Corporate

Boston – Scalora Consulting Group, an owner’s representative firm in the design and construction industry, has launched with a commitment to guiding clients through any project from concept through completion while leveraging cutting-edge technologies and supporting sustainable initiatives.

The company’s team is focused on high-quality customer service while meeting schedules and budgets in the most efficient way possible. Scalora Consulting Group provides turn-key project management services, or a la carte consulting services, and works with clients in the corporate, development, higher education, independent school, life sciences, healthcare, energy, and defense industries.

Scalora Consulting Group’s project

Scalora Consulting Group / Photo by Liesl Clark

leadership team, led by Enzo Scalora, Keri DiLeo, Jonathan Ricker, and Jill Finn, has worked together for many years. With a goal of shifting to a more collaborative, interdependent design and construction community, the firm works with its supply chain to partner with innovative firms to share knowledge and resources to make a positive impact on projects, industry, and society, while training the next generation of talent. Providing owner’s representative and project management services across the country, Scalora Consulting Group is headquartered in Massachusetts with a satellite office in New Hampshire, and a presence in Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Washington, with further expansion planned.

Representatives of Scalora Consulting Group say they believe in the concept of “new capitalism,” which argues that a company can make profits for its shareholders, while simultaneously making a commitment to its stakeholders and improving social well-being, thereby balancing profit with purpose. The company has expanded its typical responsibilities to include interests of workers, communities, and the environment while promoting equality in the workforce and striving for a genderbalanced company. For this reason, the company is an early adopter and certification is pending as a B-Corporation.

The firm currently has over 20 active clients with 40 different projects, including Northfield Mount Hermon School, Gilder Center; Analog Devices, global headquarters; Dr. Franklin Perkins School, new middle school and campus; Waterstone Properties, Rock Row development; and Nashoba Brooks School, The Discovery Barn.

Rendering of Kula Bio office

Natick, MA – Dacon and Kula Bio are creating a new headquarters in the MetroWest.

In May, Kula raised $10 million in seed funding from environmental funds including the Collaborative Fund and the Nature Conservancy. This project is in response to sales growth. Designed for versatility that will support various business functions as they grow, the space contains executive offices, open employee seating, a research lab, manufacturing spaces, an inventory area, grow room and amenities.

Currently situated in Greentown Labs, Kula Bio is a 3-year-old startup that is pioneering sustainability with Kula-N, a super charged fertilizer for agriculture. Based on the premise that longer living,

Rendering of Kula Bio kitchen natural microbes contain stronger nutrient capabilities, Kula’s patented process creates bacterial microbes that transport nitrogen from air into fertilizer. It does this via a reactor technology which enables the microbes to store energy from renewable electricity and carbon dioxide. Applied via irrigation, energy then slowly releases nitrogen directly into the soil. Once depleted, the bacteria die and decompose naturally, increasing carbon into the land.

Bryan Garcia speaks at the signing event for House Bill 6441 in Guilford.

Hartford, CT – The Connecticut Green Bank is marking 10 years of its model successfully enabling progress toward its goal of confronting climate change by mobilizing private investment into the state’s green economy.

Over the last decade, the Green Bank and its partners have deployed nearly $2.3 billion in capital for clean energy projects across the state. Projects recorded through FY 2020 show that, for every dollar of public funds committed by the Green Bank, nearly an additional $8 in private investment occurred in the economy. As a result, Green Bank-supported projects have created thousands of jobs, reduced the energy burden on thousands of families and businesses, avoided millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions, and facilitated rapid growth in the deployment of clean energy.

Established on July 1, 2011, by Governor Dannel Malloy and the general assembly, the Connecticut Green Bank was the first of its kind in the United States.

“As we mark our 10th anniversary, we are motivated by the leadership and

Governor Lamont signs House Bill 6441 into law as CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes looks on. commitment from Governor Lamont and the continued support of the Legislature, demonstrated by the recent expansion of our mission,” said Bryan Garcia, president and CEO of the Connecticut Green Bank.

The Green Bank recently relocated its headquarters from Rocky Hill into the Atlantic Screw Works building in Hartford. Some recent Connecticut Green Bank program highlights include more support for commercial businesses and nonprofits, growing the green bond market for retail investors, reaching solar parity, and helping homeowners reduce energy costs. With bipartisan support, Governor Lamont’s House Bill 6441 was passed and will extend the green bank model beyond clean energy to include environmental infrastructure. This increased scope will encompass structures, facilities, systems, services, and improvement projects related to water, waste and recycling, climate adaptation and resiliency, agriculture, land conservation, parks and recreation, and environmental markets such as carbon offsets and ecosystem services.

by Monika Avery

As we continue to talk about the purpose of place in a post-COVID world, it is important to reflect on why certain activities take place during the workday and how the physical and virtual environments can support them. Meetings, for example, are an ancient ritual. Why, when, where, and how will we have them? And yes, we will. Meetings will prevail, but now we must integrate best practices of interior design to support multiformat meetings.

Logistics of how the new multiformat meeting is facilitated will come with a set of organizational protocols clearly communicated to employees. Most of us have experienced when every meeting attendee is remote. But as some of us begin to appear back in the office, what happens

Open collaboration

when we have a blended scenario?

Teams will have to ensure consistency for both the onsite and remote participant experience. They may question whether to assemble the team that is in the office in a conference room and call those working remotely. Is there a camera, microphone, and speakers in the room

875 Main Street, 2nd Floor, Cambridge 617.354.2501 | www.andersonporter.com so all participants can see and hear each other? Or does the in-office team take the meeting at their desk – camera in laptop, ear buds, microphone?

If most of the team is in the office, then is it a predominantly in-person meeting? What if taking the meeting at one’s desk is disruptive to those around them? Where do we go then? One thing is certain: teams must be able to pivot between the multiformat meeting experiences – in-person, virtual, and the hybrid. These experiences must be engaging and immersive. When the entire team is remote, informal interactions must be planned carefully to ensure full team participation.

Emerging technologies have made supporting remote participation easier. According to USIS, a global technology infrastructure and professional services firm, AV tech trends for the built environment can be contactless, frictionless, hybrid, touchless, virtual or digital events. Responding specifically to the demand for on-site communications via digital display and video walls, interactive displays are evolving to touchless gesture-based and hover interactions. Bi-directional mirroring pushes content from shared displays to personal devices. Wireless presentation platforms enable personal device content to be mirrored on the room display and vice versa. Ceiling microphones and auto-tracking video cameras ensure remote participants are engaged with the presenter.

Not all meetings are formal when the team is in person. Ideas and actions can be generated through informal settings and walking paths through a corporate campus. The idea of scheduling meetings outside has become more attractive postCOVID, as health safety and access to open air is fresh on our minds.

Outside meeting spaces conducive to conversation, collaboration, and safe socialization can range from garden cafe settings accessed through interior food service areas, roof decks and patios, courtyards, amphitheaters, and walking paths. SLAM’s landscape architects work with the workplace design teams to identify opportunities for exterior workplace environments for our clients.

In the many ways and places that multiformat meetings will be facilitated in the future, they will continue to be a key component of interaction, communication, and organizational success. Optimizing the design of a variety of meeting places, inside and out, and digital technologies to accompany them, is a critical component of workplace design.

Part three of the Purpose of Place series will focus on amenity spaces that optimize the hybrid workplace experience.

Monika Avery, NCIDQ, IIDA, LEED AP is a principal and interior designer for The S/L/A/M Collaborative (SLAM).