SPARK

Discoveries, innovations, and insights that illuminate the future of the built environment

5 key takeaways from the DOE’s Quadrennial Technology Review

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Sun shining off a building

Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR) may be a mouthful, but here’s an easier way to think of it: it’s an important report covering energy technology that comes out every four years.

McKinstry is always on the lookout for the latest and greatest research and thinking in our field, so we’ve been taking a look at the QTR ever since it was released a few weeks ago.

Feel free to chime in with your own opinions and questions in the comments, but here are our five main takeaways from the whopper, 505-page document:

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If you’re cold at work, don’t blame building standards

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Thermostat

Photo by midnightcomm, via Flickr.

If you were on the Internet in August, you probably saw the headlines.

From the New York Times: “Chilly at Work? Office Formula Was Devised for Men.”

From CNBC: “Is your office too cold? Blame men.”

From San Diego’s KGTV: “Sexist thermostats: Science proves why women freeze at work.”

All of this coverage springs from a study published Aug. 3 in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study found that women have slightly lower resting metabolic rates than men, further arguing that current standards for designing office air conditioning systems are flawed, since they’re based on men’s metabolic rates and fail to factor in that metabolic difference.

While the narrative of “sexist” building standards conspiring to freeze women is undeniably compelling, I think it’s also extremely simplistic and misleading.

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Solving the equation: Energy efficiency + healthy classrooms = happy students

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teacher classroom

Photo by Bart Everson via Flickr

We ask our schools to do a lot on a tight budget: Invest in new technology, adapt to national standards, keep teachers and staff happy, maintain discipline, collaborate with other schools, mentor teachers—the list goes on. Little wonder, then, that maintaining the school building itself falls near the bottom of the priority list.

However, the learning environment is fundamentally important to student success. When it underperforms, so do our students. What’s more, overspending on a poorly ventilated and/or uncomfortable learning environment is the worst of both worlds.

If better buildings make for better students, how should cash-strapped schools prioritize and actualize more energy-efficient school facilities?

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Why ‘Net Zero Commissioning’ could revolutionize building performance

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NetZeroGraphicWP

This infographic demonstrates the growing prevalence of net zero energy buildings over the past few years. Infographic courtesy of the New Buildings Institute (NBI).

McKinstry’s Phillip Saieg and Josh Harwood are pioneering the concept of “Net Zero Commissioning”—a re-envisioning of the industry that posits the necessity of commissioning agents positioning themselves on the net zero energy frontier in order to stay relevant.

Though most in the construction industry are familiar with the concept of a net zero energy building (wherein the total amount of energy used by the building is equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site), Saieg and Harwood think commissioning agents need to become a vital part of the net zero discussion.

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Tunable LED lighting is illuminating the future

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From the moment you wake up to the moment your head hits the pillow, there’s one constant in your life—light. Whether it’s natural or artificial, in your home or your office, fluorescent or LED, light is always surrounding you.

For being so omnipresent in our lives, it’s remarkable how lighting isn’t always focused on what’s optimal for people. Surprisingly often, the various lights in our lives are too harsh, too dim, building-centric, or one-size-fits-all.

One company—PLANLED, based in Federal Way, Wash.—is betting that people fed up with inadequate illumination will embrace the new concept of human-centric lighting (HCL). PLANLED distributes, markets, and sells a variety of different HCL solutions for indoor, outdoor/sports, and industrial settings.

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Performance contracting: A strategy to address water woes in the West

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DroughtPhotoWP

Photo by Anthony Quintano, via Flickr.

As raging wildfires, barren fields, and dried-up waterways continue to dominate the landscape of the American West, it’s abundantly clear that drought and water scarcity are critical issues that require immediate action.

While there’s no comprehensive solution to the current drought, organizations and individuals throughout the region are looking to use every possible strategy to mitigate the drought’s impacts.

McKinstry explored how using a simple yet innovative procurement mechanism—performance contracting—could quickly help address water conservation in the seven Colorado River Basin states (AZ, CA, CO, NM, NV, UT, WY). What we found was that schools and public governments in those states could save big.

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Why (and how) the construction industry needs to embrace big data

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BigDataPhoto

Photo by Torkild Retvedt, via Flickr.

While building systems and technologies are capitalizing on opportunities to take advantage of the current technological revolution, the construction industry mainly continues to lag behind more advanced, innovative approaches used by other industries to leverage the most out of big data resources.

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How did your school spend its summer vacation?

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School_desk

For many K-12 districts, the last day of school for students doesn’t necessarily mean the buildings are taking an extended recess. Instead, it marks the kickoff of a busy construction season that relies on superintendents, building operators, project engineers, construction managers, commissioning agents and many others to collaborate on anything from a boiler replacement to a major remodel—and have it completed in less than 12 weeks before classes are back in session.

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Employee Profile: Harlan Ward, Senior Program Manager

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Harlan

Photo courtesy of Harlan Ward.

Harlan Ward has been with McKinstry’s Wisconsin team for five years—currently in the role of Senior Program Manager. Many folks across the region have crossed paths with Harlan since 2010, but few know that Harlan has a propensity for daring and unexpected adventures. Luckily for Harlan, he also seems to have nine lives.

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Supporting students, STEM and our communities

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It’s no surprise to educators that providing a strong foundation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) creates long-term positive benefits for students as they prepare to join the workforce.

In the past 10 years alone, STEM jobs have grown three times faster than non-STEM jobs. A strong workforce, in turn, strengthens local communities. McKinstry believes that the private sector has an important role to play in supporting these advancements in education, and we have a long history of putting that commitment into action in our communities through investments of our time, talents and resources.

We care about the future of today’s students, and we want to see the next generation succeed. That’s why we’re dedicated to creating opportunities for students from all backgrounds. So, what do we do?

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