It has been another amazing year for ISI’s signature learning and networking event. Our 2022 conference delivered actionable strategies and insights to advance sustainable infrastructure, with expert panel discussions that connected powerfully to the current operating environment. The event also offered a deep dive into Envision application examples while affording many opportunities for ENV SPs to renew their credential. As we turn the page on this year’s conference, here are some key takeaways.

The hub of a unique community.

Our conference had something to offer everyone in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. Professionals from the public and private sectors joined the sessions; among them planners, architects, engineers, developers, owners, constructors, and infrastructure operators.

We lean heavily on our base of engaged Envision champions to deliver this annual conference. So let there be no doubt, we could not have pulled this off without your contributions. We would like to thank the organizing committee, including Justin Waples from the Central Contra Costa Sanitary District and John Williams from Autocase for helping develop this year’s lineup of session topics and speakers. We would also especially like to salute our session moderators and speakers who delivered fantastic content throughout this two-day event.

All told, there were over 1,300 registrants, with most sessions garnering more than 500 attendees from every corner of the infrastructure sector across the US, Canada, and beyond!

A big win for learning and credentialing.

Attendees took the opportunity to fulfill their ENV SP credentialing hours. In case you were not able to attend, the recordings of each session will be available in your ISI account before the end of the year. View them there, rather than through your Zoom Events platform, to earn education hours towards your credential maintenance.

These topics and more were explored: Climate extremes and their implications for infrastructure planning; the future of net embodied carbon; tackling 21st-century infrastructure disparities; climate science and Envision at NASA; the current landscape of policy and administrative priorities; sustainable infrastructure financing; lessons from the airport sector; and the ways in which infrastructure owners and partners are “looking beyond” regulatory compliance on projects.

ENV SPs also took advantage of the pre-conference courses held on November 15 to learn about the Envision framework and examples of Envision application. The morning courses qualified for credentialing hours: “Initiating Envision Use for Organizational Readiness”; and “Preparing for Project Success.”

Strong sponsorship.

We received the support of numerous sponsors, and it was thanks to their generosity that we were able to offer the conference free to attendees. We are grateful to all our conference sponsors:

Platinum: AECOM  | HDR  |  MDR Strategy Group Ltd.
Gold: R.V. Anderson Associates Limited  |  WSP
Silver: Ethel G. Rubio | 5engineering, llc  |  RS&H

More ways to connect.

New this year, professionals and students submitted poster abstracts in response to a call from ISI’s Academic Committee. Each day of the conference had a poster and networking session where attendees could join breakout rooms to interact with the presenters. At the close of the conference, on behalf of the committee, ISI’s President & CEO Anthony Kane announced the winners of the poster event, who received prizes in the form of ENV SP training credits.

In the professional category, the winner was Mark Bruder, P.Eng, ENV SP of R.V. Anderson Associates. Bruder and colleagues submitted a proposal describing work done to rehabilitate the Springbank Reservoirs in London, Ontario.

There were two winners in the student category. Kase Poling, a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering at Virginia Tech, presented his project focusing on recommendations to enable the future design and reconstruction of more resilient communities following the 2016 West Virginia floods. And Naoki Weldon and a team from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo presented a sustainably-designed transitional housing community, named the Coastal Gardens Community, that used the Envision framework for enhanced environmental, social, and economic benefits.

ISI thanks all participants who took the opportunity to present their projects during the poster sessions.

Final word

Last but not least, ISI extends a sincere thanks to all of you, the attendees who are on the “front lines” in leading the change we are seeking. Your commitment helps drive a future of sustainable, resilient, and equitable civil infrastructure!

ISI 2022 Virtual Conference Program

Washington, D.C. — July 21, 2022 — The Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure is pleased to announce that the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure has­ joined ISI, moving from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD), where it was established 15 years ago. At ISI, it will be called the Zofnass Research Program.

“The Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure has completed its mandate to create a sustainable infrastructure rating system and produce research that was directly supportive of Envision,” said Harvard Emeritus Professor Spiro Pollalis, the driving force in the program since 2007. “ISI is the natural home for the Zofnass Program following an evolution that saw the research shift to an industry focus with the potential to provide even more value to the sustainable infrastructure community.”

