The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

The Green Impact Report Quick take: Every cubic meter of Garnica plywood locks away about 500 kg of CO2, and the mills behind it run on 100% renewable electricity. ESG officer Oscar Crespo Pinillos explains why the hardest remaining emissions sit in the glue, and why architects should be asking manufacturers for more proof, not less. Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Oscar Crespo Pinillos is the ESG Officer at Garnica, the Spanish plywood maker headquartered in La Rioja. Its panels are made from sustainably grown European poplar and sold in more than 40 countries. He grew up in the same region, where his grandfather, a forest ranger, sold logs to Garnica when it was a small sawmill nearly a century ago. Oscar studied in Spain and Finland and finished his forestry engineering degree in Maine. He went on to earn a master's from the Yale School of Forestry on a full scholarship. Before joining Garnica over eight years ago, he worked in biodiversity conservation, forestry consulting, and poplar plantation management. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Oscar Crespo Pinillos makes the case for the oldest carbon-capture tech on the planet: the tree. Key Insight #1: Plywood that stores more carbon than it emits. The Challenge: Many building materials come with a heavy carbon bill and a lot of greenwashing. Some products gain market share by claiming to be "less unsustainable" than the alternatives. The Solution: Garnica makes its plywood from European poplar grown by small forest owners. Its mills run on 100% renewable electricity and close to 100% renewable heat, with the heat coming from biomass left over from production. ROI: Each cubic meter of plywood stores about 500 kg of CO2. As Oscar puts it, we're good at engineering and AI, "but we cannot really beat trees at this." Key Insight #2: Once the energy is clean, the carbon is in the glue. The Challenge: Garnica cut its Scope 1 and 2 emissions by about 80% against its 2019 baseline. What's left is mostly Scope 3, and most of that comes from the fossil-based resins that bind the veneer layers. The Solution: Bio-based binders. Garnica's Natu1 product swaps fossil-derived chemicals for bio-based glues, aiming for an engineered panel that's as close to 100% bio-based as possible. More R&D is underway. ROI: Greener glue makes the whole panel greener. It goes after the emissions that renewable power alone can't reach. Key Insight #3: The documentation exists. Nobody's asking for it. The Challenge: Garnica has published EPDs for years, tracked Scope 1 and 2 for more than a decade, and added Scope 3 recently. But demand for the data fades as products move through the supply chain. Architects care, and the steps in between often don't. The Solution: Specifiers and buyers should ask for EPDs, sourcing details, and carbon data at every step. They should also insist on trustworthy origins in a global market where some competitors face deforestation or forced-labor risks. ROI: Asking rewards the manufacturers doing the work and pushes the whole supply chain to move faster. It also gives your project data it can defend. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "Our products are carbon positive. They capture more carbon than is released into the atmosphere."" – Oscar Crespo Pinillos 📆 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pick one wood product on a current spec, such as plywood, casework, or millwork. Ask the manufacturer for its EPD and sourcing documentation. This Quarter: Add a request for EPDs and chain-of-custody documentation to your standard spec or procurement checklist. Make it a habit, not a one-off. This Year: Go after the Scope 3 hotspots in your material choices, such as the binders, resins, and finishes. Then follow Oscar's advice and become the go-to expert on one material or sector. 🫶 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Oscar Crespo Pinillos: Website: https://www.garnica.one/en-uk/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-c-9b64abb2/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

The Green Impact Report Quick take: We've spent two decades pulling concrete out of buildings to cut carbon, and quietly lost the thermal mass that kept rooms comfortable. Mick Dunn's fix rides in on something every project already installs: the ceiling tile. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Mick Dunn is the Product Manager for Energy Saving Ceilings at Armstrong World Industries, where he brings phase change materials into everyday buildings. A Melbourne native, he studied construction management at RMIT, came to the US on an exchange at the University of Florida, and stayed. He spent his early career in commercial construction in Maine, then ran his own companies for 15+ years, first in commercial solar thermal and then developing phase change materials. One of those products started in his garage and is now scaled by Armstrong. His 20+ years sit right where advanced thermal storage meets real-world job sites. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Mick Dunn rethinks the most overlooked surface in the building: the one over your head. Key Insight #1: The ceiling becomes a thermal battery. The Challenge: Ceilings are bought for looks and acoustics. When it comes to energy, they're dead space. The Solution: Armstrong's Templok puts a quarter-inch gelled-salt phase change layer on the back of standard ceiling tiles. Mick calls it "ice packs in your ceiling." As the room warms, the material melts at room temperature, absorbs the heat, and lets it go later. ROI: Peak room temperatures drop 2–3°F with no change to how the ceiling looks. Install is the same crew, ladders, and trucks, so the storage gets "a free ride." Key Insight #2: Put back the mass we stripped out. The Challenge: Lightweight, prefab, low-concrete construction cuts embodied carbon. It also strips out the thermal mass that used to steady indoor temperatures. The Solution: Phase change material adds thermal mass without the weight. Because drop ceilings are easy to reach, it also retrofits into existing buildings with known comfort problems. ROI: Owners get "a new dial they can turn" on problem buildings. It eases peak HVAC loads, helps with peak shaving, and makes occupants more comfortable without replacing equipment. Key Insight #3: Your ceiling can qualify for a federal tax credit. The Challenge: Upgrades like this lose at the budget table because they look like a pure added cost. The Solution: Thermal storage is eligible for the federal investment tax credit, just like battery storage and ground-source heat pumps. ROI: Planned well, Mick says, the ceiling can end up costing less than a standard one. That's alongside Armstrong's Declare labels, EPDs, HPDs, ceiling take-back program, and its new lowest-embodied-carbon tile. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "The chief goal of a building should be for it to be sustainable to live in, heal in, and work in." – Mick Dunn 💚 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: List the buildings in your portfolio with the most comfort complaints, especially ones already due for a ceiling refresh. Those are your pilot candidates. This Quarter: Ask your tax advisor or incentives consultant whether ceiling-integrated thermal storage qualifies for the federal ITC on an upcoming project. Run the numbers before the ceiling spec is locked. This Year: Make thermal storage, acoustics, and thermal comfort part of your master spec and decarbonization roadmap. Then join your local USGBC chapter, as Mick did, to find the people already solving these problems. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Mick Dunn: Website: Armstrong World Industries, Inc. (AWI) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mick-dunn-62a19218/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if a coating 1 millimeter thick could insulate like a thick layer of conventional material, and you could prove it without waiting a year on a pilot? Nathan Kegel spent 20-plus years in energy modelling. Now he's at a materials science startup, building the simulation engine that tests its products before they ever reach a roof. Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Nathan Kegel leads energy services at Nanotech Materials. He grew up outside Green Bay, Wisconsin, working on a neighbor's sweet corn farm (and he's still a Packers fan). He studied at the University of Minnesota and started out designing HVAC and plumbing systems. He soon moved into energy simulation, the part of the job he found more interesting. Over about 20 years he worked on some of the early net zero and LEED Platinum lab projects in California and built building performance teams at architecture and engineering firms. He also spent roughly a decade, on and off, at IES, helping bring advanced building simulation software to North America. He's based in the Twin Cities and reads philosophy and the classics for fun. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Nathan Kegel rethinks how we insulate buildings and how we prove that new materials work: Key Insight #1: Insulation doesn't have to mean thickness The Challenge: The industry rates insulation by R-value, and thickness is part of that calculation. More resistance has meant more material, more depth and more weight. Nathan half-jokes that R-value is "the bane of my existence." The Solution: Nanotech Materials puts a silica-based particle into coatings like acrylics and epoxies. Nathan says the particle has a K-value (thermal conductivity) on par with aerogel, without aerogel's brittleness. Applied about 1 millimeter thick on a roof, the coating can essentially stop heat conduction through it. ROI: According to Nathan, the roof product is rated for Florida's 200 mph impact standard. A related spray-on coating, developed with the state of California, protects timber from wildfire and resists heat up to 1,800°C with very low smoke. You get thermal performance and resilience from one thin layer. Key Insight #2: Stop running endless pilots The Challenge: A startup can't coat a roof and wait a year to see if it worked. As Nathan puts it, "you might not be in business a year." Slow field pilots stall innovation across the industry. The Solution: One of Nanotech's co-founders built a new physics engine from scratch rather than relying on older simulation code. It has been validated under ASHRAE Standard 140. Nathan is bringing it to market, starting with services and eventually opening the full platform to project teams. ROI: Validated simulation means faster, more confident decisions about new materials. Teams can predict performance instead of waiting for it. Key Insight #3: Coat the pipe instead of jacketing it The Challenge: Traditional pipe insulation needs aluminum-jacketed systems that take a lot of labor to install. Moisture can also get trapped between the insulation and the pipe, which causes corrosion under insulation (CUI). The Solution: A coating a couple of millimeters thick, adhered directly to the metal, stops heat transfer without the jacket. ROI: Nathan says this greatly reduces labor costs and nearly prevents corrosion under insulation, so the system costs less upfront and lasts longer. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "If you really want to make the world a better place, define what that better place looks like and then work toward it, and you will be rewarded. Yes, there's going to be setbacks, but just be relentless in that pursuit of learning more and more." – Nathan Kegel 💚 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Do the jargon check Nathan recommends. Before your next presentation to an owner or your boss, figure out who the audience is, list your technical jargon, and rewrite your pitch at their level. This Quarter: Find one place where thickness drives your current spec, such as roof insulation, pipe jacketing or a retrofit with tight clearances. Ask what thin-film or high-performance coating alternatives would do to cost, labor and durability. This Year: Start with the end in mind. Don't ask "What will building design look like in 2030?" Define what you want your projects, team or firm to look like, then work backward and use energy modeling to test the path before you commit. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🧩 Connect with Nathan Kegel: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathankegel/ Learn more about Nanotech Materials: https://nanotechmaterials.com/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

