The Future. Built Smarter.

AI in practice | Part 1: IMEG chatbot brings decades of data to engineers in seconds

In the first of a two-part episode, IMEG software development team lead Steve Germano joins Mike Lawless and Joe Payne for a conversation about IMEG’s internal, AI-powered chatbot, Meg. After a year-and-a-half of development, Meg is now live and serves as a search engine for the firm’s engineering teams and other departments, drawing from the company’s vast amount of stored data.  

Built as a large language model, or LLM, questions can be asked of Meg by anyone in the company on a variety of engineering and non-engineering topics, from “How do I submit my expense report?” to “Where can I find guidance on sizing steam traps?” Meg will then point the user to the appropriate in-house tool or information from among the firm’s own curated, accurate, and verified databases. Meg fields upwards of 1,000 questions a day from the firm’s 80-plus engineering teams and other staff around the country, quickly bringing knowledge from across the firm to answer questions and provide technical information to provide the best solutions for local clients.  

“We built a singular entry point to help users find information they're looking for across the company in a single place,” says Germano, who also is a mechanical engineer. “Everyone can just type a sentence and ask what they want, just like you'd be asking a colleague sitting next to you.”  

Far from replacing engineers, Meg acts as an assistant to help them more quickly find the data and answers to their questions---an especially useful “co-pilot” and source of accelerated learning for less experienced engineers (who also continue to be mentored by the firm’s veterans). 

“It’s like having someone you can bug and ask 50 questions a day and know you’re not going to aggravate them and eat up their time,” says Germano, who expects to see similar AI-powered assistants being developed across the AEC industry. “As the technology continues to develop, it's just going to get better and better, and more and more knowledge will be available.” 

Germano offers a bit of advice for firms thinking about embarking on such a journey. “There are a lot of tools out there to start exploring with, but in parallel with that, you need to determine if your data is even ready to be consumed by AI. That’s a deep topic that needs to be explored as it can take a lot of time to curate and cleanse your data.” 

Phius leader keen on passive building’s role in decarbonization

Kat Klingenberg, executive director and co-founder of the non-profit organization Phius, talks about the history and current state of passive building in this episode of The Future Built Smarter. “Passive building principles are not rocket science,” she says. “We're talking about continuous insulation, airtight construction, no thermal bridging in the envelope, good fenestration components, and minimized mechanical systems. It's all about holistic integrated design, and once that is all implemented correctly, we get the result of super-low energy buildings that are pretty much zero-energy ready.”  

Kat also directs the technical and research programs at Phius, which certifies passive buildings and high-performance building products. The organization also has trained more than 5,000 architects, engineers, energy consultants, and builders as Phius Certified Consultants, Builders, and Raters/Verifiers. 

Predated by the construction of thousands of passive houses in North America during the 1960s through 1980s and originally modeled off the Passive House Institute of Germany, Phius codified the passive house strategies in the U.S. when the organization was founded in 2003. The principles have evolved over the past two decades and today apply not only to homes but also to new construction and retrofits of all building types, with climate-specific standards for different geographic regions.  

Passive building principles are a vital tool in the global decarbonization effort underway in the built environment—so much so that the 2024 USGBC International Greenbuild Conference will include a Phius-exclusive track, pre-conference summit, and pavilion of exhibitors.  

“There has been collaboration and friendship between the Green Building Council and Phius for quite a while, and we decided that Phius should have a track within Greenbuild this year,” says Kat. “We call it ‘Phius at Greenbuild.’ We hope that we can create a lot of interest in what we do and bring the stakeholders of Greenbuild into the fold and help them with their next challenges.” 

The urgent need to decarbonize at light speed, advances in heat pump and envelope technologies, the mastering of air tightness strategies by a growing number of builders, and the expectation that jurisdictions will begin to include Passive Building Certification as part of net-zero stretch codes (Massachusetts has already done so) are all bringing Phius into the spotlight as never before. “It's almost like the perfect storm,” says Kat. “It’s super exciting.” 

Visit Phius on the web to learn more about the organization and its collaboration with the 2024 USGBC International Greenbuild Conference. 

