Steve’ Build Blog (SBB) is all about the challenges building faces and the solutions being developed. Overtime SBB will be introducing BuildUSA (BUSA), the Prototype Initiative (PI) and Optimized Building (OB), combined they offer solutions to forward looking, integrated and collaborative, Building Teams.
Throughout 2023, SBB will organize content via a “Monthly Theme”. Building, encompasses an extraordinary amount of topics, and “Monthly Theme is intended to make the content more useful. If you have any suggestion, please reach out and let us know.
The Building industry impact on our communities, punches well above its weight. Not only does it drive the economy for building services and building materials, including manufacturing, transportation and distribution networks, but it has immediate impact on the Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment (FFE) industry that will fill the building and make it operational for the future tenents.
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Did you know total annual Municipal Solid Waste generation in the U.S. has increased by 73% since 1980, to the current level of about 262 million tons per year? Can you imagine what it is now!?...
Did you know pumped hydroelectric storage systems generate electricity by pumping water from a low to a high reservoir, releasing the water from the higher reservoir through a hydroelectric turbine...
DYK-Compressed Air Energy Storage (CAES) CAES captures and stores compressed air in an underground cavern. To create electricity, the pressurized air is heated and expanded in an expansion turbine,...
Team Building and Successful Decision Making Good vs. Bad Just Makes No Cents When I am sitting with friends, clients or coworkers, and we are discussing different ways in which a project team can...
Value and the 100 year old Oak Tree: What makes a building valuable? At first glance, this question may seem straightforward. You can express value in financial terms. In this case, by...
Technology, Work and Self Worth Some of the best, smartest and most self-confident people I know are in Building. This is not to say I don’t know a lot of “A-holes” in our industry as well, we all...
Did you know that ABES stores electrical energy in the form of chemical energy, which is then converted back into electricity when needed? Batteries contain two electrodes (anode and cathode), two...
Did you know that in 2018, flywheels accounted for 0.058 GW of rated power in the U.S. and have efficiencies between 85-87%. FES systems store electric energy via kinetic energy by spinning a rotor...
“It’s not brain surgery.” The saying implies that the activity in question is relatively simple in comparison with the difficulty of operating on the human brain. There may be some truth to this...
Did you know that PHS and CAES are large-scale technologies capable of discharge times of tens of hours but are geographically limited. Several EES technologies are in research phases, but five...
Did you know 2.5% of delivered electric power in the U.S. is cycled through a storage facility. For comparison, 10% of delivered power in Europe and 15% of delivered power in Japan are cycled...
Did you know as of June 2018, the U.S. had over 25.2 GW of rated power in energy storage compared to 1,082 GW of total in service installed generation capacity. Globally, installed energy storage...
A geothermal power plant emits roughly 11 times less carbon dioxide (CO2) )per unit electricity that the average U.S. coal power plant.
Did you know Geothermal energy is derived from the natural heat of the earth. It exists in both high enthalpy (volcanoes, geysers) and low enthalpy forms (heat stored in rocks in the Earth's crust)?...
Did you know that PV conversion efficiency is the percentage of incident solar energy that a PV converts to electricity. For production modules, conversion efficiency is 6% to 21%.
Did you know on average, 1.05 x 105 terawatts (TW) of solar radiation reach the Earth’s surface, while global electricity demand averages 2.4 TW.
Did you know that due to congestion in urban areas, an additional 6.9 billion hours of travel time and an extra 3.1 billion gallons of fuel are use by urban Americans in 2014?
Did you know that in 2015, 58.65 billion passenger-miles (PM) were traveled on public transit, and 3 trillion vehicle-miles are traveled (VMT) on public roads each year.
Did you know the rate of urbanization, i.e., the changing of land from forest or agricultural uses to suburban and urban uses, is increasing by 15% from 2010 - 2015? Urban land area is 106,386...
Did you know approximately 82% of the U.S. population lives in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950 and by 2050, 90% of the U.S. population and 68% of the world population is projected to live in urban...
When you look at the image that introduces this blog post, do you the think the modular structure of the present or the past is of higher quality? Do you even think of classical Greek Temples as...
IN THE IMMORTAL WORDS OF JOE FRIDAY: “Just the Facts Ma’am, Just the Facts” What are Data, Facts and Knowledge? Who Owns or Controls Them? Sometimes the facts seem so obvious it is...