The Green Impact Report Quick take: LEED used to be the strategy. Now it's one of maybe 20 tools. Marianna Palmour went from reviewing LEED projects to building a corporate ESG program from scratch at a 5,000-person firm, and she explains why your biggest clients' Scope 3 targets are about to become your problem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Marianna Palmour leads corporate sustainability at Salas O'Brien, an engineering and technical services firm with more than 5,000 people. She grew up on Lookout Mountain in northwest Georgia, studied architecture at Georgia Tech, and got into green building early. She took the LEED exam straight out of school and served as vice president and past president of USGBC's Emerging Green Builders. From there she worked at Sustainable Options and then Epstein Group, where she was a LEED third-party reviewer and built out a portfolio and ESG service line. She went back to Georgia Tech for an MBA in entrepreneurship, which made her a "double Jacket." While there she was a fellow with the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainability, focused on inclusive design. When Salas O'Brien acquired Epstein Group, she was asked to build the ESG program from the ground up. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Marianna Palmour shows how sustainability moves from the building to the boardroom: 💡 Key Insight #1: Double materiality beats copying the competition The Challenge: Companies often set sustainability goals by looking at what peers are doing, or by asking only the people at the top. The Solution: Run a materiality assessment that asks every stakeholder: communities, investors, the board, clients and suppliers. Then look at it in both directions ("double materiality"): how sustainability issues affect the business, and how the business affects the environment. ROI: The strategy fits your own values, your regulatory exposure (Local Law 97 in New York, California's ESG disclosure rules) and the people you actually answer to. You don't spend money chasing someone else's priorities. 💡 Key Insight #2: Your clients' Scope 3 is now your compliance problem The Challenge: Smaller firms and service providers assume EU rules and emissions reporting only apply to big multinationals. The Solution: Get ready now. Big global clients have to report Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, so they're pushing supplier codes of conduct and emissions reporting down the supply chain. That includes consultants. Marianna's simple test: Scope 1 is fuel you burn yourself, Scope 2 is energy someone else produces for you, and Scope 3 is everything upstream and downstream. ROI: A $20K job might not get noticed. Millions in work puts you in a client's Scope 3 footprint. Firms that can sign off on supplier standards and report their emissions keep those relationships and stay eligible for the work. 💡 Key Insight #3: Make the business case in two languages The Challenge: Green policies usually get written one building or one office at a time, and leadership sees them as a nice-to-have. The Solution: Early in her career, Marianna took the Georgia-Pacific tower in downtown Atlanta (over a million square feet) through one of the first big LEED EBOM v2009 certifications. It was the first time she had to convince a C-suite that operational changes were right on values and on economics. She now brings that approach to whole portfolios, turning energy, water and indoor air quality strategies into standards that work across cities, countries and regulations. ROI: Policies adopted across the whole organization save money and resources everywhere at once, not just in one showcase building. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "It's amazing what you can do if you are not afraid and you lean on your community." – Marianna Palmour ⬇️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pull the supplier codes of conduct from your top three clients and compare them with your own policies. If you can't attest to them today, find out why. This Quarter: Run a light materiality assessment. Survey employees, key clients, suppliers and leadership about which sustainability issues matter most to them, and look at both sides of double materiality. This Year: Take one strategy that worked on a single building (an energy, water or IEQ policy) and write it up as a standard for your whole portfolio or company. Then start tracking the Scope 3 data your biggest clients will eventually ask for. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🌎 Connect with Marianna Palmour: Website: https://salasobrien.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianna-palmour/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🔋 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧰 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

📝 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The future of high-performance buildings isn't necessarily about adding more technology — it's about making smarter decisions. Mechanical engineering leader Dale Garfield breaks down why fundamentals, heat pumps, renewable-ready infrastructure, and owner-focused design matter as buildings move toward a lower-energy future. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dale Garfield's path to building engineering started somewhere unexpected: the United States Marine Corps. After serving as a combat engineer — including a deployment to Iraq — Dale returned to Wisconsin and began studying civil engineering technology at Mid-State Technical College. An instructor encouraged him to take the next step, eventually leading him to Milwaukee School of Engineering's Architectural Engineering Program. Since graduating, Dale has built a career spanning engineering firms, mechanical contractors, design-build environments, and integrated architecture and engineering. Today, he is a Mechanical Engineering Leader at EUA, where his experience touches projects ranging from K-12 schools and manufacturing facilities to corporate headquarters and shipbuilding facilities. Along the way, Dale also earned an executive MBA to strengthen the business and leadership side of his technical career. His approach to buildings is refreshingly straightforward: understand what matters to the owner, remember the fundamentals, and don't make a system more complicated than it needs to be. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Dale shares a practical engineer's perspective on making buildings more efficient without losing sight of the people who have to own, operate, and maintain them. 📚 Key Insight #1: High-performance design starts with the owner—not the technology. The Challenge: Sustainability can become an exercise in adding technology without first asking what the owner actually wants, needs, or can support. Budgets, operational capabilities, energy goals, and long-term priorities vary significantly from project to project. The Solution: Dale starts with the owner's expectations and builds efficiency into the design from there. That can mean variable frequency drives, condensing boilers, high-efficiency chillers, heat pumps, and other proven strategies — without overengineering the building simply for the sake of complexity. ROI: Owners get efficient systems aligned with their real operational and financial needs. Just as importantly, they get buildings that work and systems their teams can maintain. 🚀MKey Insight #2: Heat pumps can push efficiency forward—but mechanical systems can't get buildings to net zero alone. The Challenge: Engineers can improve heat recovery, heat pumps, chillers, and HVAC performance, but there's a physical limit to how far mechanical efficiency can go. As Dale points out, engineers still have to work within the fundamentals of thermodynamics. The Solution: Combine increasingly efficient mechanical systems with onsite renewable energy. Dale is also seeing projects prepare for the future by designing structural and electrical infrastructure that can support photovoltaic arrays later — even when solar isn't part of the initial construction. ROI: Solar-ready and renewable-ready infrastructure gives owners flexibility. Instead of paying for every sustainability measure on day one, they can create a building capable of adapting as economics, technology, energy priorities, and requirements change. 🧠 Key Insight #3: The best engineering solution is often the simplest one that actually works. The Challenge: Engineers can be tempted to solve problems with increasingly complicated systems. Complexity can create its own problems when owners and facilities teams eventually have to operate, troubleshoot, and maintain those systems. The Solution: Dale returns to a lesson he learned early in his career: keep it simple and remember the fundamentals. He also believes engineers need to stick with problems when they occur instead of distancing themselves when a project gets difficult. ROI: Straightforward, maintainable systems can reduce operational headaches while giving owners something arguably even more valuable: confidence that their engineering team will remain engaged when challenges arise. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "Keep it simple. Remember the fundamentals. You can make these systems as complicated as you want, but at the end of the day, the owner wants something that works, functions and is maintainable." — Dale Garfield 🗓️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Ask what sustainability and energy performance actually mean to the owner before recommending another technology. Start with their priorities, operating realities, and long-term goals. This Quarter: Review an upcoming project for opportunities to improve mechanical efficiency without unnecessary complexity. Look at proven strategies such as heat pumps, heat recovery, variable frequency drives, high-efficiency equipment, and practical controls. This Year: Start designing for what the building may need next—not just what gets installed today. Explore solar-ready structural and electrical infrastructure and other strategies that can create a pathway toward lower-energy or net-zero-capable buildings. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ **Read the transcript: here** 🔗 Connect with Dale Garfield: 🏢 Explore EUA: [https://eua.com/,](https://eua.com/) https://eua.com/eua-people/dale-garfield/ 🌎 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-garfield/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques: Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🌎 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when AI adoption runs headfirst into energy constraints? Josh Rainbow sees technology, infrastructure, power, and sustainability becoming increasingly interconnected — and believes the winners will be the people who can turn emerging technology into measurable business outcomes. From running an AI-native company with roughly 250 AI agents to bringing global leaders together through Future Summit, Josh offers a fascinating look at where technology, energy, investment, and sustainability are heading next. 🫡 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Josh Rainbow is an entrepreneur, technology leader, investor, and founder of Future Summit, an international platform focused on bringing leaders together to accelerate trade, technology adoption, investment, and meaningful business relationships. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Josh moved to Calgary in his late teens and studied quantitative sciences at the University of Calgary, building a foundation in advanced mathematics, statistics, economics, and computer science before moving into technology. Today, his work spans events and media, AI advisory, venture investing, and global business development. Through Future Summit, Josh and his team work across technology, energy, data centers, infrastructure, finance, and other emerging sectors. His company has also embraced an AI-native operating model, using roughly 250 AI agents across functions including financial reporting, operations, project management, administration, marketing, sales, and research. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Josh Rainbow connects AI, energy, infrastructure, and sustainability — and challenges leaders to think about technology through the lens of real business outcomes: 📚 Key Insight #1: AI can make a business leaner — but automation needs to solve real business problems. The Challenge: Companies can become fascinated with emerging technology without connecting it to revenue, cost reduction, scalability, or another measurable business outcome. Josh learned that traditional businesses don't necessarily care how impressive a technology is — they care what it does for the business. The Solution: Josh's company has become AI-native, deploying roughly 250 AI agents across financial reporting, operations, administration, project management, marketing, sales, funnel research, and other functions. His philosophy is to apply technology directly to business problems rather than adopt it simply because it's new. ROI: Josh says these initiatives helped reduce his company's operating expenses by approximately 4 –50% year over year, allowing that capital to go back into the business while supporting both sustainability and scalability. 🫶 Key Insight #2: The AI revolution is quickly becoming an energy and infrastructure challenge. The Challenge: The next wave of AI requires enormous amounts of compute — and that compute requires reliable power. Josh argues that access to energy is becoming one of the major constraints facing data center and AI expansion. The Solution: Josh is closely watching technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors as potential tools for increasing future energy supply. While he acknowledges that SMRs remain expensive and highly regulated today, he sees the underlying need for abundant energy as critical to supporting continued technology growth. ROI: More reliable and abundant power could help unlock additional data center capacity and AI infrastructure. For businesses, Josh sees energy availability and financing becoming increasingly important factors in determining where and how quickly new compute infrastructure can scale. 💡 Key Insight #3: Technology only matters when it creates measurable business value. The Challenge: Technology conversations often start with the tool: Look at this incredible technology. But established companies aren't necessarily interested in innovation for innovation's sake. The Solution: Start with the business objective. Josh combines his background in technology with experience in sales and business strategy to understand how an organization makes money first — and then determine where technology can solve a meaningful problem. ROI: Connecting technology investment directly to revenue, operating costs, productivity, scalability, or another business objective gives executives a much clearer reason to invest. For sustainability professionals, the same mindset creates a stronger bridge between innovation and the business case needed to get projects approved. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "I believe in paying it forward because that's how I've gotten to this point." — Josh Rainbow 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pick one repetitive task inside your sustainability, engineering, or operations workflow and ask whether AI could reduce the manual work. Start with the business problem — not the AI tool. This Quarter: Quantify the outcome. Track whether your technology initiatives are actually reducing operating expenses, increasing productivity, generating revenue, or creating another measurable benefit. This Year: Look beyond individual building technologies and evaluate the bigger infrastructure picture. Consider how energy availability, data centers, AI, automation, and emerging power technologies could affect your organization's long-term sustainability and technology strategy. Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Josh Rainbow: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarainbow/ Website: https://joshrainbow.com/ Learn more about Future Summit: futuresummit.ai 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧲 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

💟 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability targets are easy to announce. Making buildings actually perform against them? That's where things get complicated. Etrit Demaj makes the case that the next phase of green building will be powered by real-time operational data, interoperable building systems, and AI — not another static report. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Etrit Demaj is an entrepreneur and co-founder of KodeLabs, a technology company working to make building systems and data easier to integrate, understand, and act on. Etrit immigrated to the United States from Kosovo in 1999 at age 10 and grew up in Rochester Hills, Michigan. After beginning his career at JPMorgan Chase, he moved into entrepreneurship, technology, and real estate. In 2017, Etrit and his team started KodeLabs around a big idea: buildings need an operating layer capable of connecting difficult, fragmented systems while giving owners the flexibility to add new applications and technologies. Today, that mission increasingly intersects with sustainability, decarbonization, real-time data, and AI. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Etrit Demaj challenges Green Building professionals to move sustainability from reporting into operations: 🧲 Key Insight #1: Sustainability needs real-time building data — not another static report. The Challenge: Owners and sustainability teams can set ambitious ESG and decarbonization targets without having a clear, real-time picture of how individual buildings are actually operating. Fragmented systems and inaccessible data make closing that gap difficult. The Solution: Build an operational data layer that connects building systems and makes their information usable across the organization. Etrit argues that sustainability professionals need to move beyond simply producing reports and learn to work with real building data. ROI: Better operational visibility gives teams the ability to track actual outcomes, connect sustainability initiatives to building performance, and demonstrate ROI instead of relying on disconnected reporting exercises. 📚 Key Insight #2: Interoperability is the foundation for smarter — and more sustainable — buildings. The Challenge: Every existing building is different. Some properties contain sophisticated building systems, while others may have only one or two systems worth integrating. That makes portfolio-wide smart-building strategies difficult to scale. The Solution: KodeLabs is building what Etrit describes as an operating system that makes difficult systems easier to integrate in an open way, with additional solutions and applications layered on top. The goal is to meet each building where it is instead of requiring every asset to start from the same technology baseline. ROI: A flexible integration strategy can make it easier to deploy technology across diverse portfolios rather than repeatedly treating every building as an isolated project. It also creates the data foundation needed for future AI and automation applications. ✅ Key Insight #3: The next sustainability leader may look a lot more like an engineer + data strategist. The Challenge: Sustainability has sometimes become disconnected from the day-to-day operation of buildings. Reporting targets alone don't tell teams how equipment is performing or what operational changes will produce measurable results. The Solution: Etrit sees sustainability becoming increasingly operational. Professionals who understand data, technology, engineering, and measurable ROI will be positioned to connect sustainability goals directly to building performance. ROI: Combining sustainability strategy with engineering and operational intelligence can help organizations identify real interventions, validate results, and build a stronger business case for decarbonization investments. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "The buildings that are going to meet their sustainability targets are the ones with a real-time operational layer." — Etrit Demaj 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Identify one sustainability metric you currently report and ask where the underlying building data actually comes from. Is it real-time, accessible, and actionable — or are you still piecing it together manually? This Quarter: Map the major systems and data sources across one building or portfolio. Look for integration gaps that prevent operations, engineering, and sustainability teams from working from the same information. This Year: Develop an operational data strategy that can support sustainability initiatives today while creating a foundation for AI, automation, and smarter building operations tomorrow. 💻 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: Here 🔗 Connect with Etrit Demaj: Website: https://kodelabs.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etrit-demaj-7b2364b/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💟 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if the greenest building innovation isn't waiting around the corner — it's already here? New Energy Works founder Jonathan Orpin makes the case for building better now, using durable timber structures, wood-fiber insulation, off-site construction, and mass timber to tackle carbon without sacrificing craft or economics. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Jonathan Orpin is the founder of New Energy Works, a timber framing and sustainable construction company celebrating 40 years in business. Jonathan's environmental roots stretch back to college, when he became deeply interested in environmentalism. New Energy Works initially explored cellulose insulation and solar energy before pivoting toward timber framing in the mid-1980s. Four decades later, the company works across residential timber framing, off-site panelization, glulam, and mass timber construction. New Energy Works is also 100% employee owned through an ESOP and operates around a triple-bottom-line philosophy of People, Planet, and Profit. Now, Jonathan is preparing for another kind of sustainable design challenge: building a leadership transition that allows the company and its values to thrive beyond its founder. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Jonathan challenges Green Building professionals to stop waiting for the next breakthrough and start scaling solutions we already know work: 🧠 Key Insight #1: Build the enclosure like a blanket — and attack thermal bridging from the outside. The Challenge: Conventional assemblies can introduce thermal bridges through studs and other structural components, while some insulation products carry significant global warming impacts of their own. The Solution: New Energy Works wraps its timber structures with exterior insulation and has increasingly shifted toward wood-fiber insulation. The company uses dense-packed wood fiber in cavities and rigid wood fiber outside the structure to break thermal bridges. Jonathan points to domestically manufactured wood-fiber insulation made from lower-grade trees as an especially exciting evolution. ROI: Better thermal performance can reduce operational energy demand, while wood fiber provides a lower-carbon insulation strategy. Off-site panelization also helps move work into a controlled shop environment, reducing field labor and accelerating installation. 🚀 Key Insight #2: Stop treating mass timber as "next." It's ready now. The Challenge: Concrete and steel remain foundational materials for commercial construction, but Jonathan argues their carbon impacts create an opportunity for lower-carbon structural alternatives. The Solution: New Energy Works is expanding its glulam and mass timber work on commercial projects, bringing wood into structures that might otherwise have relied more heavily on concrete and steel. ROI: Mass timber gives project teams another lever for addressing embodied carbon while creating highly crafted buildings. For Jonathan, the bigger opportunity is implementation: Green Building professionals already know enough to make better material decisions today. 