The Future. Built Smarter.

In the first of two episodes on reducing embodied carbon in structural systems, IMEG structural engineer Laura Hagan joins Mike Lawless and Joe Payne in a discussion about SE 2050, which calls on all structural engineers to understand, reduce, and ultimately eliminate embodied carbon in their projects by the year 2050. The SE 2050 Challenge was developed by the Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF) and the SE 2050 Commitment Program developed by the Sustainability Committee of the Structural Engineering Institute (SEI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). IMEG joined the Commitment in April. “Structural engineers have always played an important role in the design of a project; now we are able to look at what we are doing through a different lens and see the role we can play in being able to reduce the environmental effects of the buildings we design,” says Hagan. “The more we understand about how to make reductions in embodied carbon, the better the buildings will be for the client, the owner, users of the buildings, the surrounding communities, and the planet as a whole. I’m also looking forward to seeing what happens in the material industries, because we’re going to need a lot of innovation in the materials before we get to the year 2050.”

In the second of two episodes on reducing embodied carbon in structural systems, IMEG structural engineer Laura Hagan discusses life cycle analysis (LCA), which, in the context of the built environment, examines the lifetime environmental impacts of the different materials used in a building’s construction. The analysis provides data on the embodied carbon arising from the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and eventual disposal or reuse of structural and architectural materials. This information enables clients to understand and compare the potential embodied carbon of various design options. “We’re looking at each and every structural and architectural component—that’s the industry focus right now,” says Hagan. “What’s coming in the near future will be mechanical, electrical, and plumbing components as well.”

Podcast co-host Joe Payne recently spent a fitful night in the hospital. How his experience—and that of all patients—could be improved is examined in the fourth of a series of episodes based on the IMEG executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” Guest Corey Gaarde, a biomedical engineer and healthcare information technology specialist at IMEG, discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations improve the Quadruple Aim’s third goal, enhancing the patient experience. “The patient journey starts at home and ends at home,” he says. “If there are ways that we can bring home-level types of experiences into the healthcare environment, why not? Things like an Alexa-based device in the patient room to play music, to change the television, to control the lights, all hands-free. Things like this are very easy to do in a hotel setting, so why not do them in a patient care environment? ‘Hospital’ is part of the word ‘hospitality, right? We need to push architects and engineers to think this way, IT to think this way, push the design space, and really consider what the overall future vision of a smart patient room or experience looks like.”

In the third of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” Joel Yow, co-founder of linear A, discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations achieve the Quadruple Aim’s second goal, reducing the cost of care. “You don’t want to make an investment in a new building that’s meant to reduce the cost of care, and then misplace it or mistime it and then just generally increase the cost of care by not really thinking through the data enough,” he says. “When looking at patient origin, for example, we’ve provided reports and data to clients that show them where their patient populations are coming from in relation to where they are currently located. It always surprises me how often there are two or three people out of 10 in a room who say, ‘I had no idea this high of a percentage is coming from out of state,’ or that ‘this many people are in a service area in which we don’t have any facilities or assets.’ There is this lightbulb that goes off where they realize they really need to understand their patients better in order to better serve them.”

Numerous healthcare organizations have adopted the guiding principles of the Quadruple Aim—a framework for healthcare excellence, the goals of which can be greatly supported through an intentionally designed built environment. In the second of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations achieve the first goal, improving population health.

Numerous healthcare organizations have adopted the guiding principles of the Quadruple Aim, a framework for healthcare excellence that focuses on improving population health, reducing the cost of care, enhancing the patient experience, and improving provider satisfaction. Many of these organizations, however, are missing out on opportunities to support these desired outcomes through an intentionally designed built environment. In the first of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,”IMEG Director of Healthcare Mike Zorich provides a high-level explanation of the Quadruple Aim and offers examples of various design strategies and elements that can enhance it—and ultimately help the healthcare industry deliver better outcomes for patients, caregivers, communities, and the world.

