Passive House Podcast co-host Jay Fox speaks with Brittany Coughlin, Principal and Energy & Sustainability Specialist at RDH Building Science. Brittany describes her Passive House journey and what inspired her to pursue a career in high-performance building before talking about her work on such notable projects as the Doig River Cultural Center, which is one of the northern-most buildings in Canada to receive Passive House certification; her work as a teacher at the British Columbia Institute of Technology; and what role the building industry can play in educating consumers about decarbonization. You can read the transcript below.
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Reimagine Buildings 2024
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Transcript
Jay Fox: Hello, my name is Jay Fox, co-host for the Passive House Podcast. I'm here with Brittany Coughlin, Principal Energy and Climate Specialist for RDH Building Science, and we're going to have a little conversation today about how she got into the Passive House community, what she does for RDH, and whatever topics come up. So, Brittany, thank you so much for being here with me.
Brittany Coughlin: Thanks for having me, Jay.
JF: Absolutely. So, just to start out, I guess I'm curious, what inspired you to pursue an education in understanding sustainable building systems? Do you have any specific stories during the time when you were just starting out where you had a professor or a mentor that really changed the course of your career? Someone who inspired you?
BC: Sure. I went into engineering because I was good at math and science—I think as many of us do. My dad was also an engineer, which I'm sure influenced me, as well. And then my first co-op term, I was really lucky to work for, at the time, a small consulting company that was doing a lot of energy modeling. They were called Intermodal Engineering and just starting to get into LEED, and I remember my first or second day of work, the president of that company had just gotten back from Greenbuild, and he had all of these different brochures and pamphlets, and he was like, “There's this new thing called LEED.”
It was pretty new to Canada at the time. This was before the Canadian Green Building Council had gotten going, and he was like, “We're, we're going to start doing it. Can you kind of organize these product brochures for me?” And that kind of experience from that day and over the next few months—kind of working on sustainable related aspects of buildings—got me really interested in green buildings and sustainability. I had always been interested in the environment, and so that kind of tapped into a personal interest and passion of mine.
And here I have today! That got me interested, so I sought out other co-op terms in the buildings field gearing towards energy efficiency and sustainability, did a master's in the field, and then decided I wanted to pursue a career in it.
JF: Okay, cool. Was there anybody early in your career, you know once you've left university, who kind of shepherded you, showed you the ropes a little bit and maybe, you know, got you more interested in sustainability or served again as a mentor type of figure?
BC: I think really early on my supervisor in grad school, Professor John Straube, was a key person who really had a good way of looking at the practical side of things. He has always been really keen on sustainability and green buildings, but also sorting through what matters and what doesn't, and really critical thinking and seeking to understand buildings from a first principle standpoint to make sure that what we're doing is truly impacting buildings in a good way and is real sustainability—and real performance.
I think that that kind of mentorship has kind of underscored the way I look at buildings even to this day of really trying to be practical and to do things that really make a real measurable difference. So, he was a key person to instill that in me early on.
JF: Great! And so, jumping from sustainability and LEED, who introduced you to Passive House or was this just the direction that the industry was going in BC?
BC: I don't remember the exact moment in time that I got interested [in Passive House]. I remember really early on going to local industry events with the Passive House community, and Monty Paulson was a key person in Vancouver who I got to know and who had a big impact on me. I remember we partnered with him on some early research projects, and I learned a ton from him. His energy and enthusiasm for it was really foundational for me.
Also, just the fundamentals or first principles of Passive House really resonated with me. Coming from an enclosure background, we had been doing work to really understand effective R-values in buildings and looking at how, in energy modeling previously, we didn't always capture true enclosure performance because we weren't looking at it holistically. So, seeing the Passive House enclosure first, where they really looked at thermal bridging in detail, that really resonated with me because that's what we had also been trying to push locally. Together with the energy in Vancouver and really feeling like they had the right philosophy that kind of jived with what we were already trying to do at RDH—that got me interested in it and it's kind of grown from there.
JF: And what was the first project that you worked on that was Passive House? Let's say either Passive House inspired or Passive House Certified.
BC: There were a number of really early ones and a number of research type stuff. The first one that stands out to me, that I took from start to finish, is the Doig River Cultural Center, which is in northern British Columbia. It’s a really challenging, cold climate, like -27°C design temperature.
