Q&A on Scenario Modeling with Chris Urbanus of Burgess

Burgess Construction Consultants is a national leader in third-party quality assurance and energy testing based in Texas. The company has led the way in new home construction inspections, energy rating and testing and construction team training for over 30 years. 

Last month Chris Urbanus, Director of Energy Services at Burgess, chatted with us about his role at the company and how they leverage Scenario Modeling in their daily workflows. At Burgess, Chris oversees RESNET quality assurances procedures and manages the administrative efforts of implementing above-code scope of work such as HERS Ratings and ENERGY STAR. 

Burgess decided to start using Ekotrope’s Scenario Modeling feature 15 months ago. Since then, they’ve explored a variety of different use cases for the tool and have found it to be extremely valuable in providing better analysis to their builders. 

During the session, Chris shed some light on some of the challenges that Burgess, and many other raters and providers face, as well as how they use Scenario Modeling to mitigate and overcome these issues.

You can watch the entire conversation with Chris here or read on for the highlights of our conversation below.

Q: What services do you provide with Scenario Modeling? What questions are you trying to answer for your builders?

We believe being able to answer questions about how new codes are going to impact the builder or making the decision to move to something like ENERGY STAR or another program is an inherent service that we feel like we need to be able to offer to a builder. It’s not a fee service, it is just part of our responsibility as a HERS Rater. It’s for helping builders understand their options when it comes to making these decisions. 

Oftentimes the builders tend to ask these questions when they’re right up against these decisions’ [deadlines]. We have a team that does this, but we’re not a huge team. The Scenario Modeling tool allows us to do a lot of that analysis work in a much shorter time frame so that we can be really agile with our responses back to a builder. Even with a lean team, we can now handle all of these questions and get answers back to builders quickly.

Q: In the past couple of months, what have been the codes or programs that you’ve been analyzing the most?

We’ve been primarily looking at the 2021 IECC Energy Code in Texas and Colorado as well as ENERGY STAR. In Texas, builders can meet the 2021 IECC by meeting ENERGY STAR, so there’s a two birds one stone opportunity there. Additionally, as we’re all aware, the 45L Tax Credit is now tied to the ENERGY STAR compliance path. There are a lot of builders who have never done ENERGY STAR that want to know what it will take to get there. They’re starting to plan that out and determine if they’re within striking distance of the requirements and what they need to do to achieve these above code programs. We’re using Scenario Modeling to figure that out for them.

Q: Can you walk me through from the start of the analysis to having that conversation with the builder about the analysis? For example, something like 45L can you explain from start to finish how you work with the builder?

We usually start with the worst case scenario models and try to figure out how to get those over the threshold for passing. I’ll try to find a few things that I know will work for that smaller sample size. Then we take the most prevalent models, the ones that are built most, and use both the largest and the smallest models in their plan and use Scenario Modeling to see if the same changes will work there. 

In the meantime, we’re talking to the builder about non-negotiable changes so that we don’t include those as part of the Scenario Modeling analysis. 

After all of that is done, we get the Scenario Modeling report from Ekotrope and give that to the builder along with a summary pack that we put together. Then we’ll discuss those with the builder and see if they have any other options they want to try. This meeting is critical because the first round of Scenario Modeling analysis usually gives us several different options for compliance, which is always our goal. We never want to give them just one way to do it, but from those various options we can either move forward with one or continue to test things out with Scenario Modeling.

Q: Do builders react differently now that you’re able to give them these comprehensive results?

I think they do. It removes a lot of the questions and objections that normally come from only being able to test out changes on a handful of representative models. 

The hardest part of the process before was going in and making manual changes to the model to test things out and make sure the changes work on all of the plans. Being able to go back to the builder and say that this option works for 80%, 50%, or whatever the math works out to, it helps them make the decision much more quickly. We’ve been able to cut out a ton of the legwork and extra time to rerun specification changes and get to the endgame much faster, which is a win for everyone. 

Q: What are some things that you would like Scenario Modeling to be able to do that it isn’t able to do yet? And with that in mind, why did you decide you still want to use Scenario Modeling now even though there are some workarounds in certain use cases?

I’m really excited about the prospect of having the ability to model different versions of mechanical ventilation*. This is something that’s really important in Texas and, for builders who are still using air cycler or CFIS ventilation strategies, there can be a 15+ point reduction on the HERS Index if they make the switch. I know that anecdotally, but being able to run the scenario and give them one singular change that will have a huge impact would be huge for us. 

The other feature I’d like to see is being able to change above-grade walls based on their location* and not just globally changing them. 

We’ve been able to work around those things by working through models and building things that we know will work. We’ll just make those specific changes manually and then use Scenario Modeling to do everything else. So it’s a sort of hybrid approach to get to the end goal in those edge cases. 

*Please note: Mechanical ventilation is a recently added feature of Scenario Modeling. Changing location of above-grade walls is coming very soon. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we continue to improve and update the tool.

Q: How long does it take to get Scenario Modeling results and what do they look like?

It’s not long at all and I’ve used this for projects of all sizes. For a small project with 3 or 4 models and a couple of scenarios, you get the results in 20 seconds. For the largest projects when you’re maxing everything out in Scenario Modeling, you still get those results in less time than you would if you were doing a batch export CSV. It takes 15 minutes tops to get the results for even the largest Scenario Modeling project you can do. 

In terms of what it looks like, you get an Excel  spreadsheet with all of the naming conventions for the scenarios - because you have the ability to name each scenario so you can track it more easily on your sheet - and then all of the metric results. If you’re used to using spreadsheets and plugging them in manually, it’s giving those back to you in a way that’s really understandable and comfortable to see. You can format it in different ways depending on what you prefer. 

Overall, it’s really easy and, the way the report lays things out, it’s pretty easy to see things moving in a trendline within the rows of data. The results are quicker than you’d expect for something so robust. Most of the time it’s a 2-minute deliverable.

Q: Are there other use cases that you’re starting to see that you didn’t expect when you first started using the tool?

I was actually able to do this yesterday in a meeting. We were all talking high-level about energy efficiency improvements and trying to meet 45L and, as folks were talking, I just started running the scenarios in the tool. They didn’t ask me to, but as they were talking and asking what if we did X or Y, I just started plugging things in and running them as we were having the conversation.

That, to me, was something that I never expected to use the tool for. But, because of the agility that you have from having it in-app, it’s now become a tool that I use regularly. It’s almost unlimited what you can do when you have it right there in the app. Within a few minutes, you can answer almost any question.

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We’d like to give a huge shout out to Chris for taking the time to chat with us. We hope this conversation shed some light on questions you may have had about Scenario Modeling. If you have any further questions or would like to learn more about the tool, please contact us at info@ekotrope.com.