In the final episode in our series on sustainability strategies of the future, IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses five steps any owner can take to begin the process of decarbonizing their building. “There's a lot of discussion today about decarbonizing — the push to make sure we all electrify our buildings because the grid will get cleaner in the future. This is a big change, and a lot of owners are wondering how to wade into it without a lot of risk,” says McMillen. “So, we’re summarizing five things owners can do today that don't cost a lot of money and that will help ensure their buildings will be ready for electrification—whether it's a new building, or even an existing building that's undergoing a major renovation.”

Battery energy storage is examined in part five of our series on sustainability strategies of the future. “Most of us in the industry have had a lot of questions about batteries,” says IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen. “When does it make sense? When will they be cost competitive? How do they fit into the big picture? These are all good questions because the last thing you want to do is put some expensive, embodied-carbon heavy, lithium-ion batteries on your campus and then have them not really do much for you.” Co-host Mike Lawless, IMEG Direction of Innovation, joins Adam in delving into these questions. They also discuss the many future opportunities of this strategy, such as pairing batteries with renewables such as wind and solar to provide facilities with both reliable and sustainable backup power when the grid goes down as well as a method to eliminate expensive peak demand charges from utilities. Battery energy storage is examined in part five of our series on sustainability strategies of the future. “Most of us in the industry have had a lot of questions about batteries,” says IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen. “When does it make sense? When will they be cost competitive? How do they fit into the big picture? These are all good questions because the last thing you want to do is put some expensive, embodied-carbon heavy, lithium-ion batteries on your campus and then have them not really do much for you.” Co-host Mike Lawless, IMEG Direction of Innovation, joins Adam in delving into these questions. They also discuss the many future opportunities of this strategy, such as pairing batteries with renewables such as wind and solar to provide facilities with both reliable and sustainable backup power when the grid goes down as well as a method to eliminate expensive peak demand charges from utilities.

The fourth episode in our series on sustainability strategies of the future examines thermal energy storage. To illustrate, consider hospitals and industrial facilities that use heat pumps to create the large amount of heating hot water needed for their buildings. This type of heat pump can’t operate when temperatures dip below 15 degrees, however, and a gas-burning boiler is typically used as back-up. Thermal energy storage provides a carbon-free alternative. In this strategy, the heat pump generates additional heating water during the warmer part of the day and stores it in a thermal energy storage tank. That water can then be used to heat the facility during frigid overnight hours or anytime the temperature dips below 15 degrees and the heat pumps shut down. Conversely, chilled water storage in the summer months enables facilities to shut down their chillers in the hot afternoon hours and cool the building with water saved overnight to shave off peak demand charges. IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses the challenges, solutions, and many opportunities of this new strategy.

This episode takes a brief look at how the commercialization of the aerospace industry has opened the doors for more engineering firms to become engaged in such projects. Guest Ed Dean, an IMEG structural engineer who has designed several launch facility projects, discusses how IMEG entered the market, and the benefits commercially oriented firms bring to aerospace clients. “Commercial buildings and structures are not done in an institutional way, but rather on a very rapid schedule; things are very much fast-tracked and you’re delivering certain ‘just-in-time’ design elements. We apply this approach to the design of launch facilities, saving clients both time and money.” Ed also talks about being on site for launches and discusses a mock rocket IMEG designed to allow a client to test their launch facility equipment and processes prior to an actual rocket launch.

In the third episode of our series on sustainability strategies of the future, IMEG’s Adam McMillen discusses cold climate electrification. Essentially, this is a means to providing heat in cold climates without burning carbon-emitting fossil fuels. In areas with cold winters, McMillen explains, we currently use natural gas-burning furnaces or boilers for heat. Electricity, however, is used to power our cooling systems in the warmer months. While electricity is produced predominately by coal-burning plants, there is a trend by utilities toward greater use of renewable energy as a source. “We see our electric grid getting cleaner, year after year,” says McMillen. “So, imagine a future in which our grid is fully clean, and instead of using fossil-fueled boilers we’re using some sort of electrically-based heating equipment. As a result, we would then have perfectly clean heating and cooling for our homes and our businesses.”

