Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters inside our buildings and out.
This Podcast is about Indoor Air Quality, Outdoor Air Quality, Ventilation, and Health in our homes, workplaces, and education settings.
And we already have many of the tools we need to make a difference.
The conversations we have and how we share this knowledge is the key to our success.
We speak with the leaders at the heart of this sector about them and their work, innovation and where this is all going.
Air quality is the single most significant environmental risk we face to our health and wellbeing, and its impacts on us, our friends, our families, and society are profound.
From housing to the workplace, education to healthcare, the quality of the air we breathe matters.
Air Quality Matters
Air Quality Matters
#75 - Sarah Gudeman: The Human Side of Sustainable Engineering
What distinguishes a truly healthy building from one that simply meets minimum code requirements? In this conversation with Sarah Gudeman, Principal and Practice Lead at Branch Pattern, we explore the critical intersection where engineering expertise meets human-centered design in the pursuit of better built environments.
Sarah brings a refreshingly practical perspective to the often theoretical world of indoor air quality and sustainability. As she explains, "Code compliant is just not illegal. It's the lowest bar we can design to." This fundamental truth underscores the gap between what's legally acceptable and what's truly optimal for human health and wellbeing in our buildings.
The conversation looks into the challenges practitioners face when implementing healthy building strategies. From establishing clear guiding principles at project outset to navigating the complex dynamics of project teams, Sarah reveals how the "peopling" aspect of consulting work often proves more challenging than the technical engineering. Her insights on building psychological safety within teams highlight how admitting knowledge gaps creates space for collaborative problem-solving rather than siloed thinking.
Particularly fascinating is Sarah's discussion of the evolution in air quality monitoring, where point-in-time testing is increasingly supplemented by continuous monitoring systems. Yet this technological advance brings its own challenges: "You've got this dashboard with sensors flashing green and red at you. When do you know who to call and what kind of skill set should they have?" The question cuts to the heart of building operations, where even the most sophisticated technology requires human interpretation and action.
Whether you're a building professional seeking to elevate your approach, a facility manager trying to make sense of air quality data, or simply someone who cares about the spaces where we spend 90% of our lives, this conversation offers valuable perspective on creating environments that truly enhance human health and experience.
Check out the Air Quality Matters website for more information, updates and more. And the YouTube Channel
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Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. I think we already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. Coming up a conversation with Sarah Goodman, a Principal and Practice Lead at Branch Pattern. A mechanical engineer by trade, sarah works within a building consultancy, branch Pattern dedicated to creating better built environments. Through their interwoven specialisms in their practices, with a focus on a human-centered design approach, everything they do is guided by a long-standing purpose of improving life through better built environments, and that can only be applauded. They and Sarah are at the practical cutting edge of healthy building design, walking the walk and, importantly, having the conversations daily that we muse about so regularly on this podcast. It was this, these conversations and Sarah's specific interest in air quality I was so keen to talk to her about. Sarah, by her own admission, is a complete geek when it comes to air quality tech and and the built environment, often found with only her feet sticking out of whatever rabbit hole she's fallen down last. We've been trying and failing to get together to have a chat for about a year, so it was absolutely brilliant to finally get a chance to sit down and catch up with her. I really hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Please don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet.
Simon:This is a conversation with Sarah Goodman, the. The fascination in talking to people like yourself, sarah, is, as practitioners people actually at the coalface having the conversations with the people that are building buildings, managing spaces, looking at their built environment, you get that visceral reaction from people. You're actually trying to implement this world of sustainability and healthy buildings and indoor air quality, and a lot of the conversations on this podcast can be quite academic or quite high level from the perspective of why somebody should want to care about healthy building, but you're actually trying to win those arguments on the ground. So what's your sense? I suppose is the first question around where air quality sits today in these conversations. How does that come out, come about, how does that play out in real time and how are you moving people in the direction of thinking about air quality and healthy spaces?
Sarah:yeah, that's a. I mean, that's a great question and many parts I think. I've kind of always been interested in air quality, and even even more so the last, you know, five years, when the rest of the world got really interested in air quality as a result of the pandemic. And I I like to have a foot in both camps, right, the the kind of research, academic, technical, deep dive uh, what could we do on the leading edge of the best possible indoor air quality for buildings? And then, as a consultant and as a mechanical engineer, I also have a foot in the camp of you know, we have so many existing buildings that are underventilated and people that have sick building syndromes and buildings that have issues, people that have sick building syndromes and buildings that have issues, and so I do get to see the full spectrum of all of those things. And I think you know there's been an ongoing interest in air quality, even, you know, post pandemic, and it's really led the conversation when we think about the broader context of indoor environmental quality, which I also get really interested in, all that whole spectrum of conversations from, you know, research, r&d, new construction, leed, platinum, all the way to existing buildings and how can we like bring them up to a minimum code compliant or what you know decently performing level to keep people healthy in buildings. So there's a lot of different directions. I could go with that and we and we have that.
Sarah:I mean, we see that conversation play out in a lot of different ways. It it really ultimately depends on a lot of factors. There's a lot of variables that go into play there, like the education and interest level of the client, and we work for developers, we work for organizations, we work for designers, so we're contracted to a wide variety of different entities. And then there's always this educational gap too, that maybe somebody's interested but they don't know what they're interested in and consulting and the work that we do. We also get to have these conversations from a purely practitioner design level on the engineering practice side, and then from a consultant level on the building science side. So there's a whole huge array that we get to see and I think this is where I get excited, because I can take parts and pieces from all those different conversations and try to like weave them together to hopefully improve the conversation at all the levels. That's my goal at least.
Simon:And does branch pattern attract a certain type of client across that spectrum? Or are you doing nuts and bolts, consulting engineering for people that don't have an interest necessarily in sustainability or healthy? Is there a? Is there automatic framing of the kind of client that's engaging with you before you even start? Or are you dealing with some people in your day-to-day business that just think they're employing a run-of-the-mill firm? You know to invite advise, as most engineering firms would do, on the right way to put a hevac system in or whatever it is and yeah, there isn't that framing before the conversation even starts I mean I, I would, I would like to, yeah, I would like to.
Sarah:I would like to think and this gets into, we did kind of a brand refresh this last year. I would like to think that our brand does enough work for us that when somebody hires us, they know what they're getting into, like it's not just going to be off the shelf minimally code compliant which I also like to point out to people. Like code compliant is just like not illegal. It's kind of the lowest bar that we can design to. And I think we as design professionals and people that generally care specifically here at Branch Pattern about indoor environmental quality and the quality of the places that we design for people, we can do better and we should be better. So I would like to say that everybody that hires us knows that we have this as part of our ethos.
Sarah:But we still come up against a lot of the same challenges of the industry in terms of, you know, there's the budget, there's the schedule, there's the scope and we need to get it done as fast and as cheap as possible. So I mean we look at those projects as opportunities to educate, like I was talking about earlier. I mean I'm happy to meet people where they're at, and I even continue to think a lot about people's homes and the spaces that they live in that are not, you know, not under my influence per se professionally, but people come to me a lot with questions about air quality in their houses and I'm like, yeah, anybody that wants to know anything more, I'm happy to talk at any level and help.
Simon:Yeah, I suppose it's naive to say that, even if somebody deals with a less let's say a sustainable practice, that they're not isolated from the realities of construction and engineering. Like you say, there's still deadlines, there's still budgets that run out, there's still people with differing, and perhaps conflicting, ideas of what it looked like you know so you're in that fight, regardless of whether somebody thought they were coming in to deal with sustainability and health and air quality, there's still the reality. The real politics of construction and engineering isn't there.
Sarah:Right, and it can. I think it can be frankly demoralizing to clients at times to hear that, oh, we're not. You know, it's very much still viewed as an extra to design for healthy buildings as a priority or to design for sustainability. However, we want to design, you know, define those two things. It's still, you know, by the industry by and large in a lot of markets, viewed as extra, and so it can be disappointing, I think, for clients to hear that well, that's not, that's not part of our scope or that would, that would cost extra to have more time, in terms of even the schedule, to do these analyses and to look deeper than status quo. And it's, it's a hard conversation and, like to your point, about a lot of different people on the project. We know we're kind of trying to get everybody on the same team and bring everybody along, but everybody, as people you know has has different thoughts and opinions and priorities, and I think that is something else that's energizing to me as a, as a consultant.
Sarah:It's not just nuts and bolts engineering.
Sarah:In a way, I think the you know, the analogy I like to use with consulting is you know we're, we're doing a lot of peopling here.
Sarah:We're not just designing and like it's, we already have, you know, maybe a lack of people in the job market when it comes to STEM, and people can get degrees and do engineering and do design and we're taught as engineers, I think, to solve problems, which is great, and we're taught as engineers, I think, to solve problems, which is great, like we're good problem solvers.
