Posts in Category: Workforce, Diversity

How to Boost Home Performance and Durability with Foundation Vapor Protection

Contribute to Four Essential High-Performance Goals with Targeted Below-Slab Protection
How to Boost Home Performance and Durability with Foundation Vapor Protection
As a member of the EEBA community, you play a crucial role in leading the way towards constructing homes that are high-performing, healthy, and resilient. Now aligned with this objective are the self-educated homeowners and prospective buyers who are demanding high-performance homes. Because of this, builders (as well as the raters and architects who support them) are looking for product solutions that: Add value to their customers’ investments Demonstrate a core commitment to being a “responsible” builder Differentiate themselves in a competitive marketplace Our hope at Stego (and the purpose of this article) is to help provide useful support and education so that EEBA builders can better understand vapor transmission at the first side of the home - the foundation - and the role below-slab vapor barriers play in achieving high-performance goals in new homes. No, we are not talking about commodity 6 or 10-mil poly sheeting. Minimum residential code (2021 IRC... read more
 

Women in Construction

For this year’s Women’s History Month, EEBA invited three knowledgeable women: founder of Younger Homes Danielle Younger, co-owner and Marketing Director of Lifestyle Homes, Karen Kicinski, and co-founder of Charis Homes, Glenna Wilson, to share with us how they entered the sustainable building industry. Following a discussion about how the industry has impacted them and how they’ve impacted the industry in return, they also discussed the sustainable technologies and innovations they have implemented and provide advice for women looking to enter the residential construction industry. In this month's feature, we chose to highlight these three women to recognize the countless women that work courageously to advance equality and opportunities for women in the United States. Aaron Smith: Tell us about the most challenging and rewarding aspects of day-to-day operations in this industry. In what ways do you feel you uniquely meet those challenges? Karen Kicinski: The... read more
 

The Importance of Recruiting A Diverse Workforce, with Lakisha Ann Woods, President & Chief Executive Officer, National Institute of Building Sciences

Edited Highlights from EEBA Summit presentation, Sept.14, 2021

Today, I will talk about the importance of recruiting a diverse workforce. My goal is to end this conversation with clear, actionable goals for everyone. We want to have a plan in place. I think that's what’s so important. I want to tell you about some of our learning objectives today. Of course, we'll review the data because I always say, "the numbers don't lie." We must look at what statistics tell us, and that will guide us in the direction of where we need to make a change. We really have to increase our awareness of our unconscious bias…how we can move from those biases and find tools to help us be more successful? It's important not just to set an action plan, that your board or your company will say this is our plan and then, four years later, no one's touched that plan. You want something that's a living document that you can continue to focus on, reassess, reinvent, and move the needle.

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