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As drone technology continues to advance, building owners and designers face a rapidly evolving threat landscape. How drones are changing security planning—and what the future may hold for protecting facilities, critical infrastructure, and public spaces—is explored in this episode featuring Ryan Searles, leader of IMEG’s Security Consulting Group. “Drones have really advanced and are now causing very serious security threats to even the private sector,” Ryan says. From delivering contraband over prison fences to gathering corporate intelligence and threatening crowded venues, drones can create risks across a wide range of building types. Healthcare facilities, educational institutions, manufacturing plants, and critical infrastructure all require analysis of how drones could access sensitive areas or interfere with essential systems. “It's all about where do you and how do you protect those critical infrastructure systems,” Ryan says. It’s also about when: For owners, architects, and engineers, determining drone threat risk and planning for the appropriate security measures is best done early in the design phase of a project. Early coordination allows detection and deterrence technologies to be integrated more seamlessly and at less cost than waiting until after construction. These systems can include radar, radio-frequency detection, and believe it or not, netting. Ryan’s team incorporated the low-tech material into the security design for a project in the Middle East, specifying fine webbing over the building’s architectural openings—preventing drones from entering and not compromising the structure’s appearance. Emerging counter-drone solutions include interceptor drones capable of identifying and flying to an unauthorized drone, deploying a net, and bringing it back for investigation. In all situations, Ryan says, security measures must be proportionate to the risks. “First let's figure out what posture and level of security you want,” he says. “The objective is to establish appropriate protection without turning every facility into a fortress.” For existing buildings, security teams may need to retrofit detection and response systems. In healthcare settings, these systems must also account for helicopter operations and emergency medical flights, requiring trained personnel and carefully established response procedures. On the positive side, drones are also becoming useful tools for a growing number of legitimate operations, including healthcare deliveries, perimeter monitoring, and various industrial applications. Artificial intelligence, of course, is expanding the applications—both for good and for bad. Counter measures, however, may be one step behind when a new type of threat emerges. For example, detection systems can identify drone signals and support responses, but the newer threat of autonomous drone swarms presents a more complex challenge. “A single drone, OK, we can deal with that,” says Ryan. “A hundred drones, your defense system may only be able to stop one or two of them.” “The defense side and the detection side will definitely catch up,” Ryan adds, but responding to ever-emerging new threats will require constant vigilance and counter-measure adaptation and advances. For building owners, designers, and the general public, drones have become and will remain part of the landscape, says Ryan. “It's just becoming part of everyday life.” Read more about defending against drones on the IMEG blog.

This episode examines the use of extended reality in the AEC industry through the eyes of Abby Coleman, winner of Healthcare Design magazine’s HCD10 Industry MVP Award. As IMEG’s extended reality specialist, Abby has spent the last four years creating immersive experiences people can step into. Her role, she says, is to help “engineers and, most importantly, clients use augmented and virtual reality to thoroughly understand a proposed design.” To date she has facilitated or supported more than 5,000 such experiences for IMEG project stakeholders. Abby frames extended reality, or XR, as a way of moving design conversations out of flat, two-dimensional drawings and into a space where stakeholders can react instinctively. Once participants get into a headset, she says, “you can just hear the ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’—like, ‘Oh, wow, I can really see the benefit of using this technology for design.” Such experiences, she says, provide participants with a thorough understanding and visualization of spaces as designed. “It really helps them make better, more informed, and confident decisions before anything gets built.” Abby categories XR experiences into three levels, depending on the audience and the project. “Level one would probably be just using augmented reality on your mobile device,” she says, describing use cases such as jobsite visits and groundbreaking ceremonies. Level two is “using our VR software on PCs to really just visualize it on a screen.” Level three, the most immersive, would be “stepping into” and “looking around” a space using a VR headset, with designers being able to move elements in real time based on the suggestions of the viewers, e.g., healthcare clinicians. “Once folks are in that immersive level three experience, we definitely do have the capability to move our live Revit elements,” Abby says. A Mayo Clinic XR experience, for example, used immersive VR to show multiple boom layouts and check clearances and usability—based on the clinicians’ feedback—before construction began. In another XR experience, IMEG led a VR workshop for more than 50 Henry Ford Health clinicians, putting them into a future smart patient room featuring the healthcare information technology suggested by the designers for the project. In these and other instances, the ability to adjust design in real time helps stakeholders evaluate options in a more meaningful way than a marked-up plan ever could. Looking ahead, Abby imagines a future in which XR becomes even more powerful as it incorporates artificial intelligence. Instead of making adjustments manually during XR design reviews teams will simply use voice prompts to ask AI to make changes in the model instantaneously. “I definitely think AI and XR are going to cross paths,” she says. Watch IMEG extended reality experience videos of a patient room, conference room, and job site visits.