Sarah:But then when you get into this kind of consulting world, it can actually play against your best interests, because if you're just being told, do this thing, solve this problem, we're inclined to just jump on it and solve the problem and that might not be the best possible solution, given all the other contexts on the project, like if we think air quality and energy efficiency and resilience and transportation are all important, then I think you can pull in all those topics and come up with a best solution. But it's not going to be the first thing you think of. It's not going to be the thing that somebody told you to do, because that's what they did last time. It's going to take conversation and iteration and getting people on board and education. So there's, you know, there's a lot. There's a lot that goes into it.
Simon:Is that? Is that some of the fun part of your role? That that peopling the, the promise of a new project, and those first meetings and the trying? To understand the lie of the land and the actors and the protagonists and the all of that stuff that goes into these complex projects with multiple stakeholders. Is that? Is that still exciting? Is? Is that the most exciting part for you? The promise of a brand new?
Sarah:project and those first conversations, Very much a kind of futuristic thinker. If I had known there was a thing as a futurist and I could figure out how to be one earlier in my career. I'm like that's, that sounds great. I love thinking about the future. So, yeah, when people ask me what's your favorite project you've worked on, I always say, like the next one, like the promise of the next project is always very exciting.
Sarah:And when, when people do just jump in and start doing things without the conversations and the setup and the why and the goals, then that that actually, frankly, is de-energizing for me. I'm like, well, let's, let's ask why, let's figure out why, and then let's ask why, like four more times, because you have to ask why five times to get to the real why. And then let's write it all down and kind of memorialize these discussions that we had. Because as we go through, if we're talking about a design project, there's many months. There's design, there's construction, there's bidding, there's value engineering and then operations is a whole nother topic. But it's like we shouldn't forget that either.
Sarah:And I think that that beginning phase, when everybody's largely hopeful but people appreciate the urgency that we need to like jump in and start doing stuff, but then we need to at least take a beat and like, write some stuff down, write down the goals. Everybody can remember that. Because then when all the other stuff happens, frequently, I do think it's really valuable to remind people of that initial conversation that we had. Like these were kind of the guiding principles that we all agreed to, the rules of engagement, so to speak. So then when we go through day to day and make thousands and thousands of other design decisions, we can at least remember oh, this is what we all kind of agreed to as our guiding light and prioritization.
Simon:Yeah, that's really interesting. I like that. I like that framing of it actually, because it is like, once you get into the process of construction for want of a better word it is a. It is a process of a million decisions, isn't it? They have to be made on the fly, in the moment, on and on and on. It's just relentless. Actually, when you get into the.
Simon:That's a good word yeah, the grind of of construction, it's just this tidal wave of just questions, questions, questions, just decisions, and decisions is from from socket placements to big decisions to small, you know everything, just relentless. And having those guiding principles, a North Star, must be so important to kind of keep people on track and moving in the same direction project team.
Sarah:When we have these integrative design type projects with high performance goals or expectations or green building certifications, even internally, we can end up with a lot of staff on a project.
Sarah:So there's a project here.
Sarah:Recently we were doing a kind of a post-mortem design evaluation discussion, like internal retrospectives, and, yeah, we had people from our enclosures team, we had people from our building performance modeling team, our materials team, our commissioning team, our, you know, green building consulting team, and that was all just the building science practice.
Sarah:Then we have the engineering team, which had, you know, acoustics, electrical, mechanical, and I think working internally is one thing, but then we need to think about externally and all the other consultants and people that are working on the project and then bridge that gap from design to construction so that when you're in the thick of it day to day, they're trying to get things done and move fast and meet the schedule and deadlines. We need to know who needs to be involved in which conversations and when those decisions have to be made quickly, who has the agency to make that happen. But then make sure that we're checking with whoever the correct people are so that we don't get down the line and some change was made and it influences this. You know, domino effect of other things that, oh, I didn't, because I didn't know that I needed to check with you know whoever?
Simon:So it's in your industry, that kind of postmortem, self-reflection kind of process within an organization.
Sarah:I don't, it is for us. We're real big into what we call our dive process framework, intentionally go through, you know, discovery, iteration, you know evolution, validation and like cyclical, and internally look at these processes and see what we can do to improve what went well, what didn't go well, what you know kind of do these internal workshops ourselves. We do quite a bit of workshopping for clients as well, but I think it's especially valuable when we can stop and look internally and see what we could do better next time and it doesn't happen on every project, but certainly projects where we have a lot of different services all trying to work together and be efficient too, internally and externally yeah, I was having a conversation recently with um, a pediatric consultant.
Simon:She was reflecting, she's calls herself an interloper in the built environment and, excuse me, um, she was saying you know in in the medical field that these, these kind of reflective processes have become very important. You know, and recording near misses and and having processes to really create those feedback loops for improvement. And you just don't see that in the built environment that often it's not a very feedback loopy world, it tends to be quite linear. Get the building off your books and on to the next one and there's not a lot of that kind of self-reflection and, and you know, diagnosing those near misses, you know, without blame, but going through and going right.
Simon:How did we end up down these dead ends? What? What happened with these mistakes? How did we get there so that we can put things in place to stop that happening again? And you know we were. We were reflecting that as these buildings increasingly move into a, a period where we get this feed, this feedback from data, that's going to become important because we'll we'll live and die by the ongoing performance of these buildings that we design and build, much more than we ever have done. And if we don't have that, those processes of self-reflection in the mix, we could find ourselves having to answer some very uncomfortable questions down the line about why the building isn't performing in a certain way and how did those decisions come about.
Sarah:You know yeah, absolutely, I think it, it's really. I agree it's not common. I think it's really, I agree it's not common. I think it's really project dependent, company dependent. But it's again something I think we could all benefit from as an industry to look back and reflect on how we can get better, better and getting you know, getting into the topic of existing buildings even that's, that's even more so.
Sarah:People oftentimes do not want to go back and look at those projects when they're buildings in operation and and I I mean I understand why.
Sarah:Uh, professionally, you know, it's like we don't, we don't, we're not paid to do that routinely, so there's not, there's not a huge incentive to go back and find out if the building's performing the way it's supposed to or not.
Sarah:But if it's not, somebody is going to get a call at some point.
Sarah:And I think there are opportunities to be and show up proactively instead of reactively, and I think we want to intentionally be part of those conversations when we can be and then look for opportunities to improve existing buildings as well. So we have a couple different initiatives that we're working on partners with externally and then internally, on like how do we stay in touch and how do we monitor these buildings, but, at the same time, I don't want to be nor can we be responsible for monitoring data in existing buildings, you know, at the scale of projects that we end up working on. So I am really passionate about education in general and like that's another topic where I think we can help close the gap on okay, you have all this data now, who looks at it? What do we need to know, what do we do with it? And like, hopefully AI will fill in some of those gaps too, but I just think there's a huge, huge array of where people are coming at all of these topics from a knowledge basis.
Simon:So, yeah, I'm a big I'm a big fan of of analogies and you know we often talk about the, the automotive industry, and you know we say we don't have the time to get involved in the data and performance of every building that we've designed or been involved in. But you know the car industry is collecting data on all of its products and the reason it does that is for improvement through iteration. You know, every time you, every time you take your car into a mechanics and the mechanic plugs a computer in to see how a building is performing, that he isn't just using that data to improve his job. That data is being uploaded, if it's not already online, through the cloud, through the car itself which is increasingly the case oh
Simon:yeah, for for the manufacturer to improve and to to get ahead of problems before they start to become a problem at a, you know, a fleet level or whatever it is. You know, and we're doing that with an asset that's far less valuable than our built environment assets that we're it is, you know, and we're doing that with an asset that's far less valuable than our built environment assets that we're managing it, you know. So I think it's not beyond the realms of possibility that the kind of data that we're starting to collect on indoor environmental quality and energy across the, across the bandwidths, is going to provide the kind of rich data sets that enables people that produce this product to be able to start looking at that data at scale and doing what the automobile industry does.
Simon:No, we see a different outcome when we use that building material. We see a different outcome in longevity of that particular hevac brand. But in exactly the same way as car manufacturers are changing the fuel pump because on that particular model they found it failed 10 000 kilometers earlier than the other fuel pump they used on the other model. And you know that's the kind of thing that's going to start, that those suppliers of those fuel pumps in in the same way they've had to survive or die. Um, the the componentry suppliers into the built environment will have to start reacting to data feedback loops that say by the way, you're not being used on this next project, not because of price, not because we didn't like your salesman anymore, but because we're seeing in the data that your fan coil units fail three years earlier than your competitors. You know, and that's a liability we're carrying, so you know you're not on this next project.
Sarah:That's a very different place to be as a fan call manufacturer say you know yeah, I think there's a lot of power in in data and like just even that example is a good one. I'm you know I mentioned I'm very futuristic, but I'm also uh optimistic about all these things that we'll be able to do in the future with all this data that we're amassing in buildings. And you know, you just look at all of the all of the kind of software as a service products that are exploding on the market now with this AI enhancement. I think it can.
