ASHRAE AIA

My passion is to deliver high performance, healthy buildings that provide triple bottom line value. I believe my diverse technical background helps underpins my current mechanical sustainable design focus and helps foster the integrative thinking such work demands. I started my career with Carrier Corporation, where I gained a strong fundamental and practical understanding of HVAC&R equipment and systems that have been foundational to my career. I next joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratories in 1987 as a senior research scientist. There I engaged in building’s research, with an emphasis on the development of integrated building systems to reduce energy use. I also investigated the environmental impacts of non-CFC alternative refrigerants and the costs associated with improving indoor air quality in the U.S. building stock. During the mid-90s I worked as an energy and IAQ consultant and design engineer for Grumman/Butkus Associates in Chicago. While there I fully integrated a life cycle cost methodology into my work on new and existing buildings. Prior to returning to the Northwest in 2004, I was a founding member of Honeywell’s energy information services business. Here I led development of the technology, analytic techniques and business processes needed to efficiently collect, store, analyze and web-deliver enterprise wide actionable energy conservation information. This enabled cost effective “continuous building commissioning” for enterprise clients, some with literally 1000s of globally dispersed sites.

1. As practice leader and managing principal for Stantec's Seattle office, I have overall responsibility for (1) developing sustainable mechanical design concepts on all project, (2) helping develop young "turned on green" technical professional staff in our office so they can produce design documents for buildings that actually work and make high performance a reality, (3) leading an on-going Continuing Education lecture series by Stantec on sustainable design techniques for the AIA and (4) helping with an on-going large effort in our office to support the USGBC LEED certification process by serving as LEED assessors. 2. As one of 22 voting members for ASHRAE 189.1 "Standard for High Performance Green Building" I particpated in development of the first ANSI-accredited building standard for sustainability written in normative language that can be adopted directly into building codes. This standard is also targeted to serve as a pre-requisite for LEED in the future and provides a benchmark for next generation energy and water efficiency Standards. 3. In the spirit of the Living Building Challenge, I am currently working intensively on a high profile net zero multi-family residential building project in Issaquah that hopefully will become a model for how these projects can really work and can be replicated in the current market! This entails a very different design approach, truly integrated in deed, not just in words.

My previous involvement with Cascadia has been as: 1. A financial supporter 2. Supporting and encouraging staff here in Seattle to participate in Cascadia events, SLUG, etc. 3. Attending and speaking at Cascadia functions and events, including last year's Living Future conference 4. Providing pro bono engineering services for TI work at Cascadia's office

There are many reasons I think I can make a valuable contribution while serving on the Board of Directors of Cascadia. Limiting myself to what I consider to be my absolutely unique qualifications, I would point back to the diversity of my prior work experience and what that means, both from the standpoint of breadth but also from the standpoint of how somebody like me thinks. Not only have I been heavily involved in the design of green buildings (and, previously, energy efficient, healthy buildings before people talked much about green), but I have (just to name a few): 1. Managed large, multinational, globally dispersed teams. So, lots of skills leading and participating in large meetings, general people management skills, international travel skills, PM skills...and Dilbertian patience. 2. Developed technology to monitor and analyze existing building performance with the objective to enable existing buildings to have a chance of persisting in performing as intended. 3. Developed, applied and validated advanced building system simulation models while working in a research environment. This was before the current commercial software used today was available, so we were writing everything in FORTRAN (for you computer geeks). While also at the PNNL labs I helped support development efforts on the first version of the ASHRAE 90.1 energy standard. 4. Represented a large air conditioning manufacturer back in the early 80s when energy efficient products were first coming out. Involved in putting tons of equipment in dozens of large buildings...not very greed, but hugely helpful in gaining hands-on practical experience about making stuff really work in the field. It takes ideas, good design, good product, good contractors and a good owner to make it right. I could continue with 5, 6, 7, 8...but the point I want to make is I can go from being highly practical to highly esoteric, from highly tactical to highly strategic, from very logical and technical to providing a little humor (hopefully not too bizarre) to lighten any situation. My Myers Briggs personality type test always places me in a near balance on each of the four scales. That seems to translate into flexibility and adaptability. And, I'm a Libra too, so I guess it all makes sense...

Our global impact on the environment is still accelerating in the wrong direction and by most any metric is rapidly reaching a tipping point if something doesn't change. The only responsible thing for us individually and corporately to do is to start taking action immediately. How we and our families live our lives is a good first step. But, organizations like Cascadia can be agents for bringing about positive change quickly in the way people think and act on a broader scale. My interest in serving on the board is to place myself in a place where I can bring my own talents and knowledge to bear to help Cascadia achieve its mission and so we can magnify our shared values and beliefs in the most effective way possible.