Earth Day 2025: Sustainability Discussion with Micah Vainikka and Kyle Holmes

As we celebrate Earth Day this year, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the role the construction industry plays in shaping our planet’s health. Every decision we make, from the materials we select to the methods we use, has significant and lasting effects on the environment.

The built environment is responsible for nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Traditional construction methods often depend on resource-intensive materials, produce significant waste, and consume large amounts of energy. By integrating sustainable principles, we can achieve the following benefits: reduce our carbon footprint, conserve natural resources, and improve occupant health.

Sustainability in construction is quickly evolving thanks to advances in technology and a growing emphasis on environmental stewardship. At Team Blue, our Preconstruction team has a hand in leading the way toward a more eco-friendly built environment.

Micah Vainikka, Corporate Director of Preconstruction, and Kyle Holmes, Senior Preconstruction Manager, discussed insights on how sustainability drives our project planning and more.

Transcript:

Q: Why does sustainability matter, and what’s a contractor’s role in delivering a sustainable project?

Micah: Sustainability should be important to everyone because it’s all about the future and future generations. And in construction, especially, there are so many things that impact what the future is going to be like, and especially in the buildings that we build, how they’re going to feel, how they’re going to operate, what it costs to operate these buildings. That’s all very important and is decided early on in the early stages of planning construction.

Q: Walk us through a project where sustainability was a focus.

Micah: Recently, we just turned over a large medical project for a client that had ambitious sustainability and energy efficiency goals, and our role in that was to help them maximize their dollars, so they would get an ROI on this, but also so they have a good-performing building. What we did early on is, just as a group, between the engineering team, there was a consultant that did energy modeling, the architects, and then us as the contractor, combined our experience on past projects and what the current technology and opportunity was, and we started going through these design options and pricing each one. Our role was to assign the cost, what the ROI was in the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) measure. So they set an initial goal for the project of getting to 160 EUI of value, and we created a path of different tactics to hit that goal. That was through things like changing a certain part of the project to chilled beams instead of a traditional VAV system. They also did other unique things with the mechanical systems, especially the heat recovery chiller was a big component. And just as we were getting to that 160 goal, the leadership dropped, and created a more ambitious energy EUI goal of 130 and that’s when geothermal was introduced to the project as really the best way to get to that stretch goal, and it was one of the first and largest Darcy Geothermal Systems in the nation that we implemented and that got us to the stretch goal of 130.

Q: What was the value added in this effort for sustainability, and why would an owner go this route?

Micah: A big thing was with the uncertainty of what energy is going to cost in the future; they want to lower whatever the energy is going to take to operate their building, to require less from the grid, or whatever they’re going to rely on in the future. They don’t plan to be going anywhere, they’re a large institution, and they probably have a higher threshold than a lot of owners as far as what they’re willing to invest in sustainable methods…The ROI component is big because there were a lot of things that we studied that they chose not to do. For instance, we could have switched the entire building to triple-pane windows all the way around. That wasn’t worth the squeeze, and we looked at it, even with ambitious goals, and how long they plan to own the building.

Q: Were there any lessons or takeaways that you think could apply to other projects for other owners?

Micah: To me, when you create data around the decision-making process, when everyone is speaking the same language with the same metrics, instead of just what I would say are green platitudes. When it comes down to real decision-making ability with real return on investment metrics, then people can make smart decisions and take those lessons to the next project, too.

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The impact of projects with energy goals and innovative designs will always go hand in hand with our commitment to long-term value and data-driven decisions. From redefining mechanical systems to embracing renewable materials and optimizing enclosures, this Q&A showcases how bold leadership and thoughtful collaboration can serve as a blueprint for future sustainable development.

Happy Earth Day from Team Blue!