Sarah:It, like many things, can also be maybe overwhelming or demoralizing for people, because there's there is so much to know that I think sometimes there's an inclination to throw your hands up and say like well, I can't, there's so much stuff, how can I ever keep track of it? And that's I think. Again, I am happy to be a resource for people. I have kind of an endless interest in deep diving into things that could be valuable or helpful, and I think that's a role that we like to play, also for our clients. So, you know, we do things like get into the weeds on all these different software platforms, compare them, you know, read the terms and conditions, figure out what's going to be useful and valuable, and then everything changes. You know in the terms and conditions, figure out what's going to be useful and valuable, and then everything changes, you know, in the next week because there's a new product or a different regulation or a new rating system.
Sarah:So there is this like state of constant change that I, I think, is rapidly increasing in the industry too, Like when I I mean I started my career 20 years ago and I there was then and is now still a lot of. You know physics doesn't change and that we can't really change that much about how we design rapid and so much more expansive now that we don't have to do everything all the time, nor could we tactics little by little. Then, yeah, over the course of a career right in the next 20 years, I think, will be a lot different than my previous 20 years. You'll start to see those things change, but I feel like the pace of change is increasing and like we need to speed up a little bit to kind of keep up with it.
Simon:Yeah, that's a really interesting point you make, and it's one of those ones that I think construction will wrestle with is that it's such a traditionally conservative, slow moving industry. I mean, there's innovation in technology, don't get me wrong and also, every time an industry has to react to a new rule or standard, it seems to be able to turn on a dime and do it yeah, there's some amazing stuff going on, right like yeah.
Simon:Yeah even if they've been complaining bitterly for 10 years that there's no way they'll ever meet that standard. The moment the standard hits the ground, they're like oh okay, on you go and you're like yeah what, what?
Simon:you've been fighting this for a decade. What? What's been the problem? Um, I think the challenge is from inside the bubble. It seems to move quite slowly and we'll come on to air quality monitors later. But you know, you've been looking at air quality monitors for a while and you know the pandemic was is half a decade old now and, yeah, the, the sensors that we were using 10 or 15 years ago. You know, wandering around with devices in suitcases trying to find power outlets for them, and you know wandering around with devices in suitcases trying to find power outlets for them, and, and you know, the it's, it's just come on. I mean, it's come on so much, even in the last two or three years. Um, yeah, almost all recognition. So like it seems slow sometimes, but actually it's moving pretty quickly.
Simon:And, as you say that the advent of ai is is is genuinely exponential at the moment, which is anytime. Anything is exponential. It's almost impossible, in fact, it is impossible for the human mind to actually picture exponential anything. I think you know we struggled, we struggled, we struggled with that in the pandemic. You know that these exponential curves of infection rates were just impossible for the human brain to wrap itself around. We couldn't understand how somebody could say that many people could be infected in three months time or whatever. And similarly with AI at the moment, the growth, just the sheer growth of that at the moment is just overwhelming to people that even have some sense of it. They're going yeah, all bets are off. All bets are off. Yeah, it's a really exciting place, I suppose.
Simon:To my first question what are those conversations like for you at the moment around sustainable buildings and healthy buildings in 2025?, across the broad spectrum of clients that you're dealing with, is it a topic and something that people are laser focused on? Is it something that's getting shoved to the side to some degree? Are there other things that are overtaking or becoming more important, like? Is this a? Is this a subject? You feel like you're fighting against the tide a little bit with or with the tide a little bit at the moment. What?
Simon:was your general feeling of that space.
Sarah:It's a. This is a question we get asked somewhat regularly and I think we're also in an interesting position because we, you know I mentioned we work with organizations, developers, designers, institutions. We work a lot at the portfolio level. So we get to see real estate and largely the industrial market is where we do a lot of our work, but we work across all the different market sectors so we get to see, you know, at the university level, at the municipal level, at kind of the traditional commercial real estate, vertical construction, like what's everybody saying, and across different geographic markets, like we work mostly in the US, like we have offices and people and staff across the US, but then also a bit in Canada, mexico, Brazil and even in the EU a bit. So the conversation is different, all kinds of different places, and it's different if we're talking about a portfolio of existing buildings that have to comply with building performance standards and energy and emissions, or if we're talking to somebody at the organizational level that's concerned about rolling up all of their data to an ESG report and where does that company operate.
Sarah:I think there's certainly been some tumult in the past couple years in the US, right, and we saw a lot of conversations about kind of compliance with SEC rulings and people get kind of getting ready for legal regulatory compliance there, and then maybe now we're not, but some companies still are and it's really. It is really across the board, I think I even and I'm located in Omaha, nebraska, so I'm in a different market for sustainability than our other offices, you know, which are in like Kansas City, denver, pittsburgh, and then, yeah, we have people in Seattle, we have people in New York. So I think over the course of my career I've had conversations with people, even here, several times. I don't have like a really good cycle, you know, of how often that happens, but it feels like every few years, not just here, but in other places too, where it's not as visible or I don't know it's not, it's not as prevalent, and by it I guess I mean green buildings and that that market people will say things like, oh, are we, are we still doing that? Like, is that as leads still around? Like, is that still a thing? And and it's not, I don't say that to be flippant Like it's kind of a genuine question, like, oh, I feel like, because there are these market cycles that we, I think, respond to and see, and what are the conversations people are having.
Sarah:So I guess, over time, if I were to draw a graph on like, and the Y axis is interest in sustainability or interest in healthy buildings or green buildings or any of these topics, and then the Y or the X axis is time, it's. It is like increasing. Right, you look at something like commissioning or energy modeling or these things that like we just didn't do 20 years ago really, and now they're kind of like part of regular design and construction and I think even operational conversations. People are interested in assessing the performance of their ventilation systems and looking at filtration and all that, as you know, five years post pandemic. Over time it is like this, this trend upwards.
Sarah:But there are these like dips and flows and valleys that happen over time and if you're just looking at it in that moment, you could say something like, oh, are we still doing LEED?
Sarah:Is that still around? I remember a few years ago we were and now we're not. But it's like, yeah, over time these things are becoming part of the regular way that we do design construction operations, because I think we are collectively getting better. So I could get into rating system development and code cycles and all that too. But I mean, that's that's why we have continuous improvement cycles. And I had a conversation with some, you know with a friend a while back, and it was like wouldn't it be, this is the general view, I think, of all sustainability consultants Like wouldn't it be great if that wasn't a job title that I said was something that I do. It was like I could just be a mechanical engineer, I don't have to also be a green building consultant or ESG consultant, because that's just what we do, that's just part of it. Everybody does regular design that way, but it's that's not quite where we're at, but we're we're trending.
Simon:We're trending. Yeah, the assumption is is that the baseline is that it's a sustainable building somehow, or the baseline is that it's a healthy building? You don't have to specifically specialize in that. But but I mean, yeah, in your, in your world, it is so specialist, you know, if you, when you get down to the nitty gritty of it between lighting, sound energy, thermal comfort, air quality, you know it's very difficult to be an expert in either, in even all of the indoor environmental quality parameters never mind across the full spectrum of mechanical consulting engineering.
Simon:Um. So it's an incredibly. You do need to specialize often in something, don't you?
Sarah:yeah, absolutely. And I mean even internally. Right, we have, we have specialists that uh, you know, and all and all the disciplines that I can call and say, oh, we have acoustics issues, let me bring in the acoustics team. Or we have enclosure issues, let me find our enclosures team that you don't know. I think that's a sign of intelligence, is to be humble enough to know what you don't know or admit that you don't know everything. And if we can kind of approach that mentality as a team, as a project team, like that's where the magic happens, right, when people can admit.
Sarah:This is that psychological safety thing. Like if we can build psychological safety on a project team and people can admit what they don't know, then that leaves space and opportunity for other people to step in or to find a person that knows the thing that we may recognize as a gap. But if people don't feel like they can acknowledge what they don't know, then you kind of end up with this like weirdly siloed kind of approach that can end up not not integrated or not integrative. You know I use those words interchangeably but it's, it's idealistic in a way. You know a lot of the, I recognize a lot of the things I say in the way that I talk, but I'm like, yeah, we could do it if we just talk about at the beginning and kind of have this continuous conversation. But it can feel like a slog too, like it's a lot, it's a heavy lift. It's not how we normally do things. It's not easy. It requires people to have difficult conversations and then somebody to facilitate those, educate people and like pull all the pieces together.
Simon:So yeah, and you're, you're, you're're a measure. You're a measure of the people you surround yourself with. Ultimately, I think you know and if you can be a multidisciplinary team like you are surrounded by good people with deep sector knowledge of their particular area of interest. You know it makes you all the more powerful, I think in those meetings and those decisions and people can lean on you because they know, if you don't know, there's somebody very close to you.