What was cool about that is we were brought into it really early on, which is not always the case, right? However, we had the opportunity to look at massing and orientation and some of those foundational things that you don't always get the chance to look at, and then to try to figure out, Can we actually do passive house for this really challenging climate and building type? So, that was one of the earliest ones that I got to be involved with right from the very beginning and in deciding design strategies and modeling and that kind of thing.
And now it's a fully certified Phius building, which is really cool to see.
JF: Wow—negative 27 degrees! That is freaking cold. I'm guessing that that experience introduced you to the importance of using an early planning method to smooth over the process of integrating Passive House principles. How have you applied some of those lessons learned to future projects? What can you share with someone who's maybe starting out and about to do their first passive project?
BC: I learned so much from that project that I've taken into other work. You kind of said it already with respect to the sort of early-stage design decisions. With this building, we were in early enough and we had a site where we could do this, right? This isn't always possible. However, we actually rotated the building 90 degrees from what they were originally thinking of placing it in order take advantage of really good solar exposure, so we could have nice, big, south-facing windows; have nice daylighting; have nice views for the occupants; and take advantage of those passive solar gains.
You know, sometimes you see in northern climates really well insulated buildings that don't have a lot of windows. We really didn't want that to be the case. And so, by rotating it, we could take advantage of that solar exposure. We also simplified the geometry a little bit. We kept the really critical architectural and cultural elements but simplified a little bit of the articulation to optimize things. We could look at where to kind of optimize installation and detailing and where it wasn't cost effective to do that.
And so being able to do that really early on, I think, is the key to doing Passive House cost-effectively and smoothly. Those are the sort of things that don't cost anything and really set the project up for success in terms of Passive House. You can really optimize things by having that early input. And, like I said, you can't rotate every project, right? That is not always the case. But still, just thinking about solar exposure and how you're laying out the windows and how you're doing the massing has such a huge impact on energy performance, but we have to be able to do that stuff early on before it gets set in stone and the design starts moving on. So, it was a good learning process for me to really see that on a project where we did have that ability to make those kinds of changes. We try to tell all of our clients, you know, start early, look at it holistically, and those things are really going to set the project up for success in terms of meeting Passive House.
JF: That is a fantastic answer. I’ve been a part of the Passive House community for about four years, and I feel like the biggest recipe for success is getting everybody on the same page as early as possible and never siloing. Everybody should share a common vision and work together.
BC: Totally. It's a team sport, right? It's a team initiative and everyone needs to bring their perspectives and also be open to doing things a little bit differently. That's how you get to the best results.
JF: Fantastic. I guess moving on, I'm curious: Since joining the workforce, have you noticed efforts within the AEC [architecture, engineering, and construction] community to be more conscientious about efficiency and sustainability as a whole? This is not just Passive House community, but everybody. Also, have you noticed more of an effort on the part of companies to be more gender inclusive? It’s a slightly different question, but, you know, it’s two industry questions.
BC: I'll start with the sustainability one. There's definitely been a transition. I mean, I've been in this industry for over 15 years now, and I've definitely seen a shift. It used to be about “energy efficiency,” and now it's about carbon, right? That shift has really happened. So many more projects have high-performance sustainability goals attached to them. Honestly, it's almost rare to see a project that doesn't, and there's a lot more that are really targeting true high-performance, whether it's Passive House or net zero or something else.
We're on the upward part of that exponential growth curve and that stuff is really taking off. I also think just about every company has some, hopefully, has some plans to decarbonize their operations. I think that's important too. That’s definitely been growing a lot in the industry.
On gender inclusion, I would say, yes, we've made a lot of progress, but we still have a long way to go. We still have so much more to do there. There are so many incredible women in our industry; that is awesome to see. We have lots at RDH and lots of other companies—and we also need more. There's still not enough. There are still lots of biases out there. There's still areas and circles where we face situations that aren't comfortable or aren't inclusive. So, I think that we need to be really active in trying to continue to take down those barriers and create a more inclusive area, inclusive companies, and organizations—that kind of thing. I think every company has a role to play in that.
So…lots of work to do still.
JF: Indeed. I know you're based in BC. Do you tend to travel to other provinces or the US or Europe?
BC: I do. I actually work pretty commonly with our Toronto office, so I’m there and back pretty regularly. I'm going to Toronto next week. My workload is split pretty well between Vancouver and Toronto, as well as Boston. I've been doing a lot of work with our Boston team. We've got an amazing Passive House team there locally, but I’m there a lot to share some of the experiences that we've had in Canada. So, actually, my work is really split between Vancouver, Toronto, and Boston right now, I'd say, which is a lot of fun.
