the difficult thing that these companies are really, really having a struggle finding. And so that’s, you know, that’s really the, the prized skillset. They are willing to take someone who just knows enough about HVAC to understand the concept and fully understand networking and how computers can, can kind of work in that environment. So that’s really why we looked to high schoolers was, you know, there’s a great, great opportunity set. They have all the skills that we need, and they live in the built environment. They live in these urban areas. And so, you know, they’re not having to move to another city. They’re not having to move out into the suburbs, they’re able to perform their work and in amongst the city. So, you know, there were just a lot of, a lot of advantages and it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a great pipeline for us to get exposure to talented kids as they’re making their decision of what their future is going to be once they graduate high school. And right at that point we found that honestly, high school seniors, they have the most fire under their feet because once it hits spring semester, all of a sudden the clock is ticking.

Jon (17:56):
And like, if they don’t have a plan for what they’re doing next year or this summer, you gotta figure out something. And so that we really found is a, is a motivator to, to really kind of hone their vision in on like, you know, this is a real job, this is a real career. And if you can get started in this industry, there’s a great deal of growth and a great deal of, of learning that can come with that growth. And so, so talking to students who are on the fence of like, do I want to go to college or do I want to go get a job and then go to college? You know, it, it turns it into an interesting conversation where you can talk to a company and say, Hey, look, I’m interested in, in working, but I also want to get, you know, X amount of money towards getting my undergraduate degree. And we have a student that we placed at Alberia energy in Boston, and he was hired and immediately had $5,000 a year to put towards college courses. He immediately enrolled in two courses and just upon getting hired, had already started working towards his degree. So while that isn’t, you know, that isn’t a guarantee that absolutely everyone’s going to get a job and go to college at the same time, it is definitely a model that we see. A lot of these companies are interested in exploring because if they can get an employee that early in their career and really help in the forming and the shaping of how they approach the business, you know, they get a four year headstart to train that employee and make them the utmost in value. And then that employee can, you know, train others and kind of, kind of grow as they grow Instead of what we heard a lot of the time from a lot of building owners was, you know, talking to an undergraduate who just graduated with an engineering degree, but who has no real world experience and doesn’t understand anything about, you know, the actual implementation understands the academics, doesn’t understand the implementation. So that was really what we were, what we were trying to, trying to get around was trying to get high school students who were interested in the hands on work, who also had the technical ability and, you know, saw this is a great, great way to earn money and start to learn while they’re earning. So so yeah, it just seems like it’s, it’s kind of got a lot of, a lot of supports and a lot of ways that this industry can, can help nurture this, this whole audience of talent who can really come online and do some great work right out of the gate and start to learn more and more about the industry and become experienced very, very quickly.

Kelly (20:48):
Absolutely. I think that really is a Little bit of a different model than than a lot of people are looking at in terms of kind of tapping the, you know, workforce development and how to, how to create a workforce that is going to fill this need in building automation. And I think that’s a wonderful point of, you know, I did get a college degree, but I would be, I think some of the things were relevant, but there’s definitely the on the job training is the most critical component. And certainly the gap between when we’re looking to hire entry level folks, you know, not having any experience walking around in buildings, I think it, you know, that kinds of experiences really gonna set somebody apart you know, whether or not they have, you know, a higher degree.

Jon (21:34):
Absolutely. And I mean, right, currently we’re working with a student who is, you know, set at this precipice. He’s either making the decision either way and we’re not all the way, just go take the job, forget about college. And that’s absolutely not, not our, that’s not our recommendation at all our position because we’re working with him and looking at Sunni and a couple of the other colleges that have it and, and and business related tracks that can easily ladder off of the stacks and joules training. Because I mean, that’s really, the thing is, is there is a huge benefit to that extended learning that can come about. But, you know just from my personal experience, sometimes you go into college and you don’t quite know what you’re going to do. And a lot of colleges right now, you’re just kind of starting, you’re using the college as your guide. And then you get out into the industry and the industry is like, what, why did you learn that you should have known about these seven things? So, so it really is just trying to, to make sure the industry is part of the guidance committee that actually says, Oh, here are the, here are some really valuable skills that we could hire someone today. And if they could, you know go around and fix VAV boxes like that job alone is something that we got from an early industry partner. And we have worked and, you know, focused on how do we get it so that somebody can go into a building and work on the VAV boxes. And we’ve ended up working with Niagara to get a certification and training course that basically will we’ll teach the Niagara certification to these students. And we’re actually using a kind of like an example board, which has a VAV box on it. So now they’ll be able to remotely connect to a Niagara Jace and then actually connect and control the VAV box and do any adjustments they want or whatever these are, are like the examples of the type of exercises we’re doing. We still, we touch real stuff. Like we definitely work on real things, but we also do it where we’re addressing the need that the industry said it exists. Like they want people who understand all the inner workings of VAV boxes and that’s exactly what we’re able to deliver. So it’s, it’s really trying to stay stay so that yeah, relevant, but also just stays so that the skills are applicable, like, so that they’re not coming out because I mean, the thing that I love and hate is Lego Mindstorms love it. It’s so cool. Hate it because it really doesn’t apply any job worthy skills. I mean, I don’t know anybody who gets hired for Lego robot tree, but I do know a lot of people who get inspired by doing Lego Mindstorms and then eventually move from that up into, you know, higher tech robotics. And that’s when they kind of figure out what the job is and run with it. But I think if we can keep the training so that it’s engaging and so it’s fun, but so that it actually results in something you really do. That’s, that’s the key. And that’s, that’s the challenge that gets students really turned on engaged and willing to kind of struggle and push past to figure out how to make something work.

Kelly (25:09):
Right. And I love that about when you talk about your trainings, that number one, they’re hands on as an engineer I of course appreciate that, but then they’re not abstract like this. Isn’t, you know, go think about engineering theory and then come back and talk to us. This is specifically what buttons would you press if you were in the field and you had to set up this VAB box, for example, which as an engineer is just so practical and great to me. And I do want to circle back to one thing that you said a couple of times which I always recognize as more of an it industry item, but laddering up. And we talk a little bit about kind of, I talk about a continuous commissioning approach to learning. So always kind of tweaking our knowledge, testing something out and trying something new and then building off of that. And I kind of think that’s maybe analogous to your idea of these students kind of being lifetime learners and setting them up for success in kind of a continual learning fashion with the way that you set them up for a lifestyle that they’ll be able to sort of lab ladder up over time. So I’d love, I’d love for you to expand on that for everybody.

Jon (26:17):
Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely one of the, you know, that’s, that’s, I think partially our approach to it is we’re very much a discuss it until we can kind of as a group figure it out. And so that’s one thing, you know, that’s one thing that actually, as we’ve had to transition our classes from in-person to online that’s something that’s really served us super in, in making the transition is we generally had this kind of like put an idea out there, have everybody talk about it and try to work their own ideas out in a collaborative method where everybody can kind of shout out whatever they’re thinking and nobody gets embarrassed and nobody clams up that that really leads to this concept of laddering up. Because you know, in, in the class, everybody might be a specialist at one thing, but they’re not all the same specialist, but if they all shout out what they’re thinking and what they know, all of a sudden, everybody else starts getting their advantage starts under saying, Oh, wow, you understand that piece, and I understand this piece. And we just find that, that the classes, when they’re able to kind of work with each other and, and we purposely have designed our curriculum so that we leave little gaps in, in the instructions where, you know, we just kind of throw our hands up and say, I really don’t know, man, maybe talk to that, that kid. And maybe they know, and, and all of a sudden the class starts kind of throwing ideas back and forth and you’ll just see unbelievable learning come out of this. And it isn’t just me sitting up there saying, Nope, you did this wrong. You have to reset it and push this button and have that button and dah, dah, dah, that that really doesn’t do much. Whereas when I just kind of give it to the kids and say, okay, you all figure this out. And then once you get this light to turn blue, give me a shout and leave them with that. They, as a group, like one of them will be the one who understands how to code the color blue. And one of them will be the one who understands how to network to the light bulb or whatever they will all start to share. And really, you know, realize that that iterative bump of learning is something that can all partake in and yeah, more often than not, they surprise me and are able to turn around and have that thing, Have whatever task done almost immediately. So it’s, it’s really, it’s, you know, I actually attribute this mainly to Mike cause he is the educator in charge and yeah, it’s just his approach to this, to teaching. This is very unique. I have not seen it. I mean, I’m a technologist, so I don’t have really an understanding of, of that, that realm. But but in my actual, like having to become a teacher in the past three years, he has been able to train me and get me to the point where I understand, Oh, it’s about kind of conversation is about getting the kids, not to be able to recite the information, getting the kids so they can think on the fly and do the next step on their own. That’s really what we’re going after.

Kelly (29:26):
Absolutely. And that’s actually a great point and we we’ve been doing a lot of educational work as well, a kind of training of building operators and professionals slightly different audience, but similar idea, really, if you, you know, understanding where your audience is coming from, getting participation and then thinking about what are your objectives for the program. So, you know, your objective is not that they can recite something, but that they can then go do the work, which is much more impactful.

Jon (30:02):
Yeah. And I mean, that’s definitely one thing that, that I’ve just been thinking about with these students is, so we have about, about 60 students across four cohorts throughout New York, one in the Bronx, one in the financial district. And then the other one is two classes in the Larry side. And you know, these kids are facing, you know, living in another house, not more often than not, not in a private room. They don’t know what the future holds. They’re not having a graduation, they’re not having a prom. They don’t have their friends in class. You know, they have all these challenges and all these blockers, but they show up and, and I’m just amazed because you know, this is a video conference and they’re showing up at nine in the morning on a Wednesday to check in and go over like studying HVAC, refrigerants. Like I am just blown away at this dedication and grit. And I know that a lot of the times when people are under stress, they, they, you know, a lot of different ways to react and a lot of different coping mechanisms come out. Most of these kids, what we found their coping mechanism is, is to redouble efforts and doubly focus on what we’re working on, show up and be there and just block everything out. And, you know, we’ll be on a zoom conference and every single, every other students microphones we muted. And what you’ll realize is once they, you do ask them something and they respond is they’ll turn their microphone on. And you’ll hear like little brothers jumping on beds and you’ll hear babies and dogs and kittens and all kinds of stuff going on. And you realize like these kids are sitting there, I’m telling them about like our 22 pressure at 80 degrees. And they’re fighting this Herculean battle of like trying to keep their little brother away from their computer screen. And they’re able to like still learn it. And that’s, you know, this is the thing that I just want to kind of tell the audience is that’s the type of employee you want, someone who every single card is stacked against them. There is no certainty in front of them and what do they do? How do they cope? They double down and they focus and they get to work. And so this is what we’re really doing. This is because these kids amaze us every single time we turn on to the class and they show up they’re they’re bright eyed and ready to go. And so right now we just finished they were studying their EPA six Oh eight exam. So we’re just about to take that exam online. We’re actually gonna do that, Proctor it, individually. So they will be taking that this week. And then we’re going to start working on a training for the Niagara for certification. So they’re doing real stuff and we’ve been psyching them up and getting them amped up and telling them what we have coming up for them. And they’re all just sticking with it. They’re all right there with us. So, I mean, that’s the one thing is, is having these kids realize that like, this is important and this is something that if they, you know, their college future or their next year, future is kind of a little bit fuzzy right now, at least if they focus on this, they can come out with these three certificates that we grant. And, you know, when they come out, HVAC is going to be in a boom, you have an EPA six Oh eight, you can definitely start to get a job. And so I think a lot of them are being very, very practical in the way they’re approaching this. And it’s just a Testament to their grit and determination.

Kelly (33:58):
And I think you, you kind of mentioned a bunch of things there, but to tie back to one thing that I think is sort of core to my, my belief. And I think our belief from our perspective in the industry is you have these students look at kind of lighting first which is always a good kind of basic understanding, correct me if I’m wrong and then the refrigeration and then IOT. And I think the one thing I want to call out about that, which I think is a great progression is we do see kind of from our perspective in the commissioning world is a lot of the controls integration, or sometimes I would say the controls integrators don’t necessarily have the underlying building science fundamentals or like HVAC system fundamentals. And so tying those two pieces together, you have spoken to me about in the past as a critical component of your training program. So I did want to call that out as something that I, I think is really makes a lot of sense. You know, we can’t be building IOT workforce that doesn’t understand buildings.

Jon (35:03):
Yeah, yeah. And that honestly came through my, my work in technology was, you know, you’d work at these companies that would, you know, all of a sudden pivot towards some technical discipline and they’d hire all these specialists in one certain discipline specifically around artificial intelligence, for example, like six years ago, it was big into big into working in that. The thing is, is you hire a bunch of AI specialists. They have no idea beyond just AI and just kind of math and statistics and all of, all of that information, they have no idea what you are possibly going to apply their thing to. So it really is that same idea of, you know, you might have the smartest analysis or you might have the smartest IOT connector in the world, but yeah, if they don’t understand why they’re, you know, why they’re turning on the chiller before you start the airflow like that, you know, that’s second nature to somebody who knows refrigeration, but to someone who’s just starting up starting up the airflow, like they would never think that way they would never think of like a cycle of, Oh, you have to turn this on and prime it before this goes on and such. So, so that, that’s the thing is maybe not the experience of working in the industry for X amount of years. That that’s one blocker that we definitely noticed in a lot of job hiring announcements was, Oh, it must have, you know, seven years of HVAC experience or whatever, whatever. And, you know, I really, really don’t think that that should be as much of a, of a blocker for, for a lot of these jobs because having HVAC to cram seven years of experience into three, three months, it’s a little tough. And it also is just, it’s something where, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of other, you got a lot other skills that you could spend those seven years working on and glean a lot of that experience just through, on the job experience. So, so, and you know, the other, the other big thing for me is so I went to school in philosophy and I realized that when I started versus what I came out with I came out and started working on the web because I was interested in the web. Had I gone in for the beginning, interested in the web, I would have come out programming like a text based web because that’s what I went in knowing, whereas in those four years flash and all the graphics and everything like that came to life. So if I was in college, I wouldn’t have really studied anything that was going on in the real world. And I would still be doing my text-based BBS looking webpage. So, so that’s really the difference that I see is a lot of these, a lot of these students are seeing like the current technology and their ability to work on that. And they almost see it as an opportunity lost if they go back to school because they’re going to lose their, hold on Niagara. I mean, four years from now, I’m sure Niagara is going to change and be different, or there may be another technology. So being here and now and working on it that just, you know, gets them experience, gets them the insight, and they’re able to really, really move on it.

Kelly (38:36):
Right. And that’s sort of a, to any training industry also a challenge to the construction industry, frankly like the construction industry is so slow to try something out because if you do something new in a building and it’s, you know, it’s new construction you’ve designed it today, but it won’t be in operation. And, you know, having been tested for another, you know, three years, five years, six years. So that, that timeline is so long. I think it’s the same with, you know, changing a whole curriculum can be really difficult. So how do you get a industry responsive curriculum that’s developing fast enough to train people on what we really need to learn and, and how to get that industry educational kind of public private partnership. You know, you guys are that sort of educator, nonprofit organization. How do you have that develop that partnership? That’s kind of a critical piece.

Jon (39:26):
Yeah. And, and that’s, you know, as you were saying before, the iterative approach has really just been very much throughout the DNA of our, of our company. I mean, so we started off with pretty much strictly a lighting curriculum and that curriculum grew and grew and we were able to get, we were able to get a lot of the energy conservation concepts in there, but then we started to realize like, Oh, if you’re going to go into building automation, lighting control is one of the disciplines, but there are others. And that was when we, we saw that the EPA 608 was a attainable certificate that would require not, you know, not an unruly amount of of studying to, to accomplish. So that, that was really how we saw to break. It was if we could break it into these focus centers of lighting, refrigeration and HVAC, and then IOT then of those three, we could really adjust those to stay in parody with whatever the industry needed and we don’t have to be dead on it. Doesn’t have to just be whatever the latest and greatest thing is because I mean, our lighting curriculum is a bit more abstracted. It’s, it’s basically three standard led light bulbs, but they’re controllable with color and intensity. And so the students are learning about Python and how to control those light bulbs wirelessly by writing Python programs. Now, this seems rather abstracted at first, but then we layer it over by bringing in professionals from Rab lighting and they come in and start talking to them. Oh yeah, well, we have to address each bulb. And we, we tune the lighting by, by bringing the color to the blue or bringing the color over to the orange and, you know, making, making for all these adjustments. That really are very much the same as what we were doing when we were working on the light bulbs and the light bulbs have the added benefit that our capstone project for that unit is we have the students actually take their favorite song and choreograph a light show using those three bulbs and they change, color and flicker on and off and different intensities. And so they’re able to do something expressive and fun using Python and using programming, but really kind of engendering those concepts of lighting control in the built environment. And so it’s an engaging way that they can kind of show a whizzbang cool thing, but then have some lighting rep come over and, and be able to tell them exactly in business appropriate or industry appropriate terminology, how this is reflective of scheduling. And this is reflective of, you know, daylight harvesting and all these different terminologies that they know from lighting control. They can, they can kind of align those to the project and the industry, and really start to make sense. And so, so that’s really how we see it is by engaging the students, getting them invested in getting them interested and keeping a coding of the professional language. It allows them to really get into it, but then also have something at the end that they can go to an industry event and talk about and be relevant and be understood.

Kelly (43:02):
Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you’ve been busy. You’ve been up to a lot you know, developing all of this, but in, in five years where do you think, what do you think we’ll be talking about in five years when we have you back on the podcast?

Jon (43:18):
Wow. well…

Kelly (43:22):
Feels weird talking about that circumstance where we’ve been day to day, but..

Jon (43:28):
Like dang five days, I don’t know, but five years.. Well, I mean, one thing is, is very true is I see New York city as is poised in a very interesting opportunity. As, as this year started, we were all the, the building owners were starting to come to grips with the new environmental laws and the green laws and how they were going to be affecting buildings. And so that, that pressure was already starting and now we’re in a whole new COVID world. So that’s another pressure that’s starting. I just, I think that, you know, with the, the growth that we were talking about automation and things of that nature, I think we’re probably going to see is an expansion of expansion of looking to high schoolers for filling a lot of these technical jobs. And, and, you know, I, that that’s going to be something where, where using college college will be less of a place you go away for four years. And college will be something that is in parity with your work and helps you skill up along the way to continue on your career trajectory. So less of like a break for four years and more of like an ongoing process that you kind of take along with you as you’re progressing professionally. I think that’s definitely coming. I think that there’s going to be a big, big, big push into robotics automation and kind of, you know, telepresence and all these, all these different things. Those have all been kind of bubbling up and kind of getting early adopters to take it on, but now it’s becoming a necessity. So I think a lot of that and a lot of the infrastructure that makes all of that happen, that will become another huge, huge area of of expansion. And, you know, my hope is that once we come out of this, there will be a resetting of priorities and, and where we really choose to, to focus our education and where we really choose to focus on, you know, how to get people into fulfilling and family sustaining work. And, and so that’s, that’s my big hope is that we can kind of look at, you know, look at careers as being kind of more than just a thing to make money, but be kind of part of the continuum that makes your family work. And so, so I don’t know. I have big hopes, little hopes, realistic hopes.

Kelly (46:08):
Yeah. I was going to say we have our work cut out for us. I think a lot of people have big ideas on this podcast. Yeah. It’s going to be a long five years. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing all this with us and I really appreciate your enthusiasm around the industry. So thank you so much.

Jon (46:27):
Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come on. And and yeah, I was just, I would love to reach out to anybody listening, who is either interested in sharing their expertise or who is interested in talking to some of these really talented young people.

Kelly (46:42):
Absolutely the best way to reach you. We can link to that in the show notes. So that sounds perfect. Thank you so much. Again, I have been very impressed with stacks and joules model of partnering students with industry to really align skill sets with the jobs available at Steven winter associates, we are always looking to hire talented individuals to join the team. So providing a great training program to kickstart a lifelong career is always of interest to me. Speaking of careers, we have several openings still,check out our website and apply there, or find me on LinkedIn If you have any questions, if you want to learn more about smart buildings, what they really mean and what getting smarter can do for your portfolio or your next project, visit smartbuildings.nyc. And if you want to learn more about workforce development, stacks + joules, or anything on this episode, check out our show notes at www.swinter.com/podcasts.

Robb (47:34):
Thank you for listening buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Visit S winter.com for more info on us, visit [inaudible] dot com slash podcast to get to all our episodes and to see the show notes and visits winter.com/careers to see job openings. We have quite a few across all our offices, Connecticut and New York city, Washington, DC, and a new office in Boston. I’ve been here for just about 20 years now, and it’s pretty amazing working with brilliant people who really care about making great buildings, improving sustainability, accessibility, health affordability, durability. It’s a pretty fantastic crew. Thanks to the podcast team here, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.

Luis Quintana, Founder, Todo Accesible

In 2011, Luis Quintana founded Todo Accesible – a company that strives to eliminate the architectural and cultural barriers that exclude people with disabilities from fully integrating with the rest of society. Todo Accessible has worked with clients from a variety of sectors such as entertainment, culture, business, tourism, and more, to help them achieve the “A” distinction – meaning their space is accessible for everyone. This collaboration has resulted in the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout the Mexican Republic. Luis is an Ashoka fellow, as well as a member of Éntrale, an organization that integrates people with disabilities with different companies. Todo Accessible also has a corporate alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, allowing them to make a wide variety of companies and businesses accessible.

April was Fair Housing Month – a time to recognize the importance of equal access to housing. As we celebrate the milestones we have made, we are committed to furthering equal access for every person – regardless of race, gender, nationality, socio-economic status, disability, etc. On this month’s Buildings + Beyond episode, we interview Luis Quintana to hear more about Universal Design and accessibility in Mexico City. We discuss who Universal Design is meant to help, and how Universal Design principles can allow equal access to buildings and products for everyone.

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 (00:23):
On the podcast with me today I have Luis Quintana. He has a master’s in universal accessibility and design for all. In 2011 he founded Todo Accesible, which strives to eliminate the architectural and cultural barriers that exclude people with disabilities so that they can integrate with the rest of society. We’ve certainly discussed accessibility and universal design a lot on this podcast before, but Luis brings a new perspective on the issues from Mexico and our conversation goes beyond the technical, physical, architectural boundaries and really steps into that cultural aspect. Luis really sees accessibility holistically and we cover a range of topics from website design to sensitivity training. I hope you all enjoy our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Luis (01:15):
It’s my pleasure, Kelly. Thank you for inviting me and having me.