🫶 Key Insight #3: Sustainability includes building companies—and buildings—that can outlast their founders. The Challenge: A durable building means little if the knowledge, culture, and values behind it disappear. Jonathan sees the same longevity challenge in business ownership as he does in construction. The Solution: New Energy Works became 100% employee owned through an ESOP as part of a long-term succession strategy. Jonathan is now preparing to transition from CEO to executive chair while searching for a leader who will preserve the company's commitment to community, craft, and People, Planet, and Profit. His advice to that future CEO is simple: listen, learn, then lead. ROI: Employee ownership creates a pathway for workers to participate in the value they help create while giving the company a succession mechanism designed to preserve its culture and mission. For founders, succession planning can turn decades of work into an organization capable of continuing beyond them. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "My suggestion to the new CEO is, listen, learn and then lead." — Jonathan Orpin 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Review one current wall or roof assembly for thermal bridges and investigate whether wood-fiber insulation or continuous exterior insulation could improve the enclosure. This Quarter: Identify where your project could reduce reliance on higher-carbon structural materials and evaluate timber, glulam, mass timber, and FSC-certified wood where appropriate. This Year: Start measuring instead of assuming. Establish a repeatable process for tracking the carbon impacts of your materials and projects so your sustainability claims can increasingly be backed by data. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Jonathan Orpin: 🌲 Website: https://newenergyworks.com/, https://pioneermillworks.com/ 🌍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-orpin-1017868/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 📚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: David Gottfried co-founded USGBC, wrote the first white paper proposing a US rating system, and lit the fuse on what became LEED. Now, 30+ years and 30 billion square feet later, he's back with a bigger question: if we can green every building on Earth and still miss the climate targets, what have we forgotten? 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion David Gottfried is the Founder & CEO of Regen360, where he serves as a strategic advisor to leading organizations across manufacturing, software, and Green Building. He spent the two decades before that running Regenerative Ventures and its RegenNetwork, advising hundreds of organizations on sustainable building strategy. He began his career as a real estate developer and contractor. Gottfried hosts the Regen360 Podcast (80+ episodes) and wrote the bestselling Explosion Green, winner of the Independent Book Awards Grand Prize. His next book, Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth, publishes October 2026. Preorder here. His prior residence was a LEED Platinum home recognized as the highest-rated in the world. He holds a degree in Engineering and Resource Management from Stanford, where he lectures regularly. His honors include WorldGBC's Global Green Building Entrepreneurship Award, USGBC's Leadership Award, the Net Zero Trailblazer Award, and the USGBC Northern California Chapter "Super Hero" Award (now presented in his name). He's a Green Industry Hall of Fame inductee and a Purpose Economy 100 honoree. Outside of the office: he's a father, painter (see his work here), martial artist, fly fisherman, and cyclist, a five-time finisher of the Death Ride. He lives in the East Bay Area of Northern California. But here's what sets this episode apart: David's business card reads "Father of the Green Building Movement," and the title is earned. He co-founded USGBC in 1993 with Mike Italiano and Rick Fedrizzi, having already drafted the first Green Building Standard under his ASTM subcommittee in 1990–91 (the categories that became LEED). He was USGBC's first CEO, funded its early losses himself, and founded a second nonprofit, World Green Building Council, in 2002. Today LEED certification exists in 181 countries and WorldGBC counts 85 Green Building Councils worldwide. If you've built a career around LEED, this is the man who built the room you're standing in. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, David traces the arc from founding a movement to redesigning the operating system underneath it: 🧲 Key Insight #1: You can't scale what you haven't standardized. **The Challenge:**In 1990, "Green Building" wasn't a category: no shared definition, no rating system, and no way for developers to prove sustainable buildings were worth more. **The Solution:**David's ASTM subcommittee drafted the first Green Building Standard in 1990–91. In 1993 he co-founded USGBC with Mike Italiano and Rick Fedrizzi, and USGBC's committee (chaired by Rob Watson and funded with about $800K from the Department of Energy) built the pilot program that became LEED, certifying its first ten projects in 2000. **ROI:**That standard became the foundation for a rating system now used in 181 countries, unlocking an industry David estimates at nearly a trillion dollars globally. 🧲 Key Insight #2: Green Buildings aren't enough if the "ship" underneath them is still sinking. **The Challenge:**Even with LEED's global success, the world is still missing its Paris Agreement targets, warming has already reached roughly 1.5°C, and a billion people still lack potable water or electricity. Decarbonizing buildings alone won't fix civilization's operating system. **The Solution:**David's new book, Regen360, introduces "Earth Codes": 15 principles distilled from over 2,600 pages of dialogue with an AI assistant he calls Zenobia, synthesized into equations for what he calls HOPE: Health On Planet Earth. **ROI:**A framework that pushes sustainability practitioners past compliance checklists and toward systems-level thinking, the shift he calls moving from "human" to "humane." 🧲 Key Insight #3: AI can accelerate burnout culture or accelerate regeneration. The difference is how you use it. **The Challenge:**AI is reshaping every industry, including Green Building's own carbon and energy footprint, and it's just as capable of deepening bad habits as breaking them. **The Solution:**David built a nine-step framework for "AI for good": using AI as a check on decision-making (surfacing a product's full lifecycle assessment or environmental product declaration before you buy) and even as a nervous-system regulator that prompts reflection instead of reaction. **ROI:**Professionals who learn to pair AI fluency with the discipline of asking "what have we forgotten?" position themselves (and their projects) for the next phase of the movement, not just the last one. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "What we did at the USGBC is build the base camp so us mountain climbers can go up the mountain, and not solo without gear. We climb together." — David Gottfried "Are we putting solar panels on the Titanic? It isn't the ship. It's what the ship's floating on. It's the underlying operating system of civilization." — David Gottfried 🚵‍♀️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project (and your career) with these steps: **This Week:**Try David's AI-as-check move on one real decision: before your next product spec, ask your AI assistant for the EPD or full lifecycle assessment and see what turns up. **This Quarter:**Start asking David Brower's question on your own projects: "What have we forgotten?" Use it to audit a current project for gaps beyond the checklist: health, equity, lifecycle impact. **This Year:**Preorder Regen360 and explore how the "Earth Codes" framework could inform your firm's approach to decarbonization, resiliency, and regenerative design beyond LEED compliance. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with David Gottfried: Website:https://regen360.net/ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-gottfried-75835a2/ 📚 Preorder Regen360: An Operating System for a Regenerative Earth: Amazon 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💌 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips delivered twice each week. 👉 Subscribe FREE: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Marty Rozmanith spent seven years writing the requirements for Revit — the tool that runs $1.2B a year in the AEC industry — and now he's building what comes after it. His pitch: pair AI with discrete engineering solvers so every design choice is explainable, not just fast, and use that to strip the padding owners quietly add to every project "just in case." 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Charlie Cichetti Co-Founder & CEO of Skema.ai, serial entrepreneur, LEED Fellow, and longtime sustainability advocate. Charlie has spent his career helping building owners operate smarter, greener, and more efficiently. Today, he's focused on building a tech startup using AI to dramatically reduce waste, inefficiency, and rework across the building lifecycle. Marty Rozmanith Co-Founder & CTO of Skema.ai. He started his career as a carpenter on a framing crew before earning an engineering degree and working in architecture and structural engineering. He later joined Autodesk and was recruited onto the original Revit team, where he ran the Revit product requirements group for its first seven years - shaping features still core to the product today. After Revit, he worked at Dassault Systèmes, the French engineering-software giant behind the design tools used across multiple industries, before co-founding Skema.ai in 2022 with Charlie Cichetti (and others) to bring that same rigor to buildings. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Marty Rozmanith revolutionizes traditional construction approaches: ✍️ Key Insight #1: Pairing AI with discrete solvers so every design decision has a documented reason. The Challenge: AI alone is a black box — ask it the same design question ten times and it can produce ten different answers, which is a non-starter when a licensed engineer has to sign off and explain a decision. The Solution: Skema.ai combines traditional discrete-math solvers (which handle the hard engineering constraints — cooling, power, layout) with AI that learns to navigate hundreds of interdependent variables and explain why it made each trade-off. ROI: Owners get repeatable, defensible design output — like a data center configuration that names the exact constraint behind every chiller count — without sacrificing the speed AI promises. 🧠 Key Insight #2: "Morphing" — reusing what architects already built instead of starting from a blank page. The Challenge: Most cloud design tools ask architects to rebuild their entire library of assemblies and details from scratch, and early feasibility software forced designers to work only from a rigid pre-built "parts bucket," which architects hated and refused to adopt. The Solution: Skema.ai lets firms take an assembly from a past project and adapt it to a new site and shape, instead of redrawing it — giving designers flexibility while still capturing reusable data. ROI: Faster time from concept to a permit-ready model, plus firms build a growing library of their own best practices instead of losing that knowledge project to project. ✍️ Key Insight #3: Selling directly to owners to eliminate the hidden "CYA tax." The Challenge: Every stakeholder in a project — architect, engineer, contractor — tends to pad their estimate "just in case," a habit Rozmanith and Cichetti call the CYA tax, which typically adds 10–25% to project cost. The Solution: Skema.ai gives owners an in-house tool that non-technical team members can use to produce a highly technical, 75%+ complete design before the architect of record is even brought in — and gives every party access to the same live data at once, removing the excuse to pad. ROI: For portfolio owners like quick-service restaurants and data center operators, even modest per-project savings compound fast — the team points to one retail customer where five extra store openings in a year could move $60M+ in revenue forward. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "I realized that I can either keep designing buildings, or I can create the tools that everybody else uses to design buildings." — Marty Rozmanith 🫶 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pull your last three project budgets and estimate the "CYA tax" — the contingency padding added by each party just in case. You can't cut what you haven't measured. This Quarter: Pilot an AI-assisted workflow on one repeatable project type (a prototype store, a standard floor plate) where the tool has to explain why it made each trade-off — not just produce an answer. This Year: Build an integration strategy, not a replacement strategy. Look for tools that plug into what your team already uses (Revit, SketchUp, Rhino) so adoption doesn't carry a switching-cost tax of its own. 🧲 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Marty Rozmanith: LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/martyrozmanith Website: skema.ai YouTube: youtube.com 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💌 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips delivered twice each week. 👉 Subscribe FREE: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainable buildings aren't just about reducing carbon anymore. In this episode, Annie Bevan explains why the next generation of Green Building Leaders must evaluate materials through multiple lenses — including climate, human health, social equity, biodiversity, and circularity — to make smarter, business-driven decisions that accelerate industry-wide impact. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Annie Bevan is the Founder and CEO of the Sustainability Management and Strategy Collaborative (SMSC), where she helps industries accelerate sustainability through collaboration, strategy, and third-party verification. Having spent more than a decade advancing sustainable building products, certification systems, and industry collaboration, Annie has helped shape initiatives including Mindful Materials while working to simplify how manufacturers, architects, and owners evaluate product sustainability at scale. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building 🚀 Key Insight #1: Sustainable products require more than a carbon score. The Challenge: For years, the industry has evaluated products through individual metrics — first human health, then embodied carbon — without considering their broader environmental and social impacts. The Solution: Annie explains why the industry is moving toward evaluating products across multiple impact categories simultaneously, including:Climate health, Human health, Social equity, Circularity, Biodiversity. The Common Materials Framework helps manufacturers and designers compare products holistically instead of making decisions based on one attribute alone. ROI: Better material decisions, Reduced unintended consequences, Smarter specifications, More resilient buildings, Lower long-term environmental risk. 🚀 Key Insight #2: Sustainability only scales when it makes business sense. The Challenge: Manufacturers invested heavily in EPDs and HPDs because customers requested them — but many struggled to prove those investments actually influenced purchasing decisions. The Solution: Rather than asking manufacturers for endless spreadsheets, Annie helped drive the industry toward shared standards and common language through the Mindful Materials movement. By simplifying sustainability reporting, organizations can spend less time completing questionnaires and more time improving products. ROI: Reduced reporting burden, Increased specification confidence, Better manufacturer engagement, Faster adoption of sustainable products, Stronger return on sustainability investments. 🚀 Key Insight #3: AI will transform sustainability — but only if the data is ready. The Challenge: The green building industry still relies heavily on spreadsheets and inconsistent data structures. Without standardized information, AI cannot provide meaningful recommendations. The Solution: Annie believes the next evolution isn't simply artificial intelligence — it's building the infrastructure that allows verified sustainability data to move automatically between manufacturers, architects, designers, and decision-making platforms. ROI: Faster product selection, Better project reporting, Reduced administrative work, Improved investment decisions, Scalable sustainability across the built environment. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "There is a role for everyone who wants to make a difference in sustainability." — Annie Bevan ✅ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next sustainability initiative with these practical steps: This Week: Review one product specification using more than just embodied carbon. Consider human health, circularity, and social impacts as well. This Quarter: Explore frameworks such as Mindful Materials and Declare to better understand holistic product transparency. This Year: Develop a material selection process that aligns sustainability goals with measurable business value, helping your organization reduce risk while improving project outcomes. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript: here 💼 Connect with Annie Bevan: linkedin.com/in/annie-bevan-78402b31 🌐 Company Website: smscollaborative.com 🌎 Verico: https://www.verico-audit.com/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💌 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips delivered twice each week. 👉 Subscribe FREE: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability isn't just about reducing carbon or earning certifications — it's about creating places where people can thrive. In this episode, Brian Bollinger shares how green building, technology, AI, waste reduction, and thoughtful community design all work together to create healthier buildings, stronger businesses, and more resilient communities. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Brian Bollinger is a sustainability strategist, entrepreneur, and connector passionate about helping organizations build healthier, more efficient, and more resilient communities. His career spans refugee resettlement, nonprofit leadership, energy management, zero waste consulting, AI innovation, and sustainable building strategy. Today, Brian works across multiple ventures advancing green buildings, waste reduction, AI-powered technology, and environmental stewardship while helping organizations turn sustainability into measurable business value. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building 🧐 Key Insight #1: Sustainable buildings create healthier communities — not just lower utility bills. The Challenge: Many organizations still see sustainability as an added expense instead of a long-term investment. The Solution: Brian shares how designing a Net Zero community center for Friends of Refugees transformed the conversation. Better ventilation, improved daylight, smarter mechanical systems, stormwater reuse, and healthier materials weren't simply environmental upgrades — they directly improved people's lives. ROI: Lower operating costs, Healthier indoor environments, Fewer sick days, Better long-term stewardship, Buildings designed to serve communities for generations instead of decades. ✍️ Key Insight #2: Waste isn't just trash — it's hidden business intelligence. The Challenge: Most organizations never truly understand what they're throwing away — or how much money they're losing. The Solution: Through Waste to Zero, Brian helps organizations perform detailed waste audits that identify contamination, purchasing habits, recycling opportunities, and operational inefficiencies. He explains that the biggest improvements often come from surprisingly simple changes: Better signage, Smarter purchasing decisions, Employee engagement, Friendly competition between departments. ROI: Lower hauling costs, Higher recycling rates, Reduced contamination, Better purchasing decisions, Significant operational savings ☝️ Key Insight #3: AI will become the new electricity for business. The Challenge: Many organizations are unsure where AI fits into their daily work. The Solution: Brian encourages professionals to stop viewing AI as a futuristic technology and instead treat it like a practical productivity tool. Whether it's analyzing waste streams, modernizing legacy software, organizing meetings, or improving workflows, AI allows people to spend less time on repetitive work and more time solving meaningful problems. ROI: Faster decision-making, Better data analysis, Increased productivity, Improved customer experiences, More time focused on high-value work. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Sustainability isn't just about reducing carbon — it's about creating places where people can thrive, businesses can flourish, and communities can become healthier for generations. — Brian Bollinger ✅ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these practical steps: This Week: Take a closer look at one area of your building operations — whether it's waste, energy use, or occupant wellness — and identify one simple improvement that can make an immediate impact. This Quarter: Conduct a waste audit or facility assessment to uncover hidden inefficiencies. Review purchasing decisions, improve recycling signage, and engage your team in creating better sustainability habits. This Year: Develop a long-term strategy that integrates sustainability, technology, and human well-being. Build systems that don't just reduce environmental impact — but create healthier, more resilient communities for years to come. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript: here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Brian Bollinger: linkedin.com/in/brian-w-bollinger 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, crafted from architectural-grade anodized aluminum to last as long as the building itself. Their intuitive online plaque designer lets you create a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — simply enter your LEED project number and personalize your design. Whether you're recognizing a newly certified project or celebrating your team's accomplishment, Building Plaques helps showcase the story behind your building's sustainability journey. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick Take: Concrete is responsible for building nearly every community on earth—and it's also one of the biggest opportunities to reduce embodied carbon. In this episode, Kerry Sutton explains why the future isn't about finding one miracle material. It's about educating the entire industry, embracing innovation responsibly, and collaborating across every stakeholder to create resilient, lower-carbon infrastructure that lasts for generations. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Kerry Sutton, PE, LEED AP is the Executive Director of NEU: An ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon Neutral Concrete. In this role, Ms. Sutton leads NEU's mission to foster global collaboration, accelerating the adoption and use of reduced-carbon concrete technologies. Ms. Sutton brings over 30 years of extensive experience in the concrete sector, with a strong background in pavement design, construction, and materials. Her appointment signals a reinforced commitment by NEU to advance sustainable practices through technical expertise and industry-wide collaboration. She also serves as the Director, Industry Relations for the American Concrete Institute (ACI). Throughout her career, Ms. Sutton has been instrumental in advancing the acceptance and adoption of ACI codes and standards. She has been an active participant in the model code and standards development processes with leading organizations, including the International Code Council (ICC), ASTM, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and the AASHTO Committee on Materials and Pavements (COMP). Ms. Sutton also currently serves as a Technical Consultant for the Slag Cement Association (SCA), advising on standards development. Her recent work includes participation in the Consensus Body for the Green Building Initiative (GBI), reflecting her dedication to sustainability. Prior to her work with ACI, Ms. Sutton served as the Director of Engineering for the Michigan Concrete Association and held roles as a Technical Service Engineer and Corporate Environmental Engineer with Holcim, Inc. She is a registered professional engineer in the State of Michigan. She holds a BS in Environmental Engineering from Michigan Technological University and an MS in Civil Engineering from Wayne State University. Her technical proficiency and leadership are expected to accelerate NEU's impact on the industry's path to carbon neutrality. About NEU: An ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon Neutral Concrete NEU: An ACI Center of Excellence for Carbon Neutral Concrete was established in 2022 by the American Concrete Institute. The Center, based at ACI World Headquarters in Farmington Hills, 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building 🧠 Key Insight #1: Carbon-neutral concrete isn't one product — it's an ecosystem of smarter materials, better education, and informed decisions. The Challenge: The construction industry often searches for a single "silver bullet" material, while many project teams still lack a clear understanding of embodied carbon or how emerging concrete technologies should be evaluated. The Solution: Kerry explains that success comes from educating everyone involved — from architects and engineers to code officials, professors, students, contractors and owners — so innovative materials can be adopted confidently and responsibly. ROI: Better education leads to better specifications, faster market adoption, lower embodied carbon, and more informed investment decisions while reducing project risk. 