Sarah:That almost certainly does you know and that's reassuring, I think, when you're speaking to people well, and there's so much, I think, power and value to, not not even in necessarily the circles that you find yourself in professionally because of where you work, but the circles you put yourself in or choose to be in or find for IWBI or you know all these, all these institutional organizations that write green building standards, or professional organizations like ASHRAE. You know you can find yourself in these, in these pockets of knowledge. Where you can, you can really improve your own knowledge on some of these gaps or things that you see for yourself. And then you can identify like, oh well, who is the person to go to if I have a question about building microbiome, right, or something that's just like way on the leading edge? It's like, oh, that sounds interesting, like let's talk more about whatever you know environmental, psychology or anthropology and buildings. And you know, I think all those conversations and network connections are really important also if we want to keep that trend moving in the upward direction.
Simon:Yeah, no, I agree, and time abound. The built environment is a very collaborative environment, generally speaking. When you reach out to people, they're usually very happy to help If they can. You know, time is often the hardest resource to get from people.
Simon:But nonetheless, you know, there are a lot of very, very good people surprisingly willing to give of their time and their knowledge, which I think is amazing, and that that's an experience not just for me internally, but guests I've had on the podcast from outside of our sector. When I've asked them, they've said you know it's, it's prolific in this industry. It's a very collaborative sector in that way but maybe it's our maybe it's our end of the built environment.
Simon:I mean there might be a down and dirty get it up, yeah, tight construction sector that may not be so collaborative, but generally building generally the sustainable, green, healthy, high performance building sector tends to be quite collaborative in that sense.
Sarah:Yeah, I think so as well and and I agree that there there probably is a microcosm of this. You know this group that is willing to be collaborative and assist, and I I think it is interesting too when you see the the other side of where you know somebody might develop a tool to make themselves more efficient or productive and looks to monetize it or, you know, hold it, hold it close internally and just make their own company more competitive or perform better. But I think my perspective and over time I've acknowledged this like what the value that we bring is are all of that knowledge and previous experience and the time like you said, right time is the most valuable asset. So giving somebody your time to do that collaborative, educational, integrative discussion or process or design, like that's the real value. So I think we also like to put tools out in the world and I've thought too about air quality specifically, and I know I mentioned, like home air quality and this is because I've kind of gotten this. We've had some air quality events here recently because of the Canadian wildfires and you know people are always concerned and interested in mold. So I'm like I want to put all these questions like on my website of like how do I test for this? So, what's a good air purifier? What's an air quality monitor? How should I look at and how can we just like put more information out in the world?
Sarah:And we've done this even recently here at Branch Pattern with this CLEAR tool and I cannot honestly remember the acronym right now but it has to do with operational carbon and just all of the different standards that you know.
Sarah:When we have to report out carbon emissions, what is the conversion rate based on grid emissions factors and all these different standards. And we were you know, we're doing this kind of carbon accounting for clients at the portfolio level internally, and it became an internal question that was like well, which metric do we use? Because if we use this one, then it becomes this answer. If we use this one, it becomes that answer, and these are slightly different, and if you roll it up over 20 years, then that's a different. That's a pretty big variance. So we developed this tool internally and, long story short, we've also rolled it out externally on our website. So we're like hey, everybody, here's a resource. We're going to take it to other industry organizations that we're part of and just give it to people for their thoughts and feedback, and a lot of those people could be viewed as competitors. But I think there's also this spirit of collaboration and interest where it's like we can just raise all the ships together and hopefully all learn from that and get better.
Simon:Yeah, I had an interesting conversation with Air Gradient, you know, and they do open source air quality monitoring and you know he brought a really air quality monitoring and you know he brought really interesting perspective about this kind of open approach. And that is you. You buy a lot of goodwill with an open source approach. But interestingly, you also get to leverage the geeks and the nerds and the lads and lasses in basements who will take on a coding project over the weekend just because it's a puzzle and they want to see, they want to be the one that fixes it, and it's amazing what you can leverage once you're quite open about what you're doing. It's not just a one-way street.
Simon:From a benefit perspective, you find, you know and he was saying you know, there was a, there was a piece of firmware. Uh, coding that was presenting a bit of a challenge and some guy who's a is an apple coder or something in california sorted it out for them over the weekend because it's open source, you know, and it would have. It would have taken the months and thousands to sort this problem out and the guys like, go, well, yeah, I reckon I can fix that for you on saturday, you know, boom, there you go yeah yeah and while I love it.
Simon:I made it 10 more efficient. Oh, and I've done this, you know, and now you can add a widget to it and whatever you know, and you buy that kind of um collaboration when you're open you don't get if you hold everything very, very close and make it proprietary, which I think is really nice yeah, yeah, I agree, and I, I, I really I appreciate, like air gradient, like I love.
Sarah:yeah, we have several of the monitors and I've like followed along for the iterations.
Sarah:Like I got one of the first ones that you had to like assemble yourself and I, you know, I was like put in the pieces together Like there was no soldering, as I recall. But I mean, I too geek out on things like that as well. But again, time is the limiting factor, right? I was like, oh, I'm gonna get a Raspberry Pi and program and build all my own sensors and make my own air quality monitors, get a raspberry pi and program and build all my own sensors and make my own air quality monitors. But it's like what I end up doing is like I don't know, 3d printing dragons with my kids at home in my spare time. It's like I, I, I have all these things that I, I am endlessly curious about and I love that other people, when you see that in other people, like it's very exciting to me, so that's a great story, maybe that's the promise of AI is it frees us up for this universe that we take all of these ideas on and actually have the time to do it.
Simon:I mean, I've got boxes of things in the corner of my office there that I've just not got around to do anything with. You know, much, much as in my head, my head, I thought I know what I'll do. I'll do that, you know. And, uh, you know, three months down the road, the box hasn't even been opened um so yeah, it is what it is how's um, how's air quality progressing in your conversations at the moment? Are you if, if, um at any project level? Are?
Simon:you able to, with your engineering skills, walk away from projects as long as they're co-compliant or compliant with asha 62.1 or 2 or whatever it is. Do you feel that you're, either through overtly or through stealth, able to walk away from projects with good general air quality outcomes, or is it a push that you're having to fight for something extra? Generally, as an engineer or at this stage, with where codes and things are at, generally, can you walk away from pretty much any building and go. It's going to be okay that building.
Sarah:That's a tough one. I was going to say yes and then I was going to say no and then I was going to say yes again over the course of the question, because I think there, like there are some projects this gets back to the goal setting and kind of prioritization discussions like there are some projects where you know, good, good enough is good enough, or like we can't, you know, let perfect be the enemy of the good, like we just have to make it good, good enough and then move on, because there's a lot of other things and buildings and projects that need attention. And the way I guess that I've become okay with that is acknowledging that not everybody cares about everything in the same way that I do or at the same level that I do. Right, and if I'm trying to do all the things that we talked about before, like the collaborative discussions and the education and here's why this is important and it's like we're not getting traction or like people, that's just not a priority, then I think I have to let it go. We have to let it go and acknowledge that you know we're working to be partners. It's a partnership. It's not like they even though I think ideally, yes, we would get hired on a project because people recognize that these are inherent things that we care about. At the same time, you have to, like listen to what your client and customer wants and needs and what we can get done in a certain amount of time.
Sarah:So, yeah, sometimes good enough is good enough, but then operationally like the end of your question was so interesting to me too Like you know, can you walk away and think like it's going to be good, and that's where I was like no, like never, they're never, they're never OK, it's like it's like raising, you know, raising a little kid and sending them out in the world of let go building, even if you did everything right along the way, you know the the most operationally ready building it's, we're still going to have have issues and things that we're going to come up. That and I think it's because I mean there's a few, there's a few factors at play. We, we don't have a really good bridge from. You know, if it's new construction, a handoff, you know, to educate who's the staff that's going to be operating this building, what are all of the things they need to know about all the equipment they have and building automation systems and maintenance and filters and belts, and then like, why is all that stuff there and how is it maybe different than what you've managed before? Let alone the fact that many buildings do not have building operators. There's just not those people enough in the world.
Sarah:So then we end up with the principal or you know, like an educator or somebody who's not a building person, trying to do building things, and I do worry about those buildings. I'm like, oh gosh, like I hope it's. Is it going to be OK? Or how are we going to do over time if there isn't some kind of regular cadence to just check in?
Sarah:And even buildings that benchmark their energy, that just like put the energy data into some platform and look at it, save something like you know 3% of their annual energy just by a simple function of somebody like huh, that looks interesting and like maybe taking some action or having a discussion huh, that looks interesting and like maybe taking some action or having a discussion. So if we could apply that same principle of you know, don't just pay the utility bill, actually like look at it and log the data and consider it, could we do that with other things like acoustics, thermal comfort, air quality, you know, lighting. How can, how could we just like look at the data a little bit more and have conversations about it operationally? Then I would feel a higher level of certainty to be like, yes, I feel like we did a great job, like go on building, but we're not quite there and I don't get involved in enough of those conversations to like feel real solid about it, unfortunately, yeah.
Simon:I really like your answer there about it, unfortunately. Yeah, I I really like your answer there. It kind of makes me feel like you're a, you're a midwife sending a kid off home with a, with a young couple who you know I haven't got a clue, and you just make sure they have the car seat. Yeah, I gave them a healthy building, but I've got no idea what that child's life's to be like kind of thing I know, I know yeah yeah, that probably speaks to something.
