Name: Monica Funston TreadwayUSGBC-NCC Member Since: 2008
What's your occupation?
My day job is as a senior Project Manager with Hathaway Dinwiddie. I
split my time: about half the time, I’m an internal consultant on
sustainable projects and in-house LEED educator, and the other half
spend on the Stanford campus working on new construction, interior
improvements and historical renovation.
I started at HD in 1999 after a two-year internship with PNM at a power
plant in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. In some ways, it was like
coming home for me; I’d gone to PNM after completing my Master’s in
Structural Engineering at UNM, but my undergraduate degree is a BS in
Structural Engineering from Stanford.
My very first project at HD was the James H. Clark Center for the Bio-X
project at Stanford. Sir Norman Foster designed it, and it incorporated
some revolutionary concepts in shared workspace, structural design, and
sustainability. It was a $104-million-dollar project, and my first
introduction to sustainability, and I was a newly minted PE straight out
of graduate school.
They say that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,
and I have to think that my experience with the Clark Center project is a
great example of that in action. Not many new PE’s get to work on that
kind of project, at that kind of scale.
How did you get involved in green building?
Working with Foster and Partners on the Clark Center really opened my
eyes to how sustainability could be beautiful. At that point in time, we
weren’t so much talking about “green” or “sustainable”; we were just
trying, as a general contractor, to keep up with Foster’s vision.
The architect would talk in terms of providing access to natural light
(which we now call “daylighting”), creating people spaces to connect to
other parts of campus (which we now call “community connectivity”), and
the like.
It also helped that Stanford truly gets sustainable construction in a
big way; their owner-side commitment drove us to change how we did
business, and in some ways helped make it easier to transition into a
sustainably-focused general contractor.
Anyway, the Clark Center was a classic case of learning on the job; in
the first six months of that project, I gained a tremendous amount of
practical knowledge about the collaborative process (we know it now as
“integrated project delivery”), budgeting, scheduling and quality of
work. It also taught me to get our design/build subcontractors on board
early, and sharing in the vision.
From that point on, pretty much every job I did at Stanford had a
sustainable element; either it was there from the beginning, or we
brought it into the process.
What is your greatest accomplishment, personal and/or professional?
I’m a parent, so I’m going to predictably answer that my greatest
personal accomplishment is raising two boys who look like they’re going
to be good men.
Professionally, I take a great deal of pride in the now
four-and-a-half-year-old Silicon Valley Branch of the USGBC’s Northern
California Chapter. We’ve worked our tails off, and I like to think it’s
paid off in community recognition. It started with visionaries like
Sharon Refvem, Marty Keller and Brandon Tiananov (the initial Chair) and
Heather Durham (the initial Programs Chair).
We’ve really come into our own, I think. I’ve led the Programs Committee
for three years now, and we’ve put on a successful program every single
month during that time. The people I work with on the Committee are
fantastic, and every one of them is a volunteer; we’re able to put our
meetings in a new location every month, and it’s a logistical headache
sometimes, but it’s worth it.
I’m going to be co-chairing the SVB with Mike Foster in 2012, and we’re
looking at a great year, with GreenBuild Expo coming to the Bay Area in
2012 and what we hope is explosive growth in membership.
What are you looking forward to in the new year?
GreenBuild Expo, without a doubt! It’s like a professional family
reunion for me at this point; it’ll be my eighth GreenBuild, and, it’s
going to be a watershed moment for not just the Silicon Valley Branch
but the entire Northern California Chapter.
Let’s face it: the Bay Area is the epicenter of sustainable construction
in the United States, and it’s not just about putting on a good
GreenBuild; it’s about putting on a spectacular GreenBuild.
I was giving a speech the other night about GreenBuild coming to the Bay
Area at our USGBC-NCC Inter-Branch Party and Sustainable Transportation
Showcase, and I pointed out that we pretty much define sustainable
here; we’ve got city-wide composting in San Francisco, we’ve got Tesla
Motors in Menlo Park, and we’ve got the highest concentration, in square
footage, of LEED-certified office space in the world.
GreenBuild Expo 2012 is going to be the best Expo ever presented. I’m
personally committed to it, our branch is committed to it, and we’re
confident. Who wouldn’t be excited?
Monica’s specialization is sustainable and LEED-standard construction,
and she is a respected and influential educator and mentor within the
Northern California sustainable construction community. She is one of
the founding members of her company’s Green Team, and she helped found
the USGBC Northern California Chapter’s Silicon Valley Branch. In 2012,
she will co-chair the SVB and serve on multiple GreenBuild Expo Host
sub-committees; she currently chairs the SVB Programs Committee. She is a
Living Building Challenge Volunteer Presenter, and is currently
studying with the Bay Area Sustainable Building Advisor Program to
become a Certified SBA. Follow on twitter @MonicaFunston
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