In the final installment of a three-part series on IMEG’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan (WCAP), senior sustainability and energy engineer Laura Hagan discusses how the company is tackling embodied carbon in structural systems. IMEG’s carbon reduction journey began four years ago when the firm became a signatory to SE 2050, the structural engineering industry’s initiative to eliminate embodied carbon in structures by the year 2050. That original structural-focused plan has evolved into IMEG’s broader WCAP, which now also incorporates MEP and infrastructure disciplines. Laura, who also is a structural engineer, says SE 2050 “is a great program to be a part of because it really challenges us to be accountable for how we are designing and how we are trying to reduce embodied carbon.” Critical to this effort is first being able to measure the carbon impacts across IMEG’s large national project portfolio. “We are in the process of trying to figure out what our designs mean in terms of carbon emissions,” Laura says. “Unfortunately, with the size of IMEG, it's not possible for us to do a whole building lifecycle assessment on every project the firm designs. So instead, we are using material schedules we created in Revit to calculate the quantities of materials in a structural model. Then we are going to transfer the quantities to an internal IMEG database that will multiply them by global warming potential (GWP) factors. This will give us a preliminary high-level assessment of the amount of embodied carbon a structural project is going to emit.” IMEG also will analyze the data for benchmarking purposes, she adds. “When we are able to make this connection with the internal database, the designers and structural engineers will be able to see, in real time, the projected embodied carbon emissions of the quantities of materials that they are designing with,” Laura says. Engineers can then test different framing layouts, slab thicknesses, or material quantities and immediately see the impact on emissions. “Anyone who’s familiar with embodied carbon knows that if you can reduce the quantity of the material that you have, you’re going to reduce the amount of embodied carbon that you have.” Laura says even small specification changes can produce meaningful results at scale. She references a case study involving slab-on-grade concrete design in which reducing slab thickness or lowering concrete strength produced a 10 percent to possibly 20 percent reduction in embodied carbon for that building element. “It’s a great example of low-hanging fruit,” she says. “If you can reduce your quantity and it still performs perfectly for its structural capacities and serviceability requirements, you are going to save carbon and hopefully you’ll save some money too.” Looking ahead, Hagan says innovation in low-carbon materials is crucial for achieving the long-term SE 2050 goal of net zero structural systems. “Innovation has to happen on the material side, then people have to start designing with it, and it has to make it into building codes as an allowable system. That all takes time, and then you have to build the demand for using the material on projects.” Laura’s motivation comes from the engineering mindset itself. “We are problem solvers,” she says. “This is basically a giant problem that we don’t have all the solutions to, but it’s something that if we work together and continue to provide pressure to the industry we can reduce embodied carbon. “People are recognizing that this is important and trying to address it. That’s what keeps me excited and what makes me happy to be doing this work and continuing to push for more every day.” To learn more, listen to part one and part two of this series or read IMEG’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan.

IMEG’s mechanical engineering decarbonization efforts take center stage in this episode, the second in a three-part series on the firm’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan (WCAP). Guest Lindsey Chappelle, an IMEG senior sustainability & energy engineer, explains that the mechanical component of the plan aligns with MEP 2040, the industry-wide mechanical decarbonization initiative. “This is the MEP firms’ commitment to be net zero operational carbon on projects by 2030 and net zero embodied carbon by 2040,” she says. “IMEG is a signatory of MEP 2040 and we have produced our mechanical plan, which has been incorporated into the Whole Carbon Action Plan.” As with the WCAP’s structural and infrastructure initiatives, the plan lays out the goals, tasks, tools, and strategies for reducing and eventually eliminating operational carbon emissions (due to mechanical systems), embodied carbon of the mechanical equipment, and the carbon due to refrigerant leakage associated with certain HVAC systems. “Refrigerants are kind of weird. They don’t really fall into embodied carbon or operational carbon,” Lindsey says. “They’re kind of their own item.” Refrigerants, however, can have a sizeable impact. In one pilot project, leakage accounted for roughly 15% of total MEP-related carbon emissions. While the industry has a firm grasp on how to reduce operational carbon, mechanical engineers face challenges in getting the data needed to address embodied carbon. Among the causes are Revit models that don’t include the number and brand of various types of equipment, and manufacturers who are slow to issue Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for mechanical equipment. These third-party documents, which Chappelle likens to “a nutritional facts label,” are essential for understanding the amount of embodied carbon in any piece of equipment. Unfortunately, as she points out, “a lot of vendors haven’t even heard of an EPD.” To address this issue, IMEG and other firms aligned with MEP 2040 are strongly encouraging manufacturers to provide this information; some firms, including IMEG, are even signaling that future design specifications may require it. Meanwhile, IMEG has efforts underway to integrate design tools with available databases to provide real-time feedback. “Ideally in the future, this is going to be some kind of automated calculation,” Lindsey says, allowing engineers to immediately see the carbon implications of their design choices. Lindsey is excited to be helping to bring clarity to a once opaque aspect of building design. “There's always just been kind of a rule of thumb applied to the embodied carbon of MEP systems, and no one's taken the effort to calculate it. So it's exciting to just have the numbers and be able to back it up with reasonable resources and assumptions, see the overall carbon emissions related to a project, and then be able to make some great design decisions.” To learn more, listen to part one in this series or read IMEG’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan.

