Sustainability Achieved with Durability: The Importance of a Continuous, Well-Installed Building Enclosure
Sophia Salah PE - Consulting Engineer
Stephen Holland - Project Consultant
ABSTRACT:
In our presentation, we will give a brief overview of what building enclosure design entails and how sustainability influences our design choices. Our discussion will focus on durability, and the importance of designing the enclosure systems to last for the entirety of the building’s expected lifetime. We will describe different building envelope systems and provide some examples on how the systems we discuss can be designed more durably. We will also discuss a case study of a hospital’s building enclosure construction including a review of vegetative roof assembly over a wavy roof above operating rooms, single-ply roof system at the main hospital roof, and waterproofing membrane at the hospital’s on-site water storage tank. Through this case study, the attendees will see how full time construction monitoring helped the Owner and Design and Construction Teams achieve a proper installation and performance of these enclosure systems, effectively maximizing the expected service life of these systems.
BIOS:
Sophia Salah PE - Consulting Engineer
SGH (Simpson Gumpertz & Heger)
Sophia Salah is a consulting engineer at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (SGH) since 2008. SGH is a national engineering firm that designs, investigates, and rehabilitates structures and building enclosures with offices located in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, and Southern California. Sophia has her Bachelor of Science degree in structural engineering from University of California San Diego (UCSD) and was hired by SGH after stumbling upon the engineering firm during an on-campus job fair. While working full time at SGH, she returned to get her Master’s degree in structural engineering from UCSD. She is licensed as a Professional Engineer in California and Massachusetts. Born and raised in San Diego, she has now braved 6-ish winters and is not looking forward to the coming cold season.
Stephen Holland - Project Consultant
Stephen Holland is a project consultant at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (SGH) since 2016. Steve graduated from Northeastern University in 2016 where he received his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Civil Engineering through Northeastern’s BSMS program. Steve originally learned about SGH through their Structure’s Department, but then was introduced to their Building Technology Department where he really found his passion. Once a week, Steve travels to Northeastern for ACE Mentoring where professionals from the industry teach high school students about Architecture, Construction, and Engineering.