[Music] foreign [Music] hello and welcome to offside dirts one of my favorite subject matters we're getting into the marketplace and uh my name is Mark Willey I'm joined with Audrey Audrey what are we diving into today we have the most wonderful individual with us Kelly a DJ he is with Bonham Consulting and the focus of this company is really about energy high performance decarbonization but we're going to have Kelly give us a little bit of his background and then we're going to jump into sustainability electrification some other goodness of how we're building better buildings and making a more energy efficient so welcome Kelly how are you thank you Audrey thank you Mark pleasure to be here pleasure to be introduce uh background 20 years uh I think I graduated in 2004 mechanical engineer and master's degree since then I've been in design but has always been in the built environment now we do energy audits we do Energy Efficiency Consulting we do energy management we do energy and analytics everything with energy is basically our wheelhouse still so um pleasure to be here and looking forward to this discussion so Kelly um you know transparency for the marketplace you and I uh have been uh meeting up at events and trying to push uh the subject matter in Chicagoland for a great deal of time to protect their ages I'm not going to tell people how long that's been but if you're familiar uh and you want to dive into the website in case you haven't seen them before uh Illinois Grant Alliance is uh one of the most incredible groups when it comes to that that basis for um what we came from right was which was the usgbc the leadership in energy and environmental design but also as the marketplace uh in North America has grown the passive house with past false Alliance uh past Foss institutes Etc all these things are a culmination but also um the energy providers right and the marketplace are helping this adoption so on a on a daily basis the clients and programs you work on Kelly can you give people a sneak peek as to the focus of what you do and and how it makes that difference yes of course um I'd love to um like you mentioned Illinois Green Alliance is a big proponent of the driving Energy Efficiency and sustainability in the Chicagoland area um I'm actually on the board of directors just to you know for um basically trying to full transparency and I've been there I think it was my fourth year um it's basically and added a residential Market at a commercial Market or a mix of the two um either driven by code requirements it's already driven by um client corporate sustainability requirements for instance or certain institutions have a mandate for a certain certification sustainability certification so those are all the major drivers and some clients basically just want to do better in their buildings you know I know a lot of Architects who just basically put that on AIA 2030s Target basically is about making sure you reduce your design kind of performance As you move further and you use more new technologies um it's all over the place but essentially to bring everything together is to build better than we have done in the past and there's so many proponents for such a major effort thank you for bringing that um and letting people know about these great organizations so you have some other really interesting things with your background um you know you started as a senior mechanical engineer in 2012 leading in the Chicago office tell us how many offices you guys have because we were kind of having this discussion about what you kind of do now mostly you're doing certifications your lead AP you're doing decarbonization energy audits you also have it was really interesting we were having a quick conversation about what's happening in Washington DC to then the the Chicago market so if you can elaborate a little bit more about your consulting company and then really the focus of what you're taking with this company moving it Forward Kelly great question Audrey um senior engineer 2012. that is a good eight years way before that even started though but um bumble consultant is basically a boutique firm um we have offices in Chicago we have offices in Washington DC we do have a presence in New York City as well and then back home in Germany where the con where the company's owner actually came from we have an office in Frankfurt so what we do is across the two sides of the pond we work with a SLU and a plethora of clients chasing either Energy Efficiency consulting or certifications for sustainability or energy analytics for instance so somebody will also do something called integrated energy Master planning so it's like an energy analytics what large scale kind of scaled up to a community or a city or a kind of like a Statewide kind of implementation we have projects where it's an entire University campus or college campus and they have like a certain decarbonization goal over the next 20 30 years and we help them kind of achieve those goals and provide a pathway in terms of how that goal could be achieved and all the different steps that are needed to make that goal possible I love what you're talking about so has your group with any like smart cities or any developments and then when you're talking about the decarbonization what does that really mean are you doing measurements are you doing tools are you supporting them and letting them know these are the different ways that we are going to be providing these services for you what does that really mean okay um an example is the city of Holland in Michigan so they had a a goal as a city to actually do a bit of decarbonization and maybe get to certain Net Zero or Energy Efficiency usage so what we do is we do a lot of um how do I say we create a lot of scenarios for them you know if you're gonna remove some whole generating or call using um plants how do we convert those into a CHP combined heat and power how do we include geothermal into that as well and then we kind of go through stages and steps where we simulate okay in 2025 we're going to take these energy consumption systems out and we're going to add these on what does that look like and then you know into the future 10 more years from now maybe they want to build a new hospital they want to build a new major energy consume consuming facility so we plug that into our system and we run a lot of our analytics and we say okay you can do that and this is the additional energy that you would need for that and these are the different sources of weather energy could actually come from and we also do a carbon calculation to understand whether they're meeting their decarbonization goals um by all the different strategies and there could be a scenario a scenario B there could be scenario b sometimes you move forward sometimes you move a little bit backwards and we work with them throughout the entire process over the number of years providing them with that data driven backup so there's the decision making that has to be done in the future so for some of the folks when you said in the future some of the phrases you're using are still in the future for them so when you mention the CHP the combined heat and power uh we will be actually having an interview on that so uh hang tight uh so folks definitely dive deeper into the combined eaten pop heat and power but also you said with the geothermal and many times the marketplace are looking at District uh geothermal so if those terms are new to you well that's probably because uh groups like Bowman and Kelly's team have been implementing them year upon year and these will be part of uh your Municipal programs again and again um that's a commonality so in present date depending on where you're at in that um that's one of your gifts is you guys are meeting your client basis be it a whole town right or or be it a ginormous campus or set of buildings and you're saying hey this information in front of us is is how the users of your building are using it this is how the energy levels of the buildings are and this is the anticipated uh costings right and these are the procedures we could take now that we have this