Kelly (01:19):
No problem. And I gave folks a little bit of an intro in the background kind of at first, but we obviously had a long introduction conversation a couple of weeks ago. And there’s a lot of work that you cover so we have some ground to cover today. But maybe just to get our audience back into thinking about accessible design and universal design, can you just give and of course your perspective from, from Mexico there. Can you give us a little bit of a definition for you of what accessibility is, what universal design is and kind of maybe where they overlap and where they differ?

Luis (01:58):
Sure. Well, for me, what accessibility means is when not only a place but also things that we use are completely comfortable and usable by everyone. Not only people that live with a disability. And by this I mean going into any place on that there are no steps. The doors are wide bathrooms, but also the heights of the shelves or the height of the lights and different things that we use day by day have to be comfortable for everyone. When I mean everyone, like I said before, I also mean kids or maybe someone that doesn’t have an arm so he can use his hands or maybe also people that have limited movement because they broke a leg.,so they’re using crutches or they’re using some other device to get by. All of these people are also benefited with the accessibility. And when we speak about universal design is when we’re going to design something since the beginning that has to be thought for everyone. So when you make it, you already sure that everyone is going to be able to use it that way in the future. You don’t have to bring someone in to make the place or the product accessible for everyone.

Kelly (03:43):
Right, It’s set up for success longterm. Great.

Luis (03:46):
But when you think about it since the beginning, it’s much, much easier.

Kelly (03:53):
Right. Great. And I heard you a little bit kind of refer to both, you know, someone who’s living with a disability that might be permanent or maybe something that is temporary as well. There’s lots of different types of ways that individuals might be interacting in a temporary way or permanent way with their environment.

Luis (04:13):
That’s right. But also this benefits people that come from a different country. Like for example, if you’re visiting Mexico city and all of the signaling in my office is in letters and in Spanish letters probably you won’t understand everything that it says. Are you going to have to be asking people where’s the bathroom or where is the bath hall? But if that’s signaling instead of being using words, we use draw wings or icons – that can be understood by everyone.

Kelly (04:51):
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. And we talked a little bit about this, that your your website, you had to explain a lot to me since a lot of it is in Spanish obviously jumping kind of into your your website actually since you brought it up. And we, we see in the U.S., Some more requirements now are around website design for accessible website design. And I know you have some experience or, or Todo Accesible has some experience with that. Can you describe a little bit what accessible website design might look like or what, what that’s intended to do?

Luis (05:32):
Sure. One thing that we must keep in mind is that when we’re making something accessible, a place, a website or whatever it is, we don’t need to market all over the place. No, you don’t have to have the blue ramps. You don’t have to change the design that you already have there. So when doing a website, it’s not that I’m going to change the pictures or I’m going to change the way your website works. We might do different contrasts with colors in order to make the colors look more different from one another. Like instead of using dark gray and light gray, we might use white with dark gray, but it doesn’t change that much just so people can understand the image. And what we do is on the part that we users don’t see with all the programming is in order to make it accessible so you can move through the website without using your mouse pad. So you can do it with your key pad or with voice. That way, not only a person with a visual disability can use it, but anyone. So maybe someone that has Parkinson’s that can’t use a mouse to travel around the website, it must be much easier for them to use just the key pad. So it’s not only something that we’re making for someone that cannot see, but again, for everyone and the page, the design of the page is exactly the same as the one you have right now. That is something we don’t change.

Kelly (07:35):
Great. Just allows everyone to use it in the way that is in the way that they’re able to. And you know, Peter Stratton who you know, obviously from Steven Winter, talked a little bit about kind of folks cracking down on accessible website design as, as it relates to, like you said, kind of a website might be the access point to a different location or to a building. It’s how you might make reservations for for a spot for dinner. It might be through a website. And how can and, and so there are regulations around how those websites need to be accessible. Does the same thing happen in Mexico?

Luis (08:20):
Well now Web accessibility is something required by law. But the problem that I see here in Mexico city with that is on one hand there is no one that is in charge of executing per se that law, you know, that is checking which website complies or which one doesn’t. And in the other hand is the owner of the website. They think that because you’re going to make it accessible, it’s going be expensive and you’re gonna waste a lot of money on it. And that is something that is not true. Accessibility doesn’t cost more, especially here in Mexico city because everything, every dime you invest in accessibility, you can deduct it a hundred percent off tax. So it’s not even a, it’s not even something you have to consider as an expense, but as an investment and like I said, by, by making that page accessible, everyone is going to be able to use it, not just some people know.

Kelly (09:35):
Right. You have a bigger audience, a wider audience for whatever you’re trying to show. That’s right. That’s great. You mentioned it’s more about the, you know, just because something is the law doesn’t mean it’s being enforced, which I definitely see a lot and I talk about a lot, you know, the bare minimum requirement isn’t necessarily whatever the law says. It’s, it’s however that law actually gets enforced on kind of a day to day basis.

Luis (10:05):
That’s right. And that’s why also we measure the usability that accessibility has. Like for example, here in Mexico City, the law tells you that you can put up a ramp with a slope of 10% degree incline, I am a wheelchair user and there is no way I’m going to go up that ramp and if I’m going down, I’m going to need some teeth protection because I must leave my teeth half the Ramp down because they’re too steep. So that is something that is going to cost you money. It is cleared by the law, but it’s not something usable for everyone. Right? But what if instead of making that ramp with a 10% degree in Claymation, we give it a 6% or we give it a four it’s going to be much, much comfortable for everyone to use it because now not only me is going to be able to use it, but maybe you are walking on the street, you’re going to much rather go through up a ramp than through stairs. Or if you’re a mother and you’re going out with your kid on a stroller, that is going to be much, much easier for you to use. Then with the other degree of inclination.

Kelly (11:26):
Yeah, there’s this difference between kind of the bare minimum code requirement and what actually is accessible for for individuals and they’re not necessarily the same thing. So kind of just a cautionary tale in some ways of just because you’re designing to all the requirements of the code doesn’t mean you’re necessarily providing access to your space.

Luis (11:51):
That’s right.

Kelly (11:54):
And you have actually Worked on a standard to push designers to think about going above and beyond. There is a standard kind of like LEED with various levels of performance. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Luis (12:04):
Yeah. When were going to make an assessment? The first thing we make sure of is that you comply with what the law States here in Mexico city and for that we have something called the disctiva “A” that is just the plaque that stands out and says this place is accessible. But when you go beyond the Mexican standard, we have two other degrees. We have one that is the gold level. That is when you are a little bit further than what the law States, maybe you will have accessible playgrounds. So you’re a restaurant that you’re accessible. If you have an accessible playground for my boy, you’re going to get another point. So now you’re not on the basic level, you can achieve the gold one, but then if you hire someone with a disability to work in a restaurant, you get another point so you can achieve the highest one. That way. What we look for is that you are not only accessible to receive people with a disability, but that you’re also hiring one. I, like I said before, we have different benefits in Mexico and there’s another one for the companies that hire people with a disability.

Kelly (13:37):
Oh wow. That’s great. And I there’s a lot of parallel because we had an episode with the commissioner for the mayor’s office for people with disabilities in New York city and he was talking a lot about a workforce integration program for people with disabilities. So definitely was on the top of his mind as far as access and, you know, access to spaces, access to websites, access to jobs. So really thinking about accessibility in a, in a holistic way.

Luis (14:11):
Yeah. And that’s how we must think because if I want to take you out for lunch while I need money, how am I going to earn money if I cant get a job? So it’s wonderful that there is a restaurant where we can go have lunch but I don’t have a job. So with this kind of thinking, we’re making sure that we are back in the society, every part of the society. Now I can go work, we can go out, I can go to a movie theater, I can travel, I can go to a museum, we can go to the same places.

Kelly (14:53):
Yeah, that’s a great point. And speaking of that actually it reminds me of, you had mentioned to me in the past about a I think you were talking about an app where you could see how to get to spaces that were maybe finding the accessible bathroom in a large park or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sorry if I’m misremembering.

Luis (15:17):
No, no, that’s correct. We have a website here in Mexico that is called Lugares Accesibles that it’s basically translated accessible places. And then we used to put up here places where that had some sort of accessible standard, maybe the entrance, maybe the bathroom and accessible for who? maybe it’s not accessible for someone in a wheelchair, but it is accessible for someone that cant see. And we started integrating all these things into the website and we launched an app at the end of last year. So now you can download the app, you can register there and you can help us putting up places. But also analyzing and suggesting places that have different sorts of accessible, that way people that need accessibility can know what kind of accessible that place has. So we’re going to go to a restaurant, we can look up there for the restaurant or it is here and it has an accessible bathroom. There is no stairs and they have valet parking or they have a big parking space. So now I know we can go there and no problem.

Kelly (16:47):
That’s awesome. So that’s like crowdsourced information. It’s like, I don’t know if they have this app there too, but Waze, basically you can add information as a, as a person using the software to say there’s a police car up, up ahead. But this would be using this, this app to say you know, to tell basically this community of people that have bought into it, this bathroom is accessible. I found that, for people using a wheelchair at this stadium or this restaurant or something like that. So that it’s basically gets, gets better the more people that plug into it.

Luis (17:27):
That’s right. And that way more people know of places that we can go and visit. The first places that you’re going to see are the ones that we’ve assessed the ones that have their Disctinive “A”. And then there might be lots of other places that we haven’t assessed, but other with a different kind of disability have recommended because they’ve visited the place. So we put it up and you can also suggest or comment, you know, I went to this place, like it happened one time. There was a restaurant in a very nice own here in Mexico city that I like going there for my meetings and to eat. And they had a very nice ramp on the entrance. So I made a reservation there and I went to a meeting and when I got there, there was no more ramp. They decided to make the terrace bigger. So they use that space. But now I can’t go in. So through the app we can also come and this place has no longer accessible because they took out the ramp. So now we know that it is not accessible so we can take it out of the app as well. Or talk to the client and tell them, you know, you’re missing a big population by getting rid of the ramp. If you don’t have space for our ramp, there are other alternatives you can use. So people that can’t walk can go in the restaurant like they did before.

Kelly (19:14):
Yeah. And that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about people going the opposite direction to make it less accessible. We typically think about people making things more accessible over time. But once you, once the building has that, you know, that rating, that standard that you talked about, you have to maintain it by making sure that you keep your space accessible.

Luis (19:35):
That’s right. We evaluate you each year. The Disctinctive “a” is only valid for a year. So if you want to renew it, we go and visit again. Because we also found out that there were places that were accessible and they had this huge bathroom for us, but because they didn’t hire anyone with a disability, then they would use that bathroom for storage. So what’s the use? No, that is not a storage room. That is a bathroom. So use it as it is. So that’s why we have to continue year by year talking to our clients and saying, okay, would you like to renew it? We go and we make it just a quick visit and that’s it.

Kelly (20:21):
Right. One of our accessibility consultants was talking about the other day when you look at accessibility, you can’t just look at the architectural plans. You have to also look at the furniture layouts because sometimes in, in especially hotel spaces, they would have all this space where you can maneuver within a wheelchair as intended, but then they wouldn’t, they would put in some sort of toilet paper or some sort of thing afterwards that was a piece of furniture that would then block the ability of of someone to actually use the space effectively. So it’s important to think about it holistically, not just from the architectural design itself.

Luis (21:02):
Well that is something very important that you just mentioned. All the furniture has to also be accessible. Talking about hotels, we’ve also seen that sometimes the beds are way too high so I can jump in the bed because it’s way too high and when I’m getting off all the good thing is I’m going down and I can manage jumping back in my chair, but going up in the bed, it’s sometimes it’s difficult or with the closet we only open it up and the only place you can hang your clothes is on the high part. So there’s nothing below that I can hand my clothes in or another thing tables, there are some tables that have the legs in the middle that don’t allow a guy with a wheelchair to put his legs underneath the table because the leg of the table hits the chair. So I’ve sometimes had to ask in the restaurant for the waiter to lend me the tray, I put the tray in my legs and that’s where I eat because I can’t get in and use the table. Or utensils. I’ve found that here in some restaurants, I don’t know if it’s politics where they think that very nice forks and spoons are necessary, but they’re also heavy and for me that I can’t use my hands when I put one of the those spoons between my fingers and I put soup on it. It’s very hard for me to be able to bring this soup up to my mouth without dropping it because it’s really heavy and those are things people have no idea because they don’t need it. Right. That’s one of the important things of using and accessibility consultants that know all these things. Because if you don’t need it, you don’t notice it. But until someone that does tells you, then you realize and it’s not more expensive to buy a table, that instead of having a leg in the middle, has legs on the side or instead of buying one spoon, you buy another one that’s not as heavy.

Kelly (23:30):
Right. Maybe it’s cheaper to buy the lighter spoon even.

Luis (23:32):
Maybe. That’s right.

Kelly (23:37):
Yeah, those are absolutely good points. And you kind of bring me to another one of your the things you mentioned that I think is really interesting that I think is really related to all of this, right? So a lot of bias I would say plays in when you’re not exposed to something or you don’t understand something. And you’ve talked a little bit with me about sensitivity training. Can you tell tell our audience a little bit more about what does sensitivity training mean? And how do you go about teaching people how to kind of work more effectively with others?

Luis (24:17):
Sure, we found out that there were some times that talking about a restaurant, the restaurant is completely accessible. But I went there with one of my friends and he’s blind and he has a guide dog. And when we go in, they tell him, your dog cant go. Well by telling a blind person that his dog cant go into a place with him, It’s like telling me I have to leave my wheelchair on the entrance. It’s completely ridiculous because it is not a dog. It is an animal that gives support to them. Right? So we found out that it is very important to teach the people what it really is. So that’s why we do this workshops and are implemented by people that live with each type of disability. So they tell you how you can support a blind person. Do you grab his arm? Does he grab you? Or if he’s deaf, well, not because he’s deaf means she’s not gonna understand you. Maybe he reads lips or maybe you can point him to different things. So we show you how to interact with someone that can’t hear and how when he answers you, you’re going to be able to understand what he’s saying or what happens if a person comes in with a wheelchair. I’ve had some different experiences that they want to help me. So I let them guide me and they’re pushing me and then suddenly they see someone and they want to say hi or something and they let go of the chair and there I go. No, then that’s something you cannot do because if you have no control in your arms while you’re going to hit someone or you’re going to fall, or I don’t know what can happen now.

Luis (26:26):
So that is what we show them. When you’re helping someone with a disability, your focus is on the person with a disability. Or another thing in the restaurants here, you know, they, they want to give you beautiful plates. So they may be, they put a toothpick on your meat to hold it closed, but when you’re eating it, you don’t realize that there’s a toothpick in there that was holding your meat so you can hurt yourself. So we also tell them what it is that you put on, do not put on a plate or how do you tell a blind person what he has in front of him using the clock hands, like your coffees at 12 o’clock. Your fork is that your 10, you have your syrup at two o’clock. So they can imagine what the table looks like and know where anything is and can move freely without thinking they’re going to drop something or break something. So we show them all these things in these workshops. So now the next time they see someone with a disability, not only attending the restaurant but maybe on the streets or on a different place, they feel confident walking up and say, hi, can I help you or what it is I can do for you?

Kelly (28:00):
Yeah, absolutely. Because I think some of it is just that fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or not really knowing how to interact with people that you you know, maybe you have just don’t have experience and you sort of get nervous. So you and I noticed a lot of your stories have a little bit of a little bit of a sense of humor in them. And I think that is a good way of bringing down people’s guard a little bit and getting them kind of listening to what you’re talking about. The heart of what you’re talking about.

Luis (28:34):
That is correct. I’ve noticed that people don’t do that because they want to, they do it because they don’t really know how to help you, but when you show them, you can even see a big smile on their face that now they know how to help someone with a disability. When I’m going to jump out of the car, I can do it by myself. So the guy that helps me is the one that puts me in a chair. But sometimes to make it faster, we look for help. And I’ve noticed that some people, when they see that he’s bringing out the wheelchair and we’re starting to see how it is that he’s going to make a help me get in my chair. Sometimes they even cross the street. So that’s the guy I call, Hey you please come over. And they’ll give me a hand. And they come. Sometimes they don’t even talk to me. They talk to my assistant. No, they look at me like, Oh, he can talk. Okay. But once they help me and once they see it’s not so, and it’s not so difficult, we get along perfect with them.

Kelly (29:47):
That’s great. Even in your daily interactions, you take it upon yourself to make sure to help people be their best self. Really.

Luis (29:57):
What an excellent way to say it Kelly.

Kelly (30:01):
Well I, we covered a lot of different topics here and I’m curious, what do you want people to kind of take away from this conversation? What’s most important to you that people take away from this conversation?

Luis (30:16):
Disability is not a disease and disability is not contagious. So you can walk up to someone and be completely fresh. Like you’re with everyone else. And if you’re going to build something or if you’re gonna invest in something, be sure to make it accessible. It’s not going to cost you more money. It’s going to be much more well taken by everyone. And the amount of people you’re going to be able to receive is going to be much, much wider because a person with a disability spends almost 80% more than the rest of the population. Why? Because I never go out by myself. So if I’m going to go eat in the restaurant, I’m going to go with my assistant, the guy that helps me. If I’m going to travel, if I’m going to go visit you in the States, will I pay for two plane tickets? Two hotel rooms? So it’s a population that you can consider and when you’re making this kind of place as with universal design, it looks wonderful and it’s usable by everyone. So just to leave you with the question instead of saying why involve? Is why NOT involve people with a disability because it’s full of benefits from war, any point you want to see it.

Kelly (31:45):
Those are great points. And our our final question that we like to ask people is when we have you back on the podcast in five years what do you think we’ll be talking about then?

Luis (31:59):
I would love to say that we would be talking of how universal design changed the way people live, not only the way people think how now everyone and everything is included for everyone.

Kelly (32:22):
All right. That’s a tall order for the world for the next five years, but I like it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking with me today.

Luis (32:32):
No, on the contrary, Kelly, thank you so much for inviting me and having me over. I really enjoyed it hugely. Thank you thank you.

Kelly (32:45):
Thank you so much for listening to buildings and beyond today. To learn more about universal and accessible design, check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts S W I N T E r.com/podcasts buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe the world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable or inclusive as it needs to be and we continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. Our production team includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Robb Aldrich and me, Kelly Westby. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.

Kelly (00:05):
Bienvenido a edificios y más allá.

Robb (00:08):
El podcast que explora cómo podemos crear un entorno construido más sostenible.

Kelly (00:12):
Centrándose en la eficiencia, la accesibilidad y la salud.

Robb (00:17):
Soy Robb Aldrich.

Kelly (00:18):
Y yo soy Kelly Westby

Kelly (00:23):
En el podcast conmigo hoy tengo a Luis Quintana. Tiene un máster en accesibilidad universal y diseño para todos. En 2011 fundó Todo Accesible, que se esfuerza por eliminar los bolos arquitectónicos y culturales que excluyen alas personas con discapacidad para que puedan integrarse con el resto de la sociedad. Ciertamente hemos discutido mucho la accesibilidad y el diseño universal en este podcast antes, pero Luis aporta una nueva perspectiva sobre los temas de México y nuestra conversación va más allá de los límites técnicos, físicos, arquitectónicos y realmente entra en ese aspecto cultural. Luis realmente ve la accesibilidad de manera integral y cubrimos una variedad de temas, desde el diseño de sitios web hasta la formación de sensibilidad. Espero que todosse alegren nuestra conversación. Muchas gracias por acompañarnos en el podcast hoy.

Luis (01:15:
Es un placer, Kelly. Gracias por invitarme y tenerme.

Kelly (01:19):
No hay problema. Y le di a la gente un poco de una introducción en el fondo familiard de al principio, pero obviamente tuvimos una larga conversación de introducción hace un par de semanas. Y hay mucho trabajo que cubres así que tenemos algo de terreno que cubrir hoy. Pero tal vez sólo para que nuestro público vuelva a pensar enel diseño accesible y el diseño noiversal, puedes simplemente dar y por supuesto tu perspectiva desde, desde México allí. ¿Puede darnos un poco de una definición para usted de lo que es la accesibilidad, qué es el diseño universal y tal vez dónde se superponen y dónde difieren?

Lues (01:58):
Seguro. Bueno, para mí, lo que significa accesibilidad es cuando no sólo un lugar, sino también las cosas que usamos son completamente cómodos y utilizables por todos. No sólo las personas que viven con una discapacidad. Y con esto me refiero a entrar en cualquier lugar en que no hay pasos. Las puertas son amplios baños, pero también las alturas de la shelveo la altura de las luces y diferentes cosas que utilizamos día a día tienen que ser cómodos para todos. Cuando me refiero a todo el mundo, como dije antes, también me refiero a los niños o tal vez a alguien que no tiene un brazo para que pueda usar sus manos o tal vez también personas que tienen movimiento limitado porque se rompieron una  pierna., así que están usando muletas o están usando algún otro dispositivo para pasar. Todas estas personas también se benefician con la accesibilidad. Y cuando hablamos de diseño universal es cuando vamos a design algo desde el principio que tiene que ser pensado para todos. Así que cuando lo haces, ya estás seguro de que todo el mundo va a ser capaz de usarlo de esa manera en el futuro. No tienes que traer a alguien para que el lugar o el producto sea accesible para todos.

Kelly (03:43):
Correcto, Está configurado para el éxito a largo plazo. Estupendo.

Luis (03:46):
Pero cuando lo piensas desde el principio, es mucho, mucho más fácil.

Kelly (03:53):
Correcto. Gran. Y te escuché un poco referirse a ambos,ya sabes, alguien que está viviendo con una discapacidad que podría ser permanente o tal vez algo que es temporal también. Hay un montón de diferentes tipos de maneras que las personas podrían estar interactuando de manera temporal o permanente con su entorno.

Luis (04:13):
Así es. Pero también esto beneficia a las personas que provienen de unpaís diferente. Como por ejemplo, si estás visitando la ciudad de México y toda la señalización en mi oficina está en letras y en letras españolas probablemente no entenderás todo lo que dice. ¿Vas a tener que preguntar a la gente dónde está el baño o  dónde está el baño? Pero si eso es señalización en lugar de estar usando palabras, usamos alas de dibujo o iconos – que pueden ser entendidos por todo el mundo.

