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Construction Leaders Podcast
Beyond Sustainability: Why Resilience Matters for Construction Managers
00:27:51
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- [00:03]
A
Welcome back to the Construction Leaders Podcast, where we talk about what's shaping the future of construction and how you can lead the way. I'm Karlie Trout. I'm here with my co host for today, Evan Hendershot, CMAA's director of content. Hi, Evan.
- [00:17]
B
Hey, Carly.
- [00:18]
C
How are you today?
- [00:19]
A
Great. So today we're diving into the topic that's become impossible to ignore, and that's resilience. From extreme weather to aging infrastructure, the question isn't if disruption will happen, it's how prepared we are when it does. And more importantly, are we just bouncing back to where we were before an event, or are we bouncing forward to build better? To dig into the topic of resilience, we're joined by three members of CMAA's sustainability subcommittee. Dita Bernstein, Group Manager at Concertis, Joyce Dawson, ccm, Assistant Director of Facilities Planning and Construction at Anne Arundel Community College, and Randy Britt, Director of Climate Adaptation and Resilience at Terravanta. Randy actually joined us on the podcast exactly one year ago to talk about esg. So if you haven't heard that episode, be sure to go back and check it out. Welcome back, Randy. And welcome, Dina and Joyce. Thank you so much for being here today.
- [01:22]
B
Thank you for having us.
- [01:24]
A
So I think we're going to start off. Can you each briefly introduce yourselves to our listeners and share how you became focused on sustainability in construction? Randy, how about we start with you?
- [01:35]
B
Sure. My focus was in construction in very early stages when I was in college. Actually, I was actually in construction management working my way through college. And then I became involved with a facilities operation in my real work for about 25, 26 years with large facilities in six states. And it was a lot of work involved with facilities operations. And that led to being the first Director of Sustainability for Los Angeles Unified School District, then led to being the Director of Sustainability Initiatives. We're a very large member of the CMAA membership, and now I'm the Director of Climate Adaptation for. For Terravanda. Yeah, it got that start many years ago, and now I'm really happy to be a part of the CNA's Sustainability Committee and happy to be able to participate in spreading the good word about resilience.
- [02:32]
A
Great. Joyce, would you like to go next? Yes.
- [02:35]
D
Hi. Glad to be with you all today. I've worked in construction for 31 years now. I'm a CCM and a lead AP, BD and C. I came into construction as a second career after getting a start on a family, fell in love with project management and being a construction manager and have never looked back. So currently I am with Anne Arundel Community College, coming out of private industry where I worked on libraries, courthouses and with gsa. So my world's become a little smaller being on one college campus. However, the work that we do is very relevant. And we also teach construction management. So we are like a living classroom here. And I'm always eager to involve our students in anything that's going on here that will help them as they move out into the industry. So I became involved with the sustainability committee because I was really interested in in changing the dialogue in construction. I was tired of hearing how much is being sustainable going to add to the cost of the building. That was the worst question I ever heard. And over the years it has changed. And people are now asking what is the correct way to build in order to protect and not harm the environment, not to harm them, future resources, and to be socially equitable. And now the conversation is turning to how do we be resilient? How do we protect and keep what we have built and built sustainably?
- [04:21]
A
All right, great. And last but not least, Dita.
- [04:24]
E
As mentioned, I'm a group manager with Concertis. I trained as an architect after having my undergrad degree in natural sciences. My master project in architecture school focused on sustainable design. And then professionally I came out of school and sustainable design wasn't hot topic on anyone's agenda. So I went into construction management career wise. And I've been a found that to be like the right fit for me. It touched all the bases of everything I'm interested in and everything that I like, my natural tendency. So I have been really fortunate over my career in a few different iterations. I've had clients that were very interested in sustainability right at the time when I thought nobody cared. One client in particular was Public Building Commission of Chicago. And their mandate was to deliver public buildings that were sustainable and met Chicago's goals around energy and water and resilience. We didn't call it resilience, but we talked about quality of life for citizens. What happens if it floods? What happens if there's extreme heat? How can these mostly lead centric buildings do better throughout Chicago for the citizens of Chicago? I became involved in the sustainability committee almost at the same time that I became involved in cmaa. Really was another place where all the things I'm interested in and all the things I do professionally and the education that I brought with me all came together into one place. So when all your conversations align, it seems like the natural place to land. And it's been very exciting and satisfying to be part of this committee and bring this conversation to our members.
- [06:00]
C
Thank you all for those introductions. We're going to jump right into it now. So we've heard the term sustainability for a while and the conversation has now expanded to resilience. Can you define resilience and explain how it differs from sustainability? We'll start with Randy on this one.