In the second episode of our series on sustainability strategies of the future, IMEG’s Adam McMillen discusses embodied carbon in chillers, boilers, and other MEP equipment. “Naturally, engineers put a lot of equipment into buildings,” he says. “That equipment contains a lot of steel and comes from all over the world, so it obviously has a carbon footprint.” Quantifying that footprint is critical. “It’s starting to become clear that the amount of carbon a company has on its books is going to be a liability in the future, from a climate change perspective, a dollar perspective, and a regulations perspective. We need to get all this quantified so that companies can clearly see these big numbers as a risk to their business and demand lower levels from manufacturers.” Reversing the “throw-away” mentality also is crucial and includes designing buildings for a much longer life. “Let’s not think about constructing a 50-year building — let’s think about a 100-year building,” McMillen says. “And let’s think about 30-year MEP equipment.”

In the first of a series on sustainability strategies of the future, IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses embodied carbon. “We have pretty much figured out how to reduce operational carbon,” he says. “Now the AEC industry is ready for the next step — reducing embodied carbon in steel, concrete, and wood.” Getting these materials to a construction site requires extraction or harvesting, processing, and transportation — each of which requires energy, mostly from burning fossil fuels, which in turn releases CO2. These emissions combined make up the carbon footprint, or the embodied carbon, of a material. “People in the industry and elsewhere are really starting to get it,” says McMillen, who counts Bill Gates and Wisconsin Girl Scouts among those who are helping to spread the word. Learn more in this 15-minute podcast.

With legalized medical and recreational marijuana continuing to expand across the U.S., many new grow facilities will be licensed and constructed in the coming years. This episode examines important infrastructure considerations that are critical for “keeping the plants happy” and achieving successful harvests — not only for cannabis but also for other crops grown within controlled environment agriculture (CEA) facilities. “Our experience designing these facilities allows us to provide valuable information and lessons learned for owners who will be venturing into this market for the first time,” says IMEG’s Luke Streit, a project manager for several cannabis grow facilities. Luke discusses a variety of topics during this episode, including water and energy use, HVAC systems, power requirements, and other unique challenges encountered by CEA owners. Based on a recent IMEG webinar, this podcast provides valuable information for owners and architects alike.

The 2021 National ACEC Engineering Excellence Grand Conceptor Award – which honors the year’s most outstanding engineering achievement in the U.S. – was presented to IMEG Corp. for its design of the Denver Water Operations Complex Redevelopment. This episode examines the project’s extensive water and energy efficiency goals and challenges from the perspective of Ken Urbanek, who led the IMEG team on the $205M redevelopment featuring a 186,000-sf LEED Platinum, net-zero energy and “One Water” administration building. “This project is a testament to what we in the AEC industry can do,” says Urbanek. “It demonstrates that given the right drive from ownership, we can achieve carbon-free emissions, net zero energy, and even significant reductions in water use. Engineers, contractors, and architects – we can all deliver on this.”

Acuity adaptability – a healthcare model in which patients remain in one room regardless of level of care – is being considered by many healthcare organizations looking for safer, more efficient care delivery in the era of COVID-19 and beyond. But is this model feasible – and if so, under what conditions? “One of the things that you look for when you are exploring this option is how to balance the patient experience, patient safety, and the staff experience,” says Erin Clark, R.N., a clinical operations specialist and guest on the 35-minute podcast. Also featured on this episode are IMEG National Healthcare Director Mike Zorich and HIT Specialist Corey Gaarde, co-authors of the free executive guide, "Acuity Adaptability: Innovative Planning and Design for Responsive Healthcare Delivery."

We’ve long heard the words “Smart Building,” but these days “Intelligent Building” has become the buzz phrase for the opportunities presented by the IoT and the ever-growing amount of building system data it provides. In this pilot episode of the new podcast, “The Future. Built Smarter,” IMEG engineers Jeff Carpenter and Mike Lawless explain the important distinctions between the two phrases. They also discuss how Intelligent Building design expands the focus beyond building systems to consider such things as the occupant experience – all while providing more concrete, actionable, and measurable paths for building owners to take in their quest to benefit from the IoT.