Simon:Actually, that, um, that, where, where does, where do roles and responsibilities finish, as an engineer, you know? And what are? What's our job? Where are the boundaries to our job? How do we build in resilience and tolerances and capacity and ease of use and a decent UX experience, so that that answers as many of those questions that we can, without having to babysit and micromanage every project that we give to a client because it's not our building.
Simon:Ultimately, when our job's done, it's their building, and they need to be able to get what they can out of that space. We build buildings for people and ultimately it's not us, it's them. You know and even more, even more complicated, if it's split incentive or something like that you know that we really have very little ultimate control over the outcomes. But as an engineer, the engineer's job, I suppose, is to put that building into as solid as a position as it possibly can be at the point at which we no longer have some control over it and that's that must be a fascinating intersection, um, oh for sure, the.
Simon:the question I was going to ask you, though, was, in those situations, where is good enough, good enough kind of thing? What would be the top two things, from an air quality and ventilation perspective, that you see being dropped from projects that you wish, rather weren't? You know, when you, when you see a job cutting or or slashing, or or maybe not going down the route you'd prefer and just going, look we just, we just want to get over the line to code on this one, we don't have the budget, blah, blah, blah. What are the kind of things that you see being dropped from those discussions that you wish weren't?
Sarah:Yeah.
Sarah:It's going to be okay to oh okay, yeah, well, yeah, I think it is. That's a great question. It's interesting and and I you know you kind of touched on the fact that these buildings right, oftentimes every building is a unique and individual prototype. It's the first time we've ever built anything like this and they're systems of systems and even if we're not intentionally trying to design them for integration, they are. The things are connected.
Sarah:We're controlling buildings to meet indoor air temperatures, but then a lot of times that system is also tied to ventilation and that means air quality implications and I think there are a lot of code requirements minimum code, compliant energy code, mechanical code concepts that end up in buildings regardless, viewed as more integrated but fall back to status quo, are like fundamental ventilation design calculations, I would say deferring to like ventilation rate procedure of ASHRAE 62. I see an opportunistic future where we look at air quality for design and that has energy and carbon emissions implications that go along with it. So quantity of ventilation air, I think is something that it's easy to over-design and over-compensate for. And then probably filtration. Honestly, there's still the default of, you know, merv 8 or kind of like minimum code or minimum performance filtration and an assumption that to go with higher levels of filtration, even if it's just a plug and play in the existing equipment, that that you know the equipment can't handle it or it'll take more energy, and then you know nobody will maintain it properly. So it's going to cost more for maintenance also because those filters cost more.
Sarah:And that's, I think, some of the where we can leverage our engineering problem solving and creativity to think a little bit beyond that, our engineering problem solving and creativity to think a little bit beyond that, and we can end up in conversations about filtration, even that look at things independent of a combined HVAC system. But it's like can we do room direct filtration? How can we apply that filtration to spaces where the people are at a higher level? And then maybe look at, you know, protecting the cooling coil back at the system with a different level of filtration. But again, that's not those things aren't like status quo. It's kind of like requires a little bit more time to think. And so I kind of talked to three levels there. Right, if we're at like designing for indoor air quality and kind of creative solutions of filtration, maybe that's an ideal and then, but just like having those thoughts and considerations and not just saying five CFM per person, or 20 CFM per person, and then applying rules of thumb, and here's the filter, because that's where it's shown on the detail and we're good to go Like that would be kind of the lower end of that.
Sarah:But I think that, because we're looking at systems of systems, there are these other external influences that people are starting to clue in on. Like you know, resilience and climate change as it relates to outdoor environmental impacts on our built environment, and air quality is certainly one of those, and that influences ventilation system performance. And even like right now, my voice is like a little bit raspier than normal because we've had air quality alerts in Omaha the last like three days. You know, our air quality index has been, you know, 100 plus, and I've been outside a lot. So I think people are noticing these things too and it just can't help but make their way into these design conversations. So I think I do, I have seen and I and I do feel good about the movement and the just additional interest in conversation about filtration and just like basic ventilation system sizing. Those are like my two, my two things.
Simon:Yeah, and I guess you can see those coming in conversations quite early if people are looking to go. Well, you know, do we really need this or can we cut here? Do you have the time and bandwidth to try and engineer your way around those restrictions from people? Or sometimes you just have to get a job done and that's the client brief and they're just not prepared to go down that road and you have to kind of walk away from a project with it, you knowing it doesn't have that yeah yeah I mean that happens?
Sarah:that happens for sure because we, you know, we we respond to rfps, we competitively bid on projects and compete, like oftentimes largely on price. And there is this there is still this sector of the market where design services are viewed as a commodity or commoditized service, right? So it's like well, we want, we want a good, healthy building, but we also want to, you know, spend the least amount of money. And we want a good, healthy building, but we also want to spend the least amount of money and we want it as fast as possible. That's the trifecta right Of like good, fast and cheap.
Sarah:And it's like you can only pick two of those things. We can't really have all three. Like that's not possible. But people, I don't know, we've kind of painted ourselves into a corner as an industry somehow. Right, it's not like there's some malevolent force making this happen and people, I think, generally want to have things that are good and fast and cheap, but it's like we just can't. That's not how the industry and the market and the pricing and the timelines and construction and material procurement and all that, that we're just not. We haven't got there yet, so um yeah, yeah, there is this kind of.
Simon:There's this natural assumption, I think, within construction, outside of construction, that standards are there for a reason and that if a building is built to code, then it's a perfectly good building. You know and right, you can understand people's perspective on that. I mean, we have, we have this here all the time and it's fine, yeah, they're fine and it's fine.
Simon:And, to be fair, yeah, a lot of the really bad situations we see in construction or in the built environment are because buildings aren't anywhere near to code either, regardless of whether that's a minimum standard or not. A lot of the big problems that we see are because buildings just aren't even there, never mind above a minimum.
Sarah:But as.
Simon:Robert Beam says. You know the trouble we have is the minimum becomes the maximum and what happens is is that because construction is a big supply chain, if your target is the minimum and there's any failure in that supply chain, in any part of those linkages, the default is going to be not is the minimum any poor design or a bad friday installation or a slightly wonky commissioning or a product that's maybe not performing the way it should be, or whatever the excuse like, because it happens. You know it's a complex system of construction. It's not going to be perfect. If your target was a minimum, then is it any surprise that we find buildings over and over and over again that just you know, never mind code not being good enough, just nowhere near code. Quite frankly, and particularly with this run to failure mentality we see with ventilation systems, we have buildings that weren't to code to begin with and then haven't been looked at for 15 years.
Simon:So we go in and it's an absolute cluster, whatnot?
Sarah:you know, yeah, yeah, I, I think for sure go ahead.
Simon:I was gonna. I was gonna say do you, do you do problem solving as well in your practice? Do you get called into those cluster whatnots? And let me use the language of buildings and say they say right, sarah, sort that out would you please, because it's a disaster where do we go? Do you get much of that work or is most of your stuff design?
Sarah:I think uh, I wouldn't say it's a huge portion of of work that we end up doing when and largely now. Um, I'm very much more on the kind of consulting side of the practice than the design side, and even at my previous company when I was doing design, like when I was the engineer of record there were a lot more instances of like something's not happening or should be happening or what's going on. But I think that happens too on the front side of building renovation projects. Like there's an opportunity there to even like, raise that baseline, like okay, we're now we're renovating, like that. That should trigger something as an opportune time to upgrade systems and make sure that whatever happened over the previous, however many years, is kind of addressed or brought up to some minimally code compliant condition.
Sarah:So the a lot of the work that we get into on existing buildings from an operational side now is like a function of energy auditing work like decarbonization roadmaps, right. If an organization has a goal of net zero I mean not even just carbon, but net zero, something by something, right. Then we need to figure out like well, what's the something now and where do we need to get? If it's zero, then here's all the things that need to happen to get to there. And so, yeah, it's, it's largely like energy auditing, retro commissioning, um, existing building assessments and road mapping and things like that.
Sarah:So, yeah, I, I do, I mean I am interested in like that diagnostic world as well, um, cause there's, there's so much of it, there's such a huge need, but, like I, I think, a hesitancy to start that conversation because people already feel like they, you know, they can't keep on top of the maintenance and the you know the conditions, and there's deferred maintenance and other projects beyond the invisible things that they don't know are wrong to begin with, like ventilation or, you know, acoustics or yeah, it's like when, when something rises to the top of concern, right and that's the break fix mentality, like, oh, our building is making people sick, now we should do something.
Sarah:But when you go to someone and say, hey, proactively, do you want to do some air quality testing and know if your building is bad? It's kind of like like we already know about these other things that are problems. So I mean, I get it. There's like a hesitancy to know about potential other issues to add to your list, because everybody already has their list of things that they wish they could get to in terms of either time or budget.
