Greetings all, and welcome to all those who already introduced themselves! My name is Steven Burke and I am a Sustainability Manager at Consigli Construction in Massachusetts. We are East Coast only, but we have a few offices from DC up to Maine. I’ve been helping Jenn and Nadav get this group up and running, and I’m relatively new to the construction industry as I’ve spent the last half decade working at design and engineering firms.
I’m passionate about building science, science in general, the impacts of buildings on human health, materials transparency, waste reduction, the developer perspective, behavioral economics, and how we can do the right thing while improving the bottom line.
My background by education is in business and science. I got into the industry by working in residential green retrofits for a developer when I graduated undergrad. I then studied and worked in building weatherization and building analysis in the residential sector, worked as a member of a commissioning team, and became a certified solar installer in North Carolina, where I’m from.
I continued from there to get a Master of Science in Sustainability Management in NYC, and then the best job opportunity when I graduated was for a sustainability position at a design firm in Boston, where I’ve been since.
That’s where I first got involved with the Sustainable Design Leaders national network, which this group is mirrored off of. I can’t say enough about how valuable that group was to me to help expand my knowledge and perspectives. (I personally have already benefited from reaching out to Dave Walsh at Sellen about they manage construction waste). Once we get past the introductions and start using this group as a resource for crowd-solving our issues and crowd-sharing our successes, you’ll quickly see how impactful this group can be.
My immediate points of focus which I’ll be posting about to the group are:
- Working with a team of local MBA students this semester to analyze how we can become a more sustainable business. Their scope is for them to help us become more efficient with materials and to help us move towards a circular economic model. They’ll look at our supply chain, how we recover materials from jobsites, and our warehouses where we keep materials and equipment. (I'm including a picture of how our equipment and truck rentals were managed before it all got digitized - I find it fascinating!)
- Wanting to create a company-wide construction waste tracking and reduction effort on both LEED and non-LEED jobs despite operating in some markets where obtaining information from processing facilities and haulers is next to impossible.
- Considering what the metrics are that would make a construction company “sustainable” (beyond rating systems), and determining how we can track and improve upon them over time.
On that last note, I am wondering if you all feel that sustainability can be a competitive differentiator, or if the market just looks to the contractor to be capable with LEED paperwork, and that’s good enough for them. If we go above and beyond as a company, could we expect anyone to reward us for that? Or is it just always going to be the icing on the cake after all the factors – price, experience, etc. – have been played out?
One other thing I would love to start a discussion on related to that is figuring out how we can blow up the ENR top green contractors list to use metrics that are representative, and not just purely how has the most revenue on “green” projects.
Looking forward to the discussions to come!
Steven Burke. LEED Faculty, WELL Faculty
Sustainability Manager
Consigli Construction Co., Inc.
c. 774.462.2044