David Heslam, the former director of business development, has now been officially appointed executive director as of January 28, 2013. David previously oversaw EAI’s Energy Performance Score (EPS) development and the development of what is now CakeSystems™ software. In November 2012, the board appointed him interim executive director in order to allow Sean Penrith, the former executive director to move to CakeSystems. In late November, Penrith changed his original trajectory and chose to pursue other opportunities outside of EAI. I spoke with David a few days after his official appointment as E.D. to discuss his background and what the future holds for EA.
As an undergrad Economics major at Carleton College, David had considered leaving to become an architect. “I was really interested in energy efficient building design,” he said. Friends and family discouraged him, concerned that the job market was bleak for architects. So he completed his B.A. in economics and moved to Washington D.C to conduct economic research for public health policy. David has a minor in Technology and Policy Studies, how technology can influence the development of policy and vice versa. After a few years in D.C, David moved to the Pacific Northwest resolved to study energy efficienct architecture at either the University of Oregon or Washington. Working architects in Portland, encouraged him to gain some hands on building experience before further pursuing his formal education, knowing that architects without practical hands-on experience have trouble assimilating design ideas to the real world.
After working as a carpenter for a few years and engaging in many conversations with clients and architects who voiced their desire for contractors willing to build green, David took the leap, and started his own contracting company. He founded Coho Construction Services Inc. in 1999, using his experience in construction and his knowledge of green building and energy. He describes the company as, “more like an experimental building operation than a standard contracting company. I was working with homeowners who were really excited about what they could do. We worked to help them define what it meant to have a green or high performance building.” At the time there were no established green building standards, so he was pushing into uncharted territory. David referenced his first time working with certification guidelines and the pilot version of the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) commercial worksheet point system. “I remember using that worksheet to try to compare points they were deriving for walk off areas of a commercial building and thinking, how does that apply to a house? Well, it doesn’t apply to a house very well.”
Coho became a successful enterprise, building Portland’s first net zero building, and a home that won the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) Green Custom Home of the Year in 2003. It was because of this award-winning home David was first introduced to the EA program, then a part of PGE. After certifying the home, EAI nominated it for the NAHB award. David then began using EA’s remodel standard as well as EA certification on new home projects. “They [EA] had developed their own scoring system for homes that I could utilize as a framework to say how green the house was, an important conversation with the homeowner. My interest in helping develop a performance metric for homes on energy really grew out of that experience because I would be talking with homeowners…and they would say, “I want to have the greenest house in the neighborhood, or the city.” I began thinking, what does that really mean? You could use EA’s scoring system and try to get the most points, but did that really mean it was the greenest house?” This concern grew when he was introduced to the HERS (Home Energy Rating System) score. “I was asked why I didn’t do a HERS score on my houses. It (the score) would tell you how efficient your building was compared to national code, but that had no relevance to state code. It was confusing—if I can’t make sense of this, how are home buyers going to make any sense of it? My interest was piqued by how you talk about what makes a building efficient.”
In 2008 EA was awarded a contract to do collaborative research on what an energy performance score (EPS) could be. The concept was that an EPS would be a miles-per-gallon type metric for the home. EA hired David part time to manage research for the EPS effort and to teach their Sustainable Homes Professional (SHP) class. As part of the research project David oversaw staff analyzing more than 300 homes in three months, performing over 3,000 energy models using four different software programs on the homes in an effort to determine the most effective scoring system. The project solidified David’s interest in energy efficiency and contributing in a larger way to the conversation around green building. In late 2008 David joined EA full time, heading up the effort to get the EPS established as a metric for homes.
The research began in Portland but later expanded when EA was contracted in 2010 by Seattle City Light, a city owned utility company, and the city’s Office of Sustainability and Environment (OSE), to supply a piece of software (what would later become CakeSystems) to deliver an EPS. The EPS was to be delivered in Seattle as part of a 5000 home pilot. EA is now coming up on its third anniversary working with and delivering scores for SCL/OSE in Seattle. After the Seattle pilot, EA secured more contracts in Washington state with other community energy efficiency programs to utilize the EPS scoring tool. The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, opened up opportunities for EAI to work with community energy efficiency programs in Massachusetts, Virginia, and Alabama, as well as Washington. David describes this as, “a good experience in learning how to integrate this type of tool for contractors and the marketplace using different types of delivery systems; flexible contracting models, strict oversight for utility companies or anything in between.” EA had continued to work with Oregon’s own Energy Trust of Oregon and in 2012 another study was conducted verifying a particular software’s ability to deliver the most accurate results in the shortest time. The software, EPS Auditor Pro, (what is now known as CakeSystems), is based on the algorithm first tested in 2008, SIMPLE. It was developed by the energy efficiency expert and consultant, Michael Blasnik and built and expanded on by Earth Advantage. The EPS had been used extensively for new homes in Oregon since 2009 and recently expanded into the existing homes Oregon market. “That was really rewarding to see that become something that is happening locally.”
The evolution of CakeSystems software was serendipitous, David explained, “In reality, we only built our own piece of software because there wasn’t anything else out there to fit that niche.” EA tapped into David’s knowledge as a contractor to emphasize usability for contractors and auditors and built a team of dedicated professionals to conduct Q/A and handle customer support and project implementation. They also partnered with an IT company, Covelo due to their background building multiuser systems, that allow multiple people to interface across a platform. Auditors, contractors and homeowners all need a way to interact during the auditing process and CakeSystems allows for that, thanks to the work by Covelo. David elaborates, “All three parties have the ability to log into the system and have their own view and own functionality and real time access to the flow of activity and data. Typical energy efficiency software doesn’t have this.” The software was rebranded in 2012, to CakeSystems in part, as an effort to prevent market confusion between the software system and the EPS scoring metric. “Everything having to do with the software is now CakeSystems and EPS now only refers to the score, which is one part of the potential output provided to the homeowner,” David explained.
As to Earth Advantage’s future plans, the key word is focus. Three key areas will be the focus of the next five years of EA; certification (residential & commercial), education and policy research. David described EA’s unique value proposition as offering a wide array to developers and builders. EAI provides a suite of certifications covering the vast majority of needs within the industry from their own green building certifications, as well as ENERGY STAR, LEED® for Homes, Passive House (PHIUS), and their own Net Zero certification standard. In addition, this year will see the launch of a new EA Remodel certification, the expansion of their EA Multifamily certification and increased growth of their EA Commercial offering for small (under 100,000 sq. ft.) new commercial buildings. As David explained, the mission has always been to provide education and guidance to builders and other professionals, as well as independent certification of new homes, communities and commercial structures. “We have built that up over time and that’s not going anywhere. If anything, [the goal is] to be seen as a leader nationally, and help other regional bodies understand how they could also offer this array of services. There is a new vision for how EA will relate to other people in the industry; we are looking to be much more of a collaborator in all elements of our business. An example of how we’ve put that in practice is our commercial program’s advisory council. There are roughly only 50 LEED Fellows [a highly accomplished class of individuals nominated by their peers for advancing green building] in the world and we have three of them on our advisory council. Similarly we’ve created an advisory council for the development of our remodel program. We’re also looking to expand the membership of our board and we’ve co-launched a regional green building consortium. Everything that we’re doing now, we’re looking to do in a more collaborative way with other organizations and individuals outside of EA.”