In early 2025, Passive House Massachusetts launched an in-depth interview program to help answer this question. Supported by a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, we interviewed more than 40 Passive House practitioners—developers, architects, engineers, consultants, verifiers, and contractors—to identify the most pressing educational needs facing the industry today. Together, our interviewees have worked on 136 distinct Passive House projects across the Commonwealth. In a competitive industry where experience is a hard-earned asset, they generously shared their time and knowledge to help everyone working in this field.
Our interviewees identified the most pressing needs for Passive House education, which we sorted into five broad categories: values, planning, whole-building airtightness, ventilation, and role-specific training.
Values: Passive House projects are smoothest when project contributors come together as a team, internalize a shared mission, proactively reach beyond disciplinary boundaries, and build communication practices to keep everyone on the same page.
Planning: Much of Passive House is not about doing new things, but about doing old things with better planning. We found a wealth of specific lessons in our interviews about how projects succeed, like getting pre-certification early, integrating Passive House details and milestones throughout the project, maintaining effective information flows, and safeguarding the quality assurance process.
Whole-building airtightness: One of the defining features of Passive House buildings is their extremely airtight construction. Despite the tight standards, we found this can be achieved practically and cost-efficiently. The first step is educating everyone on the team—especially the trades tasked with implementing it on site—about the central importance of airtightness. This extra attention is then coupled with special care in the design, detailing, sequencing, installation, and testing phases.
Ventilation: Healthy, airtight buildings require a continuous, filtered fresh air system. Getting ventilation systems right is another crucial area where education can help projects run smoothly. Every ventilation system has its own challenges, but anticipation and management of tradeoffs, combined with a rigorous approach to ductwork and commissioning, can overcome them.
Role-specific training: Everyone on a project, from tradespeople with tools in hand to developers wielding financial projections, can do their job better with Passive House-specific training. For some this should be a formal certification course. For others this may simply be a quick video. Either way, it is important to make sure people get tailored, relevant information about their role.
With these needs in mind, Passive House Massachusetts is leading the charge to make sure this information gets to the people who need it. Based on the lessons from our interviews, we have developed an eight-part educational strategy that we will be rolling out over the next two years:
Community events: Enhancing and expanding our existing “Monthly Meeting” event series and our Annual Passive House Symposium.
Short courses: Revamping our Passive House 100/200 level courses, diversifying our offerings to target specific professions and roles.
Trades training: Developing a trades training pilot program, using a distributed model to effectively reach people on site.
Team support: Exploring mentorship, site visit, and peer support models to help accelerate professional development.
Connecting to existing training: Working closely with our partner organizations to help everyone identify, access, and afford the courses they need.
Digital presence: Overhauling our website to serve as a clear, informative, first point of entry for people at every stage of Passive House experience.
Public outreach: Engaging with audiences beyond Passive House delivery to ensure the broader community understands the benefits of passive building.
Continuous improvement: Using ongoing interviews and surveys to seek feedback about all of our offerings and revise accordingly.
A generation ago, the challenge was how to build buildings better. Passive House has met that challenge, providing a clear roadmap to delivering comfortable, healthy, resilient, durable, and efficient buildings. A few years ago, the challenge was whether all these values could be secured at a reasonable price. But Passive House has met that challenge as well: teams across the Commonwealth have shown over and over again that our buildings can be built to the highest standards for a reasonably low cost. The challenge today is whether we can learn from these successes and scale them, so everyone can share in these better buildings tomorrow. We are confident that Massachusetts is up to this challenge.
Interviewees:
Gabrielle Aitcheson, ICON Architecture
Sean Barfield, New Ecology
Chris Becker, Callahan Construction Mgrs.
Brian Bourgeois, BLW Engineers
Mike Browne, Advanced Building Analysis
Nicole Burger, Innova Building Advisors
Karla Butterfield, Steven Winter Associates
Ethan Clifford, Leyton USA
Dustin Corbett, Windover Construction
Moses Cordeiro, Dellbrook | JKS
Nat Coughlin, L.D. Russo
Margaret Dean, Sustainable Comfort
Greg Downing, Bald Hill Builders
Isaac Elnecave, Phius
Jon Erickson, CLEAResult
Jeff Geisinger, Utile
Chris Kennedy, Building Evolution Corp.
Maciej Konieczny, New Ecology
Nick Lepore, Dellbrook | JKS
Paul Leveille, Resilient Buildings Group
Ken Levenson, Passive House Network
Paul Maloney, Keith Construction
John Mann, RDH Building Science
Dylan Martello, Steven Winter Associates
John McGinnis, Dellbrook | JKS
Ken Neuhauser, Building Evolution Corp.
Mark Newey, Airtight Energy Consulting
Mark Norton, New Ecology
Daniel Perez, Thornton Tomasetti
Andy Poshadel, IMEG
Shari Rauls, Steven Winter Associates
Charles Romano, Windover Construction
Sherman Wai, RDH Building Science
Cody Wero, Tierney Development Services
We interviewed a further eight Passive House experts who preferred to remain anonymous.
About PHMass
Passive House Massachusetts is a non-profit, member-based organization that promotes healthy, comfortable, resilient, durable, and energy-efficient buildings through education, outreach, and advocacy. Visit us at phmass.org to learn more.
Support
This report was made possible by a grant from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, along with continuing support from our members.
The top image is Building M of the 15-building Bunker Hill project in Charlestown, the oldest neighborhood in Boston. To learn more about it, check out the recent article by Andrew Steingiser, the Passive House lead in RDH’s Boston office and a senior project architect. Image courtesy of RDH.
