Left: Our team helped the University of Victoria Student Housing and Dining project achieve its goals of Passive House and LEED v4 Gold certification.
― Advisory Services
We are committed to designing places where human life can thrive and entire ecosystems flourish.
As a global leader in regenerative design, our regenerative design team offers a range of advisory services and is dedicated to enhancing your project’s potential.
Addressing our climate imperative begins with accurately assessing our environmental footprint and informing more regenerative outcomes tailored to each client and project.
Our regenerative design leaders are subject matter experts in sustainability strategy, visioning, facilitation, and policy development. They are also fluent in green building rating systems, building science, performance modeling (energy, water, whole life carbon, daylight), healthy materials, resilient design, mass timber design, post occupancy evaluation, and third-party funding to support research and innovation efforts. We are skilled interpreters of our client’s vision and the regulatory and certification environment and know how to deliver strategies that balance many priorities.
We are pleased to offer our clients the following services that can be tailored to suit each project’s needs.
Vision Session and Charrette Facilitation
Pre-Design is the optimal time for visioning and goal setting. We have trained facilitators that are skilled at curating bespoke engagement sessions that are inclusive and welcoming and enable all voices to be heard. We can customize a visioning session to suit your project’s unique needs—one that authentically reflects the people in your organization while also highlighting emerging trends and innovations in sustainable design. From a visioning session, we translate what we have heard and can create a project’s design brief or sustainability charter that guides future decisions.
Green Building Certification Services
Third-party green building rating systems offer a framework for measuring a project’s performance across many areas. Green building certifications can offer validation of the sustainability and well-being claims you seek to make for a project.
Our in-house specialists are collaborating with authorities on developing and fine tuning the details and processes involved with the world’s leading certification programs from the USGBC, CAGBC, ILFI, IWBI, BRE and other institutions.
Effective certification consulting relies on integrated and efficient work to establish intermittent milestones throughout the design and construction phases. Our team has deep experience with the intricacies of each rating system and can navigate the requirements quickly.
Most rating systems are organized around the same broad categories: site ecology, water conservation, decarbonization, materials stewardship and human health. But each one relies on slightly different reference standards or versions of those standards. Our team is adept at communicating these differences and how they relate to the other regulations governing a project, such as the local energy code.
We are pleased to offer a range of certification services from early feasibility studies to full service offering of managing the full application and certification process.
Well-versed in certifications:
VanDusen Botanical Garden Visitor Centre, Living Building Challenge Petal Certified; CBRE Vancouver Office, WELL Gold Certified; Dockside Green LEED ND and BD+C Platinum Cerrtified.
Green Building Policy Consulting
Our team is well versed in municipal, provincial, and federal green building and sustainability policies that govern and influence our work. We are pleased to coordinate policy requirements and ensure the necessary reports and analysis are completed as part of submission requirements.
Building Performance Analysis
Within our team, we are pleased to offer a range of early design and performance analysis that enables us to shape and inform the design process. Our extensive deep green experience is paired with industry-leading tools to accurately assess, analyze, and model various options and outcomes.
Reductions in operational energy and embodied carbon, coupled with improvements in occupant health, wellness and comfort add significant value to any project. Over a project’s typical lifespan, this early investment in analysis and guidance can result in significant benefits that outweigh the initial upfront costs.
Our building performance analysis includes:
nj climate and site analysis
nj early-stage operational energy and carbon modeling
nj daylighting and circadian lighting
nj computational fluid dynamics and natural ventilation modeling
nj embodied carbon analysis ↑ We undertook a post-construction, whole-building life cycle assessment (LCA) of SoLo to understand the embodied carbon associated with the project. → The Switch List and Embodied Carbon Benchmarking Report are two initiatives helping improve wellness and performance in our projects.
Materials and Specifications Reviews
We care about occupant health and have invested time and research in moving the industry towards designing healthier environments. We have created a methodology for selecting and reviewing building products and materials in collaboration with architecture and interiors teams. Our process and close integration with the team balances the requirements of all major certification programs, healthy and low carbon best practices, and performance and durability criteria.
For a product to be added to our materials library, it must adhere to a number of sustainable criteria.
Post Occupancy Reviews
If you would like to assess user satisfaction or evaluate how well a completed building is functioning, our team can administer post occupancy surveys to gather insights on key performance factors.