“The Zofnass Program was instrumental in developing Envision and then supporting its growth through a strong applied research program, so it was always very important to ISI that we keep the name of the program’s namesake and benefactor, Paul Zofnass,” said ISI’s president and CEO Anthony Kane. “It’s amazing how Envision serves so well the original purpose, and that’s due to the first three years of very intense work, and in all honesty, that opportunity wouldn’t have come to pass without Paul.”

Honoring the Legacy of Paul Zofnass

Today, with more than 130 Envision-verified infrastructure projects and more than 6,000 Envision Sustainability Professionals around the world, it is easy sometimes to forget the pre-Envision era.

In the 2000s, for example, there were other rating systems, but none were built specifically for infrastructure, and none were as versatile as Envision is today. Creating such a rating system was going to be a heavy lift. It required the combined knowledge, experience, and resources of the largest firms in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (A/E/C) industry.

Zofnass opening the Planning Sustainable Cities Workshop at Harvard in November 2016. Long after the launch of Envision®, he remained a magnetic presence in the program named after him.

“I recognized that if anyone could appreciate and understand the subtlety and issues of sustainable design, it would be the engineering and design firms who were our clients,” Paul Zofnass wrote in the foreword to the 2013 book Infrastructure Sustainability and Design (edited by Pollalis and colleagues), as he looked back on the mid-2000s.

In that decade, the Environmental Financial Consulting Group (EFCG), the firm Paul Zofnass founded in 1990 after 17 years in finance, had grown into one of the leading advisors to the industry. EFCG’s work included helping firms navigate the industry’s first big wave of M&A activity in the 21st century. For this group, Paul was an influential and well-respected figure.

Industry champion
He was also a winsome and magnetic presence, drawing senior leaders from industry and government to EFCG’s annual summits. A long-time environmentalist, he would ask them at these conferences and on client calls, Was there not a universally-agreed framework to measure sustainability in infrastructure?

No, there wasn’t. Paul thought: Was that not the crux of the issue right there — that you couldn’t manage what you couldn’t measure? Even more than that, lacking the ability to compare one project to another with a usable rating system, his clients were missing what could be an influential tool to improve their environmental performance and bottom lines. “How can we help the engineering firms do better and do good at the same time? That was Paul’s single-minded focus with sustainability and infrastructure,” Joan Zofnass recalled of her older brother’s vision.

In 2007, the Zofnass family decided to approach Harvard, proposing the idea of developing a rating system. Dr. Spiro Pollalis, who was recommended by a colleague at EFCG, became the initiative’s key partner within the Graduate School of Design. Paul’s financial contributions and encouragement seeded the new initiative tasked with developing a sustainability rating system for infrastructure. It would benefit, most importantly, from the resources and expertise of the A/E/C firms that were Paul’s clients.

A risk worth taking
“People didn’t really know what sustainability was, let alone share a common technical language to talk about it, but they knew Paul,” recalled Anthony Kane. “It was hugely important that here was a well-respected and influential individual, telling his clients that this is what they needed to be focusing on.”

Left: Paul at the February 2015 Water Infrastructure Conference at Harvard; Right: With Bill Bertera (middle), ISI’s first CEO, and Tim Psomas (former CEO of Psomas Engineering), an initial board member and early champion of ISI, in 2012.

Paul concluded that if he could get them to join this initiative, it could fly, recalled ISI board member Marty Janowitz, a former VP at Stantec who became an early and longstanding supporter of the Zofnass Program. “Paul personally called up the firms and got their CEOs on the phone. Nearly all of them said yes, almost without hesitation.”

Getting that support from company leaders ensured the program could fuse leading research insights. The promising start also made it possible to benefit from the best of other rating system initiatives, like the one being developed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In 2010 ASCE, the American Public Works Association (APWA), and the American Council of Engineering Companies created ISI and by 2011 ISI and the Zofnass Program had entered into a strategic collaboration. Working together, they were able to integrate the best of industry experience with cutting-edge academic research to deliver Envision in 2012.

A promising foundation
But in 2007, none of that was even remotely on the horizon. So it is incredible now to think that at Harvard for the initial meetings, seated around the table to discuss the concept of the rating system, were 25-30 of the most prominent engineering, design, and architectural companies in the industry, together with public agencies and academics. The draw for them was the opportunity to be involved in creating it, developing it, and ensuring that it would be usable and understandable to their clients.

