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Engineers and designers from IMEG Corp., a top 5 U.S. engineering firm, discuss innovative and trend-setting building and infrastructure design with architects, owners, and others in the AEC industry. Topics touch on all market sectors, engineering disciplines, and related services.
Episodes

Friday Jun 03, 2022
Life Cycle Analysis: Calculating the embodied carbon in building materials
Friday Jun 03, 2022
Friday Jun 03, 2022
In the second of two episodes on reducing embodied carbon in structural systems, IMEG structural engineer Laura Hagan discusses life cycle analysis (LCA), which, in the context of the built environment, examines the lifetime environmental impacts of the different materials used in a building’s construction. The analysis provides data on the embodied carbon arising from the manufacturing, transportation, installation, maintenance, and eventual disposal or reuse of structural and architectural materials. This information enables clients to understand and compare the potential embodied carbon of various design options. “We’re looking at each and every structural and architectural component—that’s the industry focus right now,” says Hagan. “What’s coming in the near future will be mechanical, electrical, and plumbing components as well.”

Thursday Apr 14, 2022
The Quadruple Aim & the Built Environment, Part 4: Enhancing Joe’s experience
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Thursday Apr 14, 2022
Podcast co-host Joe Payne recently spent a fitful night in the hospital. How his experience—and that of all patients—could be improved is examined in the fourth of a series of episodes based on the IMEG executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” Guest Corey Gaarde, a biomedical engineer and healthcare information technology specialist at IMEG, discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations improve the Quadruple Aim’s third goal, enhancing the patient experience. “The patient journey starts at home and ends at home,” he says. “If there are ways that we can bring home-level types of experiences into the healthcare environment, why not? Things like an Alexa-based device in the patient room to play music, to change the television, to control the lights, all hands-free. Things like this are very easy to do in a hotel setting, so why not do them in a patient care environment? ‘Hospital’ is part of the word ‘hospitality, right? We need to push architects and engineers to think this way, IT to think this way, push the design space, and really consider what the overall future vision of a smart patient room or experience looks like.”

Thursday Mar 31, 2022
Mass timber is hot and getting hotter. Here’s why.
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
Thursday Mar 31, 2022
This episode of “The Future. Built Smarter.” examines mass timber — a sustainable, fire resistant, and aesthetic building material that is rapidly gaining use across the globe. Our guest for this episode is Matt Cloninger, a structural engineer for IMEG in Montana who has a lifelong passion for buildings made of wood and who has witnessed mass timber’s recent rise in popularity. “There has been a great fundamental shift in using mass timber in the last couple of years that has made it easier to use structurally,” he says. “More engineers and more owners are designing with cross laminated timber — or CLT — and other mass timber products. In the past the use of mass timber was very limited to small office building type projects, but the building codes have shifted a bit and now give us a little more leeway in what sort of buildings we can design using CLT. Now there are more commercial and industrial applications since the codes allow us to go taller.” Matt also discusses the Stadthaus, a multiple-story residential building in England that exemplifies the benefits of mass timber. “As more owners, developers, and engineers see this product and what it can do, they are going to look at how it might be applied to projects for which they may not have considered it.” For additional information not in the podcast, download IMEG’ executive, “Mass Timber 101.”

Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
The Quadruple Aim & the Built Environment, Part 3: Reducing the Cost of Care
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
Tuesday Mar 29, 2022
In the third of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” Joel Yow, co-founder of linear A, discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations achieve the Quadruple Aim’s second goal, reducing the cost of care. “You don’t want to make an investment in a new building that’s meant to reduce the cost of care, and then misplace it or mistime it and then just generally increase the cost of care by not really thinking through the data enough,” he says. “When looking at patient origin, for example, we’ve provided reports and data to clients that show them where their patient populations are coming from in relation to where they are currently located. It always surprises me how often there are two or three people out of 10 in a room who say, ‘I had no idea this high of a percentage is coming from out of state,’ or that ‘this many people are in a service area in which we don’t have any facilities or assets.’ There is this lightbulb that goes off where they realize they really need to understand their patients better in order to better serve them.”

Thursday Mar 03, 2022
The Quadruple Aim & the Built Environment, Part 2: Improving Population Health
Thursday Mar 03, 2022
Thursday Mar 03, 2022
Numerous healthcare organizations have adopted the guiding principles of the Quadruple Aim—a framework for healthcare excellence, the goals of which can be greatly supported through an intentionally designed built environment. In the second of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,” IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses how the built environment can help healthcare organizations achieve the first goal, improving population health.

