This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
I gotta say there's a story that I'm obsessed about. We've been talking about in the newsroom. Three years ago, a group of sixteen youth climate activists decided to take the state of Montana to court, challenging a provision in a law that limits climate change considerations during environmental reviews of proposed fossil fuel projects. This week, Tim, they won that's right.
On August fourteenth, a judge there ruled that the current state law violates the youth plaintifts right to a clean and healthful environment I write spelled out explicitly in the state's constitution, Carol, was a sweeping, one hundred and three page decision. The judge also in that decision determined that climate change is hurting the young Montanas and that their injuries will grow with increasingly severe climate impacts.
It's a big deal. Climate change, we know, impacting everything increasingly well, stressing our infrastructure. We see that impacting investing, taking a lead on decision making and strategy. So with that in mind, it's kind of where we wanted to start with our next guest, Kim ver Hiling, is with us. She is president of National Buildings Practice at STV and Engineering and Infrastructure firm. We talked last October from a broadcast at NJIT and so we are delighted to have
Kim back with us. Kim, how are you.
I'm good. Thanks so much. It's great to hear from both of you again.
And thank you for giving a bit a leeway because we did kind of want to start with you that. I am curious the conversations Tim and I both are about what you are having within your firm about climate change, the impact and how that might be in terms of future building, future construction, infrastructure build out, how we maybe have to be dealing with it and thinking about.
It absolutely well. Climate change is integral and we're thinking about it on every single project. Obviously STV does a lot on the transportation side, but we also do a lot and the building side, and so we're all always thinking about while we're designing or renovating, how are we going to be making sure our buildings are energy efficient?
How are we thinking about and impact to the climate as well as resilience, And we see that a lot with some of the storm conditions that have been happening across the country, especially the Sulmar we've sainted, right, and all of that is really incumbent on us as professionals to take the lead in thinking about better solutions for how we construct our facilities in the future.
Kim I was talking to a colleague of mine and Carol, I don't think I told you the story, but we were talking about he's looking for a new place in Brooklyn and he was on the first floor and he asked about flooding and you know when the sewer's back up, because it's a normal thing when it rains now and
the super told him, Oh, don't worry. We'll give you these special doors that you put on the bathroom when the suit when it rains, so the overflow stays in the bathroom and doesn't come out of the bathroom.
See the sand bag.
How wonderful, Yeah, how wonderful. Right, not a solution.
Well, that's right. Well, and obviously those structures that are already in place. It's about prevention, but we want a design so you don't have to do those sorts of things right, that we have the right infrastructure in place so it never comes to the point where you have to put in those those flood barriers.
Yeah, it's kind of crazy. Having said that, you know, one of the other things that you guys think about a lot is bringing the world into buildings and making kind of you know, bringing nature into environments. We work in an incredible office where there is tons of light, tons of glass. People walk in and they're like, this is where you work, and I'm like, yeah, it's pretty amazing because I've worked in a basement studio in a New York building where there were no windows and I
had no idea what was going on outside. That is also a big part of what you guys do and thinking, whether it's schools, whether it's correctional facilities. Talk to us a little bit about daylighting.
Yeah, so in daylighting is really the idea that you're letting natural sunlight either directly or indirectly into a building, but you are correct daylight and is one of our top design philosophies, irrespective of what building type we're looking at, and I think for those of us during COVID when we were scrambling to create offices in our homes, we realized if you were in a space where you weren't getting daylight, and you weren't also having that connection to nature.
It really did impact your mood. And so when we think about daylighting, especially on the educational side, it does help improve both student health and we've seen that it impacts student achievements, so math and reading scores directly. And conversely, if you don't have that amazing daylight come in, we have discomfort, which can reduce learning, and it's also detrimental to mental health. And that's kind of how it ties over into as we think of justice and correctional facilities.
It's on that side, it's about providing a normative environments so that occupants can thrive and not have unsafe conditions, both for staff and persons in custody.
TIMV, I don't know about you. Oh you were working here. You didn't really work from home, right, But when I were here, when I worked from home for six or seven months, I actually mind we were doing our live broadcast, but I set up right next to my window and it was just really kind of nice. But I wanted
to be by daylight. So I totally get that, Like that makes a lot of sense, and I think it made a real difference feeling that you really couldn't go anywhere but to at least have kind of a beautiful view outside.
But one challenge here with this idea is that so much of what we see with where kids are in school and the existing infrastructure, this is stuff that's built, you know, Kim, more than one hundred years ago. Can you retrofit this stuff to make it to bring the daylight in or do you have to start over?
No, you're absolutely right, but it is true. Obviously, new construction is much easier because then you can orient the school towards to north light, which is always the nicest light to bring in. So renovation is a little bit more challenging. But of course we can look to the exterior wall to really maximize the window and how much light comes in. And then we also use other technologies, meaning that outside you may bring in all that light,
but you also don't want glare. Right, there is a point where it gets to be too much light and then all of a sudden, the temperature goes up in the classroom and it's uncomfortable, right, and then there's a different problem. And so what we do on day lighting strategies is we think about maximizing the glazing, but also putting in shading controls that will monitor and limit depending on the amount of light coming in during the day.
And we also tie that to artificial lighting in the classroom with sensors so that we can also be energy efficient, which goes back to our earlier conversation about climate change. Right, And those are some of the moves we're doing to try and lessen the operational costs for school districts.
Hey, Kim, just got thirty seconds. If you had to talk about, like, what is the biggest trend when it comes to building right now? What is it?
Well, let's say the trend to building, I would say it's about a holistic experience and human and mental health and making sure we're providing in by aments that help people thrive for the task at hand in that environment.
All right, Well, I feel like our boss definitely got that memo years ago. I'm very lucky this is not one of them old We're like, the windows don't open them, just door there are now for years. Yeah, the old Excellon building that was the basement of.
The New York Stock Exchange.
Right, and you're like, I have no idea, what's going on outside. Hey Kim be well, have a great rest of the summer. Kim Varhollig, she's president of National Buildings, practiced at STV, joining us on zoom there. This is Bloomberg.