- [06:16]
B
Sustainability and resilience are two interconnected but separate concepts. The traditional definition of sustainability focus on meeting current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It emphasizes resource management, environmental protection, and social equity. In contrast, resilience refers to the capacity of systems, communities or ecosystems to withstand, adapt to, and recover from adverse conditions, stressors or disruptions such as natural disasters or economic shocks. Sustainable practices can enhance resilience by promoting diverse ecosystems and reduce vulnerability to climate change. Resilience planning through the lens of climate adaptation focuses on short term and long term adaptability, enabling systems, people and communities to not only recover quickly, but recover with improved systems infrastructure and planning for future events.
- [07:17]
D
Yeah, and Brandy, we do see a byproduct of resilience from sustainability. Like you said at the beginning, they're really interconnected. They almost walk hand in hand. Resilience, however, needs to be as intentional as sustainability. I think most of us that are CMS are very used to sustainability being a big topic with our owners and getting that into our goals and our programming. But resilience has ended up being a byproduct. So now we're encouraging everybody, make it intentional, talk about it. Look at what's going on environmentally in your area where you're building. Look at the history of what's happened in your area. So just make it very intentional.
- [08:09]
B
That's exactly the right Joyce.
- [08:11]
E
Definitely the most powerful when you put the two together and think about them each individually, intentionally, but then also what happens when you consider them at the same time.
- [08:22]
B
Yeah, I think that there's a focus on some people's part to separate the two, that they don't feel they're connected. But I agree they have to be considered together and they have to be working together and they have to be left together to be interconnected.
- [08:35]
A
So that brings us to the question of how it all relates to construction and why this is such an important conversation to have and what construction professionals should be thinking about. Dita, do you want to start with that?
- [08:49]
E
Sure. So we've already mentioned that we want things are happening in the world that make it clear that we need to be thinking about resilience and the long term stability and durability of everything that we build in bunch of different settings where we have a lot of stressors which we'll get to shortly. But when you're thinking about resilience, best case, like sustainability, you need to think about it as part of the conversation at every phase of the project and every part of the project team, from the owner's intent to the design team's development, the process of construction and operating the built project so that you get to the result at the end. Even like your siting and your material selection, which again would be part of owner's intent and design team. The CM can definitely add a great deal to this conversation early on, bringing their understanding of project and construction processes early as you can into the various phases of a project. Cms have lessons learned, both positive and negative. They know what works or what doesn't work. They see the back end of projects when they've been impacted by natural disasters or supply chain issues which might have been fueled by natural disasters or other stressors. They know what regions are impacted in the process of building. You have washed out job site, increasing time lost to heavy rains, increasing numbers of extreme heat and heat stress days, materials availability changes, and like the ability to get materials to a job site, not just the manufacturer. Engaging a CM early in the process and bringing this conversation as early in the process as possible can help a team more fully evaluate risks and cost out potential strategies and maybe even bring those project saving concepts and ideas to the table early on when they can be the most effectively applied.
- [10:36]
D
Yeah, I think we can't emphasize enough how important the CM is in this process. This isn't something an owner expects just to leave with their design team. And it's a group effort. It's the owner knowing the outcomes that they expect and how they want their project protected for the future. And the CM just has emphasized we're out in the real world, we know the cost impacts, we know what's happened on projects that was highly successful and things that were not. And value engineering always seems to become a part of the process and in that you want to do the very best for the project with the funding that you've been allowed because sometimes there isn't an open checkbook. So you've only got what you've got. So you've got to be very careful how you allocate your spending and get everything covered and protected. So the CM's value is very great, especially if they can join in the design process that that CM can be in place as design begins and work along with the team advising and looking at the constructability and feasibility of the things being suggested. So I think cms are highly important in this process.
- [12:06]
B
If I could just build off of that. I think that we also discussed the principle that cms, if they're knowledgeable in this field, it provides them a differentiator when it comes to knowledge and proposals. I think you brought that up earlier Dita, that if you have this knowledge that they can provide to the owner, it gives them a differentiator over those entities that don't have this knowledge. And that was something that Dita brought up in our discussions when we were talking about this last week.
- [12:35]
A
Well, we're going to pick back up on this conversation soon, but we're going to take a quick break to hear about today's sponsor. Thanks to IHG Planning, Travel for your team just got easier. IHG Business Edge helps small and medium sized businesses travel smarter, whether it's heading to a client meeting, a conference or corporate retreat. Members receive guaranteed discounts at thousands of IHD hotels and resorts around the world, plus flexible booking options and exclusive partner savings. And the best part? There is no annual fee. Join the program today and start unlocking value every time your team hits the road. Learn more and enroll@businessedge.ihg.com Dita had mentioned.
- [13:23]
C
Stressors in our last discussion, so let's jump to that. What are some examples of kinds of stressors construction professionals should be aware of? Randy, how about you take a crack at this one?