Wednesday Feb 16, 2022
The Quadruple Aim & the Built Environment, Part 1: Healthcare’s Dynamic Duo
Wednesday Feb 16, 2022
Wednesday Feb 16, 2022
Numerous healthcare organizations have adopted the guiding principles of the Quadruple Aim, a framework for healthcare excellence that focuses on improving population health, reducing the cost of care, enhancing the patient experience, and improving provider satisfaction. Many of these organizations, however, are missing out on opportunities to support these desired outcomes through an intentionally designed built environment. In the first of a series of episodes based on the executive guide, “Enhancing the Quadruple Aim through Data-Driven Decisions in the Built Environment,”IMEG Director of Healthcare Mike Zorich provides a high-level explanation of the Quadruple Aim and offers examples of various design strategies and elements that can enhance it—and ultimately help the healthcare industry deliver better outcomes for patients, caregivers, communities, and the world.

Wednesday Nov 24, 2021
5 steps to begin the process of decarbonizing your building
Wednesday Nov 24, 2021
Wednesday Nov 24, 2021
In the final episode in our series on sustainability strategies of the future, IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses five steps any owner can take to begin the process of decarbonizing their building. “There's a lot of discussion today about decarbonizing — the push to make sure we all electrify our buildings because the grid will get cleaner in the future. This is a big change, and a lot of owners are wondering how to wade into it without a lot of risk,” says McMillen. “So, we’re summarizing five things owners can do today that don't cost a lot of money and that will help ensure their buildings will be ready for electrification—whether it's a new building, or even an existing building that's undergoing a major renovation.”

Monday Nov 01, 2021
Battery storage: Clean energy for a rainy day — and peak demand relief
Monday Nov 01, 2021
Monday Nov 01, 2021
Battery energy storage is examined in part five of our series on sustainability strategies of the future. “Most of us in the industry have had a lot of questions about batteries,” says IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen. “When does it make sense? When will they be cost competitive? How do they fit into the big picture? These are all good questions because the last thing you want to do is put some expensive, embodied-carbon heavy, lithium-ion batteries on your campus and then have them not really do much for you.” Co-host Mike Lawless, IMEG Direction of Innovation, joins Adam in delving into these questions. They also discuss the many future opportunities of this strategy, such as pairing batteries with renewables such as wind and solar to provide facilities with both reliable and sustainable backup power when the grid goes down as well as a method to eliminate expensive peak demand charges from utilities.
Battery energy storage is examined in part five of our series on sustainability strategies of the future. “Most of us in the industry have had a lot of questions about batteries,” says IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen. “When does it make sense? When will they be cost competitive? How do they fit into the big picture? These are all good questions because the last thing you want to do is put some expensive, embodied-carbon heavy, lithium-ion batteries on your campus and then have them not really do much for you.” Co-host Mike Lawless, IMEG Direction of Innovation, joins Adam in delving into these questions. They also discuss the many future opportunities of this strategy, such as pairing batteries with renewables such as wind and solar to provide facilities with both reliable and sustainable backup power when the grid goes down as well as a method to eliminate expensive peak demand charges from utilities.

Monday Nov 01, 2021
Call in the reserves: Thermal energy storage to the rescue
Monday Nov 01, 2021
Monday Nov 01, 2021
The fourth episode in our series on sustainability strategies of the future examines thermal energy storage. To illustrate, consider hospitals and industrial facilities that use heat pumps to create the large amount of heating hot water needed for their buildings. This type of heat pump can’t operate when temperatures dip below 15 degrees, however, and a gas-burning boiler is typically used as back-up. Thermal energy storage provides a carbon-free alternative. In this strategy, the heat pump generates additional heating water during the warmer part of the day and stores it in a thermal energy storage tank. That water can then be used to heat the facility during frigid overnight hours or anytime the temperature dips below 15 degrees and the heat pumps shut down. Conversely, chilled water storage in the summer months enables facilities to shut down their chillers in the hot afternoon hours and cool the building with water saved overnight to shave off peak demand charges. IMEG Director of Sustainability Adam McMillen discusses the challenges, solutions, and many opportunities of this new strategy.

Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
3-2-1: How commercialization launched IMEG into the aerospace industry
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
Wednesday Oct 13, 2021
This episode takes a brief look at how the commercialization of the aerospace industry has opened the doors for more engineering firms to become engaged in such projects. Guest Ed Dean, an IMEG structural engineer who has designed several launch facility projects, discusses how IMEG entered the market, and the benefits commercially oriented firms bring to aerospace clients. “Commercial buildings and structures are not done in an institutional way, but rather on a very rapid schedule; things are very much fast-tracked and you’re delivering certain ‘just-in-time’ design elements. We apply this approach to the design of launch facilities, saving clients both time and money.” Ed also talks about being on site for launches and discusses a mock rocket IMEG designed to allow a client to test their launch facility equipment and processes prior to an actual rocket launch.