Funding Services
There is a tremendous opportunity for clients mandating high performance sustainability goals on their projects to leverage funds from local, provincial, federal, and private granting organizations to support their vision of environmental sustainability. Through our in-house regenerative design team, we have secured support in the range of $25,000 to $25 million in funding for either project directed research or sustainable initiatives such as net zero energy ready design, Passive House, renewable energy technologies, daylighting studies, and storm water management infrastructure, to name a few.
Examples of successful fundraising prepared by our team include the following:
nj $25 million—Whitby Sports Complex
Federal Green and Inclusive Community Buildings (GICB) program funding to support Zero Carbon Building design.
nj $5 million—Confidential Client Natural Resources Canada Green Construction Wood Funding to support the design and construction a tall mass timber project
nj $2.4 million—St. Mary’s Hospital Accredited Acute Care Community Hospital Renovation
Addition from the Province’s Public Sector Energy Conservation Agreement (PSECA) fund for moving the project to carbon neutral/net-zero energy performance.
nj $2.2 million—UBC Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability
Recipient of Sustainable Development Technologies Canada Grant
nj $750,000—Earth Sciences Building Canada Wood Council funding for design, structural testing, and construction costs.
nj $450,000—Life Cycle Analysis
CleanBC Innovation Grant to develop a LCA plug in.
nj $350,000—University of Victoria Student Housing and Dining Facility
Better Buildings BC Net Zero Energy Ready Fund.
nj $39,000—University of Victoria Student Housing and Dining Facility
Better Buildings BC Net Zero Energy Ready Fund Design Incentive.
nj $25,000—White Rock Operations Building Federation of Canadian Municipalities.
nj $350,000—Dockside Green Federation of Canadian Municipalities grant, and $85,000 from the Ministry of Environment ($35,000 for Green Technologies and $50,000 for developing the business case for the biomass system).
nj $429,000—Resource Circularity: Reimagining Cities as Regenerative Ecosystems Research Study Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agricultural Clean Technology (ACT) Program fund.
nj $95,000—Resource Circularity: Reimagining Cities as Regenerative Ecosystems Research Study
BC Centre for Agritech Innovation.
nj $100,000—Resource Circularity: Reimagining Cities as Regenerative Ecosystems Research Study Various industry partner in-kind contributions.
nj $250,000—Modular Mass Timber Housing Research
Province of British Columbia DIGITAL’s Housing Growth Innovation—Discovery Fund.
nj $50,000—Mount Pleasant Community Centre Federation of Canadian Municipalities (50%), City of Vancouver (15%), Greater Vancouver Regional District (10%) for Life Cycle Cost Study.
nj Shannon Mews Mixed-Use Development
BC Hydro High Performance Building grants Significant percentage costs covered a significant percentage of energy modeling and district energy study costs.
Our Team
Kathy Wardle
M.E.S., LEED Fellow, LFA, WELL AP, RELi AP
PRINCIPAL, CANADIAN DIRECTOR OF REGENERATIVE DESIGN
As the Principal and Canadian Director of Regenerative Design at Perkins&Will, Kathy possesses over two decades of experience in spearheading regenerative design initiatives. She leads a multidisciplinary team dedicated to advancing project performance, ensuring they are healthy, resilient, and low carbon. As a trained facilitator of project processes, Kathy has experience in facilitating sustainability and design workshops for large- and small-scale projects for a diversity of public and private clients. Kathy collaborates with a diverse range of clients, including private developers, institutions, and civic organizations to achieve project objectives while advocating for change within the green building sector.
Manuela is a seasoned sustainability professional with over a decade of experience leading high-performance building projects. She is recognized for her ability to translate ambitious sustainability goals into actionable strategies through inclusive and collaborative engagement with clients, consultants, and interest holders— ultimately turning vision into reality. Manuela guides teams from vision to execution—identifying, implementing, and communicating the strategies that deliver on the greatest opportunities.
Cheney Chen
Ph.D., P. Eng.
SENIOR ASSOCIATE, SENIOR RESEARCH LEAD, PERFORMANCE ENGINEER
In his role as a lead researcher and performance engineer, Cheney Chen draws upon a rich background that includes 15 plus years industry experience. His areas of expertise encompass building performance modeling, passive house design, and sustainable architecture. Cheney actively participates in code development committees and working groups at regional, national, and international levels, shaping energy and carbon-oriented building regulations and codes.