🧠 Key Insight #2: Collaboration — not competition — is accelerating concrete's path toward carbon neutrality. The Challenge: For years, organizations pursued sustainability goals independently, often duplicating efforts or working toward competing priorities that slowed industry-wide progress. The Solution: NEU creates a platform where manufacturers, researchers, engineers, policymakers and sustainability leaders openly share knowledge, performance data, and practical lessons that move the entire industry forward. ROI: Faster innovation, stronger standards, greater trust in new technologies, and broader adoption of lower-carbon construction solutions across the built environment. 🧠 Key Insight #3: The future of sustainable concrete depends on balancing lower embodied carbon with long-term resilience. The Challenge: Reducing carbon alone isn't enough if buildings, bridges, and infrastructure don't last. Sustainability without durability simply shifts environmental impacts into the future through repairs and replacement. The Solution: Kerry emphasizes designing structures that simultaneously reduce embodied carbon while maximizing durability, resilience, and lifecycle performance. She also highlights exciting innovations like recycled concrete technologies that recover and reuse valuable cementitious materials. ROI: Longer-lasting infrastructure reduces lifecycle costs, minimizes future emissions, conserves natural resources, and creates a truly sustainable built environment. 💬 Sustainable Soundbites "Don't put yourself in a box. Be open and ready for different opportunities." — Kerry Sutton ✍️ Your Green Building Action Plan This Week: Learn the difference between operational carbon and embodied carbon—and review the Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for one material specified on your current project. This Quarter: Bring architects, engineers, contractors, suppliers, and owners together to discuss lower-carbon material options before design decisions become locked in. This Year: Develop an organization-wide strategy that balances carbon reduction with resilience by incorporating lifecycle thinking into material selection and project planning. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Kerry Sutton: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerry-sutton-pe-leed-ap-b3485519/overlay/contact-info/ Website: https://www.miconcrete.org/home-michigan-concrete-association http://www.pavements4life.com/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe ☘️ Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips delivered twice each week. 👉 Subscribe FREE: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

💚 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The next chapter of sustainability isn't about making individual buildings slightly better — it's about redesigning entire communities. Vincent Martinez explains why the future of decarbonization depends on collaboration, adaptive reuse, electrification, and thinking beyond the building itself. 🫶 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Vincent Martinez is the President & CEO of Architecture 2030, where he has spent nearly two decades helping shape the global movement toward a carbon-neutral built environment. From launching collaborative industry initiatives to advancing embodied carbon standards and policy frameworks, Vincent works at the intersection of architecture, engineering, planning, and climate leadership to accelerate meaningful change across the built environment. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building 🚀 Key Insight #1: The future of sustainability goes beyond buildings — it includes cities, infrastructure, landscapes, and entire communities. The Challenge: Traditional sustainability efforts often focus on individual buildings, limiting opportunities for larger-scale climate impact. The Solution: Expand design thinking to include urban planning, infrastructure, landscape architecture, electrification, renewable energy, and nature-based solutions that work together as an integrated system. ROI: Systems-level thinking delivers greater carbon reductions while improving resilience, public health, water quality, biodiversity, and long-term community value. 🚀 Key Insight #2: Building reuse may be one of the most powerful climate strategies available today. The Challenge: The global building stock is being renovated at roughly 1% annually — far below the pace required to achieve climate goals. The Solution: Increase adaptive reuse by targeting key "building intervention points" such as property sales, lease renewals, equipment replacement, and major renovations with supportive financing and policy. ROI: Reusing buildings dramatically reduces embodied carbon while modernizing assets, improving operational efficiency, and extending the life of existing infrastructure. 🚀 Key Insight #3: Collaboration — not competition — is how the industry reaches its climate goals. The Challenge: Sustainability organizations, standards, and initiatives often develop independently, creating duplication and confusion across the marketplace. The Solution: Bring stakeholders together through shared frameworks, aligned methodologies, and collaborative initiatives like the ECHO Project that harmonize embodied carbon reporting. ROI: Industry-wide collaboration accelerates adoption, creates consistent standards, reduces duplicated effort, and enables faster progress toward decarbonization targets. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbites My superpower is bringing people together with generosity, transparency, and a collaborative spirit." — Vincent Martinez ✅ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: 1. This Week: Evaluate your projects through multiple decarbonization lenses—not just energy efficiency, but electrification, renewable energy, embodied carbon, and resilience. 2. This Quarter: Identify opportunities for adaptive reuse or renovation before considering new construction, and look for natural building intervention points where upgrades make financial and operational sense. 3. This Year: Build stronger partnerships across disciplines and organizations to create integrated climate solutions that extend beyond individual buildings into neighborhoods and communities. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Vincent Martinez: Website: https://www.architecture2030.org/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentmichaelmartinez/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🙏🏼 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: Dave Hubka has spent 20+ years turning "up to code" into "why would we settle for that?" — and his approach of building sustainability directly into the spec (instead of waiting for a client to ask) is a playbook every green building professional can steal. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dave Hubka is the Sustainability Practice Leader at EUA, where he lights the way for the firm's team to create healthier buildings for clients and the environment. His work starts with listening — collaborating closely with clients to uncover their specific sustainability goals and finding the best strategies to get there. Dave spent the first decade of his career as a mechanical engineer while earning accreditations in sustainable building methods, and he's been teaching ever since — lecturing around the country on designing, constructing, and operating better buildings. He's a LEED Fellow and WELL AP, and he still loves helping teams strategize the big-picture sustainability initiatives that move the industry forward. Dave sees a bright future ahead: one where most of the buildings EUA designs create more energy than they consume and actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. Outside of work, Dave keeps his mind and body in motion — spin classes, Bikram yoga, family game nights, and walks with his two dachshunds. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Dave Hubka revolutionizes traditional construction approaches: 🫶 Key Insight #1: Sustainability shouldn't be a task you hand out — it should already be baked into the spec. The Challenge: Sustainability is often treated as an add-on that gets bolted onto a project only when a client specifically asks for it — and when it's handed to a team as an extra task, people who don't know how to execute it quietly step away from it. The Solution: Dave works directly with his firm's spec team so glass, envelope, and MEP efficiencies are set up for success by default — clients get good design and sustainability without ever having to ask for it. ROI: Every project starts from a higher baseline, LEED and WELL work becomes an easier lift on top of already-sustainable design, and teams don't disengage from work they were simply told to do. 🤩 Key Insight #2: Codes are catching up — and MEP commissioning is becoming the new normal. The Challenge: Commissioning has long been "just a LEED prerequisite," treated as optional unless a project is specifically pursuing certification. The Solution: Wisconsin's new energy code now requires MEP commissioning, so Dave's firm is building out an in-house commissioning team to verify designs perform correctly across every mode of operation. ROI: Commissioned systems actually work as designed, energy models hold up in reality, and firms that build this capability now are ahead of where regulation is clearly heading. ✍️ Key Insight #3: The next sustainability frontier is the carbon footprint of water — and turning EPD/HPD transparency into real optimization. The Challenge: The industry has spent the last decade getting comfortable with EPDs and HPDs, but transparency alone doesn't reduce impact — and almost no one is tracking the carbon cost of getting water into (and dirty water out of) a building. The Solution: Dave expects the next 5–15 years to bring real accounting for water-related carbon emissions, plus a shift from manufacturers simply disclosing product data (EPDs/HPDs) to actively optimizing based on it. ROI: Teams that start tracking these metrics now will be ahead of the curve as grids decarbonize (a projected 95% by scenario in 25 years) and as owners start demanding optimization, not just disclosure. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "It's not that we inherit the planet from our parents — we're actually borrowing it from our children." — Dave Hubka 🧗‍♂️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Sit down with your spec team and identify one system (glass, envelope, MEP) where sustainability can be the default, not a client request. This Quarter: Start tracking EPD/HPD data for your key material categories — the goal is optimization, not just disclosure. This Year: Build or partner for in-house MEP commissioning capability before your state's energy code requires it. ✍️ Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒 Read the transcript here 🔗 Connect with Dave Hubka: Website: https://eua.com/ 📖 Book mentioned in this episode — The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🙏🏼 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧠 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes — just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Only 3% of people on a building project can actually open a BIM file — Ken Rhee is fixing that, and using AI and sensors to turn "as-built" data into real-time building intelligence that pays off in energy, insurance, and asset value. 