Kelly (04:51):
Sí, ese es un punto excelente. Y hablamos un poco sobre esto, that  tu  sitio web, tenías que explicarme mucho ya que gran parte de ella es en español, obviamente, algo así como saltar a  tu sitio web en realidad desde que lo mencionaste. Y nosotros, vemos en los EE.UU., Algunos requisitos más ahora están alrededor del diseñodel sitio web para el diseño de sitios web de accesable. Y sé que tienes alguna experiencia o Todo Accesible tiene alguna experiencia con eso. ¿Puede describir un poco cómo podría ser el diseño del sitio web accesible o qué, qué se pretende hacer?

Luis (05:32):
Seguro. Una cosa que debemos tener en cuenta es que cuando estamos haciendo algoaccesible, un lugar, un sitio web o lo que sea, no necesitamos comercializar por todas partes. No, no tienes que tener las rampas azules. No tienes que cambiar el diseño que ya tienes allí. Así que al hacer un sitio web, no es que voy acambiar lasimágenes o voy a cambiar la forma en que funciona su sitio web. Podríamos hacer diferentes contrastes con los colores para hacer que los colores se vean más diferentes entre sí. Como en lugar de usar gris oscuro y gris claro, podríamos usar blanco con darkgray, pero no cambia mucho sólo para que la gente pueda entender la imagen. Y lo que hacemos es en la parte que los usuarios no vemos con toda la programación es con el fin de que sea accesible para que pueda moverse a través de la página web sin utilizar su almohadilla de ratón.  Así que puedes hacerlo con tu teclado o con voz. De esa manera, no sólo una persona con una discapacidad visual puede usarlo, sino cualquier persona. Así que tal vez alguien que tiene Parkinson que no puede usar un ratón para viajar por el sitio web, debe ser mucho más fácil para ellos  utilizar sólo el teclado. Así que no es sólo algo que estamos haciendo para alguien que no puede ver, pero de nuevo, para todo el mundo y la página, el diseño de la página es exactamente el mismo que el que tiene en este momento. Eso es algo que no cambiamos.

Kelly (07:35):
Gran. Sólo permite que todo el mundo lo use de la manera que es de la manera en que’son capaces de. Y sabes, Peter Stratton que ya sabes, obviamente de Steven Winter, habló un poco sobre el tipo de gente reprimiendo el diseño de sitios web accesibles, ya que, como usted dijo, una especie de sitio web podría ser el punto de acceso a unlugar different o a un edificio. Así es como puedes hacer reservas  para un lugar para cenar. Puede ser a través de un sitio web. Y cómo puede y, y por lo tanto, hay regulaciones sobre cómo esos sitios web necesitan ser accesibles. ¿Sucede lo mismo en  México?

Luis (08:20):
Bueno, ahora la accesibilidad web es algo requerido por la ley. Pero el problema que veo aquí en la ciudad de México es por un lado que no hay nadie que se encargue de ejecutar per se esa ley, ya sabes, que es comprobar qué sitio web cumple o cuál no. Y por otro lado es el propietario del sitio web.  Creen que debido a que lo harás accesible, va a ser caro y vas  a  malgastar mucho dinero en ello. Y eso es algo que no es cierto. La accesibilidad no cuesta más, especialmente aquí enla ciudad de México porque todo, every dime que inviertes en accesibilidad, se puede deducir cien por ciento de descuento en impuestos. Así que ni siquiera es un, ni siquiera es algo que tienes que considerar como un gasto, pero como una inversión y como dije, al hacer que esa página sea accesible, todo el mundo va a ser capaz de usarla, no sólo algunas personas lo saben.

Kelly (09:35):
Correcto. Tienes un público bigger, un público más amplio para lo que sea que estés tratando de mostrar. Así es. Genial. Mencionaste que es más sobre el, ya sabes, sólo porque algo es la ley no significa que se esté aplicando, que definitivamente veo mucho y hablo  mucho, ya sabes, el requisito mínimo no es necesariamente lo que dice la ley. Es, sin embargo, que la ley en realidad se aplica en una especie de día a día.

Luis (10:05):
Así es. Y es por eso que también medimos la usabilidad que tiene la accesibilidad. Como por ejemplo, aquí en la Ciudad de México, la ley te dice que puedes poner una rampa con una pendiente de 10% de pendiente, soy un usuario de silla de ruedas y no hay manera de que vaya a subir esa rampa y si voy a bajar, voy a necesitar un poco de protección de los dientes porque debo dejar mis dientes la mitad de la rampa hacia abajo porque son demasiado empinados. Así que eso es algo que te va a costar dinero. Está claro por la ley, pero no es algo utilizable para todos. ¿Correcto? Pero ¿qué pasa si en lugar de hacer esa rampa con un 10% de grado en Claymation, le damos un 6% o le damos un cuatro va a ser mucho, muy cómodo para que todo el mundo lo use porque ahora no sólo yo voy a ser capaz de usarlo, pero tal vez usted está caminando en la calle, usted va a ir más bien a través de una rampa que a través de escaleras. O si eres madre y vas a ir a tuhijo en uncochecito, eso va a ser mucho, mucho más fácil de usar para ti. Luego con el otro grado de inclinación.

Kelly (11:26):
Sí, hay esta diferencia entre el tipo de requisito de código mínimo y lo que realmente es accesible para  los individuos y no son necesariamente la misma cosa. Así que sólo  una historia de precaución en algunas maneras de sólo porque usted está diseñando a todos los requisitos del código no significa que usted está necesariamente proporcionando acceso a su espacio.

Luis (11:51):
Así es.

Kelly (11:54):
Y en realidad has trabajado en un estándar para empujar a los diseñadores a pensar en ir más allá. Hay un tipo estándar de LEED con varios niveles de rendimiento. ¿Puedes hablar un pocomás?

Luis (12:04):
Sí. ¿Cuándo ibas  a hacer una evaluación? La primerag delgada de laque nos aseguramos es que usted cumple con lo que la ley Estados aquí en la ciudad de México y para eso tenemos algo llamado la disctiva  “A” que es sólo la placa que se destaca y dice que este lugar es accesible. Pero cuando vas más allá del estándar mexicano,  tenemos otros dos grados. Tenemos uno que es el nivel de oro. Es entonces cuando estás un poco más lejos de lo que la ley Estados, tal vez tendrás áreas de juegos de recreo accesibles. Así que eres un restaurante al que eres accesible. Si tienes un playgro und accesiblepara mi hijo, vas a conseguir otro punto. Así que ahora no estás en el nivel básico, puedes lograr el oro, pero luego si contratas a alguien con una discapacidad para trabajar en un restaurante, obtienes otro punto para que puedas lograr el más alto. Eso way. Lo que buscamos es que no solo seas accesible para recibir a personas con una discapacidad, sino que también estás contratando una. Yo, como dije antes, tenemos diferentes beneficios en México y hay otro para las empresas que contratan a personas con una discapacidad.bility.

Kelly (13:37):
Oh wow. Genial. Y yo hay un montón de becau se paralelo que tuvimos un episodio con el comisionado de la oficina del alcalde para personas con discapacidades en la ciudad de Nueva York y él estaba hablando mucho sobre un programa de integración de la fuerza laboralpara las personas con discapacidades. Así que definitivamente estaba en la cima de su mente en lo que respecta al acceso y, ya sabes, el acceso a espacios, el acceso a sitios web, el acceso a los trabajos. Así que realmente pensando en la accesibilidad de una manera holística.

Luis (14:11):
Sí. Y así es como debemos pensar porque si quiero llevarte a almorzar mientras necesito dinero, ¿cómo voy a ganar dinero si no  consigo un trabajo? Así que es maravilloso que haya un restaurantedondepodamos ir a almorzar pero no tengo trabajo. Así que con este tipo de pensamiento, nos aseguramos de que estamos de vuelta en la sociedad, en todas las partes de la sociedad. Ahora puedo ir a trabajar, podemos salir, puedo ir a una sala de cine, puedo viajar, puedo ir  a un museo, podemos ir a los mismos lugares.

Kelly (14:53):
Sí, es una grancaca. Y hablando de eso en realidad me recuerda, que me había mencionado en el pasado sobre un creo que estaba hablando de una aplicación donde se podía ver cómo llegar a espacios que tal vez estaban encontrando el baño accesible en un gran parque o algo así.   ¿Puedes hablar un poco de eso? Lo siento si estoy mal de memoria.

Luis (15:17):
No, no, eso es correcto. Tenemos un sitio web aquí en México que se llama Lugares  Accesibles  que básicamente se traduce en lugares accesibles. Y luego solíamos poner aquí lugares donde que tenía algún tipo de estándar accesible, tal vez la entrada, tal vez el baño y accesible para quién? tal vez no es accesible para alguien en silla de ruedas, pero es accesible para alguien que  no puede  ver. Y comenzamos a integrar todas estas cosas en el sitio web y lanzamos una aplicación a finales del año pasado. Así que  ahora se puede descargar la aplicación, se puede registrar allí y nos puede ayudar a putting up lugares. Pero también analizar y sugerir lugares que tienen diferentes tipos de accesible, de esa manera las personas que necesitan accesibilidad pueden saber qué tipo de accesible tiene ese lugar. Así que vamos a ir a un restaurante, podemos buscar allí arriba para el restauranteo está aquí y tiene un bañoaccesible. No hay escaleras y que tienen servicio de aparcacoches o que tienen un gran espacio de estacionamiento. Así que ahora sé que podemos ir allí y no hay problema.

Kelly (16:47):
Eso es increíble. Así que eso es como información de crowdsourced. Es como, No sé si tienen esta aplicación allí también, pero Waze, básicamente can añadir información como un, como una persona que utiliza el software para decir que hay un coche de policía arriba, por delante. Pero esto sería utilizar esto, esta aplicación para decir ya sabes, para decir básicamente esta comunidad de personas que han comprado en ella, este baño es accesible. Creoque, para la gente que usa una silla deruedas en este estadio o este restaurante o algo así. Así que es básicamente se pone, mejora cuantas más personas se conecten a él.

Luis (17:27):
Así es. Y de esa manera más gente sabe de lugares que podemos ir y visitar. Los primeros lugares que van a ver son los que hemos evaluado los que tienen su  “A” distrital.  Y luego puede haber muchos otros lugares que no hemos evaluado, pero otros con un tipo diferente de discapacidad han recomendado porque han visitado el lugar. Así que lo pusimos y también puedes sugerir o comentar, ya sabes, fui a este lugar, como sucedió una vez. Había un restaurante en un propio muy agradable aquí en la ciudad de México que me gusta ir allí para mis reuniones y para  comer. Y tenían una rampa muy bonita en la entrada. Así que hice una reserva allí y fui a una reunión y cuando llegué allí, no había más rampa. Decidieron hacer la terraza más grande. Así que usan ese espacio. Pero ahora no puedo entrar. Así que a través de la aplicación también podemos venir y este lugar ya no tiene accesible porque sacaron la rampa. Así que ahora sabemos que no es accesible por lo que podemos sacarlo de la aplicación, así. O habla con el cliente y diles, ya sabes, que te estás perdiendo una gran población paradeshacerte de la rampa. Si no tienes espacio para nuestra rampa, hay otras alternativas que puedes usar. Así que la gente que no puede caminar puede ir al restaurante como lo hacían antes.

Kelly (19:14):
Sí. Y eso es interesante. No había pensado en que la gente fuera en la dirección opuesta para hacerlo menos accesible. Normalmente pensamos en las personas haciendo las cosas más accesibles con el tiempo. Pero una vez que usted, una vez que el edificio tiene que, ya sabes, esa calificación, ese estándar que usted habló, usted tiene que mantenerlo asegurándose de mantener su espacio accesible.

Luis (19:35):
Así es. Te evaluamos cada año. La “a” Distritiva  solo es válida durante un año. Así que si quieres  renovarlo, vamos a visitarlo de nuevo. Porque también descubrimos que había lugares que eran accesibles y que tenían este enorme baño para nosotros, pero debido a que didn’t contratar a cualquier persona con una discapacidad, luego que usaría ese baño para almacenaje. Entonces, ¿de  qué sirve? No, eso no es un trastero. Eso es un baño. Así que úsalo como está. Así que es por eso que tenemos que continuar año tras año hablando con nuestros clientes y diciendo, de acuerdo, ¿te gustaría renovarlo? Vamos y lo hacemos sólo una visita rápida y eso es  todo.

Kelly (20:21):
Correcto. Uno de nuestros consultores de accesibilidad estaba hablando deque el otro día cuando se mira la accesibilidad, no se puede simplemente mirar los planes arquitectónicos. También hay que mirar los diseños de los muebles porque a veces en, especialmente en los espacios del hotel, tendrían todo este espacio donde se puede maniobrar dentrode unsi lbador como se pretendía, pero luego no lo harían, que poner en algún tipo de papel higiénico o algún tipo de cosa después que era un pedazo de mobiliario que luego bloquearía la capacidad  de  alguien para realmente utilizar el espacio de manera efectiva. Así que es importante  pensar en ello holísticamente, no sólo desde el propio diseño arquitectónico.

Luis (21:02):
Bueno, eso es algo muy importante que acabas de mencionar. Todos los muebles también tienen que ser accesibles. Hablando de hoteles, también hemos visto que a veces las camas son demasiado altas para que pueda saltar en la cama porque es demasiado alto y cuando me estoy bajando todo lo bueno es que voy a bajar y puedo manejar saltar de nuevo en mi silla, pero subir en la cama, a veces es difícil o con el armario sólo lo abrimos y el único lugardonde puedes colgar tu ropa es en la parte high. Así que no hay nada debajo que pueda entregar mi ropa u otra cosa mesas, hay algunas mesas que tienen las piernas en el medio que no permiten que un tipo con una silla de ruedas ponga sus piernas debajode la mesa porque la pierna de la mesa golpea tél silla. Así que a veces he tenido que pedir en el restaurante que el camarero me preste la bandeja, puse la bandeja en mis piernas y ahí es donde como porque no puedo entrar y usar la mesa. O utensilios. He encontrado que aquí en algunos restaurantes, no sé si espolítica donde piensan que muybonitos tenedores y cucharas son necesarios, pero también son pesados y para mí que no puedo usar mis manos cuando pongo una de esas cucharas entre mis dedos y pongo sopa en ella. Es muy difícil para mí poder llevarsu sopa a mi bocasin dejarla caer porque es muy pesada y esas son cosas que la gente no tiene idea porque no la necesitan. Correcto. Esa es una de las cosas importantes del uso y los consultores de accesibilidad que saben todas estas cosas. Porque  si no lo necesitas, no te das cuenta. Pero hasta que alguien que te lo dice, entonces te das cuenta y no es más caro comprar una mesa, que en lugar de tener una pierna en el medio, tiene piernas en el costado o en lugar de comprar una cuchara, compras otra  que no es tan pesada.

Kelly (23:30):
Correcto. Tal vez sea más barato comprar la cuchara de lighter incluso.

Luis (23:32):
quizás. Así es.

Kelly (23:37):
Sí, esos son puntos absolutamente buenos. Y me llevas a otro de ustedes son los delgadosgs que mencionaste que creo que es realmente interesante que creo que está realmente relacionado con todo esto, ¿verdad? Así que hay mucho sesgo en el que diría que juega cuando no estás expuesto a algo o no entiendes algo. Y has hablado un poco conmigo unentrenamiento desensibilidad. ¿Puedes decirle  a nuestra audiencia un poco más sobre lo que significa el entrenamiento de sensibilidad? ¿Y cómo se enseña a la gente a trabajar más eficazmente con los demás?

Luis (24:17):
Claro, nos enteramos de que había algunas veces que hablando de un restaurante, el restaurante es completamente deacceso. Pero fui allí con uno de mis amigos y él es ciego y tiene un perro guía. Y cuando entramos, le dicen que tu perro no puede  ir. Bueno, diciéndole a una persona ciega que su perro no puede  ir a un lugar con él, Es como decirme que tengo que dejar mi silla wheeen la entrada. Es completamente ridículo porque no es un perro. Es un animal que les apoya. ¿Correcto? Así que descubrimos que es muy importante enseñar a la gente lo que realmente es. Por eso hacemos este taller y somos imlegadospor personas que viven con cada tipo de discapacidad. Así que te dicen cómo puedes mantener a una persona ciega. ¿Le agarras del brazo? ¿Te agarra? O si es sordo, bueno, no porque sea sordo significa que ella no te va a  entender. Tal vez lea los labios o miaybe puedas señalarlo a cosas diferentes. Así que te mostramos cómo interactuar con alguien que no puede oír y cómo cuando te conteste, vas a ser capaz de entender lo que está diciendo o lo que sucede si una persona viene con una silla de ruedas. He tenido diferentesexperiencias que quieren ayudarme. Así que dejé que me guiaran y me están empujando y de repente ven a alguien y quieren saludar o algo así y soltaron la silla y ahí voy. No, entonces eso es algo que no puedes hacersi no tienes control en tus brazos mientras vas a golpear a alguien o vas a caer, o no sé qué puede pasar ahora.

Luis (26:26):
Así que eso es lo que les mostramos. Cuando estás ayudando a alguien con una discapacidad, tu enfoque está en la persona con una discapacidad. O otra cosa en los restaurantes de aquí, ya sabes, ellos.ely quiere darte hermosos platos. Así que pueden ser, ponen un palillo de dientes en tu carne para mantenerla cerrada, pero cuando te la estás comiendo, no te das cuenta de que hay un palillo de dientes allí que estaba sosteniendo tu carne para que puedas lastimarte. Así que tambiénles decimoslo que es que te pones, no te pongas un plato o cómo le dices a una persona ciega lo que tiene delante usando las agujas del reloj, como tus cafés a las 12 en punto. Tu tenedor es que tus 10, tienes tu jarabe a las dos en punto. Así que pueden imaginar when la mesa se ve y saberdónde está algo y pueden moverse libremente sin pensar que van a dejar algo o romper algo. Así que les mostramos todas estas cosas en estos talleres. Así que ahora la próxima vez que vean a alguien con una discapacidad, no enly asistir al restaurante, pero tal vez en las calles o en un lugar diferente, se sienten seguros caminando y decir, hola, ¿puedo ayudarte o qué puedo hacer por ti?

Kelly (28:00):
Sí, por supuesto. Porque creo que algo de eso es sólo ese miedo a decir lo incorrecto o hacer lo incorrecto o no saber realmente cómo interactuar conla gente que  sabes, tal vez no tienes experiencia y te pones nervioso. Así que tú y yo notamos que muchas de tus historias tienen un poco de sentido del humor en ellas. Y creo que es una buena manera de bajarun poco la guardia de PeOple y hacer que escuchen de lo que estás hablando. El corazón de lo que estás hablando.

Luis (28:34):
Eso es correcto. Me he dado cuenta de que la gente no hace eso porque quiere, lo hacen porque realmente no saben cómo ayudarte, pero cuando les muestras, incluso puedes ver una gran sonrisa en su cara que ahora saben cómo ayudar a alguien con una discapacidad. Cuando voy a saltar del auto, puedo hacerlo solo. Asíque el tipo que me ayuda es el que me pone en una silla. Pero a veces para hacerlo más rápido, buscamos ayuda. Y me he dado cuenta de que algunas personas,cuando ven que está sacando la silla de ruedas y estamos empezando a ver cómo es que va a hacer una ayuda que me salve en mi silla. A veces incluso cruzan la calle. Así que ese es el tipo al que llamo, oye, por favor ven. Y me darán una mano. Y vienen. A veces ni siquiera me hablan. Hablan con mi asistente. No, me miran como, Oh, él  puede hablar. Bien. Pero una vez que me ayudan y una vez que ven no es así, y no es tan difícil, nos llevamos perfectos con ellos.

Kelly (29:47):
Genial. Incluso en tus interacciones diarias, te lo tomas a ti mismo para asegurarte de ayudar a las personas a ser su mejor yo. Realmente.

Luis (29:57):
Qué excelente manera de decirlo Kelly.

Kelly (30:01):
Bueno, yo, cubrimos muchos temas diferentes aquí y tengo curiosidad, ¿quéquieres que la gente se lleve de esta conversación? ¿Qué es lo más importante para ti que la gente te quita de esta conversación?

Luis (30:16):
La discapacidad no es una enfermedad y la discapacidad no es contagiosa. Así que puedes acercarte a alguien y estar completamente fresco. Como si estuvieras con todos los demás. Y si vas a construir algoo si  vas a invertir en algo, asegúrate de hacerlo accesible. No te va a costar más dinero. Todo el mundo va a tomar mucho más bien. Y la cantidad de personas que vas a ser capaz de recibir va a ser mucho, mucho más amplia porque una persona con una discapacidad gasta casi un 80% más que el resto de la población. ¿por qué? Porque nunca salgo sola. Así que si voy a comer en el restaurante, iré con mi asistente, el tipo que me ayuda. Si voy a viajar,  si voy a ir a visitarte a los Estados Unidos, ¿pagaré por dos billetes de avión? ¿Dos habitaciones de hotel? Así que es una población que puedes considerar y cuando estás haciendo este tipo de lugar como con el diseño universal, se ve maravilloso y es utilizable por todo el mundo. Osólo para dejarte con la pregunta en lugar de decir ¿por qué involucrarte? Es por eso que NO involucrar a las personas con una discapacidad porque está llena de beneficios de la guerra, cualquier punto que desee verla.

Kelly (31:45):
Esos son grandes puntos. Y nuestra  pregunta final que nos gusta hacerle a la gente es cuando te tenemos de vuelta en el podcast en cinco años, ¿de qué crees que hablaremos entonces?

Luis (31:59):
Me encantaría decir que estaríamos hablando de cómo el diseño universal cambió la forma en que la gente vive, no sólo la forma en que la gente piensa cómo ahora todo el mundo y todo está incluido para todos.

Kelly (32:22):
Muy bien. Es un pedido alto para el mundo para los próximos cinco años, pero me gusta. Muchas gracias por venir en el podcast y hablar conmigo hoy.

Luis (32:32):
No, por el contrario, Kelly, muchas gracias por invitarme y deinvitarme. Realmente lo disfruté enormemente. Gracias.

Kelly (32:45):
Thank que tanto para escuchar edificios y más allá de hoy. Para obtener más información sobre el diseño universal y accesible, echa un vistazo a nuestras notas de espectáculo en swinter.com/podcasts S W I N T E r.com/podcasts edificios y más allá es traído a usted por Steven winter associates. Creemos que el mundo no es tan sostenible, saludable, seguro, equitativo o inclusivo como debe ser y continuamente nos esforzamos por desarrollar  e implementar soluciones innovadoras para mejorar el entorno construido. Nuestro equipo de producción incluye a Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin y mi coanfitrión Robb Aldrich y yo, Kelly Westby. Muchas gracias por escuchary y nos vemos la próxima vez.

