What a Year This Was – Year End Greetings 2023

Last year was dense. So much has happened I am having trouble putting events in chronological order. I am not alone. The Phius team started to echo this feeling. We all felt it: a seismic shift in the building industry – on multiple levels.

This year, things the passive building community has worked for (and dreamed of) became reality. It did not happen overnight. 

I remember talking with Ian Finlayson, now the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) head, in 2009 about strategies to include passive standards into the code. First steps followed, including an alternative compliance path for Phius. That path was approved largely in light of research conducted by Phius in partnership with Massachusetts-based Building Science Corporation, and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. That work established climate-specific passive building standards. The project yielded a peer-reviewed proof-of-concept report for a climate-specific standard setting methodology, which was published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

Massachusetts has since forged ahead and is pushing beyond alternative compliance paths. After 8 completed proof-of-concept Phius projects were evaluated for cost, constructability and performance, Massachusetts adopted an Opt-in Energy Stretch Code at the end of 2022. In the first few months of 2023, we saw 12 jurisdictions adopt the Stretch Code. Over the course of the year, that number has grown to 32, including the City of Boston.

Less than two weeks from this writing, the code is to take effect in Boston! Come January 2024, all multifamily buildings larger than 12,000 sq. ft. must meet passive building standards. A similar pathway has been prescribed for commercial buildings. 

This is huge! Seismic, truly! An entire building industry in one part of the country is retooling quickly….

And we have you to thank!

Your vision and your hard work and your persistence and your courage has made an enormous difference. Across the country, people are pushing and pulling, advancing high performance building from the ground up and the codes down. That was evident in Houston at PhiusCon this year. When we announced Houston as the 2023 location, it raised some eyebrows. But you all kept an open mind, and besides it being a great event, I think we all learned one thing: our community is everywhere!

What does this mean for Phius?

For one, the exponential growth we have long been waiting for really kicked into gear. 

Building certifications as well as new submissions have outpaced all previous years. The Phius Certification Team had to expand, as did other departments. The total staff number peaked recently at 25 including interns, and not including the many consultants who work with us on delivering training nationwide and verifying product performance. 

To keep pace, we retooled our content and customer management systems, long in the works, just in time. Those are but two major enterprises that were undertaken to shore up the organization and to make it ready to handle that growth. I am happy to say that everyone just did an almost superhuman job, and worked as hard as possible to make the growth happen.

I’d like to give a huge shout out, so much gratitude, to the entire Phius team – the best group of people anyone could ever be lucky enough to work with. Really, without you we could never have done this and seen such success. I can’t list everything we are all working on (I am already blowing through the 800 word limit for our blogs) nor everyone on our team, but I will mention a few.

The policy team is unbelievable. Between Zoe Rader’s persistence and diligence and Isaac Elnecave’s unmatched policy expertise and Jennie Eber’s push to motivate members and supply them with tools Zoe and Isaac Elnecave come up with: You guys rock! You work at the heart of the change engine. Keep doing what you are doing. It is working and we’ll build capacity in the meantime!

Our research team, spearheaded by Graham Wright and Al Mitchell, does not rest. They’re always asking the hard questions and looking for the simplest solutions (but not simpler). Much of their time has gone into our hallmark product of standard setting. ASHRAE’s consensus-based Passive Building Standard 227P is finally on the home stretch – expected to be available in 2025 – and the new REVIVE framework is another exciting program to go live in the beginning of 2024.

Jennie Eber and Michael Franco aced another unbelievably great conference, this time in the hot and humid south, and it could not have been a greater success! This year’s Phius Passive Projects Design Competition winners were great, from single-family zero energy to multifamily high- and mid-rises across the country! Check them out! 

The communications team, not sure how you do it, Max Lapthorne and Mike Knezovich, you seem to be everywhere, on social media, Forbes and the Chicago Tribune. And training under Josh Ruedin and Lisa White’s guidance on curriculum development has grown significantly. Not only in numbers but also in new offerings that respond to requests to assist our constituents in tackling the challenges a CPHC faces repeatedly. More to come in 2024.

Very special mention is in order acknowledging the Phius leadership team: Lisa White, James Ortega and Mike Knezovich, who worked particularly hard to build out the capacity, organizational structure and management we now need to sustain the growth.

James worked meticulously to build out the cert team with some of the best in the industry and to prepare the team to step up to the plate for you as your expert team member during the certification process. Remember, certification is not just a plaque at the end, we consult and help you through the entire process from the first sketch to occupancy. We are here for you – we got this. 

Lisa took unprecedented leadership in scaling up productivity and organizational processes all the while still doing research (with the help of Walter Grondzik) and driving forward the envisioned next frontier of Phius city block microgrid certifications. A report on her work is waiting to be officially published by the AIA. Get a preview here with our Facilitating the Renewable Transition blog series.

And Mike took on building out operations and human resources, all the while scouting to hire the best possible new team members who believe in our mission and are eager to join. 

In addition to all that, a big shout out to the unwavering support of an amazingly dedicated Phius board who believe in the Phius mission and its staff. Thank you for being the rock we can always rely on!  

As for myself, this year has been a challenge. I won’t lie. A “be careful what you wish for” kind of thing. So much happened, I can hardly remember. Where is this ride going? How to prepare for what is next? Year end inspires pondering, reassessment, evaluation. 

I am very happy to report that two strategic partnership negotiations a looooong time in the works finally concluded: I am thrilled that we’ll join Greenbuild in Philly next year as our knowledge needs to grow beyond a small tight-knit community. We need all of us, the entire sustainability community, to come together. We promise, we won’t lose the personal touch. That’s in our DNA. And a second long-standing negotiation came to a close just in time before year end: WUFI Passive will finally transition into the cloud and be expanded with the many tools you have long been asking for to make workflows easier, more precise, more efficient and less costly. I can’t wait for that announcement and launch in the coming year.

I like to close with an observation from Mike Knezovich on the rapid growth process we just went through: “This year we (the organization) went from adolescence to adulthood.”

We are ready for 2024.