🤩 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Ken Rhee Joined VIM Build in Atlanta, GA as President at the beginning of January, 2026. Co-founded Integral VIM, a BIM consulting company based in Shanghai in 2021, together with Arol Wolford ; currently developing VXBOS, a VIM-based 3D building operating software. Based in Shanghai, worked at Morgan Stanley as VP and later Executive Director in its real estate banking and investment departments (2006-2012). Conducted M&A advisory work at JP Morgan in Hong Kong and Singapore (1998-2003) Between 2012 and 2024, served as Founding Executive Director for Urban Land. Institute (ULI) China Mainland and has authored or edited a number of ULI publications, and has led a series of ULI Advisory Services Panels in China and South Korea. Holds an MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business (1998) and a BA in Econ/Business at UCLA. Born and raised in Korea until the age of 14 and immigrated to the US and settled in southern California 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Ken Rhee revolutionizes how project teams actually use their building data: 💚 Key Insight #1: Democratizing BIM Access The Challenge: BIM models are so large and fragmented — sometimes 100+ Revit files for one complex building — that even developers rarely get to see them. Historically, only a small fraction of people on a project can actually open a BIM file. The Solution: VIM Build federates Revit, IFC, and Navisworks files into a lightweight format anyone can open on a laptop, no Revit or VIM subscription required, with clickable materials that surface real bill-of-materials data. ROI: Entire project teams — architects, contractors, developers, even facility managers down the road — can finally see and use the same building data instead of relying on static exports. 💚 Key Insight #2: AI-Powered Predictive Maintenance The Challenge: Building teams typically know what is installed (like 20 different light bulb SKUs across a tower) but not how to plan around it — replacement schedules are guesswork, and maintenance crews waste time locating parts. The Solution: Layering AI on top of federated BIM data lets teams isolate any component by SKU, locate it instantly, and use AI to estimate useful life and auto-build replacement schedules. ROI: Lower operating expenses, less reactive maintenance, and faster turnaround for maintenance staff who now know exactly where to go. 💚 Key Insight #3: Real-Time Digital Twins That Talk to the Building The Challenge: There's a disconnect between the operational data buildings generate and how that data actually informs asset management, financing, and insurance decisions. The Solution: Integral BIM's sensor networks (temperature, humidity, CO2, PM2.5, TVOC, occupancy) tie directly into AC and lighting controls — even letting tenants pre-heat or cool their space from a smartphone before arriving — all layered onto the BIM-based digital twin. ROI: Reduced energy use, better facility management, and — because insurers and lenders can assess risk more accurately — improved financing terms and lower insurance premiums. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "Only 3% of people working on development projects where BIM is used can actually access the BIM models." — Ken Rhee ✅ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Audit who on your project team can actually open your BIM files. If it's limited to a couple of specialists, you have a data-access problem worth solving. This Quarter: Pilot a federated, lightweight BIM viewer so developers, facility managers, and other stakeholders can explore building data without a Revit license. This Year: Build the business case for a real-time digital twin — start with a handful of sensor types tied to your building controls, and track the impact on financing conversations and insurance premiums. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Ken Rhee: Website: https://vimaec.com/, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-rhee-295a4018**/** 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: **BuildingPlaques.com** helps project teams showcase the story behind their LEED and green building certifications with fully customized architectural plaques. Highlight your scorecard, sustainability strategy, project team, and certifications in one sleek display designed to educate and inspire building occupants. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: After 42 years at HKS, Kirk Teske reflects on a career that helped shape sustainable design at scale. From leading one of the earliest LEED pilot projects to influencing generations of architects, Kirk shares why responsible design, stakeholder engagement, and courageous leadership remain the foundation of a better built environment. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Kirk Teske is a retired architect, LEED Fellow, and former Global Director at HKS, where he spent more than four decades helping transform one of the world's leading design firms. During his career, he led corporate headquarters projects, hospitality developments, sustainability initiatives, and international practice growth while serving as a champion for responsible design and environmental stewardship. A longtime advocate for sustainable architecture, Kirk helped advance early LEED adoption, supported the Architecture 2030 Challenge, and played a key role in integrating sustainability into firm-wide practice standards. Today, he continues his environmental leadership through community advocacy focused on protecting natural landscapes and responsible development. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Kirk Teske shares lessons from a remarkable career in architecture while offering guidance for the next generation of sustainability leaders. 🧠 Key Insight #1: Sustainable design succeeds when it becomes part of every design conversation. The Challenge: Sustainability has often been treated as a specialty service or a collection of certifications rather than a core design responsibility. The Solution: Integrate energy efficiency, healthy buildings, resilience, low-carbon thinking, and responsible material selection into every project from the beginning. ROI: Better-performing buildings, stronger client outcomes, reduced environmental impact, and long-term business value. 🧠 Key Insight #2: The best building solutions come from diverse perspectives. The Challenge: Traditional design processes can overlook valuable insights from stakeholders, researchers, users, and adjacent disciplines. The Solution: Engage multiple voices throughout the design process, including researchers, anthropologists, clients, operators, and building occupants. ROI: More innovative solutions, improved project performance, stronger stakeholder alignment, and buildings that better serve their communities. 🧠 Key Insight #3: Influence creates a greater legacy than any individual project. The Challenge: Many professionals focus solely on project outcomes without recognizing the long-term impact they can have on people and organizational culture. The Solution: Mentor others, advocate for better ideas, create opportunities for emerging professionals, and lead through influence rather than authority. ROI: Stronger teams, accelerated industry progress, greater organizational impact, and a legacy that extends far beyond completed buildings. 🎙️ Sustainable Soundbite "Your voice, even as a young person on a design team, is important." — Kirk Teske 🤗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Identify one opportunity to bring additional stakeholder perspectives into an active project or design discussion. This Quarter: Review project standards and specifications to ensure sustainability goals are embedded from the earliest stages of design. This Year: Mentor an emerging professional and help them identify a project that could become a career-defining opportunity. 🔗 Connect & Learn More **🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast** 📜 Read the transcript 👉 here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Kirk Teske : Website: hksinc.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kirkteske 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.gbes.com 🤩 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: BuildingPlaques.com BuildingPlaques.com helps project teams showcase the story behind their LEED and green building certifications with fully customized architectural plaques. Highlight your scorecard, sustainability strategy, project team, and certifications in one sleek display designed to educate and inspire building occupants. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick Take: What happens when a LEED Fellow entrepreneur, a Fortune 500 technology executive (turn investor), and a startup growth strategist sit down to discuss the future of building design? You get an inside look at how AI is reshaping architecture, construction, ownership, and the economics of the built environment. In this special episode, Charlie Cichetti, Robin Bienfait, and Jim Grady explore why the next generation of buildings won't be designed from scratch — they'll be built from intelligence. 🎓 Meet the Innovators Charlie Cichetti Co-Founder & CEO of Skema.ai, serial entrepreneur, LEED Fellow, and longtime sustainability advocate. Charlie has spent his career helping building owners operate smarter, greener, and more efficiently. Today, he's focused on building a tech startup using AI to dramatically reduce waste, inefficiency, and rework across the building lifecycle. Robin Bienfait Former CIO of BlackBerry, senior executive at AT&T and Samsung, venture capitalist, angel investor, and founder of Atlanta Tech Park. Robin managed thousands of facilities throughout her corporate career and became one of Skema AI's earliest believers (and investors) after seeing the platform's potential to transform how owners design and manage buildings. She serves on the Board at Skema, also. Jim Grady Growth strategist, startup advisor, and investor relations expert. Jim helps founders sharpen positioning, communicate vision, and accelerate growth. Throughout the conversation, he pushes beyond the technology itself to uncover the business case, market timing, and investment thesis behind AI-powered building design. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building ✍️ Key Insight #1: The design & construction industry keeps throwing away its most valuable asset — its own knowledge. The Challenge: Every project generates enormous amounts of design intelligence, yet most of it sits unused on servers after completion. The Solution: Skema AI allows owners and architects to learn from previous projects, creating reusable building intelligence instead of starting over every time. ROI: Faster design schedules, lower project costs, improved consistency, and reduced rework. ✍️ Key Insight #2: AI isn't replacing architects — it is eliminating repetitive work. The Challenge: Design professionals spend too much time recreating work, searching for information, and solving problems that have already been solved before. The Solution: AI accelerates repetitive workflows so architects can focus on creativity, strategy, sustainability, and client outcomes. ROI: Higher productivity, better employee engagement, stronger project teams, and more time spent on high-value work. ✍️ Key Insight #3: Building owners will become the biggest drivers of design & construction AI adoption. The Challenge: Rising costs, schedule delays, contingency budgets, and change orders continue to threaten project viability. The Solution: Owners can use platforms like Skema to create consistency across portfolios while improving collaboration among architects, contractors, and suppliers. ROI: Faster project delivery, reduced risk, improved capital efficiency, and earlier revenue generation from completed facilities. 