Read about one of IMEG’s Phius-certified projects, the net-zero Prairie Trails School in Mount Prospect, IL. 

Northridge at 30: Seismic design advances benefit buildings across U.S.

This episode of The Future Built Smarter podcast provides a high-level look at seismic design and preparedness 30 years after the Northridge earthquake rocked Southern California in 1994. Joining the discussion is IMEG structural engineer and client executive Craig Chamberlain, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Southern California, which hosted the Northridge30 Symposium on the anniversary of the event in January. “The symposium brought policymakers, city government officials, building officials, and engineers together to help make sure we're still moving ahead even 30 years after the earthquake, and that we don't forget what happened on that devastating day,” he says.

The magnitude 6.7 earthquake shook the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles at 4:30 a.m. Jan. 17, 1994, resulting in at least 57 deaths and more than 8,700 injuries. It was California’s most destructive seismic event since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the state’s costliest to date, by some estimates causing up to $50 billion in damage to buildings and infrastructure. It also ushered in new and advanced building codes and requirements, building retrofits, and new structural best practices for building types with specific vulnerabilities—all of which continue to evolve. “A lot has come to pass since that day, but there is more work to be done,” says Chamberlain.

The lessons learned from Northridge, the advances in design and technology, and the growing use of structural assessments, building resiliency strategies, and recovery measures have applications outside of seismic areas, since a variety of natural events can threaten buildings and infrastructure throughout the U.S. “It’s important that we're prepared for that event when it comes, because it's going to come, whether it's a hurricane, tornado, flood, or earthquake,” says Chamberlain.

IMEG CEO reflects on firm’s growth and career of 47 years (and counting)

IMEG President and CEO Paul VanDuyne talks about the trajectory of his career and the firm’s growth during his 20-year tenure as CEO in this special episode of The Future Built Smarter.

The recipient of ENR Midwest’s 2023 Legacy Award, Paul entered the industry as a design electrical engineer 47 years ago when he joined IMEG—then KJWW Engineering. In 2003 he became president and CEO, and in 2015 led a merger between KJWW and TTG Engineers of California, which ushered in the creation of IMEG. Since then, IMEG has completed 35 acquisitions and has gone from 800 staff members in the Midwest and California to over 2,400 staff at 80 locations coast to coast. All of that might not have happened, however, had Paul followed his original plans when he moved from the East Coast—where he’d already earned an engineering degree—to Davenport, Iowa.

“I actually came out to the Midwest to become a chiropractor,” he says. “I was going into a new career direction. About six months into it I needed to make some money and joined this small engineering company over in Rock Island, Illinois. I was their 16th person at the beginning of 1976. That’s my story with what eventually became IMEG.”

Paul shares how his interest in healthcare—he did go on to earn his Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Palmer College—led to jumpstarting and building IMEG’s healthcare portfolio, which today is ranked 4th in the nation among engineering firms by Building Design+Construction. He also discusses IMEG’s ongoing strategic mergers and acquisitions, its goal to become a billion-dollar company, and how its wide diversity of markets and services, geographic distribution, employee ownership, and single profit center combine to provide the firm with resilience and growth even during times of adversity. “All that really helped us get through the pandemic, but also any difficult times that come up,” he says. “That's a huge stability factor for us.”

After nearly 50 years in the business, Paul says he is very committed to a daily health regimen that helps him to stay energized and meet the demands of the job, physically and mentally. “I think a lot of it has to do with mindset,” he says. “If your mindset is a progressive mindset, and it's an abundance mindset, I think that gives you a huge advantage.” 

Learn more about IMEG’s approach and stories of success on the new mini-documentary, "IMEG Built Smarter: A Strategic Growth Story.” 

How Ann Arbor seeks to lift up an underserved neighborhood through community geothermal

This episode features Missy Stults, Sustainability and Innovations Director for the City of Ann Arbor, MI, one of 11 communities being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Office to design a community geothermal heating and cooling system. Joining the conversation is IMEG Sustainability Director Adam McMillen, who is leading the analysis and design portion of the project. 

