Catherine (Cat) T. Sheane - Astorino

High School: Wakefield High School , Arlington, VA 1994

College: Princeton University

Graduate School: Carnegie Mellon University 2006 – MS Civil & Environmental Engineering (Green Design concentration)

Where I live: Lawrenceville

What I do:
EVERYTHING. Okay not everything, but I do a lot of different things, which is what makes my job interesting. I work with the Marketing department to prepare project narratives and fee proposals when we're chasing work that requires LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification or other sustainable design components. I also tend to put in a blurb about why sustainability should be a consideration on projects that don't explicitly ask for it so that our potential clients are aware of where there are opportunities along those lines. Once we've landed a contract, I work with the client and design team (sometimes as part of a charrette) to establish sustainable design priorities, which most frequently take the form of a LEED checklist with a series of credit targets with a point total that's in line with the client's targeted level of certification.

When necessary for additional convincing, I do cost-benefit analyses to provide information to clients about how quickly their investments in up front system improvements will pay them back through energy savings, or conversely, give them an idea of how much more they could spend on high performing building and systems based on projected energy performance, if they already have a desired payback period in mind.

Even though a whole building approach to sustainability considers more than just energy efficiency (materials, water, site, indoor environmental quality), energy performance is a primary focus for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the emphasis on the contribution of buildings to overall energy consumption in this country (40% of primary energy use, 72% of electricity). As a result, energy codes/standards are consistently becoming more stringent and LEED Rating Systems and other green building guidelines (GreenGlobes, Living Building Challenge, Architecture 2030) are pushing the barrier even further than what's required by law.

My role is often to ask "Why?" when a client or designer says, "No, we can't do that," referring to sustainable design elements, or politely rock the boat .

Aside from all that, I also:

• Collaborate with external organizations/institutions such as Green Building Alliance (teaching LEED Accreditation Exam review courses), Sustainable Pittsburgh (I'm a member of the Business Climate Coalition), Carnegie Mellon University and Pitt (in support of research projects and proposals)

• Do internal training for LEED exam prep and other topics

• Maintain Astorino's memberships at GBA and USGBC

• Make presentations at conferences, write articles for magazines

• Maintain firm statistics on green design work

• Try to stay up to speed on the latest developments in green building design and technology

Projects I'm working on now:
3PNC Plaza, Bakery Square, Pittsburgh Arena, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, several projects for the Veterans Administration, among others (can give you more info if needed). We also have three small offices in Florida with whom I'm working on sustainable design projects primarily in the fields of higher education and municipal government.

How I got here:
I arrived in Pittsburgh from Brooklyn, NY finally ready to start graduate school, seemingly 5+ years after everyone else I know. I had practiced structural design for over four years in New York (inspecting tunnels, climbing bridges, doing lots of math) and I finally found a reason to go back to school – I wanted to find a way to morph my engineering background into a green design specialty, and Carnegie Mellon University's Civil & Environmental Engineering school had the only program I found with the substance and the flexibility that would allow me to do so. The program in green design permitted me to create my own curriculum aside from a few required courses, so I was able to take classes in engineering, architecture, econ, and public policy, the perfect hodgepodge for what I wanted to do (since then so many more undergraduate and graduate programs with sustainability components have popped up – it's great!). My job (Sustainable Design Manager at Astorino) is what originally convinced me to stay after graduation, as it was the best fit by far of all the jobs that I found in my search.

Why I like it:
In the bigger picture, I feel like I'm a part of something important happening in Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania. The "green" community in Pittsburgh is incredibly broad and collaborative, with a wide range of environmentally-minded projects, programs, and organizations already in place as well as amazing ideas in progress. Because of my focus on the built environment, I feel I'm only scratching the surface of what's going on outside of that market segment, but ultimately it's all connected. I also like the idea that I have a small role in helping to dispel the inaccurate view the outside world seems to hold of Pittsburgh today due to its industrial roots. With all of the attention on Pittsburgh's "greening" efforts as part of G-20 summit press, the long-standing work of Astorino and others in the green building community is really paying off!

On the smaller level, I enjoy seeing the progress of those who are learning more and more about green design and LEED, individuals within my firm who are becoming fairly autonomous when it comes to researching cost impacts, preparing energy models, filling out LEED documentation; and the increased savvyness (is that a word?) of clients who know what they want and understand the process of building a green building. I've noticed that I spend a lot less time convincing potential clients of the reasoning behind green building than I did when I started this job three years ago.

The personal side:
Moving to Lawrenceville last December made a huge difference in making me feel at home in Pittsburgh; I love the vibe, the variety of people and things to do, and the fact that pockets are changing all the time while other parts seem to be caught in a time warp. I also love the fact that there are multiple choices for live music, dancing, karaoke, and great food within a 10 minute walk of where I live. Clues that I might be on my way to becoming a real Pittsburgher: 1) Someone whom I just met heard about a dinner party my housemate and I had from a friend's college friend from Ohio. 2) I've begun to refer to certain places by their former names and not what they're called now 3) I've been told I say "half ahr" or "needs fixed" without realizing it 4) I love the bus (or maybe that means I still have a bit of New Yorker in me!)

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