On an individual-professional level, what took place were incredible, fascinating discussions about how it could work, philosophically and technically, participants recall. Gathering in Cambridge, MA, there were sub-meetings for geotechnical, water, and every conceivable discipline. The firms flew their experts in. It was all pre-Zoom.

At the April 2012 Envision launch event.

Paul remained very engaged, always opening major events or announcements, and that dedication to the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure continued long after the launch of Envision. “Sometimes he and Joan were coming that morning from New York, and we were not starting before they would arrive,” recalled Prof. Pollalis. “They were at every event — they did not miss one.”

As the rating system initiative progressed and requests went out for financial support to continue the work, once again, Paul Zofnass and his new endeavor at Harvard would almost always receive a “yes.” The opportunity to develop the rating system was too big to let go of.

Single-minded vision
After the early concept meetings, what followed was a very intensive period to create the Envision of today, with its ability to capture and align the total value of infrastructure with the credits and points in the framework across various infrastructure characteristics.

Looking back, it was an exceptional feat — combining the required talent and experience in one place to pull it off. One might call it a remarkable confluence, not to say miraculous. But to put it that way might lead you to overlook the convening power, the magnetism, the tenacity, and clarity of vision of someone who succeeded in getting the industry, against considerable odds, to rally around the idea of a single sustainability rating system for infrastructure: Paul Zofnass.­­

Back-to-back events in May 2022 provided opportunities to put Envision® front and center on an international stage. Recognition of Envision as a transformative framework for sustainable infrastructure keeps growing, and below are some key activities President and CEO Anthony Kane and Managing Director Melissa Peneycad undertook to continue that momentum.

Anthony Kane speaking at the Envision Italia Event (left) and at the University of Genoa (right).

Envision Italia and University of Genoa Keynotes

While in Italy for the Envision Italia Conference, Kane gave a presentation on sustainable infrastructure at University of Genoa, on May 25. A 550-year-old university well known for its program in sustainable architecture, engineering, and design, Università di Genova provided an opportunity for Kane to speak about the state of sustainable infrastructure in front of an audience of faculty and students (some of whom are using Envision in their master theses!). The next day, he traveled to Rome to deliver a keynote address at the Envision Italia Conference, organized by our Italian partner, ICMQ. Senior leaders representing the companies, operators, and ENV SPs that make up the Envision community in Italy were in attendance. The event’s return to an in-person format after more than two years delivered valuable project updates and lessons learned on developing sustainable infrastructure in Italy. In the same week, ISI was also pleased to announce that another Italian project had received an award through Envision Italia, the Bologna Bypass Project.

ISI’s Melissa Peneycad moderating a session at the International PPP Forum in Barcelona.

UNECE Conference

Melissa Peneycad represented ISI at the 6^th UNECE International Public-Private Partnerships Forum in Barcelona (May 4-6, 2022), where PPP practitioners from around the world gathered to challenge one another and share best practices. She moderated a panel on how the circular economy can be supported by “People-first” PPPs, that are evaluated against five people-first outcomes and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a discussant in another session, she provided live assessments of projects from Mexico, Brazil and Slovenia that were submitted to UNECE as case studies aligning with its People-first evaluation methodology, leading to a robust discussion about sustainable PPP development.

Melissa Peneycad giving the opening keynote at CSCE 2022. Right: Professor Rishi Gupta, the conference chair.

Canadian Society for Civil Engineering Conference

Peneycad delivered the opening keynote at Canadian Society for Civil Engineering (CSCE) Conference in Whistler, B.C. ISI-approved Envision-qualified trainers from luuceo consulting presented an Envision Workshop, and ISI also had a booth at this conference. Attended by 550 academics and practitioners, from 14 countries, this conference provided an unparalleled opportunity to communicate the value of Envision on projects alongside ISI’s partner in Canada, the CSCE. The event saw participation by key infrastructure leaders and decision-makers, including plenaries by the federal and provincial (British Columbia) ministers of infrastructure. A full announcement about CSCE 2022 appeared on the Envision Canada website.