It was 1983, in Lincoln Park, and I was three months into my first Design/Build/Development project. My partner and I had just purchased a traditional Chicago Bungalow that had been raised on...
Technology, Innovation, Disruption (TID): It may sound strange to begin a post on technology by referencing my 93-year-old mother, lovingly known by our family as The Bubbster. However, I...
Collaborative cloud-based platforms - key to transitioning building Today, all of us share a simultaneous sense of amazement, aggravation and trepidation at the sheer amount of information—the good,...
Did you know that Wasteful Energy uses in residential homes include the following and that these together they represent approximately 39% of all residential primary energy use? Heating and cooling...
I’ve been interested in building and buildings since I was a little kid. I have many childhood memories that involve building. Two stand out with particular vividness. When I was 4 years old...
Did you know that urban areas comprise only 3.6% of the total land mass of the 48 contiguous states, but 80% of the Americans, live, work and play there.
Did you know that the average size of a residential U.S Single Family Home has grown from 983 sf in 1950 to 2,599 sf in 2017. A 164% increase
Fragmented Leadership In Building Being an ex-jock whose tendons and muscles now break and ache more than they actually perform. I now have become a fair weather fan of which ever sport and sport’s...
Did you know that in the United States approximately 20% of all electrical energy generated is used to heat and cool large institutional building. Can buildings be used as batteries by dumping...
Let me begin by telling you a story. It’s the story of a typical building “transaction.” It may sound painfully familiar to many of you. You are making an addition to your home. It has been...
Building punches way above its weight. This single industry has an inordinate impact on the overall economy. The numbers speak for themselves. As of May 2018, the total value of construction...
I have a lot of personal friends and business associates who take great delight in trashing the building industry in general and architects in particular (this latter critique being a bit of bashing...
I am the father of two cyborgs. That is, I am the father of two Millennials. As far as I’m concerned, they may as well be cyborgs. As someone who came of age in a media ecology of tape decks,...
Let’s say you’re a GC and I offer you the opportunity to work on a lucrative project. The specs are as follows: Mile-high skyscraper. It will house the population of a modern metropolis. It will be...
(A warm welcome to guest blogger Jim Hosking) Merger mania is here to stay! Maybe your organization has been through a merger and you survived, well keep looking around the corner, it may be...
I read the other day that building projects for life on Mars are already underway. Researchers at Northwestern University, using samples of simulated Martian soil, have developed a blend of sulfur...
One of the wonderful benefits of being an architect/builder/developer, is that, in the normal course of business you get the opportunity to learn about almost everything. Buildings impact on the...
I build things for a living. For almost four decades, I’ve worked as an architect, a general contractor, a developer and as CEO of both an architectural and building company. In terms of the way we...
L.I.F.E. Concept (Originally published in 1986) Each year the public is becoming more conscious and concerned with issues of health care. It is no longer satisfactory to just be free of...
“Building and Technology” The building industry is on the verge of entering the 21st century. Substantial improvements in technology, process and materials are leading a wave of innovation. For...
The building industry has resisted this type of innovation, even though it has been successfully embraced by multiple industries for decades. In the next decade two collaborative business models...
The volume of product-related information available today can overwhelm consumers. They sense a need for a consistent buying experience which will ensure satisfactory decision making and successful...
Businesses today operate in one of two broad categories: The boutique market, where companies offer customers high levels of customer experience and support, but restrict their distribution into the...
For the foreseeable future, larger business systems will be the main drivers of change in the building industry. Regulatory compliance, capital availability, and purchasing power will increasingly...
There is an old adage “You Cannot Get There From Here”. The achievements of other industry leaders in aviation, electronics, manufacturing and technology have improved product quality and increased...
The financial meltdown of 2008, combined with climate change and the growing worldwide effort to improve energy efficiency, lower carbon emissions and develop sustainable building models has served...
BUILDUSA-CHICAGO We understand that in today’s world of limited resources, shifting polices and reimbursement uncertainty, healthcare executives face many challenges in building successful leading...
Historical inertia in the Building Industry, is clashing with a raging current of fast paced change, impacting all projects and teams designing, building and maintaining the built...
Signup for a free membership to access exclusive content