information to get you to more efficiency so it takes a unique brain to collect all that it takes a massive team and you didn't shortchange Us in that you started it by saying over many years right so you're bringing it and then you're saying this what's going to happen so the that 50 000 foot view on that like the dashboard in front of you the three monitors on your desk um tell us a little story about some of your team and and how that is collected and analyzed give us that little sneak peek even if we can't comprehend it okay I will make an attempt at trying um consultant is a very diverse team we have Engineers we have scientists we have people who are data um like a data background have run Master's portfolios we have um recent graduates we have people who've been 25 30 years in industry and we work collaboratively with very very good teams I'm talking about from the a e industry we have some very very smart clients as well who are in property management and property engagement we have um PhD people who basically can run analytics at the back but also our team is very diverse I like what you mentioned Mark about District Heating and District cooling systems in Europe that's like been standard for 30 40 50 years so it's not even new technology but it's that campus driven approach to this and even when it comes to our engagement with clients it's always been a very collaborative process with different with a lot of diversity like people in our office are from all over the world literally we we hire from everywhere and everyone always has a an opportunity to provide some kind of input or hey what about this idea um this is what we do I think we have someone from Jordan and they said oh in Jordan This is a particular product that we've used and we try and bring all of those to the table obviously using also uh cost-benefit analysis to determine what is fit for purpose some things that are applicable in the United States and not applicable in Germany and vice versa and have like charettes and you know generation of ideas and it's a lot of vibrancy it's a lot of energy it's a lot of enthusiasm and we just put that all on the table and we kind of mind map it and eventually surprisingly we usually come up with a great solution that everybody's like oh yeah why did we think of that that's what we could do this is great and sometimes clients are like coming in with their great ideas as well or they're very ambitious and they're pushing their Consultants to the max they're like no we want to do better we want to do better than before we want to do better than our competitors and that kind of that kind of energy is what we use to generate some of the best solutions that we come up with the enthusiasm and the diversity and the acceptance and the excitement that your team not only has but a company that encompasses that is so unique Kelly and the thing that is so wonderful is that I think those are the companies that are going to thrive in the next 20 30 years those are the companies like yours that really have this passion about taking care of our Earth and our environment and it's wonderful to see all these different areas so when you're looking at the Chicagoland area are you doing new projects are you doing existing projects what is the Staple in the Chicagoland area It's a combination of many different factors we are doing a energy benchmarking for a low-income housing um kind of multi-family complex just down in the south side but at the same time we have a new building that's coming up or it's not a new building but it's a major renovation in downtown Chicago I'm not allowed to name it we're also working on that as well we have some brand new buildings for like you know with the two or three or four million dollar condos in them that we're also working on we also have institutional kind of projects as well where it's you know portfolio building is 50 years old we need to build a new building what we're going to do are we going to demo rate that we're going to have a new construction so Audrey it's the entire platform of different types of projects we also did an airport quite recently as well too and they had major uh this is Aruba airport I'm allowed to mention that one we worked on Aruba airport as well they have a huge amount of American tourists come in and it's growing so they have a growth Plan called Gateway 2030 where they want to increase the capacity of that airport that was built back in 100 years ago and I bring it up to scratch with the anticipated growth of Tourism which is a huge proponent of their Market um so yeah all all over the place new build reconstruction renovation finally the biggest one that's coming up right now is repurposing everyone is hearing about what's happening on LaSalle Street where a lot of offices are now turning into residential um kind of like usage and working with engineering teams and architecture teams and also the government teams or the city teams to repurpose some of these old offices and turn them into residential which is very complicated but also awesome to try and figure out how to do it's pretty exciting when you can tell us what those projects and goals are uh I understand also the ability uh for clients to want to keep many things private um in the world of energy sometimes an analysis tells us that we're not as good as we thought we would like to be because let's face it um Chicagoland in specifically has pretty cheap energy when it comes to other sources but now their their Marketplace is mindful of uh people Planet before profit they want to wait until they've reestablished their usage and uh and then be boasting right so uh for folks unaware energy benchmarking Chicago's been the leader of that in a long time and so that comparison allows you to see the changes other buildings have taken on so that first they're limiting their energy use before they adopt these Technologies and specific ways of bringing it forward and then that repurposing aspect is is allowing that building shell to still have that beautiful um style and look on the outside but inside it's functioning different and presumably uh they're they're listening to all the skillful people over at Bowman and they're saying okay now we can have now that people are living in the building not just working there for six hours eight hours a day um they can they can live in an energy efficient building and have the health benefits of that um so Kelly your work is incredible we invite everyone uh to follow along and to work with the team at Bowman whether you're in the District of Columbia whether you're over by there in our over the pond in Germany and where all your offices are Kelly is a good friend of ours we're so happy to have you on Marketplace and um to take us out can you share with people uh the aspect that I like about you um you drive yourself personally this is a passion this is not just your press profession wrap us up with the story of you on that and thank you for joining off siteter oh thank you thank you Audrey thank you Mark I just think that we need to think about the future I know it sounds cliche I know it sounds you know very tree-hugging but no we want fresh air we want healthy environments we live and work and play in all of these environments and I think it's in everybody's best interest that we continue to preserve what we have so that we don't lose it at some point in time and feel very very sad or have to deal with further consequences down the street we'll have the Next Generation I think every generation's responsibilities to preserve what we have improve it so that the Next Generation can actually benefit from that and the Next Generation Um that's my spill thank you everybody thank you so much for your time appreciate it next time I'll wear a suit okay take care guys all right thank you take care thank you Kelly and thank you we are just sincerely grateful for all of the advancements that you're making in construction I'm Audra grabasic Mark Willie's here as well and Kelly we are trying and we are doing and we are moving things forward thank you for being here today on offside dirt [Music]