We're starting to see growth in other areas where RDH has offices as well. We've got some really exciting stuff happening in Denver and on the West Coast, too. It's really taking off, and I love supporting our teams in different parts of North America. It's really fun.
JF: I forgot to mention. You are now also at BCIT, the British Columbia Institute of Technology, where you teach whole building energy modeling. Can you describe what that experience has been like? Are there any changes you would like to see to the curriculum that would make students a little bit better prepared to actually work in the industry?
BC: Yeah, it's been fun, but I haven't actually been teaching too much lately. I don’t have as much time in my days anymore, but I started working with BCIT before COVID. They were very forward-thinking, and they wanted to bring their energy modeling course into an online version, so I helped them adapt the course that they currently offered into an online offering. At the time, it was a little bit tricky because they were used to offering this course where the instructor would kind of walk around and look at screens to help people learn energy modeling, right? And so doing that in an online environment took some adapting, but, you know, we now know through COVID that this is quite possible and doable, but that was kind of my initial involvement.
So, I worked with them to adapt that course, and then I've taught it a handful of times, which is a lot of fun. You learn so much by teaching content and getting to interact with different students. I really enjoy that. I wish I had more time for it still, but I think that it's great to have those kinds of offerings for professionals. I think that we can continue to adapt the courses, too, because the industry's changing so quickly and there’s evolving technologies and high-performance design is getting better and better. We did talk about Passive House in the course, as well as other kinds of high-performance design, but continuing to update the courses given new technologies is always really important.
JF: Absolutely, and especially with BC being at the forefront of the movement to decarbonize building stocks, at least for North America. I mean, when I started at the Accelerator about 2019, BC was the poster child of what you're supposed to do. That said, I'm wondering if you think, that model can be exported to other provinces in Canada or states in the US? Additionally, what advice would you give to any governing bodies in charge of making such changes to ensure they were implemented successfully?
BC: It already is starting to be exported. In BC we have the Step Code, which transitioned us from a code standpoint to performance targets, which Passive House does really well at. It's kind of a similar model there. Toronto has a similar approach with the Toronto Green Standard. I think we'll probably see that in our national codes in Canada pretty soon. Massachusetts is doing that with the Stretch Code there.
I had this really cool professional experience—this is probably a couple of years ago, just before Massachusetts was introducing their Stretch Code. I was in town to do some work with our Boston office and so they'd set up a few meetings with me with some of the folks there, and I was reading up on the kind of background and the research they had done to support the Stretch Code, and it was, like, identical. It was very similar to what we had done in BC with the Step Code.
So, I got to this meeting, and I sat down, and I said, “Oh, it's awesome to see what you're doing. It's really similar to what we did in British Columbia.” And they said, “Oh, yeah. We copied you.” And that was just such a cool moment for me. I mean, obviously they did their work and there's differences, as well, but just to see how ideas can grow, how someone can take it and build off of it to make it better and adapt it to their local context was really cool. It was a pretty cool professional moment for me just to be like, “Wow, this is amazing that these ideas are spreading and high-performance is spreading within the codes.”
I'm sure there are a lot more jurisdictions that are looking at that, but it can totally spread. In terms of advice, I'd say I think that's something that BC has done pretty well is really providing a lot of support to bring the local industry along. So, BC produced a number of guideline documents with different documents geared towards different parts of the industry. So, like a one for design professionals, and then one for contractors, and one for big buildings and small buildings and that kind of thing. They also did lots of training sessions—specific training sessions that were geared towards different parts of the industry. And I think those things are super important to support a smoother transition to implementing code. Because if we just put a code out or a standard out, and no one knows how to build it, we're not actually going to get the results that we're planning on, right? It goes back to that practical side. It's just not going to happen or it's going to take a lot of time. So, really putting a lot of effort into bringing the industry along, training them, giving them case studies, bringing them up to speed, I think is pretty important for jurisdictions that are looking at implementing that sort of code.
JF: That's fantastic advice. What do you think is the next frontier for building science and for the decarbonization movement? I'm assuming it's material science and then kind of embodied carbon, but is there any specific facet within that kind of broad range that you that you're looking into?