Gayathri Vijayakumar, Director, Residential Energy Services, Steven Winter Associates, Inc. 

For 15 years, Gayathri Vijayakumar has specialized in evaluating residential and multifamily buildings with an emphasis on high-performance construction and renewable energy systems. Gayathri is a Director for Residential Energy Services at SWA, supporting team members on their energy efficiency, research, and product development projects. She also provides consulting to federal, state, and local agencies, codes, and programs to develop emerging standards and procedures that involve energy efficiency requirements.

Gayathri currently is a member of the ASHRAE 62.2 Multifamily Working Group, Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300, and a voting member of ASHRAE’s Residential Buildings Committee.

Curious about how building performance standards are decided upon?

The IECC, or “model code”, establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency by specifying the performance levels for the building envelope, mechanical systems, lighting systems, and service water heating systems in homes and commercial businesses. This model code is updated every three years, and within those three years there is a LOT of behind-the-scenes work going on to determine the changes for the next version. In this episode, we learn all about the long and lengthy code development process from SWA’s own Gayathri Vijayakumar.

International Code Council (ICC) Code Development Process website

The Making of the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) – written by Gayathri Vijayakumar

Testimony Videos from the Committee Action Hearing (April 2019, Albuquerque, NM):

Testimony Videos from the Public Comment Hearing (October 2019, Las Vegas):

*While not mentioned during the podcast, Gayathri wanted to acknowledge Robby Schwarz, Reid Hart, Mike Moore, New Buildings Institute, the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, the National Multifamily Housing Council, Ryan Meres, members from NY Department of State, and Joe Lstiburek, for their support and collaboration on many of the above proposals and at the hearings.

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 (00:21):
In this episode I spoke with Gayathri, Vijayakumar, who is an engineer here at Steven winter associates. For a few years She’s been involved in the code amendment process specifically with the IECC, the international energy conservation code, like all of the IECC codes. That’s international code council. These are updated every three years and she got involved with working on several amendments to the code to improve energy efficiency. This is this conversation is really about the process of how codes are amended, not the substance of the codes or the substance of the amendments, not the amendments themselves. We’ll link to that information for sure, but this is really about the process and this is not my area of expertise as you can clearly tell if you listen to this episode. But Gayathri does a great job of breaking down the process, answering my many questions and clarifying when I’m confused, which was fairly often, I really learned a lot. So let’s chat with Gayathri.

Dylan (01:30):
Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the past passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually on June 11th and 12th. This year I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the US. Be sure to tune in online to see my session and others by registering at naphanconference.com that’s N a P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show.

Gayathri (02:06):
So they call the IECC the model code. And so generally all the work that goes into the model code, so it’s been the 2009, the 2012, the 2015, 2018 IECC. Right. So every three years when they go through those cycles it’s, it’s set up to be the model code that local jurisdictions like States can adopt and become the state energy code. And so if we talk about the 2018 IECC, usually States don’t adopt it that same year. They’re not adopting it in 2018. Right? It just gets published in 2018 so they’re usually a few years behind. And so what’s strange about the code cycle is that before your state has even adopted it, before most users are using it for their buildings, you already have to know that you want to change it. You have to know what about it you don’t like. And so usually it ends up being the people in the game that either in the building industry or in energy advocacy groups, they’re the ones that know what they don’t like about the current code. And they already know what they want to change about it three years from now. And so I got involved in the code cycle back in 2016 and so a colleague of ours,

Robb (03:16):
And so we’re talking right now in March of 2020 to put things in reference for people

Gayathri (03:21):
Exactly. So four years ago, and again, similar to you, I was not interested in code development is not my background. I’m a mechanical engineer. I came to Steven winter associates 15 years ago. Never envisioned that code development is where I wanted to go. A coworker of ours, Sean Maxwell, had been involved in the New York state adoption of the 2015 IECC, so like we were discussing, every state wants to adopt the model code, but it’s a model code. So they’re going to amend it to suit whatever needs they have. And so when New York state was looking at the 2015 IECC, there were things they didn’t like about it. And so they’d reached out to Steven winter associates and specifically about air leakage testing. Sean Maxwell had some ideas for certain changes to the air leakage test standards. And so he worked with them, provided some language. And so what most most States will do is they’ll amend a certain part or multiple parts of the model code. And so that becomes our own state version. And so he was working with them and then he had the bright idea instead of just limiting this amazing change he’d come up with for air leakage testing to be used in New York state, why not submit it to the actual model code, the actual IECC. And so the 2015 had just been printed, and so as soon as it’s printed, you have to think about the next code cycle, which is the 2018 version. So we had the language ready and so he somehow got involved and figured out, you know, on the IECC website how to submit a change proposal. And so he did that in time and that had to be done by January of 2016 so New York state hadn’t even used the 2015 IECC. He had just seen it in language through the amendment process. And so he submitted the change, and he was also not well versed in code development. There’s probably other people in our company that did code development work, but that was his first experience with it.

Robb (05:08):
Okay, cool. And long story short, that did not go through. So then he passed the torch to you for this next round of code amendments. Is that right?

Gayathri (05:20):
Sort of. So what happened was there’s three stages to the code development process.

Robb (05:26):
So let’s talk. So it’s 2020 now. So in 2019, you or people you were working, with submitted amendments went to several hearings or meetings about those amendments, and then there was ultimately some voting, which we’ll get into, but was the whole process like in 12 to 16 months?

Gayathri (05:54):
Basically, it’s very rapid fire. And so the story of some of those amendments actually starts with Sean’s proposal. So he initially submitted that proposal, air leakage testing in 2016. Right. So every code cycle, it’ll always start with a proposal. And you’re right, we submitted a couple amendments. He had submitted one, but what happened was, is he, he moved to Australia. So he missed two key parts of the process. So after you submit a proposal, there’s a committee action hearing and we’ll talk about that. And then there’s also a public comment hearing. So because he missed those very critical rounds, he roped me into it at the public comment hearing level. And so I tried and failed because I knew nothing about what the cycle was, but I gained a lot of experience from that experience at that the public comment hearings, learned who the players were, tried to defend a proposal in front of a lot of people and learn who my opposition was. So I learned it the hard way. And so then fast forward to three years later, I knew a little bit more about the process than I did back in 2016. And so I used that and I knew what the dates were. You know, I knew how to propose something by 2019 for the 2021 IECC. So none of our States are using the 2018 IECC, I don’t know, a year and a half ago. Who to reach out to, to collaborate to propose something and submit it by January of 2019.

Robb (07:14):
Okay. Okay. So you were involved with three three amendments, right? Yes. And we had talked a little bit before, it might make sense to focus on the simplest amendment first, what was the simplest amendment?

Gayathri (07:32):
The simplest one to just show you how it goes through the process is one where I wanted to submit a change for multifamily buildings that are subject to the commercial code. People in the past, had to get proposals in for multifamily because they get cut at the three-story height, you know, three stories and less its residential. Four stories and up is commercial.

Robb (07:51):
So you could have a three story multifamily building, add one more story, even though they’re exact same apartments, exact same construction type, entirely different code?

Gayathri (08:03):
Exactly. Very Different requirements. And so people had tried and failed in the past to provide some kind of unified path forward for code compliance for multifamily. So I thought of a simple one. So I submitted and basically there’s a code compliance path for low-rise multifamily called the ERI path, which is energy rating index. And so it’s not very popular but some people could choose to use it and because recent changes had allowed it to be used for multifamily high rise buildings, I said, why don’t I propose it as a code compliance option for high rise multifamily that are subject to commercial code. And so I submitted that as a very simple change.

Robb (08:35):
So ERI, it’s kind of like the HERS index, but the non proprietary version of a HERZ index. and so you can prove that you comply with for residential buildings with, by getting a hers rating or getting an ERI.

Gayathri (08:50):
Yes. For code compliance. Since 2015 there has been an ERI path. Most people will, a prescriptive code compliance use a Rez check. There’s also a simulated performance path. And then they had introduced in 2015 this ERI energy rating index path.

Robb (09:05):
I think you had said it was existing for high rise, but it was actually existing for residential and low rise and you propose to make it an option for high rise.

Gayathri (09:14):
Correct.

Robb (09:14):
Okay. Okay. Nice.

Gayathri (09:17):
And so because that had changed relatively recently that you could do an ERI on a apartment in a multifamily high rise building, that’s a relatively new change. That’s why it was limited before when they introduced it in the 2015 IECC, it was limited to residential low rise multifamily three stories and below. It was limited to them from the beginning. And so, because I knew it had changed, I introduced a, a sentence in the commercial provisions.

Robb (09:44):
So, so wait a minute. When you say you knew it would to change, you mean like you couldn’t even get an ERI in a, in an apartment in a high rise building?

Gayathri (09:52):
Correct.

Robb (09:52):
Okay. Okay. I didn’t follow you there. So Even pre-code just the whole ERI concept, you couldn’t apply it to a high rise building? And then now you can?

Gayathri (10:03):
Exactly. And so that, I mean that was a process that took some time. But yeah, historically you weren’t able to do the ERI except for units in buildings that are three stories and less. So when that change came about and I was aware of that I introduced it as a possible option if a commercial multifamily building now that this ERI was now available due to recent changes in that standard. I wanted to say they could choose it as their code compliance path. So it was just going to be an option. And so I figured I would throw it in there and I knew I’d failed in the previous code cycle, but I figured this would draw out the opposition so I’d hear what they didn’t like about it. And so it was a simple proposal. It went in. I also failed to attend the committee action hearing for this particular proposal.

Robb (10:44):
Oh, okay. So back up, so you submitted this, so this was trying to get it into the 2021 code. You submitted the proposal in January of 2019?

Gayathri (10:57):
Yes.

Robb (10:57):
Okay. So you submitted the proposal and then, then what happens?

Gayathri (11:01):
And then what happens is a committee action hearing. And so this is part of every code cycle. So once you put in a proposal, there’s hundreds and hundreds of proposals. You don’t know who’s going to propose something similar to what you proposed, who’s going to contradict you. You don’t know what sections. It’s just the wild, wild West. It’s all unknown. And so there’s hundreds, hundreds. And this is just, this is just that IECC if we’re talking about all the other codes, I’m not even involved in that. And so you can access all the proposals. So you know what else is being proposed and similar sections and you can find out who they are, who the people are that propose them. But you go to the committee action hearing and this is where you defend your proposal. And so in this simple example of this, this one of my proposals I wasn’t, I didn’t stay on for the committee action hearing on this.

Robb (11:49):
Whos the committee?

Gayathri (11:50):
So theres the commercial provisions and residential provision. So there’s two sections of the IECC. So they have a residential committee at about 11 people on that that committee. And then the commercial committee was about 14 people. I don’t know how they pick those members. Again, I’m not this, I’m not the expert in co-development, but they have a list of members that are on the residential side and then a different group for commercial. So it’s a long process. It was over 10 days of testimony cause there’s hundreds and hundreds proposals and it’s a, it’s a very long amount of time to get everyone the opportunity to speak. So you don’t know what day you’re going to speak necessarily. And so I couldn’t stay for 10 days in a row to wait for my commercial proposal to be heard. And so I left. And so I listened to the testimony. It was 30 minutes. So people get up and you know, there’s lots of opposition. I had a couple of people speak in my defense. But anyways, it failed. The committee was not, you know, there wasn’t enough testimony and support in my proposal. I think if I’d been there, I probably could have argued against the opposition pretty effectively, but I wasn’t there. And so basically it fails.

New Speaker (12:57):
Is this just a simple majority from the committee?

Gayathri (12:59):
Simple majority from the committee.

Robb (13:00):
And who’s on the committee?

Gayathri (13:02):
I actually don’t know. It’s a, it’s a mix of people. There’s definitely a few faces that I recognize. There’s usually they try to keep it balanced. So between like building industry and then energy advocates, I think there’s a mix of people that they have to keep on the committee.

Robb (13:18):
So here’s a question. Since your proposal was to treat high rise residential units as residential units, that was the commercial committee that had to hear that? Or was that the residential committee that had to hear that?

Gayathri (13:33):
The commercial committee had to hear it. Cause you basically have to propose specific words for the IECC and that’s it. Those are the words that will get used if it gets, if it’s successful, nobody else goes back and wordsmiths your language. This is it. If you see typos in the code, that’s because that’s what happens. It’s not that the IECC goes back and says, Oh, what they meant to say was this. Now it’s, that’s it. You have one shot at it. And so because they didn’t like, you know, but they outlined they have to give rationale for their reason for rejecting it. And so for this particular one, they weren’t confident that the, the expansion of scope of the energy rating index was warranted to go to high rise. They were concerned about central systems and multifamily high rise buildings. They had a couple, you know, good reasons for wanting to have heard more or understood more. But the problem was I wasn’t there to give them all the answers. And so the next step, if you aren’t going to admit defeat is to submit a public comment. And so once they announced that the committee has made all their, their decisions, so they, they print out all the results and you can decide, I want to submit a public comment. And there’s a deadline. I think it was in early June or July. So you have to submit a public comment to bring your proposal back to give it a chance. And so that happens at a public comment hearing in October.

Robb (14:55):
Okay. So yeah, a few weeks or months after the first meeting, which was called the committee action hearing they published their decisions and it’s basically either thumbs up or thumbs down. The majority of the committee

Gayathri (15:09):
Yeah. And the document will show exactly how many committee members will be like, you know, 14 to zero or 13 to one. You’ll see the number of committee members who voted for and against and they have to give you some kind of summary statement of why, you know, it doesn’t wrap up the entire conversation. You know, the testimony for this one was 30 minutes. So they just have to give a, a sentence or two about why they, they didn’t like it.

Robb (15:30):
So then you’re not done. Then you submit a public comment.

Gayathri (15:37):
A public comment. And so the public comment anyone can submit, anyone can submit a public comment. And so for this particular one, I was the original proponent of the change proposal. I’m submitting a public comment. I did two of them, actually I did one just in support of my original one because I thought it was a good sound proposal. I just wasn’t there in person to defend it. And so you submit it online with a reason statement of why you think it should be heard again. And so I did one like that. And then the second one I did was to actually broker a compromise. You know, I’d heard loud and clear from the testimony of why they didn’t like it. So I said, okay, I hear you.There’s qualms about central systems. So I limited the scope of the language in the, in the proposal to say you can use this but not if you have central systems.

Robb (16:25):
So only if the heating, cooling, water, heating

Gayathri (16:27):
was all in unit systems. It seemed like what I heard from the testimony from the committee action hearing was that was kind of like the really point of contention. And I thought, you know, all right, I can meet them halfway, I’ll propose two, and so the reason to propose two is then it gets on the public comment hearing agenda. If you don’t submit anything, you never get a chance to defend it again at the public comment. So if I’d missed that it would just be dead in the water. And so you have to make sure that you submit a public comment. The, the hurdle is much higher. It’s we’ll get to voting probably at some point in this conversation, but usually it is just a 50% simple majority vote to disagree with anybody’s proposal. So it’s very easy to reject changes.

Robb (17:13):
So, so, so hang on, so anybody and everybody can submit a public comment. And probably most people who have their proposed amendment rejected will come back and submit a public comment. Okay. So they submitted public comment and then there’s this next meeting, which is a public comment hearing. I should be able to remember that name, but I won’t. So at the public comment hearing, which was, which was when in 2019?

Gayathri (17:40):
it’s usually in October. And so the committee action hearings usually like in April or may and then the public comment is usually in October.

Robb (17:50):
All right, so you went out to Vegas, wasn’t this one?

Gayathri (17:52):
This year was in Las Vegas.

Robb (17:53):
So then is this another 10 day?

Gayathri (17:59):
The window’s a little shorter because there’s not as many proposals on the public comment agenda. So in the committee action hearing, everybody’s proposals are being heard. And it’s just the committee of 11 people on the residential and it was 14 on the committee, on the commercial one everyone gets heard, but everyone only gets two minutes to speak in favor. And then one minute opposition. But it’s all the proposals on the public comment hearing agenda, the, it’s less, right. So if their original proposal was well liked by the committee and they said thumbs up and nobody submits a public comment, that’s not on the public comment aGendra so we’ve whittled down the number of proposals that are going to be heard.

Robb (18:38):
I see. So it’s both ways. They turn proposals down and then people who actually want them submit a comment or they give the proposals a thumbs up and people who don’t like them will submit a comment. Okay. So then what’s that like? Like do you at least have an idea of when your, when your amendment is going to be heard?

Gayathri (19:00):
It’s not a very clear idea. They give you a schedule and so they try and stick to it. And so some days you’d be there from 8:00 AM and they’d say we’re going to go until seven but then you’d be there and they’re like, we’re not making enough progress so we have to get, you have to go through it a lot faster. So you could be be there until 10 o’clock at night. So you know some people you just have to book a one way ticket because you don’t know. There was definitely times where I thought my proposal might not get heard before I have to leave. And so it is a little, it is very hard. Yeah.

Robb (19:26):
Like, is there an order, like there’s 4,000 comments, you’re 2,782 or whatever?

Gayathri (19:34):
They do Print the agenda. The hearing order. Okay. And so what happens is at the beginning of the public comment, hearing people can make a motion to reorder certain proposals and regroup them and things like that. But it has to be sustained by the voting members. So some people will just see that, you know, there’s a getting moved ahead or behind to somebody and they’ll reject it for that reason. So yeah, you definitely need to be present when certain things like that happen. But yeah, you can change the order on it. It is a lot.

Robb (20:04):
Wow. So wait, is it the same 11 or 14 people?

Gayathri (20:11):
Ah, no. Good question. That’s different. It’s totally different. So the committee action hearing, right? the first meeting in April, right? So you have this great proposal, it’s a great idea. You’re defending it against the opposition. Anybody who can talk to you, but you’re only trying to convince the people on the committee. So there was 11 or so people on the residential 14 on, on commercial. And the public comment hearing is completely different. You’re not trying to convince a committee, you’re trying to actually come convince voting members. And we haven’t talked about voting members yet. So voting members are people like government and state officials. It could be from like your local department of buildings, every jurisdiction, all these authorities having jurisdictions, they have these voting members that go to the public comment hearing cause they’re basically there to see which proposals are probably going to make it into the next round of the model code. And so whether they like it or not, whether they’re going to have to have all this extra work the next time the model code gets adopted by their state or if they’re going to have to change it. So they have a vested interest to be there and they get to vote. So they get to hear it firsthand from anyone who had a proposal to see if they actually support it. So that’s who you’re trying to convince.

Robb (21:18):
There must be thousands of these voters you would think in the country, but then any of those thousands can come to this meeting?

Gayathri (21:27):
Yes. Yes. But guess how many were there actually voting? I mean like we just sat like there’s so many days on end that you have to commit to being here.

Robb (21:38):
112?

Gayathri (21:40):
For certain codes. Like so there’s the IRC, the international residential code, there’s a building code, mechanical code. So when they got down to the IECC, the residential provisions, some of the votes were only a total of 60 voters. So it’s not a lot of people.

Robb (21:56):
So this second round of meetings, the public comment hearing, there are thousands of potential voters, tens of thousands probably.

Gayathri (22:09):
Yeah, definitely thousands. But the only ones that can vote are the ones that actually make the trip to wherever the hearing is and this year was in Vegas. And if they’re in the room at the time that the proposal is heard. So there was a lot of ebb and flow of like how many people were in the room. So you could, you know, they could break for dinner and your proposal, it could be the next one up. And here you are in Las Vegas. People don’t come back after dinner. And so all of a sudden there’s only 11 voters when your proposal is heard and it fails because there’s just not enough people. Or the people that you knew were going to vote your way are gone now.

Robb (22:41):
Okay. So, all right. So anyways, you have 11 to 20,000 voters in the room and you have what? So your amendment is called number 2784, whatever. And you come up and so you will explain your public comment, so what happened with this?

Gayathri (23:11):
So we’ll go with this example. So this first example, right? So first of all, the committee hated it, right? So it got denied 14 to zero on April. So it was, so the motion on the floor, so this all lots of wording that I was not familiar with before. The motion on the floor is the committee disapproved it. Okay. Right. So basically the first motion on the floor in Vegas at the public comment hearing is to sustain this move, this disapproval vote that the committee had. Okay. So they say, you know who wants to speak? Who wants to speak in favor of the committee’s motion for disapproval. So all the same people that hated it before get up and speak again. But this time I’m there. And so I also have some other people that did like the proposal who had spoken on on behalf of it when I wasn’t there. And so we all line up and we speak in favor of it. So it’s a two step process at the public comment hearing if the committee already said they did not like it, you have to convince enough people. It’s a simple majority of the voting members to at least allow you to present your public comment.

Robb (24:13):
So you just end up convincing twice. Okay, so you stand up and say, I make a motion to explain the rationale for this amendment or, or in this case, the modifications I’ve made to the amendment.

Gayathri (24:24):
Yes. So basically that first, that first step is like they all say all the things they hated about it. You got up and say, no, it was really good. And we really want to convince you guys to let us talk about the public comment. The first motion is to let them, you had to convince them to say the public comments worth hearing. And so we cleared that bar. We told them, you know, we have two good public comments, just give us a chance. And so we had the, we got the simple majority to say, all right, we’ll give them a chance to explain the public comments. And then public comment comes out and I had two options, right? I was just the same one I’d proposed before. And then the one where I said, you know, here’s a compromise. The, the commercial committee on this didn’t like it cause it was too broad in scope had central systems. So I have a public comment that’s very limited. And so when I defended that one that got, you know, 80% of the vote in the room, the compromise did. And so that became the standing motion instead of disapproval. The public comment hearing results would say that that was as modified by public comment that becomes the result from this public comment hearing was that instead of disapproval we want to go through with this proposal, but as modified by a public comment.

Robb (25:37):
Were the initial committee members there also?

Gayathri (25:39):
Yes. So a lot of the original committee members were there. They are, some of them are still voting members and so they might’ve been there voting. I know I spoke to a couple of them to, you know, get their firsthand input on why they liked it or why they didn’t like it. So yeah, they’re voting, they’re also voting members.

Robb (25:56):
Okay, cool. So did anybody come stand up and speak against it?

New Speaker (26:02):
Oh yeah. Pretty much the same people from the committee action hearing, which I wasn’t there for, but I watched the videos. I knew who they were. There’s video of all of this.

Robb (26:14):
So we’ll, I’ll make sure to put the link to that in the show notes for everybody who can’t wait to watch two weeks of code hearing. Oh my gosh.

