Finishing the 2.4 mile open swim.

I get a lot of questions about the Ironman training regimen: “How do you train for something like that? How many training hours per week? What do you eat? How can you function in other ways while training? Are you out of your mind?” Let’s just say that the whole experience appeals to my inner engineer. There are two basic types of endurance athletes—those who train and race solely on gut instinct, and those who rely more on rational science. I fall squarely in the science camp.

I’ll use my Saturday bike ride as an example.

My ride covered 80 miles in slightly under 4-1/2 hours. During that time, I climbed more than 6,000 vertical feet and burned roughly 2,800 Calories.

Now the goal of any endurance athlete is to travel as fast and far with as little effort as possible. Serious cyclists think in terms of strength-to-weight ratios. Specifically, they evaluate the parameter Watts/kilogram (W/kg). The higher the ratio, the faster you’ll go [neglecting aerodynamic drag, of course. But that’s too much information for this post!]. So, training programs are oriented toward increasing the athlete’s output power potential (Watts) while decreasing—or optimizing—the weight (kilograms) of his body and bike.

Let’s focus our attention on the numerator of that equation—power. On Saturday I was able to maintain an average speed of 18 miles per hour on those hills by producing an average power output of 170 Watts (W). My normalized power, which is how my body perceived the effort, was 191W. My maximum power output on the steepest section of climbing was 574W.**

At 170W average, that means I produced the same amount of power over 4-1/2 hours as a typical 60” x 30” solar panel on a bright, sunny day. Or, I could have powered the two standard fluorescent lighting fixtures in my office for a little over half of a work day. In graphical form:

I’m a fairly respectable middle-aged cyclist, but fall far short of elite status. How do my numbers compare to the world’s best pro cyclists? In his prime, Lance Armstrong could produce an average of 400W over the last hour of a 5+ hour Tour de France stage. The world’s current top sprinter is Mark Cavendish. He can generate a peak output of more than 1,500W during a final sprint, and he weighs less than I do.

Perhaps now you can understand why pro cyclists have to submit periodic urine samples (and why I don’t). But I digress…

A hybrid willow plant.

*An Ironman triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by a 112 mile bike ride, followed by a 26.2 mile marathon run. The starting gun fires at 7:00 am and athletes must cross the finish line without any outside assistance by 12:00 midnight.

** Dividing the normalized by average power gives another metric called Variability Index (VI). My VI was 1.12 on Saturday. On Race Day I’ll want that to be less than 1.1 on a hilly course. I’ll also want my peak power to be far less than 574W—actually less than 250W—if I want to have any hope of actually running the marathon.

I received this sign as a “gift” many years ago. I personally battle the culture of “No.”

In one exercise, he had us stand in circles of four to six people. Our task was to improvise two stories.

For the first story, one person would initiate the conversation by making any random statement. The person next to him would continue the conversation by saying, “No, but…” and then improvise a response. We let the story develop on its own, with each person around the circle responding with “No, but…” until Brent stopped the exercise.

For the second story, we completed an identical exercise, but this time each person would start his response with the words, “Yes, and….”

The “No, but…” exercise was right in most of the engineers’ wheel houses. While you could literally feel the positive energy getting sucked out of the room, the group had little difficulty saying “No” while identifying a problem with the previous speaker’s comment.

The “Yes, and…” exercise was completely different. We were practically singing “Kumbaya” after one minute of continuous positive reinforcement. It was almost disturbing to hear that much positivity from a room full of otherwise stoic engineers.

As engineers, we’re valued for our ability to identify and overcome problems by pointing out barriers that others fail to see. Great engineering requires independent thinking skills, logical reasoning abilities, and frequent periods of quiet isolation. You can’t go along with the flow and also be a great engineer. That conditioning encourages us to become task oriented and reclusive. But if unchecked, the culture of “No” permeates our souls. We can easily slip into the role of office cynic, walking the corridors with a furrowed brow, pointing out the inadequacies in everything from the coffee machine to our colleague’s haircut. Everything becomes a problem.

There are obvious consequences. What makes us great as engineers can make us really lousy at relationships.

So it can be a great irony when the engineer, weaned in the culture of “No, but…” gets rewarded for his problem-solving skills by ascending into the ranks of management. It doesn’t take long for the analytical manager to realize that his continual “No, but…” response eventually leads to wounded relationships and organizational dysfunction.