Simon:I'll have you back in just a minute. I just want to borrow you briefly to talk to you about 21 Degrees, a partner of the podcast, formerly the Green Building Store. They were founded in 1995 by three exceptional building professionals and the company grew out of their frustration with the poor availability of ecological building products, and I've known them for years as the go-to company in the UK for end-to-end design-led MVHR systems. You see, your home should do far more than just provide shelter and be energy efficient. If designed correctly, it'll be a far healthier and more comfortable environment. So whether you just want to start with a single product solution or need a comprehensive range of technologies to make your home more comfortable, 21 degrees can help. In 21 degrees you won't find a more trustworthy, straighting, passionate about what they do and approachable group of people. I speak a lot about the performance gap on this podcast and what we can achieve if we value ventilation highly enough. 21 degrees embodies that sentiment for me. So if you're building a home, looking to install ventilation or need to talk to experts in the field, I can't recommend them highly enough. Links are in the show notes at airqualitymattersnet and you can find them at 21degreescom. That's 21degreescom.
Simon:Now back to the podcast. Yeah, and for me, that would be the thing that I see being dropped. That I wish wasn't was an ability to see the spaces in a way that means you can be proactive, whether that's through BMS or controls or IoT or sensors. That ability to see the space and to predict and see patterns is so powerful and often dropped, unfortunately. Um and and you're sat. You know, yes, you're paying for something up front, but the potential to save costs down the line is enormous because you know you can see the deterioration of products or changes in patterns of performance of spaces. That can get you ahead of the curve before it does cost you money. You know, yeah, how many times have we seen that in all sorts of buildings that are performing poorly and have been for years, but nobody's been able to pick it up until it became a problem, until something started dripping on somebody's desk or rattling in the ceiling and you know, somebody actually cared to look.
Simon:You know and the other end of the scale the other end of the scale, at the lead and certification end of things, because you guys are at the forefront of both developing standards like lead but also implementing them to very high levels in buildings. What, what, what changes in the dynamic of those conversations where you're working with clients that are saying, forget minimums, forget codes? I mean, obviously we need to achieve them, but we have aspirations that are far higher than that. What's, what's driving that mentality principally, as you see it, and who are the kind of characters in those organizations that are driving that mentality?
Sarah:Yeah, I think those conversations are both industry specific and organizationally specific and it depends on the. I mean the drivers depend on the goals, but sometimes vice versa. So you might end up with somebody championing the conversation and saying we have to we silver minimum because we said we would do it in our shareholders report. Or they might have an interest in aligning health and wellness for their occupants because of a competitive advantage in the market sector. Or looking at a recognition for zero waste and diversion from landfill. That they're already doing as a company but they want some kind of third party recognition so they can roll it up to some other reporting structure. And we we have those conversations with people at all kinds of different levels. And it is another topic of interest to see how sustainability or ESG staff are positioned internally at an organization, what kind of autonomy or agency or authority they have to get stuff done and make decisions in terms of procurement, and then whether those staff are positioned kind of more at a corporate organizational level or at a functional building systems and engineering level, and whether those staff are actually full-time staff of that organization or if they're like a full-time hire from an external entity that's working on behalf of the organization. I think, right, all that exists and all that is interesting, and we see that play out for all kinds of different reasons.
Sarah:I think it gets more complicated when we're talking about company goals and market competitiveness and shareholders reports and, you know, let alone compliance and external regulatory requirements. But on like a project basis, I mean ideally, if somebody's building a building and this is, you know, again back to the analogy of the car, the simple example right, we're going to build a new thing, you have your, you have your ultimate customer, which is like the driver of the car, but then you have the person making the car to try to make it appealing to the customer. And the customer of our building, right, is different depending on what market sector we're talking about too. So it's like if you're working on a school that's pursuing healthy building standards, I think people inherently understand the value. On the customer basis, right, we have our children, we have our teachers and educators in the building basis, right, we have our children, we have our teachers and educators in the building.
Sarah:But then who? You know? How do they get to advocate for themselves during that procurement, design, construction process? And that doesn't routinely happen. So I think you know it has to be somebody that's on that chain back to the chain. Somebody on that chain earlier has to make that connection for it to all kind of proceed in that way. And so the the kind of I don't know, uh, advocate or champion for whatever the sustainability topic is can be, can be different depending on market sector and organizational structure.
Simon:And then the why, the goals, yeah it sounds like it's far simpler if somebody just turns around and says look, our target is lead gold. Yeah, what do we need to do? You know, I've been told.
Sarah:Yeah, the best is when. The easiest I will say the easiest example is when you're you know you're working for, uh, maybe a publicly traded company that you know know they have, so they have some requirements. They're you know, on the open market, they're reporting, they have an ESG report, they have shareholders to be accountable to and they're building a new headquarters building and the CEO, in a room full of the design team and the HR person and all of the other, like operational staff, says we're going to get LEED gold and we're going to get well gold and the building's going to be certified, everybody go and then like, then it happens because it's like oh, it's very top down, everybody heard it, we're all, we were all in the room, everybody, we had all the right people on the team. There's a reason externally, internally, and then it just kind of it goes. But sometimes that messaging and the why and the goals you know needs to be communicated all along those links in the chain and like it can get lost in translation yeah, and you hit a lot of ceilings.
Simon:I remember speaking to a consultant years ago and he was saying this is the ideal scenario you get these people in a room so that the levels that you're dealing with for what is effectively systemic change, often in a process or an organization aren't hitting resistance above them. That meeting has happened, where, from the top down, they've gone. Is everybody clear on what the strategy is here, that there's no resistance above you here for doing this, notwithstanding financial constraints and all the usual stuff?
Simon:but this is the imperative um and and then. Then it's all lights are green. It's where you're dealing with people above you and they're hitting glass ceilings you know, above them and and they're not sure if that's going to be a no or whether that's really an aspiration of the organization, and you know that yeah, that's the same for sustainability and leaders. It is for all sorts of things. You know I work in housing quite a bit and it's the same there for things like strategies around housing.
Sarah:If it, if it isn't coming from the top down, often it ends up just being a document that sits on a shelf because at some point, at some point it hits a roadblock, you know and you don't know why, and it just stops well, and I think, yeah, there's, there's importance to have that continuity of an advocate or a champion all along the way into operations. Because even the example I mentioned, that and this was a real example the building you know the building was designed, the building was built, it got certified, double certified gold, lead and well. But there are things like ongoing performance testing and data management that have to be reported back certainly to well. And you know IWBI is pretty prescriptive about like these things need to happen within these cadence quarterly, yearly, whatever. And you know organizations like once the building is turned over, that you know they have a property management company, they have internal staff, but they're not set up to clearly understand whose role it is to manage that effort. Right, like well, who's responsible for that thing? That we've never done before.
Simon:So it has to become a conversation and having that continuous knowledge on who's responsible becomes increasingly important important, yeah, and there can be so much false faith put into a champion within an organization because that champion can leave, as they often do, even just to another part of the country or to another part of the organization, and once that figurehead is gone the one that spearheaded this idea or this grand plan sometimes it's like you're starting again from scratch. You know, and, and if it isn't part of the dna of the organization, it's doomed for failure. You know, and it's why right these complex projects like sustainability, like things like lead and well and others that are multi-systemic, if it's not, it doesn't become part of the playbook of that organization at a at a substantive level that they're almost always doomed to failure because one year one person will leave, the next year somebody else will leave, and before you know it, people are looking around going what's this? Well thing I've got to do again in august. It's, why does it? Why are we doing?
Sarah:this. Why are we?
Simon:doing this, yeah, yeah, maybe you know I'm busy next year, you know, or particularly sass models and things that require ongoing investment and stuff you know, in those budget meetings they're going. Do we get any value from this?
Sarah:what's the why are we doing this? Yeah, what is? Why are we doing this? Even yeah, yeah, yes. And what is this? Even yeah, yeah.
Simon:Yes, and the assumption is is that it's a big part of the organization and it's not two. Two people leave, three people leave, and it's as if it never existed. It's amazing. It's amazing, isn't it, even in big, very forward thinking organizations, how that can just evaporate into nothing in the space of a couple of years.
Sarah:Yeah, and that's. That is something that, for me, is disappointing, too right. If you get to a point where people are unsure why we're doing this thing, that's not a win in my book. Just doing something because we've always done it that way, or because when I got hired somebody told me to do this thing, and not understanding why or the value behind it, like that's, that's not, that doesn't make me feel good at the end of the day, like I would.
Sarah:You know, I want people to feel like they're part of this process or like they're bought in, like they're you know they're doing these things because it benefits all of us operationally as stakeholders of this building, and not because, oh, I don't know, I hired this consultant to do this testing because somebody told me to, or I look at this data on the building automation system and it shows red, and so I call the external person and then, you know, don't go any deeper into the why behind that. I think it's not how my brain is wired, so I struggle to understand it. But I empathize, though. Right when we don't have the luxury of worrying about some things or having an interest or needing to be able to, to go deeper into the why, and I think that's fine too, but we need to at least have somebody.
