| Description | Seven trends for a better built environment
Ash Awad
VP and Chief Market Officer
McKinstry Hosted by Val Overlan ABSTRACT: Today’s built environment is needlessly inefficient and broken. Buildings cost far too much to design, build, operate and maintain. Half of all building construction costs are wasted, and half of all energy consumed in facility operations is wasted. Our industry’s slow call to action is failing communities. We must act now to chart a future built environment that eradicates waste and stands in balance with nature. Seven emerging trends hold the key to unlocking our future built environment. Ash Awad explores each emerging trend, offering an
engineering perspective on how technologies and rising social pressures will drive the construction industry through 2035. Trends covered include living and resilient cities, net positive energy, autonomously operated buildings, adaptive reuse, learning workers, modular everything and robotics. The presentation will
also introduce McKinstry’s zero energy and zero carbon Catalyst Building as a model for creating a living and resilient built environment. SPEAKER BIO: As Chief Market Officer, Ash Awad sets McKinstry’s market strategy and oversees all sales and business development efforts. He is a primary driver in the company’s growth from a Seattle-based mechanical contractor to a national leader in designing, constructing, operating and maintaining high-performing buildings. Over two decades, Ash created and grew McKinstry’s Energy & Technical Services practice into a thriving national business. Through his efforts, McKinstry has helped thousands of clients transform their facilities from
liabilities into assets by unlocking building performance and eliminating waste. Many notable buildings and campuses across the Puget Sound have benefited from McKinstry and Ash’s leadership – including multiple facilities across the University of Washington campus. No other project demonstrates what the built environment could and should become than McKinstry’s South Landing development in Spokane. Catalyst, the first building announced as part of the South Landing development, is a five story, 159,000 square foot facility currently under construction. McKinstry’s Hub facility, the second building announced as part of the South Landing development, creates an optimal relationship between the built environment and the utility grid. The four-story South Landing Hub facility will feature 40,000 square feet of leased space that includes a central energy plant to power the facility and its neighboring Catalyst building. South Landing will serve as
a case study for creating a grid-optimal built environment. The development is testing new approaches to building design and operations, coupled with a fresh approach at lease structures, energy service level agreements and occupant engagement. This approach represents new opportunities to reinvent energy as a service for the
betterment of utilities, building owners and tenants. Ash serves the community in a variety of industry and philanthropic roles. He is Board President of the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council and sits on the boards of the Pacific Science Center, UW’s ME Department and Climate Solutions. He earned a bachelor’s of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s degree from the University of Washington. Ash is a registered professional engineer. |
|---|