Steve Burke
39, senior director, sustainability
Suffolk
Boston
As a sustainability professional who has worked in both the design of projects and the construction of the Boston Suffolk constructions management firm, Burke easily goes from one to the other and interacts well with peer professionals from both parties.
“When we really review the design and review the drawings, we can return to an owner and give them the list of recommendations that consider the life cycle of a property and investment,” he says, “the systems that will help you achieve the best energy performance and the lowest operating cost, but also the lower life cost with the maximum amount of profit and value.
Burke, who has given more than 50 external presentations on sustainability, charge the Boston Carbon Leadership Forum, a collaboration with the Boston Society of Architects.
He claims that knowing how to convince the owners of the business case to create sustainability by focusing on issues such as energy independence and security is especially important in a company with clients from different fields of the country and with different political opinions.
Customers who are built in “highly vulnerable” markets “completely understand what these problems are,” says Burke.
“One of the greatest potential shortcomings of the sustainability space is that we try to lead by virtue, instead of their company. The consequences of our actions and the greatest considerations of the environmental impacts of what we do is important. That is why sustainability professionals are on the career they are.” “ But you will not convince someone to be on the fence or rest in the other direction, that only because the ice sheet melts faster than expected, they should spend more money on their investment.It cannot be the reason why we convince someone … to do something different. It must be based on the numbers, the value and an increase in the life of the asset or other factor.
Burke also says that the dissipation of federal financing and the standards for sustainability under Trump administration -ensued with sustainable decentralized efforts -are forcing national companies such as Suffolk to create a “ catalog of solutions depending on geography ”, and to the regulatory requirements “ only to ensure that we find the Basiline components that he is ” that is used to the project of a project that is being used to “ by the process approved anywhere.
Burke does not believe that owners will retreat their commitments to climate and sustainability “completely. For many, it will continue to be business as usual.”
In a previous role as Consigli Sustainability Director, Burke developed his first reference points and carbon neutrality objectives and achieved the International Living Future Institute certification. He also played an active role in the first Net-Zero Hotel in the United States, Hotel Marcel, in New Haven, Conn.
“This was a unique process for restoration, a replacement, because it was originally an office building that was moving to a hotel, a historical project where you could do nothing outside,” he says, and sought a passive house and a clean zero certification. “With the passive house, a great emphasis is made on air sealing and air tension, which further complicates the fact that nothing can be done outside. Everything must be done from the inside.”
Burke also helped to form the National Leaders Network of Sustainable Construction, in collaboration with Buildengaren and Sto Building Group, after being part of similar for design leaders. The new group consists of 60 U.S. sustainable construction professionals.
At Sufolk, he also works with climate technology companies through the starting accelerator of the firm and the technology group.
Burke points out his collaboration with Tech Innovator Systems. “It makes a cement replacement product that runs in an electrical manufacturing process, which significantly reduces carbon emissions associated with the most intense carbon material in concrete, which is cement, and is one for a replacement drop with cement limestone products,” he says. “It is encouraging, as someone who co -presides a low carbon concrete group in the Boston area, to see that this local solution is available and the amount of interest.”