Simon:somebody needs to get it like about why was that important up the chain for continuity, so that we can all kind of raise the ships and be better and you know more informed and I think sometimes I don't know if it's right, but I think sometimes the moment we're talking in terms of somebody needs to get it in an organization, we probably got it wrong at that point that it needs to be systemic within the organization for it to have sustainability. They're relying on an individual or a group of individuals to right sustain something over the long term. I can't remember I read a book on on organizational change management once and they were talking you know most businesses it's a decade for any substantive organizational change to happen, because you've got to go through several iterations of changes of personnel and management in order to know that that systemic change has happened and embedded could. Because, yeah, you assume it has but actually it isn't. It's because a couple of characters get it and if they're no longer there or their priorities change, you never really know.
Simon:That's the challenge and that's the battle we have with sustainability, I think more broadly is that this isn't a one-year, five-year, ten-year thing. This is something that you know systemically. Businesses and organizations have to change for the long term and it doesn't happen just because there's a sustainability champion in the organization that's right.
Sarah:You know, yeah, and as you're building that framework, it can be, it can be fragile, right to your point. So if you, if you take a piece out and or a person right, like the whole, the whole system can shift.
Simon:So it is kind of about building those resilient structures of people, like operationally right, and that's I think I think that's really important, that there's whole, whole structures within businesses that thought dei was around to stay for a while that are re-evaluating their, their future careers and prospects. And what have you? You?
Sarah:know, it's.
Simon:We live in a fragile world where what we, what we see, what we seem think is established. Sentiment on certain subjects seems to be able to turn on a dime. You know, really, fundamentally, you know we I think no more so have we seen that in the last couple of years. You know it's been interesting times. What's your job? How do you when somebody says, so what'd you do, sarah? How do you explain to people? Do you have a very formed role, like, is it an easy explainer or is it quite nuanced?
Sarah:I mean I like to use a lot of words so I find myself over explaining often what I do, but I do, I like to start with.
Sarah:I like to start with like I'm a mechanical engineer and I do consulting for commercial real estate, like usually that's enough that people are like okay, and if they want to know more, then I talk about how we focus on green buildings and the intersection of healthy buildings and green buildings and building science and engineering, and how Branch Pattern was an engineering design firm, fundamentally like MEPT traditional design, and then really evolved, similarly to how I did over the course of my career, into this enhanced interest on, you know, indoor environmental quality, operational carbon, embodied carbon materials, enclosures and like kind of the what I view as like enhancements to ultimately make buildings better. It's not just I don't think the concept of sustainable design isn't a value add if we look at it as just like bolting on these things to how we already design buildings. It's like we need to think about enhancing the way that we already design buildings. So then I and then, if they're still listening, then I'll talk about how I specifically am.
Simon:And, let's be fair, we've usually lost about 90% of the room at that point.
Sarah:Yeah, most people are like, okay, that's, that's enough. But yeah, I, I, yeah I'm interested in indoor environmental quality, specifically air quality. And it's funny, though you know my sister-in-law texted me recently. They have a relatively new baby at home and you know she was on a conference call walking around the basement and noticed some spots on the wall and was, you know, like, oh, what is that bug you about work when you're not working? And I was like, no, I actually like this stuff, like I'm actually really excited to talk about it all the time.
Sarah:So it's not you know for me what I do and my work isn't just a job. Like it's actually kind of part of my ethos and what I'm really interested in to a point that my kids, who are eight and 10, will be watching something on the TV. I can't remember what this was. It was something like some kind of nationally geographic kids show or something. For some reason they ended up with a smoke and a filter and I was like cooking something in the kitchen and they came and got me like mom, there's something with a filter on the TV. Like you're going to want to see this. So I mean people, people know what I'm into because it's just kind of all around me all the time.
Simon:Yeah, it's when people realize actually you've been talking at them about air quality for the last decade. It just so happens something about air quality came up they're interested in, they went. I know somebody that does air quality. Who is that? It's me. You're married to him.
Sarah:I've been talking to you about this for somebody said something, yeah, yeah I'm sure that happens to you all the time too, right yeah?
Simon:somebody said something that's why we just have to keep talking do you see your role evolving much over the next five years? Like can you imagine yourself talking about what you do in a different light in five years? Oh, for sure.
Sarah:Yeah, I think I mean functionally, as a practice. Our building science team is designed to be nimble and responsive to the needs of the market. So I have several partners that we all run the building science practice and we have practice leads that run the engineering practice as well. But then we all each also work with a team of consultants that are dedicated to these different disciplines, whether it's green building, consulting, analytics, commissioning portfolios, and then you know, we do try to work very hard internally to be responsive to the needs of both our clients and the market. So I would be remiss if I didn't point out, you know, lead V5 is launched now. That's rolling out over the course of the year. That's rolling out over the course of the year.
Sarah:Sunset registrations for the older version, 4.1 and 4, are going to be targeted for quarter one 2026.
Sarah:So you know we're proactively getting up to speed on, like, what is the value to register projects early for version five or to wait, and having those conversations with clients and all the other things that go along with that, the changes with Energy Star.
Sarah:Looking at GRESB reporting, you know there's just like what do we need to be ready to do in response to what the market needs, and some of it happens quickly and you get to kind of observe these trends over time also. So I think my role largely is to be aware of all the things that are happening and be ready to respond if somebody comes to us with a question that's like, hey, I heard about this thing, is it valuable or not? Or hey, I want, I have this idea for something that I want us to do to be more competitive. How do we do that? And to be able to help answer those questions. Like that's kind of my role now and how I will continue to position ourselves and like be ready to answer those questions, and then we can, we can like spin up these teams to provide those services that go along with those requests.
Simon:Yeah, and stay on the front foot and increasingly be involved in setting and writing those standards as well. I mean, I'm right in recalling you involved with LEED V5, weren't you I think you did you chair the air quality group or the indoor environmental quality side of it? Yeah you were that you evolved, weren't you?
Sarah:yeah, yeah, I was the chair of the eq technical advisory group or the tag um, and and volunteered, yeah, with usgbc kind of chronically for the last, uh, six years and after, after that time I termed out on the tag and so then you can't volunteer for that same technical advisory group again for two years, I think. And so I was my kind of volunteer term concluded in December of last year and I just even this morning emailed my, my friends at USGBC and I was like, hey, how's it going? Like I miss you guys. Can I, can I volunteer, can I do some stuff? Like there's we're having these ask the experts webinars over the course of this year. The first one is next week and one of my partners here at Branch Pattern is on that webinar on operational carbon. But yeah, yeah, I was like can I be on? There's an air quality one in October. Do you need anybody to speak?
Sarah:So yeah, I was like very, very involved in the rollout of V5.
Sarah:It was really rewarding to be part of those conversations and to see the development through hundreds of volunteers, hundreds of volunteers, and be in those rooms and in those conversations.
Sarah:And it was very interesting because we started with existing buildings, we started with operations and maintenance rating system and then we pivoted over to new construction like building design and construction rating system. And one of the things on my wishlist of to-dos still is to do kind of a mind mapping exercise to bridge the gap from BD&C to O&M, specifically for LEED, like using that as a vehicle, but you could apply those principles to any building. That doesn't have to be a LEED certified building or even a certified building. But it's like what are the things that we could do to design our buildings specifically in the indoor environmental quality category? But it was like what are the design things that have implications and operations and what are the things that people need to know operationally? That maybe were design decisions but they don't have visibility on. So yeah, I could geek out on lead for a whole nother hour and a half podcast, but yeah, it was really rewarding.
Simon:And that goes back to what you were saying earlier about this kind of as an engineer letting go of a building and the operation maintenance people taking over it what they know, what they understand about the setup of that space and how to use it. It sounds like there's some connections there with what you were saying about LEED and O&M and new buildings. Is there anything substantive? What have been the main substantive changes in LEED V5 from an air quality perspective? Can you recall?
Sarah:Yeah, the I mean some of the most interesting conversations that we had as a group were related to honestly applying the air quality parts of the standard to different building typologies. You know, I think it's easy to to think about the work that you do and how it would apply to projects that you've seen in the past. That you do and how it would apply to projects that you've seen in the past. But then, because of the you know the variety of expertise and experience we had on the tag, people would bring up examples like you know what if it were a different you know just totally wild, different building type that you'd never worked on before, like an institutional occupancy or a convention center, or like how do we apply these things? So some of the biggest changes are related to just fundamental getting back to, like, fundamental ventilation system design I'm excited about. So these are also the things I'm excited about. I'm excited about the fact that the prerequisite now has a requirement to and I don't know exactly what this is going to look like, but hopefully to document that the system was designed with consideration of outdoor air, like that was. That's always been in LEED. It was like a check box. That's like hey, make sure you check section five of standard 62.1. And you design, you checked out the ambient air quality around the building and I did a webinar earlier this summer on outdoor air and resilience and how the outdoor becomes the indoor air. And I think I was 10 years into my career before I actually read that section and was like, oh, we're supposed to go to the site and like look at the buildings around and look for potential contaminants before we just assume we're going to do an air intake on the roof and everything's going to be great all the time, you know. So I think that you know that's kind of more embedded in the standard the need to design our indoor air considering the outdoor air.