First in a three-part series. Can an engineering firm reach net zero embodied and operational carbon on all its projects by 2050? If so, what must be accomplished between now and then? Answers to these questions and more are discussed in this episode featuring IMEG’s Director of Sustainability, Adam McMillen. Adam has been working with IMEG’s multidisciplinary Sustainable Design Task Force to issue the firm’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan, or WCAP. The 2026 WCAP is the third iteration of IMEG’s carbon reduction initiatives; the 2024 plan—then a structural-only document—was the first in an annual requirement of the embodied-carbon-focused SE 2050 Commitment Program. Since then IMEG has expanded its plan to include MEP and civil infrastructure initiatives. The 2026 WCAP therefore provides a comprehensive strategy for reducing embodied and operational carbon, continuing to align with SE 2050 as well as with MEP 2040, the mechanical-focused initiative. IMEG’s multidisciplinary plan is unique to the industry. “It's one of our biggest differentiators,” Adam says of IMEG’s approach. “All these initiatives are in sync and everything's speaking the same language. We see the Whole Carbon Action Plan as an opportunity to simplify and streamline things as one solution—one low-carbon approach—that a client can really get behind.” The WCAP is divided into four sections: Education, Report, Reduce, and Advocate—each one delineating individual and multidisciplinary goals and tasks, completed goals and tasks, and the tools that have been or will be created by IMEG to assist its designers in delivering time-efficient, scalable sustainable solutions. While all sections of the WCAP are critical, the first, Educate, provides the means for achieving quick reductions at no additional cost. For example, just by understanding what embodied carbon is and the differing carbon levels of materials can have a big impact. “It’s a huge opportunity just to understand that if I choose recycled content in my steel, that makes a big difference,” says Adam. “Finding five to 10 things per discipline and getting people to “do this, not that” can lead to significant carbon reductions with no cost to the owner.” The firm’s use of artificial intelligence does create a carbon footprint of its own from the energy used to run the computations at data centers. However, IMEG tracks its carbon footprint and has found that the project carbon reductions enabled by its sustainable designs far outweigh the AI carbon footprint of the design process. “For every one ton of carbon that we use by allowing AI to help us make better decisions, we reduce by 10,000 tons the carbon footprint of our projects,” says Adam. How realistic is IMEG’s goal of achieving net zero embodied and operational carbon on all its projects by 2050? “That’s a great question,” says Adam. “Yes, we're taking a risk by saying we're going to reach that. But why not set the framework to try?” To learn more, read IMEG’s 2026 Whole Carbon Action Plan