- [13:35]
B
Sure. There's typically two types of identified stressors that construction professionals should be aware of. There are acute shocks and then there's chronic stressors. The acute shocks have short term duration and lower predictability and chronic stressors have long term duration and higher predictability. Acute shocks that are most likely the impact construction professionals are things like hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, blizzards, earthquakes which can include subsidence and liquefaction, wildfires, which can also be brought up by heat waves and volcanic eruptions, terrorism, infrastructure failure and collapse. Active shooters. The types of chronic stressors that are likely to impact ends are sea level rise, droughts, water shortages, environmental degradation, global warming, aging infrastructure, overtaxed or insufficient infrastructure, and financial shortages.
- [14:36]
D
I'm on a campus that has existed since the 1960s. So when you're on a campus that has aging buildings, you've got to look at that aging infrastructure and things that are over taxed and think about what does that mean if we have a severe weather Condition, you would think in little old Arnold, Maryland, we wouldn't have many problems, but we have been faced with the effects of hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, blizzards. So that's the realm of my current projects. And we have to consider these things. So we look at stormwater management, we look at mitigating flooding, we look at roof uplift. When we get some of this terrific wind up here, you have to be concerned. We're also concerned about individuals. If they're in a building, where's the area of refuge? Have we put a sufficient area of refuge in a building? And with the snow, it doesn't snow heavily here every year, but boy, when we get it. So we have to think about roof loads in regard to weather as well as other things. So there's so much to think about. Acute shocks hit you by surprise. So you have to be smart and nimble and think about these things before they happen. And these chronic stressors, they're part of your environment. So of course you want to think about what that means to your current campus, to your current building, to your building projects in general.
- [16:12]
E
I wanted to also mention that sometimes you have chronic stressors that build off of each other and they've been escalating over the past however many years as climate change has become more and more obvious. So in Chicago, we don't necessarily have wildfires or volcanic eruptions, but you never know. But we do have flooding and high temperatures, which sometimes happen at the same time. And the flooding isn't from sea level rise, it's from like much heavier rains and much more frequent than has happened in the past. You couple that with some high temperatures and some changes to how like the prevailing winds and you have air quality issues and that becomes some of the biggest issues and stressors, mostly on the people, but also on the infrastructure to try to manage that flooding. Another thing we've had to address over time is repeated freeze thaw cycles, which shorten the life of many materials and systems. So it used to be way back in the day, not that long ago, it would get cold in the winter, it would stay cold, everything would freeze, and then in the spring, everything would thaw. But over the last, say, 10 years, those freeze thaw cycles happen more like multiple times over the course of a winter. And so you definitely see the increase in potholes and the increase in failure in pavement and building exteriors that results from having this cycle, 10 years of freeze thaws in one year. So it definitely, you have to think about what the impact is on materials.
- [17:42]
A
So given all of the Stressors that you've mentioned, Randy, that was quite a list there of stressors and you all Talking about the CM's critical role in resilience. I'm sure our listeners are wondering how to learn more about best practices and resilience. And I immediately thought of the course you all recently developed with the Sustainability subcommittee and will be presenting in 2026. So I'd like to talk about that. I believe it's called Resilience Means Bouncing Better Mitigation for Design, Construction and Training. Joyce, can you start off and tell us a little bit how that course came about?
- [18:22]
D
Sure. Let's go back into the past and let's say Viva Las Vegas. So in 2018, this. This group of people, we've known each other for quite a while now working on sustainability, we wanted to have the kind of course where you had the ability to participate and learn from one another because there's a lot of knowledge that walks through those doors. So we came up with emphasizing that construction management does not have to be a gamble. So one goal was to gain insight into how to employ best practice strategies to protect sustainability goals as challenges come up in the project life cycle. So we ran the class like a casino. And I think everybody was on board. They were like, okay, let's do this. So everyone in the class worked on developing their sustainability goals for their projects. But of course, we had to put unpredictable changes into the mix so it would be real. So every time Elvis, literally our big Elvis cutout, which Dita found us and swore she was not taking back on the airplane, and we understood that every time Elvis was in the building, some change happened that meant that the CM had to respond in a way that kept the goals of the project intact. So the class caused the team to pull together with all their strengths and experiences and to start formulating plans that address these changes but maintain the integrity of the project. So we're looking to go the same direction. We want to bounce ideas off of everyone and we want to bounce around the topic of resilience and we want to come together and Randy, Dita and I will lead you down the path of thinking about resilience and what it means to your current and future projects and how do you add value as a cm. We're pretty excited about this. We want to shoot from the floor and get that three point score with you guys as we talk about this. This is what we're looking for in 2026 is coming to this topic of resilience. We feel it ties very closely to sustainability and just spend time working together through the topic. So at the end of the day we all leave with more ideas and more tools about how to deal with this important topic in our projects.