Gayathri (26:25):
Oh, and also the committee action hearing. So We’ll just leave it at, I was convincing enough that it was worth the vote of the people, the room, and they agreed.

Robb (26:44):
Okay. Very good. Then it came out of Vegas at the committee after the public comment hearing. Then all of these hundreds of proposals go to all of those thousands of voting members across the country. Is that right?

Gayathri (27:05):
Well, you basically, you do have to get into the system, you have to like there’s a deadline. I’m not a voter. So the online voters, they call them the governmental member voters or something like that. So only certain people can vote. Like the people in the public comment hearing, you know, they had a vote cause they were like a local official and they were there. So those are the same kinds of people that can vote online. So there’s this online vote that happens in like November or December. And so at that point you there was some deadline where you had to register. It’s just like voter registration. You had to make sure you registered to vote in time and if you did, then you can participate in the online vote and you don’t have to vote for every single proposal. You can go in and cherry pick the ones you want to vote for.

Gayathri (27:45):
But when you go and do your vote, they’ll give you the whole history. So the original proposal is there, you’ll have the voting results from the original committee. You’ll see that like in my example that they disapproved it. You’ll see that in the public comment round, they, you know, the, the committee was overturned and the public comment decided that they liked the public comment. And so the voter will get to see all of that. They’ll get to see the numbers, they’ll see their original language, they’ll see the modified language and they can make a decision. And so that’s the final vote.

Robb (28:17):
And, I think you said that there were way more votes, way more possible voters actually voted this year. Is that right? How did the online vote work for this?

Gayathri (28:31):
So this ne was a little bit different than the the first year that I was involved in 2016 when you did the public comment hearing, all those votes were just taken by a wave of hands. And so there was no electronic voting. And so in this code cycle, when we were in Las Vegas, all the voters had these electronic gizmos and they were doing their voting electronically. And so all those votes automatically transferred into the online system. And so, you know, instead of starting at zero votes, so like in the first set, the first one I was involved in back in 2016 when I got to the online vote, the one that happened in like November, December, there’s zero votes for any proposals. You start from scratch. But this year you at least started with the 50 or 60 people that voted while they’re in Las Vegas. And they have not yet released the final vote tallies for the 2021 IECC, So I don’t know how many people totally voted. I just know at least all the public common votes automatically counted.

Robb (29:33):
Wait, but, the online voting happened in like late in 2019.

Gayathri (29:40):
Yes. So like November/December It wrapped up. They just haven’t released the final voting tallies. They have preliminary results out. So we kind of an idea if everything goes smoothly. I think they just have to go back. There’s like a, a process, again, I’m not familiar, but there’s a process where they go back and check the votes.

Robb (29:54):
So, you know preliminary numbers but it has to be like certified or whatever? What were the preliminary numbers?

Gayathri (30:01):
So for at least my, this proposal that we’ve been talking about, it’s approved.

Robb (30:07):
By a good margin.?

Gayathri (30:08):
I don’t know. Those are preliminary thumbs up, thumbs down.

Robb (30:14):
So because it got approved at the public comment hearing. Does it only need A simple majority of all the voters to approve it?

Gayathri (30:32):
So this is where it gets complicated. So it’s a very low bar to reject any code change proposal, which is why it’s generally very hard to get a change through. So the voting body, if over 50% of people don’t like something, it just gets denied. So the one that I had, it got rejected by the first committee. So at the public comment hearing it didn’t need a simple majority. It needed the two thirds majority to get it through. And then once it gets the online vote, it still needs the two thirds to sustain it.

Robb (31:10):
so because that initial committee meeting turned it down, Each of the subsequent stages needs a two thirds majority to approve it.

Gayathri (31:23):
Yeah. So the bar gets raised higher, that’s what the purpose of that committee Action hearings.

Robb (31:28):
Okay. Okay. Yeah. But so then initial the initial tally looks like you got two thirds.

Gayathri (31:35):
Yes.

Robb (31:35):
Okay. And we’ll know the final results?

Gayathri (31:39):
I have no idea when, we are waiting. It looks like on the preliminary results, It’s going to be one of the most efficient code cycles yet if it goes through.

Robb (31:58):
what do you mean to most efficient codes?

Gayathri (32:00):
A lot of energy efficient proposals got approved.

Robb (32:08):
Oh okay. Should we talk about one of your other ones?

Gayathri (32:25):
So the other two I was part of were air leakage, air leakage tests. And so that’s how I got roped into this back in 2016 and because I failed at it, I knew I wanted to try again. And because I knew who the opposition was and I knew what they didn’t like about it, I spent, you know, basically 2018 corralling those people and saying, what didn’t you like about it? Can we work together? Instead of being on opposite sides of the aisle? Can we be on the same team coproponents of a proposal for air leakage testing on the residential side. And so we did, so we worked together.

Robb (32:59):
And we probably shouldn’t name any of these people?

Gayathri (33:02):
Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to take credit for it, but I mean I guess I didn’t ask permission to mention them, but a group of us worked together to get the air leakage test metric changed. And so it was very similar to what Sean had proposed for New York back in 2015. And so we worked together and at the committee action hearing it was very well supported by the residential committee. And so in this case it was supported by the committee. So basically we haven’t talked about this yet, but if it’s supported by the committee and nobody submits a public comment against it, then it goes on something called a consent agenda. And so basically that’s just a shoe in to be part of the next code cycle.

Gayathri (33:49):
So we had this, we had this winning proposal on the air leakage tests. We’re very excited about it. There were two public comments against it. And so we worked with those two public commenters to ask them, you know, what is wrong with our proposal? How can we work together before this gets to the public comment debate in Las Vegas. And so in working with them up until, you know, that public comment hearing was at the end of October, I think up until like the middle of October, I was still working with them to say, is there a compromise we can work out? And so we did and we worked out a compromise.

Robb (34:21):
So Briefly. This was about air leakage testing in multifamily buildings?

Gayathri (34:26):
Yes. And again, this is this particular one I had two. One was for residential buildings and one was for commercial. So when I say residential, it’s low rise multifamily, three stories and less. So it was an air leakage testing. So since 2012 IECC the residential buildings have had a test to either a three air changes per hours of 50 pascals or five air changes at 50 pascals. And that’s based on climate zone. So the warmer climate zones have the five and the colder climate zones have the three. you can do this for a single family home, but it’s the same metric for apartments or attached townhouses. You know, the metric never changed and it’s a volume based metric and you can test it at the building level or you can test it for individual apartments. There’s no distinction. And so for all the States that have adopted the 2012 or 2015 IECC, they struggled with that metric. Because there’s a lot of leakage between attached units. And so the work around, because maybe their state didn’t amend the code, a lot of States did amend the code to make, you know, the three ACH 50 a higher number or something more easy to comply with.

Robb (35:29):
So I guess from our standpoint, let me back up. So when you’re certifying a building for code compliance or whatever, you take a blower door you stick it in the door to that apartment, you depressurize that apartment and only that apartment and you need three or five ACH 50. Some of that leakage comes from outside, but plenty of it comes from neighboring apartments up and down. So I guess our, our take is, you know, compartmentalization is good, you know, air leakage between apartments is bad if your neighbor smokes or you know, for indoor air quality reasons. So from an energy standpoint, yeah, maybe, you know, outdoor air is the biggest culprit from an energy standpoint, but for IAQ reasons that’s why we were kind of like, just test each apartment. Is that the rationale?

Gayathri (36:15):
Yeah. Well basically, the rationale was there were a lot of opposition that were stating very similar things. The air between apartment that doesn’t reflect an energy penalty. Why are we talking about this? You know, you want this for indoor air quality. And so I learned enough about codes that the way around that argument was that the codes already allow compartmentalization testing. So the code already said you can test an apartment individually to meet that requirement of the three or the five ACH 50 so I wasn’t actually introducing a new concept. It already had compartmentalization testing. It already allowed you to test and include air from a neighboring apartment to meet the compliance. So luckily for me, I could, I could stand up to that opposition comment by stating that because that was true. I wasn’t introducing some new testing approach. All we were trying to do is say let’s, let’s continue to test the way code has allowed these buildings to tests, but let’s give them a different metric. And so the different metric instead of the ACH 50 was a surface area based metrics. So we use 0.3 CFM at 50 pascals per square foot of the enclosure of the apartment. It’s a metric energy star has used. LEED has used, ASHRAE 62 two as used. And so that’s the one that Sean helped get into the New York state code back in 2006

Robb (37:31):
Okay. So for a single family home, it’s kind of all external, but for an apartment it’s some party walls.

Gayathri (37:38):
Yeah. And so we got that. So we limited the scope of it. And so that was part of that compromise. We limited the scope of it to multifamily buildings and very small single family homes. So it wasn’t going to be a metric that was gonna be allowed for all single family homes. And so that was the, that was a proposal. And so because it was approved by the committee, the committee definitely likes options. Builders have been struggling with how to meet the current test metric, this three and five ACH 50, they’re always looking for work arounds and guarded tasks and other approaches to comply with the standard. And so they liked this approach because it gave the builder and option a new metric that maybe they won’t have to resort to a more expensive test procedure to comply. And so they liked it. And so because we dealt with the public comments and they agreed to withdraw their public comment. And so in doing so, it came off the public comment agenda, which saved it.

Robb (38:34):
you lost me again. So This proposal would allow to certify a multiple low rise multifamily building, you could test apartment by apartment. Is that right? Per CFM. Per square foot

Gayathri (38:47):
Right. You could already test department department. That didn’t change. We were just changing the metric to this, this new one.

Robb (38:53):
Okay. The CFM per square foot of enclosure area. So two people submitted public comments against it after it was approved by the committee. But then you talk to those two people and got them to withdraw their objections. Correct. So then what happens?

Gayathri (39:10):
So by doing that, it saves the proposal. So the proposal now doesn’t get debated at the public comment hearing. So if it’s not being debated, the public comment hearing it goes on something called the consent agenda and the consent agenda basically skips the public comment hearing. And so all the online vote sees is that it’s just as submitted. So that’s basically going to go in as, as submitted. That’s the, if the committee said we like this as submitted, it skips the public comment hearing, it’s basically going to go into the 2021 IECC as it was. So that’s, that’s the Holy grail right there. That’s what you want. You want to go with a winning submission at the committee action hearing, get it as submitted and it has zero public comments.

Robb (39:50):
So in Vegas, you didn’t have talk about this at all?

Gayathri (39:53):
No, thank goodness. No. And again, this was like a week leading up to it.

Robb (40:00):
So what were their objections? Like you didn’t, you didn’t change anything? Did they misunderstand?

Gayathri (40:05):
No. Well there was two. So no one was just wordsmithing part of the definition that we had for enclosure area.

Robb (40:14):
Did you change something then?

Gayathri (40:16):
No, we did not change something. We told them like we hear you, We think maybe we could change this in this, in another code cycle. And so some things like that aren’t worth changing. And the way we explained it to them is, you know, if we do change this because you know, we agree with you that the wording could be better. The problem we face is now when we go to public comment hearing instead of just being a simple majority like this just skates through to the 2021 IECC, now you’ve raised the bar to convincing two thirds of the people that now we need the standard. So is the change that you want so valuable that you’d rather you’d sacrifice his whole thing just being shot and not making it at all? So they just wanted to tweak it. And so we said we hear you, but I think we could work together on the next code cycle to fine tune that language. But the substance of it is so important that we’re hoping that you’ll withdraw the comment so we can actually get this metric into the code. And then wordsmith, the fine details of it was just the definition of my closure area. Okay. And the other one was also, the other one was a little bit more complicated. Again, like I said, when people submit proposals, you don’t know who are all the groups that are getting together to submit proposals on the same section. And so there was a bunch of people submitting on air leakage test because it has been a struggle for so long for multifamily builders. And so it was just, it was kind of a conflict with something that they were trying to do. And so we kind of negotiated away where they would do their public comment and we had a public comment on theirs. And so we kind of worked out a deal that, you know, we overlayed all our, our proposals together and we realized, you know, there’s a solution here that works. And so that’s kind of, you know, they agree to withdraw their public comment on theirs on ours. And we were agreed to withdraw public comment on theirs. I know it’s complicated. Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s all about conversations and just work. At the end of the day, it comes down to, you know, a lot of us just want the same thing, but we’re kind of going at it the wrong way. Like you don’t know what your opposition, you don’t have a chance to have these conversations with people before you submit the proposal. You don’t know who those people are. So once you do know who they are, you work together and figure out what the objections are. And then you can get like a compromise proposal through.

Robb (42:33):
But, you do have people who are just, Intransigent is the word that’s coming to mind, but that may be a little harsh, but just really opposed to codes requiring more and more of builders and developers.

Gayathri (42:56):
There’s definitely two factions that are usually represented at these hearings and people that are kind of resistant to change and people who are saying we were not changing fast enough. So those are kind of dueling factions that are always out there. And so some of my proposals, you know, I’m only there for a couple things. You know, I was there for this energy rating index thing. I was there for air leakage tests. Some of these other folks are there for the long haul. They have proposals invested in every section of the code.

Robb (43:24):
So it still goes out to all the thousands of voters around the country for the online vote. But for this air leakage testing proposal, it only needs a simple majority Because The objections to the committee got withdrawn.

Gayathri (43:40):
Right. And so it doesn’t even need anything at the online vote. It on the consent agenda.

Robb (43:50):
Oh so It’s just code? It will be code? that you know for sure?

Gayathri (43:55):
I believe so. Again, I’m not a super duper expert on it, but the way I understand it is that the Holy grail is to get something on the consent agenda. And the consent agenda basically is the committee action. Like the committee hearing, they approved it, nobody put a public comment against it. So there’s no other reason to debate at the public comment. So when you get to the, so they hold a consent, there’s a emotion at the beginning of the public comment hearing and it’s something about the consent agenda and all the proposals. There’s hundreds that were liked by the committee. So it’s just one fell swoop motion like all of these approved. Yes, something like that. Okay. And so at the online vote, maybe they it again, but I think it’s another just motion like yes, obviously were going to check this all the way through. I’m not a voter, so I don’t exactly know it looks like, but basically my understanding is that is what you want. That’s, that’s the goal. And so I didn’t have to clear another 50% that was, that was just that, that was why it was so important to have that discussion with the two public commenters to say, do you really want to have your public comment go through and raise the bar on this? Or do you actually like the substance of this change enough to say, all right, we can figure this out. And they did. Okay. And so the other, the other proposal I had is that same metric number three, number three. So this was, you know, that’s if it’s good for low rise multifamily, why can’t it be good for high rise multifamily? And so in the commercial code they also have an air leakage section.It’s just not mandatory. And so it’s an optional test. And so optional test means nobody tests it. And so for a couple of code cycles, they had also tried to get A mandatory air leakage test to be part of the commercial code. So residential codes been doing this since 2012 IECC commercial’s just had this optional visual inspection. And so I was approached and asked, you know, can you submit this proposal? We’ve got a technical brief on this. Can you submit one? And I said, sure. And so basically they had three overlapping proposals. What happens is sometimes if somebody doesn’t like one aspect of your proposal, it’s dead in the water. Even if they like everything else, right? They’re going to nitpick about that one particular aspect. And even if all the rest of the good stuff, they support it, they can’t support it because it’s one aspect. So the approach was to split this air leakage test proposal into three pieces. And the one I was involved in was for multifamily. And so it was going to require air leakage test for multifamily buildings. And they wanted to do the same metric that we had successfully gotten in low rise or they anticipated, they didn’t know at that time, they anticipated we would. So the same metric, the same 0.3 CFM FFT pascals test the apartments. So that was one that actually was also submitted by the commercial committee that heard it in in April. That was in Albuquerque. So that was voted as submitted and then it did have a couple public comments that were approved. It was approved. So the committee liked it. They did think that it was a good time to change. And I don’t remember the, the makeup of that committee but they did you know, they supported this air leakage test becoming mandatory. Again, I wasn’t there and I didn’t watch the video for that one. But in the public comment hearing there were two or three folks that submitted public comments cause they didn’t want to do air leakage tests in these multifamily buildings. It’s expensive. Things like that. Multifamily or any commercial buildings, they had split it into three because they thought if multifamily got through but the other ones didn’t, at least multifamily got through. And then if, if the other one, which I didn’t submit that was for non multifamily. So the other commercial buildings under commercial code

Robb (47:36):
Didn’t I remember you mentioning you testifying on the, like there was a certain big box store that had some very strong objections.

Gayathri (47:43):
Yes. They had very strong objections, even though they have a giant webpage devoted to how sustainable they are for their consumers. But they were out there against doing air leakage testing because they didn’t want to spend an extra $20,000 on a test. So yeah. So in that case, very similar, the committee liked it. The committee liked it when I had a residential proposal on the commercial proposal, the committee liked it. This time there’s three public comments, but we didn’t work together. We tried to have conversations with them to say, you know, do you really want to pose this? Like how about you know, could you meet us halfway? And so those conversations didn’t go anywhere. And so that’s why we were faced with debating them on the floor in Las Vegas. And so we did. And so we being other co proponents, other likeminded individuals, people that you know come out of the woodwork when you’re at the, at the hearings.

Robb (48:33):
So who gets to talk? Like do you get to talk cause you are the initial proponent of the amendment?

Gayathri (48:39):
Yeah. Anyone can talk, with no qualifications, no credential, nothing. You could have anyone. Well maybe not. Again, these are code hearings. It’s not super exciting. So yeah you can walk up there and basically you just queue up in a line and everyone gets their two minutes to say something. And then there’s a moderator keeping track of everyone. Two minutes. You have two minutes of testimony and then the next person. Basically all the people that are kind of on the same side of the proposal, they all speak. So we all stand up in a line behind the microphone and we just kind of discuss who wants to go first and who wants to go. So I remember on the flight to Las Vegas, I had a lot of strategizing to do. So. I definitely, you know me, I’m very organized. I basically laid out everyone’s testimony and said, you will say this and we will say this and I don’t cause you only have two minutes. So we didn’t want to overlap our all our content and there’s a lot of content to get through. And so we kind of just coordinated that to, you know, these are the points each of us can cover. And then other people jump up and say what they want. And you never know what the opposition is going to say or who’s going to say it. Well you preempted a lot of the opposition. Well because you already know what they’re going to say because they’ve said it at the committee action.

Robb (49:59):
So you just kind of preemptively refuted?

Gayathri (50:03):
Sometimes you have to do that because you only have two minutes. And so you know, they’re going to come back and you can rebut what they say in another minute. So you just go, it’s a, it’s a lot of back and forth, but the moderator makes sure people aren’t duplicating testimony and things like that. So.

Robb (50:17):
So for this, for this commercial code air testing, I guess there are three amendments, three proposed amendment, is that what you said? Or three parts.

Gayathri (50:26):
So 3 independent Proposals all in the same section with the hopes that if all three passed they would work, they would get melded together and they would work. But they were willing to sacrifice one. If one had the support of the committee or the public comment voters, then, you know, one having one was better than having none. And so I think maybe, and I wasn’t involved in prior cycles, so I think maybe previously maybe they had failed by looping, you know, lumping them all together.

Robb (50:55):
Okay. So because the initial committee in Albuquerque liked these proposals, You only needed a majority of voters present at the public comment hearing to approve it in order for it to come out of the public comment hearing as recommended?

Gayathri (51:15):
Correct. Exactly. And so the people that are submitting public comments, they have to know that they have to convince two thirds of the people in the room that their public comment is better than ours. And so there was one public comment that was like another wordsmithing. But you have to get two thirds of the people to agree with that. And then same for like the people that just flat out didn’t want it. So they had to be more convinced.

Robb (51:40):
So all of these three, did they pass?

Gayathri (51:44):
Yes. So far, so far so good.

Robb (51:50):
So from the Hearing in Vegas, They all came through?

Gayathri (51:51):
Yes.

Robb (51:52):
All right. And then so then it goes to the online vote. So, okay. Backing up, in Vegas, you would need two thirds to overturn the committee’s recommendation?

Gayathri (52:06):
Yes.

Robb (52:07):
And then they didn’t get two thirds on any of these. So then it goes to the online voters and they would need to approve it by a simple majority in order for these proposals to become code? And did you get preliminary results?

Gayathri (52:21):
Yes and So these are all, all the preliminary results are just lumped in together. So nobody knows anything else. I mean the preliminary results are, yes, those are, those are in, yes. But again, everything’s just still preliminary.

Robb (52:31):
So you batted a thousand this code cycle.

Gayathri (52:34):
I was told that, yes. I don’t know what that means, but something to do with baseball. It was easier when you only had, you know, I’m only there defending like three proposals whereas other people are there with giant binders cause they have to speak in defense of every single section. And so I went in there and all I had to focus on were the three that I cared about.

Robb (52:58):
Wow. Yeah. And but you were psyched,

Gayathri (53:01):
Yeah, it’s so fun. I like a good fight. And the thing is, the things I was fighting for just made sense. You know, they made sense. We’d put in the effort to coordinate and discuss, you know, we reached out to the opposition to see what they didn’t like about it to understand it and we put words into the proposal that kind of addressed their main concerns. So I think we proactive about it and so I thought, yeah, I think that helped.

Robb (53:28):
Nice. Awesome. So what do you get on the slate for next code cycle?

Gayathri (53:35):
Oh my goodness. I don’t even know. All the little word smithing and things like that that people said, you know, Oh no, we got to go back and you know, fix certain things. I know these three proposals on the commercial side, you know, when they melded together it, some of it is a little clunky, so I know people want to, you know, fix that.

Robb (53:55):
But these are some pretty significant changes.

Gayathri (53:57):
Yes. That’s what I was saying. Like from the beginning, like, you know, this is going to be the code cycle that I think really makes an impact on how efficient buildings will be. That once they would adopt the 2021 there’s tons of proposal I was not involved in that were, you know, pretty significant changes to the 2018 IECC. So I think it’s going to be pretty impressive. Things like the energy rating index, you know, dropping those scores a little bit lower, making those more stringent. Yeah, so there was a lot of changes I wasn’t involved in, but yeah. You know, maybe, you know, maybe the next cycle air leakage testing instead of the 0.3 number, maybe we make it a little tighter, you know, maybe 0.3 goes down to something else, you know, we’ll propose something different. So yeah, no, I find it interesting and Challenging.

Robb (54:40):
So do you know when we’ll get the absolute final decision on all the voting for the 2021?