I have personally battled the temptation to use my task orientation as an excuse for lacking soft skills. I attest that overcoming the engineer’s culture of “No” can be a long—perhaps life-long—process. But the evidence from my journey also suggests the rewards for turning problems into opportunities are great.

The traditional fragmentation of building design and construction contracts are slowly giving way to a new vernacular: IPD, BIM, design charrettes, GMP management, design-build and design-assist contracts.** Our industry’s clearly in the midst of morphing from a series of linear design and construction processes to higher levels of true collaboration and teamwork.

It’s an intimidating time for the stereotypical skeptical, introverted engineer. Despite a flat economy, talented engineers are already in unprecedented demand. It seems the biggest winners in our evolving, collaboration-thirsty market will be those who comprehend the value of “Yes, and…” while learning to channel their natural “No, but…” tendencies in a positive way.

So I suppose a lecture on emotional intelligence might be a reflection of the new construction industry normal, after all. What do you think? Can we overcome our old ways of delivering projects in the short term, or is it going to take a generational shift with an entirely new breed of professionals?

* The Partnership for Achieving Construction Excellence
** IPD = Integrated Project Delivery, BIM = Building Information Modeling, GMP = Guaranteed Maximum Price

Related Posts:

• Personality Counts in Design-Build
• Five Essential Elements to Great Design-Build
• Confessions of an Engineer Blogger

Thank you to Matt Dixon, McClure Company Manager of Natural Gas Services, for this week’s guest post.

A remote metering site under construction.

Built on a heritage of industrial grade pipefitting, McClure Company hasn’t turned a blind eye to the possibilities presented by the growing development of this natural resource. We’re leveraging our expertise on the vast amount of piping-related work associated with well pad, gas processing, compressor, and remote metering station sites. Each of these types of stations acts independently to facilitate the overall transportation process of natural gas from location to location. To support our own natural gas services business, we recently opened an additional fabrication shop in Muncy.

The latest news is that the drilling operators in central Pennsylvania are scaling back their efforts and moving resources to the southwestern corner of our Commonwealth. This is where the gas is considered “wet” and therefore may provide a better business opportunity than the typically “dry” gas wells of north central Pennsylvania.  Wet gas contains natural gas liquids (NGLs) or byproducts that have individual value in the commodity marketplace. (See map below, courtesy of The Pennsylvania State University Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research website, referencing the depth of wet and dry gas in the Marcellus Shale base.)

Despite the reduced drilling activities in this area, the north central Pennsylvania region continues to buzz with the infrastructure-related work that occurs after the drilling and fracking of each well is complete.  This includes everything from a well pad site to the specific piping and components that will eventually safely transfer the gas from the wells to both existing and future natural gas pipelines.

We’re excited to play a part in an industry that could eventually contribute to American energy independence. Will shale gas become as American as baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie? Stay tuned for future updates as we invest our resources into the effort.

*Based on information released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Maybe we’ll soon see sponsorship of the annual international Little League World Series by natural gas development businesses.

Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA). Photo courtesy of www.gsa.gov.

Last week I attended the NAESCO* federal energy workshop held in Washington, DC. The keynote speaker was Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA). The GSA is responsible for improving the government’s workplace by managing assets, preserving historic property, delivering maximum value in acquisitions, and implementing technology solutions. Their portfolio of buildings is massive, comprising about 360 million square feet.

The title of Ms. Johnson’s presentation was “Moving Toward Net Zero Energy: Accelerating Energy Efficiency Investment at Federal Facilities.”

You might recall that I reported on the status of President Obama’s Executive Order which mandated Net Zero Energy in federal buildings by 2030, a few months ago. In that post, I presented many of the technical and financial barriers to effectively hitting the Net Zero target by 2030. While those barriers are real and significant, listening to Martha Johnson for 30 minutes had me on the Net Zero bandwagon. I can appreciate why she was appointed to head the GSA.

She gave an inspired pitch for what she described as our current generation’s version of JFK’s moon shot challenge. She clearly believes that Net Zero by 2030 is attainable but, in one critical respect, the challenge is about more than the concrete goal of zero energy in our buildings. In her words, “It’s not just about getting to zero, it’s about the culture and broadening connection to the common mission.” And my observation from the workshop is that the culture is beginning to shift.