BC: I think that's definitely the big one—embodied carbon. I think that it's still the early days. We still need to learn a lot on how we model and calculate because it's really hard to do it with any level of accuracy. There are so many differences between materials and transportation and that kind of thing, and so we've seen projections and results that are sort of all over the map, just depending on different modeling approaches and assumptions and that kind of thing.
So, I think the industry has a lot to learn in terms of how we model that. And then actually reducing embodied carbon emissions, there's some really tricky issues. You know, concrete, how do we do that? Mass timber is a good solution. It’s more costly, but it has a big impact. So, I think that's the next big thing, but first that we still have a lot to learn and a lot to tackle as an industry all while making sure not to glance over the operational carbon side.
I think we have a really good sense of what the solutions are, but we need to be doing it in way more buildings than we currently are. So, making sure we're scaling—that too is important.
JF: I couldn't agree more. I'm probably going to cut what I'm about to say, but I think it's really cool that I got to do this one thing earlier this year. So, the second largest outdoor earthquake simulator in the world was testing mass timber’s seismic resiliency in San Diego, and I got to visit the site and actually see it. At this site they did something like a hundred tests on mass timber up to I think they reached 7.3 on the Richter scale. And the windows didn't crack. The timber just absorbed the shock so well and even though it's ten stories tall, it seems like there's virtually no structural damage. So that's pretty cool.
BC: There's been some really cool high rise mass timber buildings across North America, and we've been involved in a couple in BC. It's super interesting, but there’s still lots more to learn there. Still, it's a pretty cool technology.
JF: How do you think public awareness and advocacy can drive positive change in addressing the climate crisis within the building science or Passive House space?
BC: I think it has a huge role to play. I mean, so much of what we see and design on buildings is driven by consumer demand, right? So, if consumers are asking for low carbon, if they're asking for more comfortable spaces, they're asking for healthier indoor air quality, that's a big lever to help us actually be able to do it and design it into our buildings. I always think that if people knew the benefits of say, just for example, an HRV with a high-quality filter on it to filter out wildfire smoke when we have wildfire smoke events, which are all too common now in Vancouver, if people only knew the kind of health value of that, everyone would want one, right? It would be like a no-brainer to put them in all of our buildings.
I've heard from our friends in California that air tightness is now driven by needing to keep out wildfire smoke, and that's a great driver and one of many reasons to do it, but having that kind of awareness and consumer demand, I think is super important. So, definitely, we need to keep educating the general public and help people understand the value so that they're asking for it, and then that helps us get it into buildings.
JF: I think Mike Ingui of the Accelerator is always fond of saying that, you know, people don't even know that they can ask for these things—they don't know that it's available. I feel like the sustainability question is always framed in this idea of sacrifice. If you're doing something that's good for the environment or even ethical and ecologically sound, you must be sacrificing something, but Passive House shows that it's actually the total opposite.
BC: Totally agree. I mean, another example is windows. Think of all of the luxury condos in Vancouver and our cities around the world that have really poor performance windows that are super cold in the winter. So many people would pay for a really comfortable triple-glazed, low-conductivity frame window if they knew that they could get that, so there's huge value there.
JF: To play on the point, there was a very wealthy person I knew in Brooklyn who lived by a highway, and he got a Passive House retrofit, but didn't even know it was Passive House. He just knew it was good for acoustic performance, and he was amazed by how quiet it was. For him, sustainability was an afterthought. He cared about the fact that he could sleep without getting woken up by the noise from the highway.
BC: Yeah, exactly. You've got to tell the world that this is the quality that they can have.
JF: All right. So, I would like to finish up here with one last question. I'd like to know, if you could give any piece of advice to the fresh-out-of-school version of yourself, given the experiences you have now, what do you think that would be?
BC: That's a good question. It's the hardest question, right? My career has led me to where I am, and I'm really happy with it, and you kind of learn a lot along the way. I think if anything, maybe just to keep doing what you're doing. I think we always need to give ourselves more confidence and give ourselves the kind of leeway to ask lots of questions and to learn about different things in different areas. But, you know, it's maybe not the most exciting answer, but it's just always a learning process, right? Just keep learning—which I'm still trying to do.
JF: I couldn't agree more. Brittany, thank you so much for taking the time to hop on the podcast with us and to speak and to share your experiences. It's just absolutely invaluable.
BC: Well, thanks for having me. It's been a fun conversation.