Gayathri (54:46):
I do not. I have asked and I’m sure the second it gets released there’ll be, you know, blogs about it and things like that because everyone’s just waiting because definitely the people that are into energy efficiency and advancing the codes and getting to net zero, they’re excited about this one. So the second it’s, it’s legit, you’re going to see blog posts about it.

Robb (55:05):
All right. And we’ll post it. Yeah, absolutely. And you have a couple of blog posts about this already that we can link to.

Gayathri (55:12):
Yes. When I came back there was just, so I was just so excited about this process and you know, coming away with a successful proposals, you know, this is a dry topic. But I find it super exciting and I just liked the idea, you know, I think even like Sean when he got involved, the fact that, you know, we work in buildings and we just don’t realize that we could actually be the ones that changed the rules for all the buildings, not just the ones we work on with our individual clients. It’s just like, if we want to have a broad impact on buildings, we got to affect, you know, more than the ones that we know of. It’s got, this is the international energy conservation code and so we need to raise the bar for all of the buildings. And so if we have a good idea that makes sense. It’s not just like my way or the highway, you know, reach out to the builders and say, would this change work for you? Yeah. So instead of just like fighting against like, you know, code is, you know, it’s too hard. It doesn’t make sense. Instead of fighting it and complaining about it, you know, you just go and submit changes to it. So I thought it was fun.

Robb (56:07):
Awesome. Thanks for doing it. Thanks for talking about it.

Gayathri (56:11):
Yeah, no problem.

Robb (56:16):
Thank you to Gayathri. We have quite a few links on the show notes page if you want to check out more on this topic. Gayathri written some blog posts about the amendments themselves that she was working on and also about the process that we’ve been talking about. And all of these meetings and hearings are recorded and we’ve linked to them to the relevant videos that deal with the amendments guy through is working on. And I was impressed watching some of these videos. The, the hearings were run very efficiently. People were very concise for the most part and professional, very substantive comments very unlike say political debates. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I learned a lot watching much about the process, watching some of these videos. And finally at the time I’m talking right now, late March of 2020, the results of voting have completed, but the, the code itself is still not final.

Robb (57:16):
As Gayathri said, the, there was a kind of a groundswell of changes that really will push energy efficiency in a lot. A lot of buildings if they all get approved, voters approved them. But now there are challenges as I understand it, there are challenges relating to the procedure. This procedure that we’ve been talking about for the last hour or so was not done correctly. And so the results, the 2021 IECC will not be finalized until these challenges to the procedure are sorted out. We have links to more info about all this. Also, show notes are at swinter.com/podcast that’s S W I N T E R.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Our mission here is to improve the built environment. That’s really the core of our official company mission statement. That means better buildings or durable buildings, accessible, sustainable, healthy, new buildings, existing buildings. We are looking for help in doing this because it’s winter to.com/careers. If you are interested, we have openings in all of our offices, Connecticut, New York city, Washington, D C and our newest office in Boston. Thanks again to Gayathri and to the whole a podcast production team here. Alex Mirabile, Jayd Alvarez, Heather Breslin, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello and myself. Rob Aldrich. Thanks.

Curious about how building performance standards are decided upon?

The IECC, or “model code”, establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency by specifying the performance levels for the building envelope, mechanical systems, lighting systems, and service water heating systems in homes and commercial businesses. This model code is updated every three years, and within those three years there is a LOT of behind-the-scenes work going on to determine the changes for the next version. In this episode, we learn all about the long and lengthy code development process from SWA’s own Gayathri Vijayakumar.

Episode Guest: Gayathri Vijayakumar, Director, Residential Energy Services, Steven Winter Associates, Inc. 

For 15 years, Gayathri Vijayakumar has specialized in evaluating residential and multifamily buildings with an emphasis on high-performance construction and renewable energy systems. Gayathri is a Director for Residential Energy Services at SWA, supporting team members on their energy efficiency, research, and product development projects. She also provides consulting to federal, state, and local agencies, codes, and programs to develop emerging standards and procedures that involve energy efficiency requirements.

Gayathri currently is a member of the ASHRAE 62.2 Multifamily Working Group, Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300, and a voting member of ASHRAE’s Residential Buildings Committee.

Episode Information & Resources

*Scroll down for episode transcript!

International Code Council (ICC) Code Development Process website

The Making of the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) – written by Gayathri Vijayakumar

Testimony Videos from the Committee Action Hearing (April 2019, Albuquerque, NM):

Testimony Videos from the Public Comment Hearing (October 2019, Las Vegas):

*While not mentioned during the podcast, Gayathri wanted to acknowledge Robby Schwarz, Reid Hart, Mike Moore, New Buildings Institute, the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, the National Multifamily Housing Council, Ryan Meres, members from NY Department of State, and Joe Lstiburek, for their support and collaboration on many of the above proposals and at the hearings.

PH2020 is going virtual! At this conference, you can learn from a diverse international array of leading Passive House professionals: the scientists, the architects & engineers, the certifiers & component manufacturers, and the building owners and developers. Click here to learn more and to register!

Don’t miss sessions from Dylan Martello, Lauren Hildebrand, and others from SWA at this year’s conference! Visit SWA’s events page for more session details.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

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 (00:21):

In this episode I spoke with Gayathri, Vijayakumar, who is an engineer here at Steven winter associates. For a few years She’s been involved in the code amendment process specifically with the IECC, the international energy conservation code, like all of the IECC codes. That’s international code council. These are updated every three years and she got involved with working on several amendments to the code to improve energy efficiency. This is this conversation is really about the process of how codes are amended, not the substance of the codes or the substance of the amendments, not the amendments themselves. We’ll link to that information for sure, but this is really about the process and this is not my area of expertise as you can clearly tell if you listen to this episode. But Gayathri does a great job of breaking down the process, answering my many questions and clarifying when I’m confused, which was fairly often, I really learned a lot. So let’s chat with Gayathri.

Dylan (01:30):

Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the past passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually on June 11th and 12th. This year I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the US. Be sure to tune in online to see my session and others by registering at naphanconference.com that’s N a P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show.

Gayathri (02:06):

So they call the IECC the model code. And so generally all the work that goes into the model code, so it’s been the 2009, the 2012, the 2015, 2018 IECC. Right. So every three years when they go through those cycles it’s, it’s set up to be the model code that local jurisdictions like States can adopt and become the state energy code. And so if we talk about the 2018 IECC, usually States don’t adopt it that same year. They’re not adopting it in 2018. Right? It just gets published in 2018 so they’re usually a few years behind. And so what’s strange about the code cycle is that before your state has even adopted it, before most users are using it for their buildings, you already have to know that you want to change it. You have to know what about it you don’t like. And so usually it ends up being the people in the game that either in the building industry or in energy advocacy groups, they’re the ones that know what they don’t like about the current code. And they already know what they want to change about it three years from now. And so I got involved in the code cycle back in 2016 and so a colleague of ours,

Robb (03:16):

And so we’re talking right now in March of 2020 to put things in reference for people

Gayathri (03:21):

Exactly. So four years ago, and again, similar to you, I was not interested in code development is not my background. I’m a mechanical engineer. I came to Steven winter associates 15 years ago. Never envisioned that code development is where I wanted to go. A coworker of ours, Sean Maxwell, had been involved in the New York state adoption of the 2015 IECC, so like we were discussing, every state wants to adopt the model code, but it’s a model code. So they’re going to amend it to suit whatever needs they have. And so when New York state was looking at the 2015 IECC, there were things they didn’t like about it. And so they’d reached out to Steven winter associates and specifically about air leakage testing. Sean Maxwell had some ideas for certain changes to the air leakage test standards. And so he worked with them, provided some language. And so what most most States will do is they’ll amend a certain part or multiple parts of the model code. And so that becomes our own state version. And so he was working with them and then he had the bright idea instead of just limiting this amazing change he’d come up with for air leakage testing to be used in New York state, why not submit it to the actual model code, the actual IECC. And so the 2015 had just been printed, and so as soon as it’s printed, you have to think about the next code cycle, which is the 2018 version. So we had the language ready and so he somehow got involved and figured out, you know, on the IECC website how to submit a change proposal. And so he did that in time and that had to be done by January of 2016 so New York state hadn’t even used the 2015 IECC. He had just seen it in language through the amendment process. And so he submitted the change, and he was also not well versed in code development. There’s probably other people in our company that did code development work, but that was his first experience with it.

Robb (05:08):

Okay, cool. And long story short, that did not go through. So then he passed the torch to you for this next round of code amendments. Is that right?

Gayathri (05:20):

Sort of. So what happened was there’s three stages to the code development process.

Robb (05:26):

So let’s talk. So it’s 2020 now. So in 2019, you or people you were working, with submitted amendments went to several hearings or meetings about those amendments, and then there was ultimately some voting, which we’ll get into, but was the whole process like in 12 to 16 months?

Gayathri (05:54):

Basically, it’s very rapid fire. And so the story of some of those amendments actually starts with Sean’s proposal. So he initially submitted that proposal, air leakage testing in 2016. Right. So every code cycle, it’ll always start with a proposal. And you’re right, we submitted a couple amendments. He had submitted one, but what happened was, is he, he moved to Australia. So he missed two key parts of the process. So after you submit a proposal, there’s a committee action hearing and we’ll talk about that. And then there’s also a public comment hearing. So because he missed those very critical rounds, he roped me into it at the public comment hearing level. And so I tried and failed because I knew nothing about what the cycle was, but I gained a lot of experience from that experience at that the public comment hearings, learned who the players were, tried to defend a proposal in front of a lot of people and learn who my opposition was. So I learned it the hard way. And so then fast forward to three years later, I knew a little bit more about the process than I did back in 2016. And so I used that and I knew what the dates were. You know, I knew how to propose something by 2019 for the 2021 IECC. So none of our States are using the 2018 IECC, I don’t know, a year and a half ago. Who to reach out to, to collaborate to propose something and submit it by January of 2019.

Robb (07:14):

Okay. Okay. So you were involved with three three amendments, right? Yes. And we had talked a little bit before, it might make sense to focus on the simplest amendment first, what was the simplest amendment?

Gayathri (07:32):

The simplest one to just show you how it goes through the process is one where I wanted to submit a change for multifamily buildings that are subject to the commercial code. People in the past, had to get proposals in for multifamily because they get cut at the three-story height, you know, three stories and less its residential. Four stories and up is commercial.

Robb (07:51):

So you could have a three story multifamily building, add one more story, even though they’re exact same apartments, exact same construction type, entirely different code?

Gayathri (08:03):

Exactly. Very Different requirements. And so people had tried and failed in the past to provide some kind of unified path forward for code compliance for multifamily. So I thought of a simple one. So I submitted and basically there’s a code compliance path for low-rise multifamily called the ERI path, which is energy rating index. And so it’s not very popular but some people could choose to use it and because recent changes had allowed it to be used for multifamily high rise buildings, I said, why don’t I propose it as a code compliance option for high rise multifamily that are subject to commercial code. And so I submitted that as a very simple change.

Robb (08:35):

So ERI, it’s kind of like the HERS index, but the non proprietary version of a HERZ index. and so you can prove that you comply with for residential buildings with, by getting a hers rating or getting an ERI.

Gayathri (08:50):

Yes. For code compliance. Since 2015 there has been an ERI path. Most people will, a prescriptive code compliance use a Rez check. There’s also a simulated performance path. And then they had introduced in 2015 this ERI energy rating index path.

Robb (09:05):

I think you had said it was existing for high rise, but it was actually existing for residential and low rise and you propose to make it an option for high rise.

Gayathri (09:14):

Correct.

Robb (09:14):

Okay. Okay. Nice.

Gayathri (09:17):

And so because that had changed relatively recently that you could do an ERI on a apartment in a multifamily high rise building, that’s a relatively new change. That’s why it was limited before when they introduced it in the 2015 IECC, it was limited to residential low rise multifamily three stories and below. It was limited to them from the beginning. And so, because I knew it had changed, I introduced a, a sentence in the commercial provisions.

Robb (09:44):

So, so wait a minute. When you say you knew it would to change, you mean like you couldn’t even get an ERI in a, in an apartment in a high rise building?

Gayathri (09:52):

Correct.

Robb (09:52):

Okay. Okay. I didn’t follow you there. So Even pre-code just the whole ERI concept, you couldn’t apply it to a high rise building? And then now you can?

Gayathri (10:03):

Exactly. And so that, I mean that was a process that took some time. But yeah, historically you weren’t able to do the ERI except for units in buildings that are three stories and less. So when that change came about and I was aware of that I introduced it as a possible option if a commercial multifamily building now that this ERI was now available due to recent changes in that standard. I wanted to say they could choose it as their code compliance path. So it was just going to be an option. And so I figured I would throw it in there and I knew I’d failed in the previous code cycle, but I figured this would draw out the opposition so I’d hear what they didn’t like about it. And so it was a simple proposal. It went in. I also failed to attend the committee action hearing for this particular proposal.

Robb (10:44):

Oh, okay. So back up, so you submitted this, so this was trying to get it into the 2021 code. You submitted the proposal in January of 2019?

Gayathri (10:57):

Yes.

Robb (10:57):

Okay. So you submitted the proposal and then, then what happens?

Gayathri (11:01):

And then what happens is a committee action hearing. And so this is part of every code cycle. So once you put in a proposal, there’s hundreds and hundreds of proposals. You don’t know who’s going to propose something similar to what you proposed, who’s going to contradict you. You don’t know what sections. It’s just the wild, wild West. It’s all unknown. And so there’s hundreds, hundreds. And this is just, this is just that IECC if we’re talking about all the other codes, I’m not even involved in that. And so you can access all the proposals. So you know what else is being proposed and similar sections and you can find out who they are, who the people are that propose them. But you go to the committee action hearing and this is where you defend your proposal. And so in this simple example of this, this one of my proposals I wasn’t, I didn’t stay on for the committee action hearing on this.

Robb (11:49):

Whos the committee?

Gayathri (11:50):

So theres the commercial provisions and residential provision. So there’s two sections of the IECC. So they have a residential committee at about 11 people on that that committee. And then the commercial committee was about 14 people. I don’t know how they pick those members. Again, I’m not this, I’m not the expert in co-development, but they have a list of members that are on the residential side and then a different group for commercial. So it’s a long process. It was over 10 days of testimony cause there’s hundreds and hundreds proposals and it’s a, it’s a very long amount of time to get everyone the opportunity to speak. So you don’t know what day you’re going to speak necessarily. And so I couldn’t stay for 10 days in a row to wait for my commercial proposal to be heard. And so I left. And so I listened to the testimony. It was 30 minutes. So people get up and you know, there’s lots of opposition. I had a couple of people speak in my defense. But anyways, it failed. The committee was not, you know, there wasn’t enough testimony and support in my proposal. I think if I’d been there, I probably could have argued against the opposition pretty effectively, but I wasn’t there. And so basically it fails.

New Speaker (12:57):

Is this just a simple majority from the committee?

Gayathri (12:59):

Simple majority from the committee.

Robb (13:00):

And who’s on the committee?

Gayathri (13:02):

I actually don’t know. It’s a, it’s a mix of people. There’s definitely a few faces that I recognize. There’s usually they try to keep it balanced. So between like building industry and then energy advocates, I think there’s a mix of people that they have to keep on the committee.

Robb (13:18):

So here’s a question. Since your proposal was to treat high rise residential units as residential units, that was the commercial committee that had to hear that? Or was that the residential committee that had to hear that?

Gayathri (13:33):

The commercial committee had to hear it. Cause you basically have to propose specific words for the IECC and that’s it. Those are the words that will get used if it gets, if it’s successful, nobody else goes back and wordsmiths your language. This is it. If you see typos in the code, that’s because that’s what happens. It’s not that the IECC goes back and says, Oh, what they meant to say was this. Now it’s, that’s it. You have one shot at it. And so because they didn’t like, you know, but they outlined they have to give rationale for their reason for rejecting it. And so for this particular one, they weren’t confident that the, the expansion of scope of the energy rating index was warranted to go to high rise. They were concerned about central systems and multifamily high rise buildings. They had a couple, you know, good reasons for wanting to have heard more or understood more. But the problem was I wasn’t there to give them all the answers. And so the next step, if you aren’t going to admit defeat is to submit a public comment. And so once they announced that the committee has made all their, their decisions, so they, they print out all the results and you can decide, I want to submit a public comment. And there’s a deadline. I think it was in early June or July. So you have to submit a public comment to bring your proposal back to give it a chance. And so that happens at a public comment hearing in October.

Robb (14:55):

Okay. So yeah, a few weeks or months after the first meeting, which was called the committee action hearing they published their decisions and it’s basically either thumbs up or thumbs down. The majority of the committee

Gayathri (15:09):

Yeah. And the document will show exactly how many committee members will be like, you know, 14 to zero or 13 to one. You’ll see the number of committee members who voted for and against and they have to give you some kind of summary statement of why, you know, it doesn’t wrap up the entire conversation. You know, the testimony for this one was 30 minutes. So they just have to give a, a sentence or two about why they, they didn’t like it.

Robb (15:30):

So then you’re not done. Then you submit a public comment.

Gayathri (15:37):

A public comment. And so the public comment anyone can submit, anyone can submit a public comment. And so for this particular one, I was the original proponent of the change proposal. I’m submitting a public comment. I did two of them, actually I did one just in support of my original one because I thought it was a good sound proposal. I just wasn’t there in person to defend it. And so you submit it online with a reason statement of why you think it should be heard again. And so I did one like that. And then the second one I did was to actually broker a compromise. You know, I’d heard loud and clear from the testimony of why they didn’t like it. So I said, okay, I hear you.There’s qualms about central systems. So I limited the scope of the language in the, in the proposal to say you can use this but not if you have central systems.

Robb (16:25):

So only if the heating, cooling, water, heating

Gayathri (16:27):

was all in unit systems. It seemed like what I heard from the testimony from the committee action hearing was that was kind of like the really point of contention. And I thought, you know, all right, I can meet them halfway, I’ll propose two, and so the reason to propose two is then it gets on the public comment hearing agenda. If you don’t submit anything, you never get a chance to defend it again at the public comment. So if I’d missed that it would just be dead in the water. And so you have to make sure that you submit a public comment. The, the hurdle is much higher. It’s we’ll get to voting probably at some point in this conversation, but usually it is just a 50% simple majority vote to disagree with anybody’s proposal. So it’s very easy to reject changes.

Robb (17:13):

So, so, so hang on, so anybody and everybody can submit a public comment. And probably most people who have their proposed amendment rejected will come back and submit a public comment. Okay. So they submitted public comment and then there’s this next meeting, which is a public comment hearing. I should be able to remember that name, but I won’t. So at the public comment hearing, which was, which was when in 2019?

Gayathri (17:40):

it’s usually in October. And so the committee action hearings usually like in April or may and then the public comment is usually in October.

Robb (17:50):

All right, so you went out to Vegas, wasn’t this one?

Gayathri (17:52):

This year was in Las Vegas.

Robb (17:53):

So then is this another 10 day?

Gayathri (17:59):

The window’s a little shorter because there’s not as many proposals on the public comment agenda. So in the committee action hearing, everybody’s proposals are being heard. And it’s just the committee of 11 people on the residential and it was 14 on the committee, on the commercial one everyone gets heard, but everyone only gets two minutes to speak in favor. And then one minute opposition. But it’s all the proposals on the public comment hearing agenda, the, it’s less, right. So if their original proposal was well liked by the committee and they said thumbs up and nobody submits a public comment, that’s not on the public comment aGendra so we’ve whittled down the number of proposals that are going to be heard.

Robb (18:38):

I see. So it’s both ways. They turn proposals down and then people who actually want them submit a comment or they give the proposals a thumbs up and people who don’t like them will submit a comment. Okay. So then what’s that like? Like do you at least have an idea of when your, when your amendment is going to be heard?

Gayathri (19:00):

It’s not a very clear idea. They give you a schedule and so they try and stick to it. And so some days you’d be there from 8:00 AM and they’d say we’re going to go until seven but then you’d be there and they’re like, we’re not making enough progress so we have to get, you have to go through it a lot faster. So you could be be there until 10 o’clock at night. So you know some people you just have to book a one way ticket because you don’t know. There was definitely times where I thought my proposal might not get heard before I have to leave. And so it is a little, it is very hard. Yeah.

Robb (19:26):

Like, is there an order, like there’s 4,000 comments, you’re 2,782 or whatever?

Gayathri (19:34):

They do Print the agenda. The hearing order. Okay. And so what happens is at the beginning of the public comment, hearing people can make a motion to reorder certain proposals and regroup them and things like that. But it has to be sustained by the voting members. So some people will just see that, you know, there’s a getting moved ahead or behind to somebody and they’ll reject it for that reason. So yeah, you definitely need to be present when certain things like that happen. But yeah, you can change the order on it. It is a lot.

Robb (20:04):

Wow. So wait, is it the same 11 or 14 people?

Gayathri (20:11):

Ah, no. Good question. That’s different. It’s totally different. So the committee action hearing, right? the first meeting in April, right? So you have this great proposal, it’s a great idea. You’re defending it against the opposition. Anybody who can talk to you, but you’re only trying to convince the people on the committee. So there was 11 or so people on the residential 14 on, on commercial. And the public comment hearing is completely different. You’re not trying to convince a committee, you’re trying to actually come convince voting members. And we haven’t talked about voting members yet. So voting members are people like government and state officials. It could be from like your local department of buildings, every jurisdiction, all these authorities having jurisdictions, they have these voting members that go to the public comment hearing cause they’re basically there to see which proposals are probably going to make it into the next round of the model code. And so whether they like it or not, whether they’re going to have to have all this extra work the next time the model code gets adopted by their state or if they’re going to have to change it. So they have a vested interest to be there and they get to vote. So they get to hear it firsthand from anyone who had a proposal to see if they actually support it. So that’s who you’re trying to convince.

Robb (21:18):

There must be thousands of these voters you would think in the country, but then any of those thousands can come to this meeting?

Gayathri (21:27):

Yes. Yes. But guess how many were there actually voting? I mean like we just sat like there’s so many days on end that you have to commit to being here.

Robb (21:38):

112?

Gayathri (21:40):

For certain codes. Like so there’s the IRC, the international residential code, there’s a building code, mechanical code. So when they got down to the IECC, the residential provisions, some of the votes were only a total of 60 voters. So it’s not a lot of people.

Robb (21:56):

So this second round of meetings, the public comment hearing, there are thousands of potential voters, tens of thousands probably.