Sarah:And then there are some options to look at designing for resiliency in terms of outdoor air quality events or indoor air quality events like pandemic response, and there's some incentives to move the market towards continuous monitoring versus historically. We've just focused on point in time air quality testing, but they're both in there, which is which was fun and exciting and in more, many hours of interesting discussions were had on that topic. And then about you know, what kind of contaminants do we want to monitor? For what do we want to incentivize people to do with their data. Is there any reasons to share that? Or like, how do we get value out of the kind of things that look prescriptive on the rating system? So there's a lot, uh. And then, you know, we had to balance out the points that you get for all those things with all the other categories in the rating system. So we had these big, you know, committee conversations on that topic.
Simon:Yeah, yeah, and one of the things you mentioned there I think is going to be an interesting area going forward and I've got somebody coming on to discuss that, just to both steel man and advocate for this argument Is this move towards continuous monitoring.
Simon:We're seeing it both in LEED and in WELL, and other standards, but we're seeing arguably a demotion of the point in time testing and the interesting thing there is is the.
Simon:We haven't really seen out that low cost at scale monitoring play out over time. And what we know about the point in time monitoring is that generally it's done to a particular standard with calibrated devices by organizations that got processes and procedures and skill sets, and it's very different in the low cost sensor world. You know we'd have much less control about placements of sensors, about calibrations of devices, and there are trade-offs on both. And I know and I'm interested, I know you've got an interest in low-cost sensors, as do I, but also at the, the other end of the scale, the the the value of occupational hygiene or industrial hygiene, the value of near reference grade sensors, the value of processes and procedures of capturing environmental data is also incredibly performant and for me it's going to be interesting to see how those standards lead and well and others over the next decade find that balance, because it's not clear what direction it's going in.
Simon:Certainly well is now accepted, I believe, low-cost monitoring in substitution of point-in-time testing, and that's a big departure.
Sarah:you know, yeah, yeah, we, we do that work as well the, the performance testing for well and iwbi, and then the air quality testing, the point in time testing for lead, right, but then we are also very much involved in discussions on continuous monitoring, monitor options, integration with systems, and I do fall back to when we have to have those discussions. I guess in an ideal world I look at it as a kind of both and Like there's still a value in point-in-time testing and there's a value in continuous monitoring, and the value and the reasoning and the why are different for both of those things and there's some overlap. But I kind of fall back to like is it actionable? Is either of the data, that conversation, because if it's not something we can take action to make change with, then you fall into the category of doing it for a point, which I don't. I never advocate for that Like when, even when we end up in those conversations and we're in the business of green building certifications.
Sarah:But when we end up in conversations on like what's the, let's do it to get the point or the value of the point, it feels kind of yucky to me personally because I'm like the, the getting the point, though I am highly motivated by gamification. The point is not the value, right. Like we can't, we shouldn't, just do things for a point or for a value. Like we can look to do things that make sense. And so the air quality thing, like if it's not actionable to know all you know, 30, whatever component VOCs, then you know we can't do anything about it because the building that we're testing those VOCs for is an educational industrial. You know they have 3D printers and all kinds of you know equipment that was like okay, we're going to test it and we're going to have a lot of VOCs. And then, what you know, we're not going to change the function of the space. So I think there's value to both and we, you know we need to have project-based conversations about is the value actionable?
Simon:That's a really good point. Yeah, what's the point In a kind of a strange way, yeah, and that kind of goes back to scientific endeavor. You need to understand what your question is before you conduct the research. And similarly with environmental monitoring what are you trying to answer? And similarly with environmental monitoring what are you trying to answer and what are the actionable outcomes out of it before you start doing a point in time test or longitudinal monitoring. You know it's fine if you think you might have a particular VOC and a couple of years time, or at the other end of the scale, like you say, you measure at the wrong time in the wrong place. With your snapshot measurement you might not be getting something that's reflective of the use of that space. Even so, it's a. I would be nervous about seeing point in time testing dropped completely. I think the question is and I asked this of Joseph Allen last week similarly with the occupational hygiene or the industrial hygienist. What's not clear to me, looking into the future, is what the access points for those skill sets are.
Simon:If they're not where they should be at the moment. Where should they be? So in the case of occupational hygiene, you know we understand there's a value in occupational hygiene. It's a highly skilled job. It's got lots of scientific rigor behind it. There's a, you know, very qualified person. Do we need them in every case? No, probably not. But is there a how do I know when I need an industrial hygienist? And similarly with these point in time tests, if I'm not going to have them, if they're not completely invaluable, then when do?
Sarah:I know I need one Right.
Simon:Is it a particular outcome from a low-cost sensor that triggers that workflow? And that's not what. For me, that's not clear yet and it'll be interesting to see how these standards over time map that out. For, like we've been discussing the non-professional, the person that's going to be managing this space exactly yeah, well, I've got. I've got this dashboard with these sensors flashing green and red at me. When do I know who to call and what kind of skill set should they have?
Sarah:yeah, interesting yeah, it is, and I I think it's another educational opportunity, right. But the first hurdle is people recognizing what they don't know. You know you don't know what you don't know, and until you acknowledge that there's maybe a gap there, you don't know to take the second step of like do I need somebody else? Like do I need somebody else? And you know it would sound self-serving if I said something like, oh well, somebody like me could be in that conversation, but like that's not practical or realistic and there there is some interesting work that I know is being done within these rating system frameworks and other external guidance.
Sarah:Like there was a, there was a white paper that the building green formerly building green peer networks put together. That was like I mean, it was our working title, I think it became the actual title. It was like so you have some air quality monitors. Now what? Like now you have some data. Like there's somebody looking at the data that's not a practitioner. What do I look for in terms of trends? Like what's good, what's bad, when do I need to bring in somebody else? But that, you know, that's just one example of one paper that you know. Probably not a lot of people that are not practitioners read. So it is like how do we get that message out as part of regular building operation to other organizations for people to want to educate themselves on? So I mean, it's a great question and we're moving in that direction. But yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years. I think you're right direction. But yeah, it's, it'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.
Simon:I think you're right yeah, you've just inspired a panel discussion for me uh on, uh. So you've got an indoor air quality sensor. What now, yeah, would be a great conversation to have, wouldn't? It gets a bunch of experts together to say congratulations. You've got a white box on the wall. What do you do next?
Sarah:I know what would be even more interesting. I think, too, I would love to hear the conversation of whoever ended up tasked with looking at that data or maintaining that monitor right in different building types. It's like is it the sustainability corporate staff person? Is it the you know, maintenance technician? Is it an external entity that came in to service the building and they're like, what is that thing? Like I would, I would be real interested to hear what everybody has to say there, right, and that gets into like improvement, right. If we can hear the issues that those people are having, it helps us on the on the front side when we're having those kind of consulting based conversations.
Simon:So I think we'd be quite. I think we'd be quite frightened, uh, that there was a standard introduced into scotland that every bedroom should have a co2 monitor. Um, it was part of the regulation and they were able to enact it. They did a survey recently of what the impacts of this CO2 monitor had on awareness of homeowners. I think something like 25% of people thought it was a carbon monoxide alarm.
Sarah:I was just going to say that, Like that's the first hurdle Carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide.
Simon:Yeah, a bunch of people thought it was a thermostat and couldn't understand what the temperature reading was on about, um, there was all sorts of funny responses to actually what people thought this thing was for, um, which I thought it was, and a lot of buildings just didn't have it installed even though it was part of the code. But, yeah, there was this. There's this whole. How do you say you've got an air quality monitor? What next?
Sarah:Sarah, look, I've been really talking to you this afternoon.
Simon:I really appreciate you taking the time.
Sarah:Likewise Thank you.
Simon:It's been fascinating talking to somebody that's having these conversations for real, with real customers working out how to implement these changes in high-performance buildings and buildings that care about health and air quality. So thanks a million. I really appreciate it.
Sarah:Yeah, thanks, I'm happy to, I'm happy to have the chance to discuss with you, and it's certainly an ongoing conversation, so there'll be. There'll be more to come, I'm sure.
Simon:Thanks a million and I'll and I'll put some links in the show notes for people who want to check out Branch Pattern and Sarah's own websites and some of the stuff you're doing with air quality monitors as well there's some really great and your youtube channel as well. Are you still doing? Are you still doing the air quality I?
Sarah:mean yeah, back to the discussion where we talked about the boxes in the corner. Yeah, I have, I have some. There's some lined up. It's slowed down a little bit but it's it's still of interest for sure brilliant, I'll.
Simon:I'll stick some links in, sarah. Thanks a million. Speak to you soon.
Sarah:Yeah.
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