PAE

Our teams love to combine fun and learning! Our growing Los Angeles crew toured the Angel City Brewery in the historic warehouse that originally housed the John A Roebling’s Sons Co,?the cable maker for the Brooklyn Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge. Oddly, they also made SLINKY's! Know anyone that might want to join our fun team? Check out our job openings: https://lnkd.in/g7mZJvNU

“Together we come up with better solutions than if we were to analyze our work independently.” – Dawn MacFadyen Dawn MacFadyen and Colleen Peach joined a thoughtful discussion at the AIA Los Angeles Women in Architecture panel on Achieving Project & Professional Growth. Each panelist offered their experience on the ever-evolving landscape of remote/hybrid work in the AEC industry and how it has affected client relationships. It was particularly great to hear the discussion on what it means to collaborate effectively when there is no one right answer.

Awesome article on the success at OHS’s expanded facility. It makes me smile to know these users ????? are loving their new space before finding their forever homes. My favorite excerpt: “Animals now “graduate” from the Behavior Modification Program 40% faster than before. In 2023 alone, more than 150 animals completed the program, demonstrating the efficiency and care provided in the new facility.” Such a wonderful project team to be a part of! PAE

I visited the Royal Danish Library at Aarhus University to find something I’ve been trying to track down for a couple of years now - old documents summarizing the Nordic effort in the late 1960s to harmonize the building drainage standards. Nordic Committe Building Regulations (NKB) sought to establish performance-based building regulations between Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland. This harmonization project was one of the earliest and largest undertakings of its kind in Europe. It also laid the groundwork for the European harmonization effort a few decades later which concluded with EN 12056 standard, one of the most recognized building drainage design standards in the world today. While the project itself was not successful in terms of harmonizing the Scandinavian countries under a single standard of practice, it did produce some useful design guidance and standardization that was incorporated into national standards. The design guidance took into account the latest scientific knowledge at the time in this specific field of hydraulics, primarily drawing from the work conducted at NBS (renamed to NIST) in the US, BRS (renamed to BRE) in the UK, CSTC (renamed to BuildWise) in Belgium, as well as from various Scandinavian institutions. In autumn of 1970, the institutions and organizations that formed the NKB were some of founding members of the Water Supply and Drainage for Buildings branch of the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB W062). Just to highlight a few interesting points from this Nordic harmonization effort: peak drainage flow profiles for various building types were considered as well as ensuring a minimum scouring force equal to 2.5 N/m2 is achieved at least once daily to limit the accumulation of solids in the drain. An empirically modified variation of the Colebrook-White formula for free-surface flow was used over the traditional Manning Formula for estimating flow for various gradients. A 1/5th cross-sectional filling area of the stack was determined suitable for the single stack drainage configuration, less than the 1/3rd to 1/4th maximum range reflected in Robert Wyly and Herbert Eaton 1961 research at the NBS, but more that the 1/6th filling area recommended by CSTC a few years earlier and in the EN 12056 standard for maximum drainage flow in a stack published a few decades later. Why is this niche topic worth revisiting? A majority of the sanitary drainage design standards are based on prescriptive methods and theory developed in the mid-20th century, much of which is well known to be outdated and based on arbitrary judgments that are largely irrelevant today. 21st century plumbing systems need to be designed and constructed to address 21st century concerns such as water stress, nutrient cycles, and carbon intensive water supply and treatment systems, resilient sanitation systems, and efficient usage of materials.

It’s back-to-school season! Here in Portland we are keeping busy supporting Portland Public Schools. Recently the newly modernized 100-year-old Benson Polytechnic High School opened to students. On the boards are the modernizations of Ida B. Wells High School with Mahlum, and Cleveland High School and Jefferson High School with Bora Architecture & Interiors. We are also hard at work supporting PPS in a district-wide decarbonization plan to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% by 2030, reach net zero emissions by 2040, and phase out existing fossil fuel infrastructure by 2050. PAE is working closely with Oh planning+design, architecture, New Buildings Institute, Ameresco, and PPS to create a roadmap for these decarbonization goals to help identify the best way to implement GHG emission reductions across facilities. The roadmap also includes graphics and interactive tools to help students, teachers, and the community understand the goals.

Don’t miss the upcoming AIA Los Angeles Women in Architecture Committee’s annual conference POWERFUL XI: TOGETHER on Oct 4! Our own Dawn MacFadyen and Colleen Peach will be speaking on the panel: Holistic Collaboration – Achieving Project & Professional Growth. You won’t want to miss this event full of inspiring speakers!

The Contra Costa County Administration Building in Martinez, CA, has made history as the world’s first public project to achieve TRUE Gold certification for construction! In addition, the project is all-electric and targeting LEED Gold. This incredible TRUE milestone means over 95% of construction waste—more than 15,000 tons—was diverted from landfills and given a new purpose. From salvaged marble and granite blocks to repurposed wood panels and concrete, every piece has been thoughtfully reused or recycled. Kudos to everyone involved in this achievement! #ZeroWaste #SustainableBuilding #TRUEGold #GreenBuilding

We’re proud to announce that the Upper School at Bush has officially achieved ILFI Zero Energy Certification! The Seattle-based independent K-12 school also gained Passive House and Salmon Safe certifications in pursuit of their ambitious commitment to sustainability. Read more here:?https://lnkd.in/gT4CVCVH

The state of Texas is projecting a 73% population increase over the next 50 years! When thinking about all that water usage, how do we ensure water security for a growing state? PAE’s Associate Principal Justin Stenkamp was a technical advisor for the Texas Net Zero Water Toolkit, which aims to guide property developers, owners, and other professionals in smart water design. By using Net Zero Water principles that offer developments ways to capture, store, and treat water onsite, buildings can shift the traditional water cycle and provide for their own water, independence, and resiliency. View the toolkit to learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gVEF-ASy Toolkit Authors: Grace Gilker, Sharlene Leurig

Congratulations to the Seattle Aquarium and LMN Architects on the new Ocean Pavilion! This new space includes a 350,000-gallon main along with an exterior public viewing space. The estimated 1.2 million annual visitors will enjoy over 100 different species like leopard sharks, spotted eagle rays, and even a mangrove forest! Crucially, PAE’s recommendation to include water-to-water heat exchangers that will recapture heat from tank water being discharged and use it to heat the incoming makeup seawater from Puget Sound will save millions of BTUHs of energy each year.