- [21:08]
C
So I think that begs the question, why now? Why has Sustainability Committee decided to focus its attention on educating members about the topic of resilience and the need for climate adaptation to achieve resilience at this time?
- [21:22]
B
I'll start with this one. It's undeniable that as a global industry, we're living in a time of turbulent, acute and chronic stressors. Every year, multiple hurricanes and tornadoes, flooding, wildfires, seismic events, aging, infrastructure failures and accidents and the list goes on and on. It's becoming clear to us that bouncing back just isn't good enough. We need to elevate our efforts to a greater level and focus on bouncing forward. As an example, one of the constant themes that we see throughout the Expressors is that we don't see improvements in emergency responses, mitigation and recovery. Much of that is due to reductions in funding for public services and first responders. That makes it imperative for us as construction professionals to focus more on improving designs and construction to reduce loss of life, minimize property damage and protect people's livelihoods. And while we're focusing heavily on land, buildings and systems, if we don't find ways to make our people more resilient and prepared to withstand stressors and bounce forward as well with the hope that things will actually be better in the future, then we won't succeed. These are fundamental needs for climate and adaptation, resilience assessments and construction management needs to play a key role in its implementation.
- [22:41]
E
Randy, that's really aptly put. We are already seeing the impacts of stressors. They're amping up year over year and funding is tight, always and always shrinking. So that leaves us with a the best way to improve our outcome is to think strategically and evaluate those options as early as possible, shift gears and think about how we can get that long term best outcome. We know that what worked in the past can't necessarily be expected to work in the future. And owners need that support and that knowledge that we bring to the table that an educated CM would bring to the table. We're going to be better poised to support decision making and to get better outcomes.
- [23:17]
D
Yeah. In a past conference we had discussed these stressors that exist and in particular we talked about flooding. An example during that conference was we looked at Ellicott City, Maryland who thought they had a hundred year event because their city flooded because of development higher than the city when torrential rains came, there wasn't anything to hold the water back. And it ended up just being a river flowing down from the top of Ellicott City all the way down to a mill at a river that's at the bottom of the city. It was devastating. There was loss of life. This is a very historic city. So they had a lot of building damage and so they began to bounce back and get the city cleaned up and think about, okay, we never want that to happen again. But it happened again two years later, the same event. And so now if you go to Ellicott City, you'll see that they bounced forward. They looked at what happened and they came up with a plan that mitigated floodwater. And so now when rain comes, rather than everybody running for their cars and getting out of the city, they now can rest comfortably because that water is now being channeled. Some of it goes under buildings. But the whole point is it doesn't come as a river down the street. It is mitigated, is managed. So yeah, these are things we want to look at is don't just bounce back, but bounce forward so that what you thought was a one time event does not hit you again when you least expect it.
- [25:08]
A
Yeah. Joyce, we really appreciate you sharing that example. It would be great if we could stay and talk about. I know there's so many more things to dig into on this topic, but we just have time for one more question. Brandy, I'm wondering if you could give some advice to CMS who are. Maybe this is a new area for them and they're looking to learn more. What advice would you give those individuals?
- [25:33]
B
Sure. Obviously we're going to be hopefully putting out this webinar early next year and there'll be a series of webinars that will provide our CMS with different types of resilience challenges to focus on with real life examples and challenges to work with. Our goal is to provide them with easy to understand information, but to challenge them to be able to solve these problems going forward. But we're not the only resource. For additional information, the UC also have the American Institute of Architects, the US Green Building Council, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. But it's our goal with CMAA to be a resource to membership and provide them with information regarding the best ways to make their project more resilient and to provide them with a go to place to find information and to serve them and be available to them as they need guidance as they go through their projects.
- [26:40]
E
All right.
- [26:41]
C
And with that, Dita, Joyce and Randy. We thank you all for joining us today. It was a pleasure chatting with you all. And before we go, I wanted to just remind listeners of that resource that's been mentioned a few times today. If you're listening as this podcast drops, we encourage you to join the January 8 session. Resilient means bouncing forward better mitigation for design, construction and training. This session will take a deeper dive into resilience as a whole and will be available also on demand after the fact. To learn more, visit cma net.org to be sure you don't miss our next episode, please subscribe to the podcast and follow us on social media Maahq and don't forget to leave us a review with your thoughts on today's episode and let us know what you you'd like to hear on an upcoming podcast. And keep an eye out for upcoming episodes on pathways to the CM profession, practical guides to CM roles, and technology implementation. On behalf of cmaa, I'm Evan Hendershot with Carly Trout. Thank you for listening.