Gayathri (22:09):

Yeah, definitely thousands. But the only ones that can vote are the ones that actually make the trip to wherever the hearing is and this year was in Vegas. And if they’re in the room at the time that the proposal is heard. So there was a lot of ebb and flow of like how many people were in the room. So you could, you know, they could break for dinner and your proposal, it could be the next one up. And here you are in Las Vegas. People don’t come back after dinner. And so all of a sudden there’s only 11 voters when your proposal is heard and it fails because there’s just not enough people. Or the people that you knew were going to vote your way are gone now.

Robb (22:41):

Okay. So, all right. So anyways, you have 11 to 20,000 voters in the room and you have what? So your amendment is called number 2784, whatever. And you come up and so you will explain your public comment, so what happened with this?

Gayathri (23:11):

So we’ll go with this example. So this first example, right? So first of all, the committee hated it, right? So it got denied 14 to zero on April. So it was, so the motion on the floor, so this all lots of wording that I was not familiar with before. The motion on the floor is the committee disapproved it. Okay. Right. So basically the first motion on the floor in Vegas at the public comment hearing is to sustain this move, this disapproval vote that the committee had. Okay. So they say, you know who wants to speak? Who wants to speak in favor of the committee’s motion for disapproval. So all the same people that hated it before get up and speak again. But this time I’m there. And so I also have some other people that did like the proposal who had spoken on on behalf of it when I wasn’t there. And so we all line up and we speak in favor of it. So it’s a two step process at the public comment hearing if the committee already said they did not like it, you have to convince enough people. It’s a simple majority of the voting members to at least allow you to present your public comment.

Robb (24:13):

So you just end up convincing twice. Okay, so you stand up and say, I make a motion to explain the rationale for this amendment or, or in this case, the modifications I’ve made to the amendment.

Gayathri (24:24):

Yes. So basically that first, that first step is like they all say all the things they hated about it. You got up and say, no, it was really good. And we really want to convince you guys to let us talk about the public comment. The first motion is to let them, you had to convince them to say the public comments worth hearing. And so we cleared that bar. We told them, you know, we have two good public comments, just give us a chance. And so we had the, we got the simple majority to say, all right, we’ll give them a chance to explain the public comments. And then public comment comes out and I had two options, right? I was just the same one I’d proposed before. And then the one where I said, you know, here’s a compromise. The, the commercial committee on this didn’t like it cause it was too broad in scope had central systems. So I have a public comment that’s very limited. And so when I defended that one that got, you know, 80% of the vote in the room, the compromise did. And so that became the standing motion instead of disapproval. The public comment hearing results would say that that was as modified by public comment that becomes the result from this public comment hearing was that instead of disapproval we want to go through with this proposal, but as modified by a public comment.

Robb (25:37):

Were the initial committee members there also?

Gayathri (25:39):

Yes. So a lot of the original committee members were there. They are, some of them are still voting members and so they might’ve been there voting. I know I spoke to a couple of them to, you know, get their firsthand input on why they liked it or why they didn’t like it. So yeah, they’re voting, they’re also voting members.

Robb (25:56):

Okay, cool. So did anybody come stand up and speak against it?

New Speaker (26:02):

Oh yeah. Pretty much the same people from the committee action hearing, which I wasn’t there for, but I watched the videos. I knew who they were. There’s video of all of this.

Robb (26:14):

So we’ll, I’ll make sure to put the link to that in the show notes for everybody who can’t wait to watch two weeks of code hearing. Oh my gosh.

Gayathri (26:25):

Oh, and also the committee action hearing. So We’ll just leave it at, I was convincing enough that it was worth the vote of the people, the room, and they agreed.

Robb (26:44):

Okay. Very good. Then it came out of Vegas at the committee after the public comment hearing. Then all of these hundreds of proposals go to all of those thousands of voting members across the country. Is that right?

Gayathri (27:05):

Well, you basically, you do have to get into the system, you have to like there’s a deadline. I’m not a voter. So the online voters, they call them the governmental member voters or something like that. So only certain people can vote. Like the people in the public comment hearing, you know, they had a vote cause they were like a local official and they were there. So those are the same kinds of people that can vote online. So there’s this online vote that happens in like November or December. And so at that point you there was some deadline where you had to register. It’s just like voter registration. You had to make sure you registered to vote in time and if you did, then you can participate in the online vote and you don’t have to vote for every single proposal. You can go in and cherry pick the ones you want to vote for.

Gayathri (27:45):

But when you go and do your vote, they’ll give you the whole history. So the original proposal is there, you’ll have the voting results from the original committee. You’ll see that like in my example that they disapproved it. You’ll see that in the public comment round, they, you know, the, the committee was overturned and the public comment decided that they liked the public comment. And so the voter will get to see all of that. They’ll get to see the numbers, they’ll see their original language, they’ll see the modified language and they can make a decision. And so that’s the final vote.

Robb (28:17):

And, I think you said that there were way more votes, way more possible voters actually voted this year. Is that right? How did the online vote work for this?

Gayathri (28:31):

So this one was a little bit different than the the first year that I was involved in 2016 when you did the public comment hearing, all those votes were just taken by a wave of hands. And so there was no electronic voting. And so in this code cycle, when we were in Las Vegas, all the voters had these electronic gizmos and they were doing their voting electronically. And so all those votes automatically transferred into the online system. And so, you know, instead of starting at zero votes, so like in the first set, the first one I was involved in back in 2016 when I got to the online vote, the one that happened in like November, December, there’s zero votes for any proposals. You start from scratch. But this year you at least started with the 50 or 60 people that voted while they’re in Las Vegas. And they have not yet released the final vote tallies for the 2021 IECC, So I don’t know how many people totally voted. I just know at least all the public common votes automatically counted.

Robb (29:33):

Wait, but, the online voting happened in like late in 2019.

Gayathri (29:40):

Yes. So like November/December It wrapped up. They just haven’t released the final voting tallies. They have preliminary results out. So we kind of an idea if everything goes smoothly. I think they just have to go back. There’s like a, a process, again, I’m not familiar, but there’s a process where they go back and check the votes.

Robb (29:54):

So, you know preliminary numbers but it has to be like certified or whatever? What were the preliminary numbers?

Gayathri (30:01):

So for at least my, this proposal that we’ve been talking about, it’s approved.

Robb (30:07):

By a good margin.?

Gayathri (30:08):

I don’t know. Those are preliminary thumbs up, thumbs down.

Robb (30:14):

So because it got approved at the public comment hearing. Does it only need A simple majority of all the voters to approve it?

Gayathri (30:32):

So this is where it gets complicated. So it’s a very low bar to reject any code change proposal, which is why it’s generally very hard to get a change through. So the voting body, if over 50% of people don’t like something, it just gets denied. So the one that I had, it got rejected by the first committee. So at the public comment hearing it didn’t need a simple majority. It needed the two thirds majority to get it through. And then once it gets the online vote, it still needs the two thirds to sustain it.

Robb (31:10):

so because that initial committee meeting turned it down, Each of the subsequent stages needs a two thirds majority to approve it.

Gayathri (31:23):

Yeah. So the bar gets raised higher, that’s what the purpose of that committee Action hearings.

Robb (31:28):

Okay. Okay. Yeah. But so then initial the initial tally looks like you got two thirds.

Gayathri (31:35):

Yes.

Robb (31:35):

Okay. And we’ll know the final results?

Gayathri (31:39):

I have no idea when, we are waiting. It looks like on the preliminary results, It’s going to be one of the most efficient code cycles yet if it goes through.

Robb (31:58):

what do you mean to most efficient codes?

Gayathri (32:00):

A lot of energy efficient proposals got approved.

Robb (32:08):

Oh okay. Should we talk about one of your other ones?

Gayathri (32:25):

So the other two I was part of were air leakage, air leakage tests. And so that’s how I got roped into this back in 2016 and because I failed at it, I knew I wanted to try again. And because I knew who the opposition was and I knew what they didn’t like about it, I spent, you know, basically 2018 corralling those people and saying, what didn’t you like about it? Can we work together? Instead of being on opposite sides of the aisle? Can we be on the same team coproponents of a proposal for air leakage testing on the residential side. And so we did, so we worked together.

Robb (32:59):

And we probably shouldn’t name any of these people?

Gayathri (33:02):

Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to take credit for it, but I mean I guess I didn’t ask permission to mention them, but a group of us worked together to get the air leakage test metric changed. And so it was very similar to what Sean had proposed for New York back in 2015. And so we worked together and at the committee action hearing it was very well supported by the residential committee. And so in this case it was supported by the committee. So basically we haven’t talked about this yet, but if it’s supported by the committee and nobody submits a public comment against it, then it goes on something called a consent agenda. And so basically that’s just a shoe in to be part of the next code cycle.

Gayathri (33:49):

So we had this, we had this winning proposal on the air leakage tests. We’re very excited about it. There were two public comments against it. And so we worked with those two public commenters to ask them, you know, what is wrong with our proposal? How can we work together before this gets to the public comment debate in Las Vegas. And so in working with them up until, you know, that public comment hearing was at the end of October, I think up until like the middle of October, I was still working with them to say, is there a compromise we can work out? And so we did and we worked out a compromise.

Robb (34:21):

So Briefly. This was about air leakage testing in multifamily buildings?

Gayathri (34:26):

Yes. And again, this is this particular one I had two. One was for residential buildings and one was for commercial. So when I say residential, it’s low rise multifamily, three stories and less. So it was an air leakage testing. So since 2012 IECC the residential buildings have had a test to either a three air changes per hours of 50 pascals or five air changes at 50 pascals. And that’s based on climate zone. So the warmer climate zones have the five and the colder climate zones have the three. you can do this for a single family home, but it’s the same metric for apartments or attached townhouses. You know, the metric never changed and it’s a volume based metric and you can test it at the building level or you can test it for individual apartments. There’s no distinction. And so for all the States that have adopted the 2012 or 2015 IECC, they struggled with that metric. Because there’s a lot of leakage between attached units. And so the work around, because maybe their state didn’t amend the code, a lot of States did amend the code to make, you know, the three ACH 50 a higher number or something more easy to comply with.

Robb (35:29):

So I guess from our standpoint, let me back up. So when you’re certifying a building for code compliance or whatever, you take a blower door you stick it in the door to that apartment, you depressurize that apartment and only that apartment and you need three or five ACH 50. Some of that leakage comes from outside, but plenty of it comes from neighboring apartments up and down. So I guess our, our take is, you know, compartmentalization is good, you know, air leakage between apartments is bad if your neighbor smokes or you know, for indoor air quality reasons. So from an energy standpoint, yeah, maybe, you know, outdoor air is the biggest culprit from an energy standpoint, but for IAQ reasons that’s why we were kind of like, just test each apartment. Is that the rationale?

Gayathri (36:15):

Yeah. Well basically, the rationale was there were a lot of opposition that were stating very similar things. The air between apartment that doesn’t reflect an energy penalty. Why are we talking about this? You know, you want this for indoor air quality. And so I learned enough about codes that the way around that argument was that the codes already allow compartmentalization testing. So the code already said you can test an apartment individually to meet that requirement of the three or the five ACH 50 so I wasn’t actually introducing a new concept. It already had compartmentalization testing. It already allowed you to test and include air from a neighboring apartment to meet the compliance. So luckily for me, I could, I could stand up to that opposition comment by stating that because that was true. I wasn’t introducing some new testing approach. All we were trying to do is say let’s, let’s continue to test the way code has allowed these buildings to tests, but let’s give them a different metric. And so the different metric instead of the ACH 50 was a surface area based metrics. So we use 0.3 CFM at 50 pascals per square foot of the enclosure of the apartment. It’s a metric energy star has used. LEED has used, ASHRAE 62 two as used. And so that’s the one that Sean helped get into the New York state code back in 2006

Robb (37:31):

Okay. So for a single family home, it’s kind of all external, but for an apartment it’s some party walls.

Gayathri (37:38):

Yeah. And so we got that. So we limited the scope of it. And so that was part of that compromise. We limited the scope of it to multifamily buildings and very small single family homes. So it wasn’t going to be a metric that was gonna be allowed for all single family homes. And so that was the, that was a proposal. And so because it was approved by the committee, the committee definitely likes options. Builders have been struggling with how to meet the current test metric, this three and five ACH 50, they’re always looking for work arounds and guarded tasks and other approaches to comply with the standard. And so they liked this approach because it gave the builder and option a new metric that maybe they won’t have to resort to a more expensive test procedure to comply. And so they liked it. And so because we dealt with the public comments and they agreed to withdraw their public comment. And so in doing so, it came off the public comment agenda, which saved it.

Robb (38:34):

you lost me again. So This proposal would allow to certify a multiple low rise multifamily building, you could test apartment by apartment. Is that right? Per CFM. Per square foot

Gayathri (38:47):

Right. You could already test department department. That didn’t change. We were just changing the metric to this, this new one.

Robb (38:53):

Okay. The CFM per square foot of enclosure area. So two people submitted public comments against it after it was approved by the committee. But then you talk to those two people and got them to withdraw their objections. Correct. So then what happens?

Gayathri (39:10):

So by doing that, it saves the proposal. So the proposal now doesn’t get debated at the public comment hearing. So if it’s not being debated, the public comment hearing it goes on something called the consent agenda and the consent agenda basically skips the public comment hearing. And so all the online vote sees is that it’s just as submitted. So that’s basically going to go in as, as submitted. That’s the, if the committee said we like this as submitted, it skips the public comment hearing, it’s basically going to go into the 2021 IECC as it was. So that’s, that’s the Holy grail right there. That’s what you want. You want to go with a winning submission at the committee action hearing, get it as submitted and it has zero public comments.

Robb (39:50):

So in Vegas, you didn’t have talk about this at all?

Gayathri (39:53):

No, thank goodness. No. And again, this was like a week leading up to it.

Robb (40:00):

So what were their objections? Like you didn’t, you didn’t change anything? Did they misunderstand?

Gayathri (40:05):

No. Well there was two. So no one was just wordsmithing part of the definition that we had for enclosure area.

Robb (40:14):

Did you change something then?

Gayathri (40:16):

No, we did not change something. We told them like we hear you, We think maybe we could change this in this, in another code cycle. And so some things like that aren’t worth changing. And the way we explained it to them is, you know, if we do change this because you know, we agree with you that the wording could be better. The problem we face is now when we go to public comment hearing instead of just being a simple majority like this just skates through to the 2021 IECC, now you’ve raised the bar to convincing two thirds of the people that now we need the standard. So is the change that you want so valuable that you’d rather you’d sacrifice his whole thing just being shot and not making it at all? So they just wanted to tweak it. And so we said we hear you, but I think we could work together on the next code cycle to fine tune that language. But the substance of it is so important that we’re hoping that you’ll withdraw the comment so we can actually get this metric into the code. And then wordsmith, the fine details of it was just the definition of my closure area. Okay. And the other one was also, the other one was a little bit more complicated. Again, like I said, when people submit proposals, you don’t know who are all the groups that are getting together to submit proposals on the same section. And so there was a bunch of people submitting on air leakage test because it has been a struggle for so long for multifamily builders. And so it was just, it was kind of a conflict with something that they were trying to do. And so we kind of negotiated away where they would do their public comment and we had a public comment on theirs. And so we kind of worked out a deal that, you know, we overlayed all our, our proposals together and we realized, you know, there’s a solution here that works. And so that’s kind of, you know, they agree to withdraw their public comment on theirs on ours. And we were agreed to withdraw public comment on theirs. I know it’s complicated. Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s all about conversations and just work. At the end of the day, it comes down to, you know, a lot of us just want the same thing, but we’re kind of going at it the wrong way. Like you don’t know what your opposition, you don’t have a chance to have these conversations with people before you submit the proposal. You don’t know who those people are. So once you do know who they are, you work together and figure out what the objections are. And then you can get like a compromise proposal through.

Robb (42:33):

But, you do have people who are just, Intransigent is the word that’s coming to mind, but that may be a little harsh, but just really opposed to codes requiring more and more of builders and developers.

Gayathri (42:56):

There’s definitely two factions that are usually represented at these hearings and people that are kind of resistant to change and people who are saying we were not changing fast enough. So those are kind of dueling factions that are always out there. And so some of my proposals, you know, I’m only there for a couple things. You know, I was there for this energy rating index thing. I was there for air leakage tests. Some of these other folks are there for the long haul. They have proposals invested in every section of the code.

Robb (43:24):

So it still goes out to all the thousands of voters around the country for the online vote. But for this air leakage testing proposal, it only needs a simple majority Because The objections to the committee got withdrawn.

Gayathri (43:40):

Right. And so it doesn’t even need anything at the online vote. It on the consent agenda.

Robb (43:50):

Oh so It’s just code? It will be code? that you know for sure?

Gayathri (43:55):

I believe so. Again, I’m not a super duper expert on it, but the way I understand it is that the Holy grail is to get something on the consent agenda. And the consent agenda basically is the committee action. Like the committee hearing, they approved it, nobody put a public comment against it. So there’s no other reason to debate at the public comment. So when you get to the, so they hold a consent, there’s a emotion at the beginning of the public comment hearing and it’s something about the consent agenda and all the proposals. There’s hundreds that were liked by the committee. So it’s just one fell swoop motion like all of these approved. Yes, something like that. Okay. And so at the online vote, maybe they it again, but I think it’s another just motion like yes, obviously were going to check this all the way through. I’m not a voter, so I don’t exactly know it looks like, but basically my understanding is that is what you want. That’s, that’s the goal. And so I didn’t have to clear another 50% that was, that was just that, that was why it was so important to have that discussion with the two public commenters to say, do you really want to have your public comment go through and raise the bar on this? Or do you actually like the substance of this change enough to say, all right, we can figure this out. And they did. Okay. And so the other, the other proposal I had is that same metric number three, number three. So this was, you know, that’s if it’s good for low rise multifamily, why can’t it be good for high rise multifamily? And so in the commercial code they also have an air leakage section.It’s just not mandatory. And so it’s an optional test. And so optional test means nobody tests it. And so for a couple of code cycles, they had also tried to get A mandatory air leakage test to be part of the commercial code. So residential codes been doing this since 2012 IECC commercial’s just had this optional visual inspection. And so I was approached and asked, you know, can you submit this proposal? We’ve got a technical brief on this. Can you submit one? And I said, sure. And so basically they had three overlapping proposals. What happens is sometimes if somebody doesn’t like one aspect of your proposal, it’s dead in the water. Even if they like everything else, right? They’re going to nitpick about that one particular aspect. And even if all the rest of the good stuff, they support it, they can’t support it because it’s one aspect. So the approach was to split this air leakage test proposal into three pieces. And the one I was involved in was for multifamily. And so it was going to require air leakage test for multifamily buildings. And they wanted to do the same metric that we had successfully gotten in low rise or they anticipated, they didn’t know at that time, they anticipated we would. So the same metric, the same 0.3 CFM FFT pascals test the apartments. So that was one that actually was also submitted by the commercial committee that heard it in in April. That was in Albuquerque. So that was voted as submitted and then it did have a couple public comments that were approved. It was approved. So the committee liked it. They did think that it was a good time to change. And I don’t remember the, the makeup of that committee but they did you know, they supported this air leakage test becoming mandatory. Again, I wasn’t there and I didn’t watch the video for that one. But in the public comment hearing there were two or three folks that submitted public comments cause they didn’t want to do air leakage tests in these multifamily buildings. It’s expensive. Things like that. Multifamily or any commercial buildings, they had split it into three because they thought if multifamily got through but the other ones didn’t, at least multifamily got through. And then if, if the other one, which I didn’t submit that was for non multifamily. So the other commercial buildings under commercial code

Robb (47:36):

Didn’t I remember you mentioning you testifying on the, like there was a certain big box store that had some very strong objections.

Gayathri (47:43):

Yes. They had very strong objections, even though they have a giant webpage devoted to how sustainable they are for their consumers. But they were out there against doing air leakage testing because they didn’t want to spend an extra $20,000 on a test. So yeah. So in that case, very similar, the committee liked it. The committee liked it when I had a residential proposal on the commercial proposal, the committee liked it. This time there’s three public comments, but we didn’t work together. We tried to have conversations with them to say, you know, do you really want to pose this? Like how about you know, could you meet us halfway? And so those conversations didn’t go anywhere. And so that’s why we were faced with debating them on the floor in Las Vegas. And so we did. And so we being other co proponents, other likeminded individuals, people that you know come out of the woodwork when you’re at the, at the hearings.

Robb (48:33):

So who gets to talk? Like do you get to talk cause you are the initial proponent of the amendment?

Gayathri (48:39):

Yeah. Anyone can talk, with no qualifications, no credential, nothing. You could have anyone. Well maybe not. Again, these are code hearings. It’s not super exciting. So yeah you can walk up there and basically you just queue up in a line and everyone gets their two minutes to say something. And then there’s a moderator keeping track of everyone. Two minutes. You have two minutes of testimony and then the next person. Basically all the people that are kind of on the same side of the proposal, they all speak. So we all stand up in a line behind the microphone and we just kind of discuss who wants to go first and who wants to go. So I remember on the flight to Las Vegas, I had a lot of strategizing to do. So. I definitely, you know me, I’m very organized. I basically laid out everyone’s testimony and said, you will say this and we will say this and I don’t cause you only have two minutes. So we didn’t want to overlap our all our content and there’s a lot of content to get through. And so we kind of just coordinated that to, you know, these are the points each of us can cover. And then other people jump up and say what they want. And you never know what the opposition is going to say or who’s going to say it. Well you preempted a lot of the opposition. Well because you already know what they’re going to say because they’ve said it at the committee action.

Robb (49:59):

So you just kind of preemptively refuted?

Gayathri (50:03):

Sometimes you have to do that because you only have two minutes. And so you know, they’re going to come back and you can rebut what they say in another minute. So you just go, it’s a, it’s a lot of back and forth, but the moderator makes sure people aren’t duplicating testimony and things like that. So.

Robb (50:17):

So for this, for this commercial code air testing, I guess there are three amendments, three proposed amendment, is that what you said? Or three parts.

Gayathri (50:26):

So 3 independent Proposals all in the same section with the hopes that if all three passed they would work, they would get melded together and they would work. But they were willing to sacrifice one. If one had the support of the committee or the public comment voters, then, you know, one having one was better than having none. And so I think maybe, and I wasn’t involved in prior cycles, so I think maybe previously maybe they had failed by looping, you know, lumping them all together.

Robb (50:55):

Okay. So because the initial committee in Albuquerque liked these proposals, You only needed a majority of voters present at the public comment hearing to approve it in order for it to come out of the public comment hearing as recommended?