She went on to describe their deep energy retrofit challenge, which targets 30 buildings in 17 states. Deep energy retrofits, which target 60% or more savings from initial baseline conditions, present difficult financial hurdles. Savings of greater than 30% usually require significant capital investments. To overcome the obstacles, Ms. Johnson encouraged the audience of about 200 energy services contractors, vendors, and stakeholders to broaden their standard approach of picking low—hanging energy fruit to produce fast ROIs. She pointed out that, “The GSA isn’t interested in ‘incremental-ism’ or ‘piecemeal’ anymore. The G-S-A is stepping on the G-A-S.”

It was good to observe that, despite the inspirational big picture pitch, she’s a realist. Again in her words, “Energy use is as much about behavior as it is green bling.”

Successful migration toward Net Zero with deep energy retrofits will require equal parts of a cultural shift, a broadened technical and financial approach, and changes in operational and individual behaviors. Restating some points from my earlier post:

• With current technologies, Net Zero will only be achievable with very significant capital investments that go far beyond what most businesses and government entities would consider an acceptable return on investment (ROI).
• McClure Company’s experiences coincide with others’ in that acceptable ROIs are achievable when reducing energy use by 10% to 30%. Deep energy retrofits of 60% or more savings require large capital contributions.
• Finances aside, an assessment by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that we could achieve the goal of Zero Energy on only 22% of our building stock with current technologies as of 2005, while 80% of our existing buildings will still be in use in 2030.

I’ll be watching the GSA deep energy retrofit challenge with great interest. Though the financial and technical challenges to large scale success are daunting, the GSA appears to have an ideal leader to shepherd the process. She won me over.

What are your views of deep energy retrofits? Can we accelerate our industry toward a Net Zero energy future? What process, product, or financing innovations do we need to clear the financial and technical hurdles?

Here's a good explanation of the Net Zero energy concept.

*The National Association of Energy Services Companies.

Last month, I warned of green over-exuberance relating to Pennsylvania House Bill 193, which would institute a new high-performance state buildings standard. It turns out I was a little overly exuberant myself, using the words “Pennsylvania Adopts High-Performance State Buildings Standard.” In fact the bill passed through the House, but has yet to be adopted. It has been referred to the Senate. Mike Walsh, Deputy Secretary for Administration at the Pennsylvania Department of Education, kindly pointed out my inaccuracy as follows:

“In the recent post on Kate Harper’s bill (House Bill 193), the article seemed to indicate that ‘Pennsylvania has adopted’ a high-performance building standard.

“I am sure you realize that the House of Representatives adopted the legislation, and it is now in the Senate. So, it has to go through the Senate, and then to the Governor before it could be said that the Commonwealth has adopted the standard. Similarly, I believe the legislation passed the House last session, but remained in the Senate and it did not move once it got to that Chamber.

“Anyway, I wanted to be sure that the readers understood that we are not quite there yet.”

Thanks, Mike, for clearing that up for our readers.

Last month I mentioned that the bill lists 11 goals in its purpose statement. Here they are verbatim:

1. To promote effective energy and environmental standards for construction, rehabilitation and maintenance of buildings in this Commonwealth.
2. To optimize the energy performance of State Commonwealth buildings throughout this Commonwealth.
3. To increase the demand for environmentally preferable building materials, finishes and furnishings.
4. To improve environmental quality in this Commonwealth by decreasing the discharge of pollutants from buildings and their manufacture.
5. To create public awareness of new technologies that can improve the health and productivity of building occupants by meeting advanced criteria for indoor air quality.
6. To improve working conditions and reduce building-related health problems.
7. To reduce this Commonwealth's dependence upon imported sources of energy through buildings that conserve energy and utilize local and renewable energy sources.
8. To protect and restore this Commonwealth's natural resources by avoiding development of inappropriate building sites.
9. To reduce the burden on municipal water supply and treatment by reducing potable water consumption.
10. To reduce waste generation and to manage waste through recycling and diversion from landfill disposal.
11. To improve the Commonwealth's capacity to design, build and operate high-performance buildings and, in doing so, to create new jobs and contribute to economic growth.

What are your thoughts on these goals for our state buildings?