“In Ann Arbor we have the goal of achieving a just transition to communitywide carbon neutrality by 2030,” said Stults. “One of the things that is really critical is centering equity in our work, and so from the very beginning we said we have to make sure that we're working with neighborhoods that we've traditionally disinvested in.” The city’s Bryant Neighborhood—an underserved, energy-burdened community of 262 households, 75 percent of which are considered low-income, with over 50 percent of residents being minorities and renters—was chosen for the project. “For almost three years we've been working with Community Action Network (CAN) and the residents of Bryant to figure out what would it mean if they became the most sustainable neighborhood in America,” said Stults. “What would it mean if you flipped the script on a neighborhood that we sort of just forgot about and made it be the centerpiece of climate action? And then this project came about.”  

The goal of the project is to design (and eventually build) a community-scale geothermal system that covers at least 75% of the heating and cooling load for all 262 households as well as for a local school, a county community mental health service center, and the City of Ann Arbor’s public works facility. The project will directly lower the neighborhood’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40%, significantly improve indoor air quality, eliminate the energy burden for low-income residents, and enhance year-round comfort.  

The project team is led by the City of Ann Arbor and consists of 14 entities including CAN and other community organizations, mental health providers, the public school district, utility providers, geothermal design firms, and workforce development and training organizations.  

“The answer to the climate crisis isn't brand new neighborhoods everywhere,” said McMillen. “It is: Work with what we have in a smarter way, reuse resources we have, then lift everyone else up with us. And make it replicable so anyone can do it.” 

Read more about the project. 

UW Health bringing a proton center powered by the sun to Madison

This episode offers a preview of UW Health’s Eastpark Medical Center in Madison, WI. Expected to be fully open by Fall 2024, the seven-story outpatient facility will offer advanced imaging and lab services, destination services, multidisciplinary adult specialties, and women’s complex care. The center also will feature the state-of-the-art UW Health | Carbone Cancer Center, one of the few in the country to offer proton therapy and, in collaboration with Leo Cancer Care, the first healthcare facility in the U.S. to offer upright proton therapy.  

Discussing the new center and proton therapy aspects of the project are Jerry McGuire and Steve Mumm, senior project managers for University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics Planning Design and Construction, and Kevin Langan, an IMEG mechanical engineer working on the project. “Proton therapy is a relatively new cancer treatment,” says McGuire. “It’s an advanced form of radiation therapy using a precise dose of radiation that conforms to the tumor itself—reducing side effects and causing no damage to surrounding healthy tissues.” The new center will offer both a rotating gantry where a patient lies down on a couch with the machine rotating around them, and an upright fixed beam system in which the patient sits up. The upright system is being found to provide improved outcomes— offering greater comfort, reducing patient anxiety, and improved accuracy—and is particularly beneficial for pediatric patients.  

The planning, design, and construction not only of the proton therapy spaces but also the infrastructure to support the technology was like no other healthcare project. “There were huge implications well beyond the proton therapy space—for example, the chiller plant gets larger, an additional electrical service was added, and larger generators,” said Langan. “It also required a lot of coordination with the proton therapy vendors to make sure we were providing what they needed.” To withstand the neutron dose rates of the treatment bay and contain the radiation, the proton therapy space also required 7-foot-thick concrete walls below grade. A temporary system to pump glycol through tubing within the poured concrete was required to keep the concrete from overheating and to cure appropriately.  

Eastpark Medical Center is also seeking LEED v4.1 certification for healthcare and has several sustainable features, including a 1MW rooftop solar array which provides the approximate energy needed to power the proton center. “We basically will have a carbon-neutral proton center in Madison, Wisconsin,” says Mumm. 

Housing director: ‘We’re providing homes where people can thrive’

Scott Campagna, Senior Director of Housing at IMEG, is featured in this episode—one in a series of conversations with the firm’s market leaders. Scott talks about the subsectors of IMEG’s housing work—neighborhoods, multifamily, student housing, and senior living—and the challenges and opportunities facing the market overall. “It's an interesting time,” he says. “There's a huge housing demand in all sectors but in the current environment, with the lending being pulled back, projects in all sectors generally are moving a bit slower.” Scott also discusses office-to-residential conversions, a trending topic in the market. He cautions that such pursuits always be preceded by an infrastructure assessment. “Certainly not every building is the same nor is it best suited necessarily for a housing conversion. You need to look at the systems infrastructure to ensure it will support the housing project. You don't want to be hit with any surprises after the fact or during construction.” On all projects in the market, Scott says the mentality at IMEG is to “Turn housing into homes. We understand we are drawing more than just lines on paper—we are providing a home where people can thrive and flourish within our communities.”  