Gayathri (51:15):

Correct. Exactly. And so the people that are submitting public comments, they have to know that they have to convince two thirds of the people in the room that their public comment is better than ours. And so there was one public comment that was like another wordsmithing. But you have to get two thirds of the people to agree with that. And then same for like the people that just flat out didn’t want it. So they had to be more convinced.

Robb (51:40):

So all of these three, did they pass?

Gayathri (51:44):

Yes. So far, so far so good.

Robb (51:50):

So from the Hearing in Vegas, They all came through?

Gayathri (51:51):

Yes.

Robb (51:52):

All right. And then so then it goes to the online vote. So, okay. Backing up, in Vegas, you would need two thirds to overturn the committee’s recommendation?

Gayathri (52:06):

Yes.

Robb (52:07):

And then they didn’t get two thirds on any of these. So then it goes to the online voters and they would need to approve it by a simple majority in order for these proposals to become code? And did you get preliminary results?

Gayathri (52:21):

Yes and So these are all, all the preliminary results are just lumped in together. So nobody knows anything else. I mean the preliminary results are, yes, those are, those are in, yes. But again, everything’s just still preliminary.

Robb (52:31):

So you batted a thousand this code cycle.

Gayathri (52:34):

I was told that, yes. I don’t know what that means, but something to do with baseball. It was easier when you only had, you know, I’m only there defending like three proposals whereas other people are there with giant binders cause they have to speak in defense of every single section. And so I went in there and all I had to focus on were the three that I cared about.

Robb (52:58):

Wow. Yeah. And but you were psyched,

Gayathri (53:01):

Yeah, it’s so fun. I like a good fight. And the thing is, the things I was fighting for just made sense. You know, they made sense. We’d put in the effort to coordinate and discuss, you know, we reached out to the opposition to see what they didn’t like about it to understand it and we put words into the proposal that kind of addressed their main concerns. So I think we proactive about it and so I thought, yeah, I think that helped.

Robb (53:28):

Nice. Awesome. So what do you get on the slate for next code cycle?

Gayathri (53:35):

Oh my goodness. I don’t even know. All the little word smithing and things like that that people said, you know, Oh no, we got to go back and you know, fix certain things. I know these three proposals on the commercial side, you know, when they melded together it, some of it is a little clunky, so I know people want to, you know, fix that.

Robb (53:55):

But these are some pretty significant changes.

Gayathri (53:57):

Yes. That’s what I was saying. Like from the beginning, like, you know, this is going to be the code cycle that I think really makes an impact on how efficient buildings will be. That once they would adopt the 2021 there’s tons of proposal I was not involved in that were, you know, pretty significant changes to the 2018 IECC. So I think it’s going to be pretty impressive. Things like the energy rating index, you know, dropping those scores a little bit lower, making those more stringent. Yeah, so there was a lot of changes I wasn’t involved in, but yeah. You know, maybe, you know, maybe the next cycle air leakage testing instead of the 0.3 number, maybe we make it a little tighter, you know, maybe 0.3 goes down to something else, you know, we’ll propose something different. So yeah, no, I find it interesting and Challenging.

Robb (54:40):

So do you know when we’ll get the absolute final decision on all the voting for the 2021?

Gayathri (54:46):

I do not. I have asked and I’m sure the second it gets released there’ll be, you know, blogs about it and things like that because everyone’s just waiting because definitely the people that are into energy efficiency and advancing the codes and getting to net zero, they’re excited about this one. So the second it’s, it’s legit, you’re going to see blog posts about it.

Robb (55:05):

All right. And we’ll post it. Yeah, absolutely. And you have a couple of blog posts about this already that we can link to.

Gayathri (55:12):

Yes. When I came back there was just, so I was just so excited about this process and you know, coming away with a successful proposals, you know, this is a dry topic. But I find it super exciting and I just liked the idea, you know, I think even like Sean when he got involved, the fact that, you know, we work in buildings and we just don’t realize that we could actually be the ones that changed the rules for all the buildings, not just the ones we work on with our individual clients. It’s just like, if we want to have a broad impact on buildings, we got to affect, you know, more than the ones that we know of. It’s got, this is the international energy conservation code and so we need to raise the bar for all of the buildings. And so if we have a good idea that makes sense. It’s not just like my way or the highway, you know, reach out to the builders and say, would this change work for you? Yeah. So instead of just like fighting against like, you know, code is, you know, it’s too hard. It doesn’t make sense. Instead of fighting it and complaining about it, you know, you just go and submit changes to it. So I thought it was fun.

Robb (56:07):

Awesome. Thanks for doing it. Thanks for talking about it.

Gayathri (56:11):

Yeah, no problem.

Robb (56:16):

Thank you to Gayathri. We have quite a few links on the show notes page if you want to check out more on this topic. Gayathri written some blog posts about the amendments themselves that she was working on and also about the process that we’ve been talking about. And all of these meetings and hearings are recorded and we’ve linked to them to the relevant videos that deal with the amendments guy through is working on. And I was impressed watching some of these videos. The, the hearings were run very efficiently. People were very concise for the most part and professional, very substantive comments very unlike say political debates. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I learned a lot watching much about the process, watching some of these videos. And finally at the time I’m talking right now, late March of 2020, the results of voting have completed, but the, the code itself is still not final.

Robb (57:16):

As Gayathri said, the, there was a kind of a groundswell of changes that really will push energy efficiency in a lot. A lot of buildings if they all get approved, voters approved them. But now there are challenges as I understand it, there are challenges relating to the procedure. This procedure that we’ve been talking about for the last hour or so was not done correctly. And so the results, the 2021 IECC will not be finalized until these challenges to the procedure are sorted out. We have links to more info about all this. Also, show notes are at swinter.com/podcast that’s S W I N T E R.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Our mission here is to improve the built environment. That’s really the core of our official company mission statement. That means better buildings or durable buildings, accessible, sustainable, healthy, new buildings, existing buildings. We are looking for help in doing this because it’s winter to.com/careers. If you are interested, we have openings in all of our offices, Connecticut, New York city, Washington, D C and our newest office in Boston. Thanks again to Gayathri and to the whole a podcast production team here. Alex Mirabile, Jayd Alvarez, Heather Breslin, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello and myself. Rob Aldrich. Thanks.

Celeste McMickle

Celeste McMickle is the Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. She is trained as an architect, and is a certified permaculture designer, master composter, TRUE Advisor, Green Rater, LEED-H AP, and horticulturalist. Celeste uses her background in architecture, green building, and zero-waste to improve both the natural and built environment wherever possible.

We often address large-scale sustainability issues by focusing on improving building energy use, material use, and accessibility. But what about waste? According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.51 pounds of trash each day.

To learn about strategies for reducing waste, we interviewed Celeste McMickle, Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. TRUE Zero Waste certification supports facilities and businesses in achieving their zero waste goals by providing a clear path to certification using a point-based rating system and educational tools, such as the TRUE Advisor program. Celeste shares what large-scale companies are doing internally to make an impact via the True Zero Waste certification, how zero waste solutions help save money, and even what “wishcycling” is.

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

We often address large-scale sustainability issues by focusing on improving building energy use, material use, and accessibility. But what about waste? According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.51 pounds of trash each day.

To learn about strategies for reducing waste, we interviewed Celeste McMickle, Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. TRUE Zero Waste certification supports facilities and businesses in achieving their zero waste goals by providing a clear path to certification using a point-based rating system and educational tools, such as the TRUE Advisor program. Celeste shares what large-scale companies are doing internally to make an impact via the True Zero Waste certification, how zero waste solutions help save money, and even what “wishcycling” is.

Episode Guest: Celeste McMickle

Celeste McMickle is the Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. She is trained as an architect, and is a certified permaculture designer, master composter, TRUE Advisor, Green Rater, LEED-H AP, and horticulturalist. Celeste uses her background in architecture, green building, and zero-waste to improve both the natural and built environment wherever possible.

*Scroll down for episode transcript!

The BuildingEnergy Boston Conference + Trade Show is an event designed by and for practitioners in the fields of high-performance building and design, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. The theme of BuildingEnergy Boston 2020 is Transforming Existing Buildings, with additional emphasis on decarbonization and on bringing more diverse communities into the discussion. Click here to learn more or to register.

SWA’s Robb Aldrich and Nicole Ceci will be presenting “To Electrify or Not to Electrify…?” on Monday 3/23, and we will be exhibiting at booth #32. Come visit us!

The Hot Water Forum, presented by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), is a conference that’s all about energy-efficient water heating. This year’s program will feature sessions on high-efficiency water heaters, multifamily hot water systems, smart plumbing system design, best practices for developing policies and programs, and much more. To learn more and to register for the event, click here!

SWA’s Nicole Ceci and Dylan Martello will also be presenting, so be sure to check out their session!

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello | Jayd Alvarez

Kai Starn

Kai Starn is a Senior Sustainability Consultant at SWA on the Sustainable Building Services team. He is a green building advocate, serves on the board of the CT Green Building Chapter, and combines his enthusiasm for zero energy design with Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment.

Catherine Paplin

Catherine Paplin is a Senior Building Enclosure Consultant at SWA. She adheres to the twin precepts that preservation and restoration are inherently sustainable practices, and that designing for climate is an essential spur of good design.

For the past 30 years or more, when we’ve been talking about the carbon emissions of buildings, we’ve usually been talking about operational emissions – the carbon put in the atmosphere after the building is built.  We now know that 30-50% of a building’s total carbon emissions are already in the atmosphere before the lights are even turned on.  These emissions are referred to as embodied carbon.  There is an enormous, industry-wide effort underway to incorporate accounting for embodied carbon in construction, because the realization has dawned that you can’t build ‘green’ without it.

On this episode, Robb sits down with SWA’s Kai Starn, Senior Sustainability Consultant, and Catherine Paplin, Senior Building Enclosure Consultant to hear about WHY embodied carbon is becoming a larger part of the conversation.

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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: 00:06
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: 00:23
For this episode I talked with Kai Starn and Catherine Paplin. They’re my colleagues here at Steven winter associates. Kai focuses mostly on green building certification for larger commercial buildings and Catherine works on high performance building enclosures, also for bigger buildings. and we’re talking about embodied carbon and this is an issue we’re seeing more and more, in more and more different places. When youre talking about carbon, we’re talking about greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide is the biggie, but there’s also methane, nitrous oxide and halogenated hydrocarbon gases, HFCs, refrigerants, blowing agents, etc. When we talked about carbon until fairly recently, most people were talking about operational carbon – a building uses energy, a lot of energy is generated by fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels gives off CO2 and that was what we’re trying to reduce. When we’re talking about embodied carbon, we’re talking about the materials themselves and the building itself, the material extraction, processing, transportation, construction. When you analyze the whole carbon picture, people who do it rigorously do lifecycle assessments or LCAs, which is a pretty rigorous analysis. We’re not getting too deep in this discussion, but this is a quick conversation to talk about why and how and where we’re seeing this embodied carbon issue come up more and more. We’re all seeing it more and more. If you want to learn more, check out our show notes. Katherine and Kai linked to some great resources. And if you can make it to Boston later in March, I encourage you to check out NESEA’s BuildingEnergy conference. NESEA is the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, March 23rd and 24th at the Westin Boston waterfront. I think I’ve missed one of these BuildingEnergy Boston conferences over the past 20 years. I’ve gone for quite a while. I’m looking forward to this year. A colleague and I, Nicole Ceci and I, are doing a session on building electrification called”To Electrify or Not to Electrify,” it’s a discussion or perhaps a debate on prioritizing electrification efforts, building electrification efforts. I’m looking forward to that. And also I just looked at the program and there are three sessions focused on embodied carbon. This has been a hot topic at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston for the past few years. So come check that out. March 23rd and 24th, 2020 Western Boston waterfront, go to nesea.org N E S E A .org for more info. In this conversation with Catherine and Kai, we started discussing why we’re hearing more about body carbon these days.

Catherine: 03:34
We now have evidence that the amount of carbon emissions from a building during its whole life cycle, on average, 30% of that is from embodied carbon – is from building the thing. And if you’re looking at a 30 year projection, the first 30 years of the building’s life, then you’re looking at 50% of the emissions that will be due to that building being the result of embodied carbon. And all of those emissions are going in before the building even begins to be used. So it’s already there in reality by the time that you’re starting to use that building. And that is a huge thing to think about when you start looking at the horizons that are projected for climate change acceleration and possible tipping point.

Robb: 04:54
Yeah. So if reducing carbon emissions, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions is a priority, this is definitely something you should be looking at. I mean that’s huge. So basically constructing a building results in as much emissions as the building operating over the first 30 years does. Very generally speaking.

Catherine: 05:23
Yeah. And this is based upon the 2018 report on climate change and emissions. So this is top scientists in the world coming to a consensus about about this number.

Robb: 05:47
Gotcha. So that’s worldwide number?

Catherine: 05:50
Yes it is.

Robb: 05:50
Okay. And Catherine, you wrote a blog post on our website a while back about embodied carbon associated with different insulation materials. And that’s kind of eye opening. Cause obviously a key way to reduce operational carbon is to add more insulation. But some insulations have really big embodied carbon implications. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Catherine: 06:22
When you’re talking insulation, it turns out that more is not always better. Because there are types of insulation which are extremely commonly used. Namely plastic foams. And there’s a rigid plastic foam board commonly called XPS for extruded polystyrene. and there is a spray foam plastic insulation, closed cell, which is also used all over. And both of these are manufactured, and in the case of the spray foam, installed with a hydrofluorocarbon blowing agent, and that blowing agent has something like 1200, 1400, there are different estimates, but they’re all in the well over a thousand range, times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. So when we talked about those those equivalent gases to carbon dioxide, this is one of that 2% of, of emissions gases that are completely out of proportion in terms of the amount of carbon emissions they actually represent. So what that really means is that when you go and put something like this, if you put just one inch of this insulation into your building, it’s going to be 36 to 40 years before you pay off, before you have saved all of the emissions that you just spent in putting that in there, and one inch is not enough insulation. So in reality, it’s decades and decades before you have made up for what you spent putting that in.

Robb: 08:47
No, that’s great. And it’s a huge number it’s kind of jaw-dropping. And cellulose comes to mind as what I would think would be the lowest, one of the lowest embodied carbon insulation. But is that accurate first of all?

Catherine: 09:09
It is certainly among the lowest. What you get into with insulation, and with all materials, is there’s a reason why we’re using these things. There is a reason why this is the most common commonly used material, or one of the most commonly used materials for insulation. And that is because it does so much so well – those two insulations give you among the highest R-value, that is thermal resistance value per inch of any insulation. And they have other qualities that make them extremely useful, even sometimes indispensable for particular uses. The spray foam is a vapor barrier. It’s an air barrier. It conforms to any irregularities and on and on.

Robb: 10:05
No, like you say, foam insulation is so appealing for so many reasons and it has been the Go To for many different applications for people on the leading edge of high performance buildings. And now maybe that will change a little bit and we’ll put a link to your blog post and and some of your sources for that in the show notes. But yeah things are changing.

Kai: 10:38
I just sort of want to reiterate sort of what we’ve been talking about. It’s really fascinating and it’s a really big deal talking about this carbon that’s front loaded into the buildings before we even move in. And you know, I think what we’re sort of talking about when we’re talking about these installations and stuff are high performance buildings – we want our buildings to operate at a low cost. And you know, that’s been the forefront of our minds since the 70s, you know, energy efficiency. And we’re starting to realize that these high performance buildings with these high embodied carbon materials release more total emissions then, you know, maybe a code minimum building with, you know, moderate body carbon emissions. And that’s a really big deal and sort of startling, and you know, we absolutely need these net zero energy buildings, we absolutely need those, and you know, we’re not disputing that. As Catherine said, these materials have properties that we need in areas. But just looking at the net zero by itself isn’t gonna get us to the goals to stabilize the temperature of the climate in the timeframe that we’re looking at.

Robb: 11:58
Yeah. So, in your work Kai are there a few materials – you’ve done a little bit of number crunching on building by building I think, and what are the big components where there are big problem areas or big opportunity areas to reduce embodied carbon?

Kai: 12:23
Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the short answer is to choose lower carbon materials and we could maybe get to that later how to do that. And maybe using carbon sequestering, natural materials. Also part of that short answer is just to use less material overall. You know, that’s one thing that we can look at early on, you know, different massing options, but in industrialized areas, the three main structural materials, concrete, steel and wood are the, are the drivers of embodied carbon by virtue of just how much fuel and energy it takes to create them, to bring them into existence.

Robb: 13:02                   Yeah. Kai, maybe I’ll ask you, I mean programmatic wise, what are you seeing? How are you seeing your clients or programs starting to address embodied carbon?

Kai: 13:19
Yeah, so in my world, I work a lot with green certifications, building certifications primarily LEED. And the LEED version 4 building rating system really has been the biggest market driver. You know, up until now related to embodied carbon, in my view.

Robb: 13:41
So people are starting to pay attention in the context of programs? It’s just credits right now that people may or may not go after, but people are starting to look at it. Is that fair?

Kai: 14:00
I would say there’s a growing consensus that overall zero carbon needs to be our goal across the industry. And you know, we’ve heard that from architecture 2030 who stated that the construction industry needs to be net zero carbon by 2050. You know, sooner is better, but that’s sort of the outer goal

Robb: 14:24
And are those goals explicitly embodied and operational carbon?

Kai: 14:30
That’s right. Yeah. So we’ll be looking at both those pieces. Yeah.

Robb: 14:33
Okay, cool. Nice. And Catherine, what are you seeing on the policy side or among clients about interest in embodied carbon? Or what would you like to see maybe is another question that’s a different question.

Catherine: 14:52
One of the most Important things at this point that we could do when we really look at embodied carbon is to make a shift in our priorities from building new buildings as the first thing that we want to do all the time to renovating existing buildings as the first thing we want to do all the time. Because it’s a very simple and obvious thing, that if you don’t take down a building and build something else in its place, or even just build a new building, but especially if you, if you take an existing building and you dismantle it, and you destroy it and build something else, it’s obvious how exponentially more embodied carbon you are putting in the atmosphere at that point. It’s tremendous and we really can’t afford to do that anymore.

Robb: 15:55
Yeah. This is a huge issue on, I mean we’ve all run into that I’m sure with clients who want to build new rather than renovate and it’s much harder. I mean we were talking about insulations, Catherine with, you know, foam insulations having a lot of advantages. Starting from scratch with new construction makes it easier to, you know, get good efficiency, get accessibility, durability, resiliency, all of those are easier when you start from scratch. But this is a huge deal about the embodied carbon of that construction.

Catherine: 16:38
Well, I think one of the misconceptions that should be dispelled is that older buildings are automatically less efficient or have considerably less capacity to achieve high efficiency, high performance. I think that what we’re showing more and more now is that in fact, we can make older buildings high performance, high efficiency. And you have to get into also a discussion, which we don’t have time for here, about what age of buildings, because over the past hundred years, construction methods have changed Radically, scale has changed radically. And, and there, there’s a different approach for each era of building. But for example, you, you will find that it is often easier for pre-war buildings to be brought into a high performing status than some 50s through 70s buildings.

Robb: 18:09
So pre-war we’re talking about New York city before world war II generally. Yup. Pretty clear demarcation in the city. Okay.

Catherine: 18:18
But at the same time there is now a lot of work afoot to figure out how to make those 50s through 70s buildings be retrofitted to perform well. One of them, there’s a lot of focus of course on curtain wall now because are going to have to deal with aging curtain walls. There is also options like a interior storm windows that people don’t necessarily know a lot about yet. But these can be operable and you can even have basically interior curtain wall replacement that that prolongs the life of your, your curtain wall building and gives you a huge bump in performance.

Kai: 19:15
Just sort of mulling over the existing building conversation, it’s real interesting. I’m thinking about why building owners may opt to keep the building instead of tearing it down and building new. And I imagined that one of the drivers is cost. It’s more cost effective to reuse these buildings in certain instances. And it makes me think of something that our clients often ask us is, you know, they ask for a life cycle assessment when they really want a life cycle cost analysis. And you know, I think what they’re looking at is, okay, well what materials are we going to use, how much is it going to cost us, how long are they gonna last, this sort of thing. And you know, both employ this like life cycle approach where the lifecycle cost, the LCC is the direct monetary costs for a product or service. Whereas the LCA is the environmental benefits and they actually can, if you’re doing lifecycle costing, you’re not so far off from doing a lifecycle assessment too. You’re collecting your materials, you know, how much material quantities you’re using. And it’s, it’s not so difficult to to transpose those into the environmental benefits. And I hope that more of our clients start asking for that.

Catherine: 20:48
We’re watching buildings get torn down every, every day. It’s it’s really time to start thinking about the fact that buildings aren’t disposable. We really have made this in our minds into a disposable product. And it’s not. And the poster child for this as far as I’m concerned would be 270 park Avenue, which is a high rise, international style commercial building, a skyscraper that is being torn down as we speak. It is the largest such demolition at least ever in New York City. And it may be in the nation or the world. I am honestly not sure, but it is being demolished in order to make way for a new larger skyscraper. And if somebody analyzes what kind of embodied carbon hit this represents, I think that this ought to become what the demolition of Penn station was to the historic preservation movement. It’s a wake up call that we can’t afford to think like this because we won’t achieve our goals if we continue to do this.

Robb: 22:37
Thanks to Catherine and Kai, and again, I urge you to visit the show notes page. There’s lots of resources. There’s links to the embodied carbon network, the relatively new EC3 tool, architecture 2030, several reports, blog posts about embodied carbon, about historic preservation. We decided to link to all these in the show notes rather than have Catherine and Kai rattle them off in the audio. Also go to nesea.org to Check out the building energy Boston conference if you can. March 23rd to 24th 2020. One may be sobering note since we recorded this, according to Wikipedia, at least we confirmed that 270 park AVE is indeed the tallest building ever to be voluntarily demolished in the history of the world. So sorry, we’re not ending on a high note.

Speaker 2: 23:38
Thank you for listening. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven Winter Associates. Visit Swinter.com for more info on us, visit swiner.com/podcasts to get to all our episodes and to see the show notes and visit [inaudible] dot com slash careers to see job openings. We have quite a few across all our offices, Connecticut, New York city, Washington, D C and a new office in Boston. I’ve been here for just about 20 years now and it’s pretty amazing working with brilliant people who really care about making great buildings, improving sustainability, accessibility, health, affordability, durability. It’s a pretty fantastic crew. Thanks to the podcast team here. Alex Mirabile. Heather Breslin, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.