🧐What is Charlie Up To? Charlie and the Skema AI team are entering an exciting growth phase. Current initiatives include: ✅ Expanding direct relationships with major retailers and building owners ✅ Growing Skema AI's footprint in Data Center Design ✅ Launching broader access for architects through a freemium offering ✅ Expanding AI capabilities for contractors and construction teams ✅ Preparing for a major Series A raise to accelerate growth As Charlie puts it, The Mission is Simple: "Create the 'fast-forward button' for commercial building design and construction" 🌟 Why Robin Is Betting On Skema Robin has spent decades leading technology transformations inside some of the world's largest organizations. What stood out to her wasn't simply the AI, it was that Skema was built AI-native from the beginning. According to Robin, many incumbent software companies now face a difficult challenge: they must bolt AI onto existing products. Skema started with AI as its foundation. That distinction could become one of the company's greatest competitive advantages as adoption accelerates throughout the industry. 🧰 Jim Grady's Perspective Throughout the discussion, Jim repeatedly returns to the question investors care about most: "What creates value?" His takeaway: Owners are increasingly frustrated by inefficiencies, delays, and repeated mistakes across projects. As those pressures grow, solutions that preserve institutional knowledge and accelerate project delivery become increasingly valuable. The opportunity isn't simply saving money, it's unlocking revenue sooner, by getting projects operational faster. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "We've built the fast-forward button for how you design and build commercial buildings." — Charlie Cichetti Quote Options Charlie Cichetti "The more of your building intelligence you can reuse, the faster your next project becomes." Robin Bienfait "Better security is built in, not bolted on. The same is true for AI." James D. Grady "The biggest opportunity comes from stopping the cycle of relearning the same lessons on every project." ✅ Your Green Building Action Plan This Week: Identify one repetitive design, estimating, or project workflow that could benefit from AI-enabled knowledge reuse. This Quarter: Evaluate how institutional knowledge is currently captured — and where valuable lessons are being lost. This Year: Develop a digital strategy that preserves building intelligence across your entire portfolio. 🎧 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📜 Read the transcript 👉 here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Robin Bienfait LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinbienfait/ Website: https://www.emnovate.com/ 🔗 Connect with Jim Grady LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesdgrady/ 🌟 Learn More About Skema AI: 🌐 https://skema.ai 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤩 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: BuildingPlaques.com BuildingPlaques.com helps project teams showcase the story behind their LEED and green building certifications with fully customized architectural plaques. Highlight your scorecard, sustainability strategy, project team, and certifications in one sleek display designed to educate and inspire building occupants. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: AI, data centers, and digital infrastructure are transforming the built environment faster than most of us realize. In this episode, Anya Eydman explains why the future of decarbonization isn't just about technology—it's about trust, education, community engagement, and helping buildings become active participants in a cleaner, more resilient energy ecosystem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion **Anya Eydman is a strategic advisor and community advocate working at the intersection of energy infrastructure, grid assets, and public–private systems. Her work focuses on helping complex projects move from concept to execution in ways communities can understand, trust, and benefit from. She specializes in stakeholder alignment, community partnerships, workforce readiness, and last-mile implementation strategies that connect infrastructure projects with real community impact. Anya has worked across energy optimization, climate initiatives, and civic partnerships, with a focus on building resilient and equitable systems that support long-term economic and environmental outcomes. She holds a Master's degree in Public Administration and, outside of work, writes poetry, meditates, and runs.** 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Anya Eydman challenges conventional thinking about energy, AI, and sustainability while helping us understand how digital infrastructure is reshaping the future of the built environment. 🧠 Key Insight #1: Buildings are evolving from energy consumers into grid assets. The Challenge: Most buildings have historically been viewed as passive energy consumers, limiting opportunities to support grid resilience and energy flexibility. The Solution: Reframe buildings as active participants in the energy ecosystem through intelligent infrastructure, electrification, distributed energy resources, and grid-interactive technologies. ROI: Improved resilience, enhanced energy management, future regulatory readiness, and new opportunities to participate in evolving energy markets. 🧠 Key Insight #2: AI's biggest sustainability opportunity is eliminating inefficiency. The Challenge: Organizations remain burdened by fragmented workflows, disconnected systems, and fear surrounding AI adoption. The Solution: Leverage AI to identify hidden inefficiencies, streamline operations, improve decision-making, and enhance productivity while keeping humans at the center of the process. ROI: Reduced waste, improved operational performance, lower carbon impacts, and more effective use of time, talent, and resources. 🧠 Key Insight #3: Community trust is becoming critical infrastructure. The Challenge: As data centers, energy infrastructure, and AI technologies expand, communities often lack visibility into their impacts and benefits. The Solution: Prioritize education, transparency, stakeholder engagement, and honest conversations about both risks and opportunities. ROI: Stronger public support, reduced project friction, faster adoption of innovation, and more sustainable long-term outcomes. Sustainable Soundbites "Every single industry will need to be a green jobs industry." — Anya Eydman 🤗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Evaluate how your current spaces support occupant wellness through daylight, air quality, and connection to nature. This Quarter: Explore geothermal or photovoltaic feasibility studies for upcoming projects or facility upgrades. This Year: Build sustainability conversations around measurable human outcomes — wellness, productivity, and operational savings — to improve stakeholder alignment. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📜 Read the transcript 👉 here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Anya Eydman : Website: arya.energy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anyaeydman/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.gbes.com 🤩 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: BuildingPlaques.com BuildingPlaques.com helps project teams showcase the story behind their LEED and green building certifications with fully customized architectural plaques. Highlight your scorecard, sustainability strategy, project team, and certifications in one sleek display designed to educate and inspire building occupants. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when sustainability stops being about buzzwords — and starts being about healthier kids, stronger schools, and lower operational costs? Architect Bob Morris breaks down how net-zero schools, biophilic design, and human-centered architecture are reshaping the future of education. 🙋 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion **Bob is an architect who specializes in the planning and design of K12 schools for EUA, a multi-disciplinary design firm with five office locations in Wisconsin, Colorado, and Georgia. Architecture, for Bob, is a means to an end. Great design is measured by how it improves the lives of those who experience it. This necessitates a user-driven approach, emphasizing the voices of teachers, parents, and students in the design process. The results are learning environments that embrace equity, promote student agency, and encourage experiential learning opportunities. It also leads to designs that are rooted in the places and stories of the communities they serve, emphasizing connections to nature, long-term sustainability, and responsible use of resources. As a senior design architect and principal at EUA, Bob's personal design approach mirrors the values of his firm. EUA's design philosophy is anchored by the belief that design has the power to unleash true human potential and to enrich communities. This includes a firm-wide aspiration to net-zero emissions in the built environment as evidenced in the AIA 2030 Commitment.** 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Bob Morris revolutionizes traditional construction approaches: 🧠 Key Insight #1: Sustainable schools perform better when they prioritize human wellness — not just energy savings. The Challenge: Traditional school buildings often focused on efficiency and standardization while overlooking how physical environments impact student health, engagement, and learning outcomes. The Solution: Bob and his team design schools with biophilic principles, natural daylight, improved indoor air quality, flexible learning environments, and stronger connections to nature. ROI: Healthier students, increased engagement, improved learning environments, and long-term building performance that supports both wellness and sustainability goals. 🧠 Key Insight #2: Net-zero schools are becoming financially realistic for public education. The Challenge: Renewable technologies like geothermal and solar were historically viewed as too expensive or impractical for publicly funded school districts. The Solution: Advances in geothermal systems, photovoltaic arrays, and available funding opportunities are helping schools achieve ambitious energy goals without sacrificing budgets. ROI: Lower operational costs, reduced energy consumption, and the ability for school districts to reinvest savings directly into student programs and educational resources. 🧠 Key Insight #3: The future of sustainability depends on reframing the conversation around people, not politics. The Challenge: Sustainability and "green building" conversations can become politically divisive, especially in public-sector projects. The Solution: Bob emphasizes focusing conversations around health, student outcomes, operational efficiency, and creating environments that genuinely improve human experience. ROI: Greater community buy-in, stronger stakeholder alignment, and more meaningful progress toward resilient, high-performance buildings. ❝ Sustainable Soundbite "The buildings we design today become the world the next generation is stuck with." — Bob Morris 🤗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Evaluate how your current spaces support occupant wellness through daylight, air quality, and connection to nature. This Quarter: Explore geothermal or photovoltaic feasibility studies for upcoming projects or facility upgrades. This Year: Build sustainability conversations around measurable human outcomes — wellness, productivity, and operational savings — to improve stakeholder alignment. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📜 Read the transcript 👉 here 👩🏻‍💻 Connect with Bob Morris: Website: https://eua.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-morris/, https://www.linkedin.com/company/eppstein-uhen-architects/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.gbes.com 🤩 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🤝 Today's Episode Sponsored By: BuildingPlaques.com BuildingPlaques.com helps project teams showcase the story behind their LEED and green building certifications with fully customized architectural plaques. Highlight your scorecard, sustainability strategy, project team, and certifications in one sleek display designed to educate and inspire building occupants. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.