Planning is essential for meeting education market challenges

In a continuing series of discussions with IMEG’s market leaders, this episode of The Future Built Smarter features John Holbert, vice president of education. John discusses the challenges facing the market, primarily those for higher education institutions, which face ever-increasing enrollment competition, changes in student demographics, limited resources, aging infrastructure, and difficulties with facility staff retention. Many higher education institutions, as well as K-12 school districts, also face challenges in meeting sustainability and environmental initiatives as well as the need to improve safety and security in their buildings and on their campuses. “Security has become a big topic, and we have started consulting on safety and security plans for campuses and districts,” he says. Such initiatives start with a vulnerability assessment and gap analysis, with planning and design including principles from Crime Prevention through Environmental Design, or CPTED. “We’re also seeing more referendums and funding opportunities for safety and security measures,” he adds. Before embarking on any building project, John emphasizes the importance of master planning to best prepare for the needs of the future. Such planning helps institutions meet their long-term goals and allocate funds and other resources accordingly—before it’s too late. “Across the landscape of education, we see a lot of deferred maintenance,” he says. “We're still going into 50-plus-year-old buildings that have original systems in them.” 

Keeping K-12 students safe demands a holistic security approach

Holistic security considerations for K-12 school design are examined in this 17-minute episode featuring Ryan Searles, IMEG’s security consulting group leader. Ryan spends an average of three weeks of each month traveling the country presenting at conferences or training organizations in crisis management, active shooter mitigation, and other security preparedness—with a growing number of school districts seeking his team’s services. “We keep seeing a rise in violence in the United States and more violent events occurring at places of education,” he says. “In K-12, particularly, it's really about what we can do to mitigate it from happening.” In addition to getting involved earlier in the design phase of new facilities, Ryan and his team are also conducting an increasing number of security assessments of existing schools, providing answers to such questions as, “What do we have in place? What are we doing right? Where are our gaps and where are our vulnerabilities? How do we fix those?” The most effective security design and emergency preparedness takes a blended, holistic approach, Ryan says, and includes not only physical and technology design aspects but also “the human aspect”—training, drills and rehearsals for staff and students, as well as proactive threat assessments of individuals and being vigilant about watching for early warning signs. “We've been a very reactive culture in the United States with school security and safety. We can't do that anymore—that's become very apparent and has a lot to do with my team being so busy. Schools are reaching out saying, ‘Come show us what we need to do to keep these kids safe.’ “

Ryan Searles will present "Security Considerations for School Design" at 8:15 a.m. Oct. 13 at the Association for Learning Environments' National Conference, LearningSCAPES 2023, in Chicago. Learn more.

Water, water everywhere—with many improvements needed

This episode—another in a series of discussions with IMEG’s market leaders—features Jack Kusek, market leader for water and wastewater. Listen to the episode and you’ll learn: 

• What PFAs are and what can be done about them 
• Which U.S. city has the largest concentration of lead pipes 
• Why security is a big concern for water and wastewater facilities, particularly in smaller communities 
• How two communities collaborated to ensure their water resiliency
• Why outsourcing facility operations is a necessity for many small municipalities
• How IMEG has helped restore Frenchman’s Reef resort on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands following back-to-back hurricanes that devastated the property in 2017 

Jack also discusses his motivation for the work he specializes in, and the reward he receives when he’s able to help a community improve its water infrastructure and water quality and provide for one of the fundamental needs of life. 

“The fact that we can help people on St. Thomas and other communities so that they have new facilities, cleaner water to drink, and wastewater plants that aren't polluting the Top of Formstreams—just seeing how those improvements benefit people and how thankful they are, that’s motivation enough for me.”