Elizabeth Turner, Phius Certified Consultant (CPHC®) and architect at Precipitate, recounts her experience at the recent Phius Train the Trainers event.
Nine trainees from across the country gathered at Phius’ Chicago HQ in late July to participate in the Phius Training the Trainer Training (T3).
I was fortunate to be one of them as we spent the weekend learning training protocols and discussing best practices in passive building education with Phius staff members Katrin Klingenberg, Lisa White, and James Ortega, as well as current Phius Certified Consultant (CPHC®) instructors, who joined us virtually to share their wisdom from decades of experience.
The last in-person Phius T3 event was in 2018, so this was a clear commitment to growing the capacity for CPHC training to meet growing demand by doubling the current number of instructors. I took the train from Minneapolis, so I like to call my experience T4: Training to the Phius Training the Trainer Training. For those who haven’t tried it, the train can provide a much more relaxed and lower carbon option for travel.
I’ve been passionate about energy modeling and building energy efficiency since my first energy modeling class in 2009, and I took the CPHC training myself in Spring of 2016 to grow my knowledge. Although I already had an MS in Sustainable Design, I found the CPHC training to be an incredibly valuable upgrade to my building science knowledge, delivered in a format that I could fit into my full-time work schedule.
It’s exciting to see how far the training has come since then: revamping the Phase I online training and making it asynchronous, adding an online option for the live instruction sessions to increase access, and creating a Phius Associate training for those wanting to learn more with no prerequisites required.
My CPHC training has enabled me to not only bring in-depth building science expertise to every design project I work on, but also certify many multifamily and single-family projects here in Minnesota and beyond. It’s been thrilling to work with multiple project teams to get their projects certified, but demand for CPHCs is growing – particularly as policies increasingly incentivize certification. I look forward to helping train the next generation of CPHCs as we scale up advanced building science knowledge to reach more projects.
There are nine instructors in this new batch, with half of us part of the Phius Certification Staff and half CPHC practitioners experienced in multiple types of Phius certification. We spent the weekend primarily practicing how to most effectively teach the design exercise and WUFI Passive energy modeling that make up the core of the live session portion of the CPHC training.
Most of us brought experience with teaching and training, from colleges on both coasts and everywhere in between, including West Point. It was exciting to be with a group of other experienced educators sharing best practices from years of teaching experience, and I left the weekend inspired with new teaching approaches and techniques. I’m passionate about teaching sustainable design and am delighted to be able to continue this work through CPHC training. I’ve taught sustainable design since 2010, first as a research and teaching assistant, and then through Sustainability Studies and the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota, and it is rare to have the opportunity to discuss how to make teaching of energy efficiency accessible and impactful. I love that Phius is committed to not only certification of projects, but high-quality education.
My biggest takeaway from the weekend was a renewed appreciation that the heart of Phius is truly as an educational non-profit dedicated to continual improvement. Yes, the certification is important, but so is growing our understanding of building science and communicating lessons learned with the broader building community. There is also an ethos of improving the ease of moving through the design and certification process, and increasing capacity to impact as many projects as we can.
If you’re not yet a CPHC but considering taking the leap, we hope to see you in a future training session!
