The BCT Team at Next Step Living

The BCT Team at Next Step Living

We love hearing about our successful BCT alumni. It is especially exciting when several of them work at the same company. That's why this picture, which Bob Hastings (the guy in the center) just sent through is so cool! Our five BCT alumni at Next Step Living are Edison Dika, Nick Celularo, Bob Hastings, Chris Kennedy, and Andy Truong. Not pictured is Chris Haringa. About the company: Next Step Living is a one-stop resource for informed advice, expert workmanship and guidance about available incentives and rebates, Next Step Living partners with more than 400 municipalities, civic organizations and leading corporations to deliver energy-efficient and environmentally friendly solutions. Those solutions include: Home energy evaluations Weatherization work (air sealing and insulation) Roofing and windows Heating and cooling (ductless mini splits, HVAC systems) Solar panel installation Named to the Inc. 500 list of fast-growing companies, the 2014 Global Cleantech 100 and recognized by the New England Clean Energy Council as an employer of the year, Next Step Living has more than 800 employees in Massachusetts and...
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BCT’s Peggi Clouston Speaks About “Emerging Technologies in Wood and Bio-Based Building Products”

The concluding talk of this semester's impromptu BCT lecture series “Building with Wood” was delivered November 21 by our very own Dr. Peggi Clouston. After covering the many benefits of wood and other bio-based materials (such as bamboo), she illustrated several of her research projects that featured mainly composite applications of these materials in structures. Her talk followed Nic Clark from KLH. Dr. Clouston teaches courses in structural wood design, material mechanics and bio-based composites to students of construction technology, architecture, and engineering. Her research focuses on modeling and characterizing the probabilistic mechanical behavior of structural bio-based composite materials as well as innovative wood products and systems. Links: Presentation (available soon) Bio-Based Building website Dr. Clouston's faculty page ...
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Nic Clark of KLH Speaks About Cross-Laminated Timber Buildings

Nic Clark of KLH Speaks About Cross-Laminated Timber Buildings

Nic Clark, Managing Director of KLH UK joined BCT on October 15 to present KLH's many projects worldwide in which they successfully used a new wood-based product, cross-laminated timber (CLT). Examples ranged from lowrise schools to residential buildings up to ten stories high. This lecture was the second installment in this semester's impromptu BCT lecture series “Building with Wood”, following Robert Malczyk of Equilibrium Consulting. KLH is the worldwide market-leading manufacturer of large-format glued laminated timber elements, especially Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) panel products. KLH and its subsidiary KLH UK has been involved in the construction of thousands of wood buildings, including the 8-story Stadthaus in London, UK and a recent 10-story apartment building in Melbourne, Australia. Links: KLH presentation KLH UK website KLH Austria website ...
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New Publication: “A framework for integrated urban metabolism analysis tool (IUMAT)”

Abstract: IUMAT (Integrated Urban Metabolism Analysis Tool) is a system-based sustainability analysis tool. It quantifies and aggregates the social, economic and environmental capitals of urban activity in an integrated framework focusing on the metabolic flows of urban development. This paper builds on previous work on urban metabolism and advances an analytical framework that defines how the consumption of resources and resulting environmental impacts are calculated as indices of sustainability in an urban region. The benefits of integrated urban modeling using the proposed framework as well as the data sources are detailed. The underlying analytical framework for the proposed tool applies the dynamics of choice, time, and scale towards dynamically interpreting demographic and economic factors. IUMAT's calculative modules for land cover, transportation, and energy/water/resource use are described as well as the modality of connections between the modules. Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamad Farzinmoghadam, Simi Hoque, A framework for integrated urban metabolism analysis tool (IUMAT), Building and Environment, Volume 82, December 2014, Pages 702-712, ISSN 0360-1323,...
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Clouston co-authors book chapter on laminated bio-based composites

Clouston co-authors book chapter on laminated bio-based composites

A recently published book titled "Bio-Based Composites for High-Performance Materials: From Strategy to Industrial Application" (published by CRC press) includes a chapter on "Characterization and Strength Modeling of Laminated Bio-Based Composites", which was co-authored by BCT-faculty Peggi L. Clouston, Sanjay R. Arwade, and Alireza Amini. See below for an excerpt on Google Books: Link: http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781482214482...
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