The Future. Built Smarter.

Part 4 | IMEG Sustainability Champion Olivia Paxson: ‘One person can only do so much’

The final episode in a series about IMEG’s refreshed Sustainability Plan features Olivia Paxson, a structural engineering designer with the firm. Olivia is also the Sustainability Plan’s champion in IMEG’s St. Louis office, where she collaborates with her co-workers to implement the plan’s mandated and optional initiatives. 

“We’ve already switched to LED lighting and that's thanks to the people we rent from,” she says. “We have a dishwasher, and we have reusable utensils, and we’re really close to a metro line as well as bus stations.” Like most IMEG offices, the St. Louis team is a tenant in its building and will be working to find more ways to collaborate with the other tenants and the owner to enact further changes. 

Olivia is excited over the effort she has seen across IMEG and the potential for meaningful change. “I think this collective action is so important because one individual can only do so much,” she says. “All the offices have come together—different people of different backgrounds, and they're not all engineers. We've got such a variety of people and because we're able to come together I think we can be pushed so much further.” 

Part 3 | IMEG Sustainability Champion Anchila Monks: ‘This is the right time’

IMEG’s Anchila Monks is featured in the third episode in a series about the firm’s refreshed Sustainability Plan. A business developer with IMEG, Anchila is also the Sustainability Plan’s champion in the firm’s office in Portland, OR, where she collaborates with her co-workers to implement the plan’s mandated and optional initiatives.  

Anchila recalls what her grandmother told her at a young age: “She said that heaven and earth and humanity are different manifestations of one life energy, and that we only have one planet—and there is no Planet B.” For Anchila, this was the beginning of her understanding of the importance of taking care of the environment. 

Living and working in Portland—one of the country’s greenest communities—makes some of the Sustainability Plan’s optional initiatives easier to accomplish, such as biking and carpooling to work, recycling, and composting. The office also has “adopted a block” and formed a “Team Portland” group to participate in a community clean-up day.  

Like other IMEG Sustainability Champions, Anchila is passionate about her role, and urges people everywhere to not procrastinate in helping to save the environment. 

“Do not waste time,” she says. “This is the right time to do it.” 

Part 2 | IMEG Sustainability Champion Jessica Lee: ‘It’s really inspiring’

The second in a series of episodes on IMEG’s refreshed Sustainability Plan features Jessica Lee, a sustainability and energy consultant with the firm. Also the Sustainability Plan champion in IMEG’s Chicago office, Jessica collaborates with her co-workers to implement the plan’s mandated and optional initiatives.  

Jessica’s passion for the environment began as a child growing up within an indigenous community in Hawaii. “Being surrounded by the greenest greens and the bluest blues in the world made me appreciate nature and respect nature,” she says. “So, growing up I was just surrounded by the idea that the earth is what gives us life and we should work with it rather than against it.” 

In addition to contributing to the company-wide tracking of office energy use and other mandated initiatives, Jessica is looking forward to helping the Chicago office choose and implement its optional sustainability initiatives. She hopes these will include an office composting bin and increased use of public transportation to and from work. 

“Everybody's coming together to get new ideas on what they could do in the office and it's just really inspiring to see that,” she says. 

Part 1 | Power in numbers: IMEG offices rally behind firm’s sustainability plan

In the first in a series of episodes on IMEG’s refreshed Sustainability Plan, Adam McMillen, director of sustainability, and Taylor Gawthorp-Cruse, senior sustainability and energy consultant, discuss key aspects of the initiative. Designed to integrate environmentally friendly practices at the firm’s offices, the updated plan builds upon the original version, released in 2018, and promotes conserving energy and water, lowering carbon emissions, and reducing waste. The 2024 version includes new mandated initiatives (such as tracking office energy usage) as well as optional initiatives (such as providing in-office composting) that allow each location to take actions best-suited for their office, whether corporate owned or rented.  

While the firm’s largest positive impact on the environment rests within its ability to reduce the carbon footprint of its clients’ projects, it also can now make a sizeable impact through the operations and actions at its own offices, which now number 90-plus across the U.S. “Now our carbon number has become a big number, and if we have a sustainable mindset where we work every day, then that scales, too,” says McMillen. “If you only have three offices, it is still worth it to think about it, but it has become more important for us now for sure.” 

Implementing an internal sustainability plan is a large undertaking, and organizations seeking to do so should start by identifying office champions who can lead the effort at each office location. 

“My biggest piece of advice is to harness the power of passionate people in your firm,” says Gawthorp-Cruse. “You’d be surprised by the drive of people who want to make a positive impact and bring new ideas to the table that maybe they don't get to express in their day-to-day work. Our sustainable office champions are amazing, and I think there's nothing a group of passionate people can't accomplish.” 

AI in practice | Part 2: IMEG chatbot gets smarter by the day

In the second of a two-part episode, IMEG software development team lead Steve Germano continues his 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.” 

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.