Dr. Mohamed Imam
Ph.D., Architect AIBC, Int’l Assoc. AIA, LEED AP BD+C, CPHD ASSOCIATE, SENIOR RESEARCH LEAD
Mohamed is a Senior Architect with over ten years of experience in architecture, computation, and performative design. Holding a Ph.D. in architecture and an M.Sc. in Sustainable Buildings, Mohamed’s expertise encompasses various areas, including resource circularity, machine learning, and data-driven decision-making. Mohamed is a senior research lead at Perkins&Will and is currently leading research on building integrated agriculture systems and exploring opportunities for circulate resource management strategies.
Anna Beznogova
OAA, CPHD, LEED Green Associate, WBLCA AP REGENERATIVE DESIGN ADVISOR, ARCHITECT
Anna is a Certified Passive House Designer, RELi Accredited Professional, Life Cycle Assessment Professional (WBLCA AP), and LEED Green Associate. Anna brings an integrated approach to advocating and advancing sustainability goals and best practices in projects. With a decade of experience, Anna works with teams to manage green building certification programs such as Passive House, LEED and CAGBC Zero Carbon Building Standard, building performance analysis, and carries out research on healthy and low carbon building materials.
Our Team
Amy Brander
M.Eng, WELL AP, LEED AP BD+C
REGENERATIVE DESIGN ADVISOR
With a background in structural engineering, Amy is an embodied carbon leader and works with teams to quantify, report, and reduce embodied carbon through LCA modelling to meet various green building rating systems and policy requirements. Amy is fluent in a range of green building rating system programs such as LEED, WELL and the CaGBC Zero Carbon Building standard, and municipal green building regulatory policies, and facilitates workshops on resilient design. She is a member of the Perkins&Will Embodied Carbon and Resilient Design Working Groups, and the Carbon Leadership Forum BC.
Shiva Honarvar
LFA, LEED AP BD+C
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN ADVISOR II
With a background in architecture and Master of Engineering Leadership in High-Performance Buildings, Shiva helps teams understand the intersection between architecture and mechanical design. Combining her knowledge in both fields, she takes an innovative approach that bridges design and environmental responsibility, demonstrating that thoughtful architecture can improve quality of life while honouring the planet. Shiva is fluent in several rating systems including LEED, WELL, CAGBC Zero Carbon Building Standard and the Living Building Challenge.
Dayna Kroeker
LEED AP BD+C
SUSTAINABILE DESIGN ADVISOR II
Dayna Kroeker is a sustainability professional with over a decade of experience in the AEC industry. With formal education in green building and planning, she works directly with owners and project teams to coordinate sustainable LEED or other green building project certifications from design through construction and certification. Dayna is committed to advancing sustainable design through relationship building, research, and continuous learning.
Nicole Pfeifer
B.Eng, EIT, LEED AP BD+C
SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN ADVISOR I
With a degree in civil engineering, Nicole utilizes her practical engineering skills to accelerate a positive impact in the built environment. Nicole brings to design teams knowledge of healthy materials, low carbon design, and overall environmental systems performance. Working on a diverse range of project typologies, Nicole has experience in facilitating the LEED process during design and construction phases.
Reham Jaradat
LEED AP BD+C
SUSTAINABILITY ADVISOR II
With a strong background in sustainable architecture, Reham leads innovative design projects that prioritize environmental responsibility. She excels in creating eco-friendly spaces that balance functionality and aesthetics. Reham is passionate about integrating green building practices into every phase of design, ensuring long-term sustainability and resilience. Her expertise includes energyefficient design, LEED certification, and regenerative architecture. Reham is committed to advancing the field of sustainable architecture through collaboration, research, and continuous learning.
Since 1935, we’ve believed that design has the power to make the world a better, more beautiful place.
That’s why clients and communities on nearly every continent partner with us to design healthy, happy places in which to live, learn, work, play, and heal. We’re passionate about human-centered design, and committed to creating a positive impact in people’s lives through sustainability, resilience, well-being, diversity, inclusion, and research. In fact, Fast Company named us one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in Architecture. Our global team of 2,500 creatives and critical thinkers provides integrated services in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and more. Our partners include Danish architects Schmidt Hammer Lassen; retail strategy and design consultancy Portland; sustainable transportation planning consultancy Nelson\Nygaard; and luxury hospitality design firm Pierre-Yves Rochon (PYR).