Susan VanBenschoten, IMEG Director of Urban Design, Planning, and Engagement, joins host Joe Payne to discuss the expansive services and expertise of her team.   With 40 years of experience in the community planning and civil infrastructure industry, Susan previously was CEO of FHI Studio, a large planning firm in the Northeast that joined IMEG in 2024, bringing a new service line to the firm. She frames urban planning as the critical foundation upon which successful infrastructure and community outcomes are built. This early-stage focus, she says, defines what a project is before it advances into design, policy, or implementation.   “Urban design and planning is really an umbrella of dozens of different services that are integrated during the planning process,” she explains. These services reside in five major groups: transportation planning, engineering, and design; community planning, land planning, and urban design; environmental planning, resiliency planning, and permitting; landscape architecture; and community engagement—which is, Susan adds, “part and parcel to all the rest of the planning that we do.”   These services are used in various combinations, based on the needs of a project, and operate as an interconnected system. “Planning is very broad and by its nature needs to be multidisciplinary,” Susan says, emphasizing the importance of aligning technical, environmental, and social considerations from the outset. Central to this process is problem definition—often more complex than it initially appears. “You’re really backing up to the very beginning of a problem,” Susan says. Whether addressing congestion, land use, or economic challenges, her team relies on data analysis paired with direct community input. “We really try to use data-driven analysis to understand what the problem really is but also listen to the community so we understand what they see the problem is.”   While traditional public meetings and outreach continue to be conducted, technology has expanded the reach and effectiveness of community engagement. “We still hold meetings. We still do walkabouts—walking through communities and seeing firsthand what some of the issues are.” Technology, however,  has created ways to involve more of the community with virtual meetings, online surveys, and virtual reality, which allows “people to visualize what we are talking about.”   Depending on the project, this process can result in a comprehensive “roadmap,” particularly in large-scale or area-wide planning efforts. Such a roadmap can include dozens of recommendations, ranging from immediate actions to long-term capital investments. Importantly, such plans are not static documents. “Planning documents are living documents,” Susan says, evolving alongside the communities they serve.   Susan and her team are eager to expand their work across the U.S., collaborating with IMEG’s civil infrastructure and MEP teams to bring more value and successful outcomes to clients. “That's the power of having planning and engineering and design all under one roof,” she says. “It's very much in line with IMEG's purpose of shaping and making better communities.” Learn more about IMEG’s Urban Design, Planning, & Engagement services.

This episode is a conversation with Juan Moreno, an electrical designer at IMEG and a past recipient of the firm’s engineering scholarship program. Juan received one of the thirty $10,000 scholarships awarded when the program was launched in 2023. Born in Miami, Juan spent his childhood and teen years in Colombia. In 2021 he enrolled at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where one of his older sisters, a UNF graduate, was living at the time. Engineering, he explains, was always a likely path as the profession runs in his family. “My dad is a civil engineer and one of my sisters is also a civil engineer. So I always knew I was going to go the engineering route,” he says. His interest in electrical engineering took root after taking an electrician course while still in Colombia. “It really got me into the electrical side of engineering,” Juan says, adding that electrical courses at UNF sealed the deal. “Every lab in college, it was super fun, because it was hands-on.” Juan learned about the IMEG Scholarship Program in 2022 from a friend who was working as an intern at IMEG’s Jacksonville office. Juan soon applied, saying the process was “pretty straightforward and simple”—though he had little expectation he would be chosen as one of the recipients. The following summer, while back home with his family in Colombia, Juan and his parents learned he had won one of the scholarships. “It was quite the surprise,” he says. “We were all pretty happy.” While there are no strings or promises of employment attached to the IMEG scholarship, after Juan graduated in May of 2025 with a degree in electrical engineering he decided to apply to the firm. He was hired and now works out of IMEG’s office in Broomall, PA, southwest of Philadelphia. A few months later he attended the firm’s Consultancy 101 program—a week-long gathering of newly hired graduates from across the country to introduce them to the firm, its services and markets, technology and innovation initiatives, and to get to know each other and have some fun. After that it was back to the Broomall office, where he has been learning from veteran engineers while working with them on various projects, including a large hotel and casino project in New York. “Every day I get to learn a lot,” Juan says. “I try to connect it with stuff from college, but of course, college is really theoretical and just academic.” “Every day I’m learning something new,” he adds. “I think that’s great.” To date, the IMEG Scholarship Program has awarded 93 scholarships worth $10,000 each to underserved college students studying engineering. Scholarship applications for the 2026-27 academic year are being accepted through March 13. To learn more and apply, visit the IMEG website Careers section.

Considering using mass timber for the first time? IMEG’s Robert Norton provides key considerations in this episode of The Future Built Smarter. A senior structural engineer working out of IMEG’s San Francisco office, Robert has more than a decade of experience designing with mass timber. He says the material is more than a trend—it transforms how a building is experienced. “Being in a wood building makes you much more comfortable. The wood provides a lot of warmth and it feels homier.”   Mass timber also changes how a building is designed and constructed, he adds. “It becomes part of the architecture.” Unlike steel or concrete buildings, where beams are often hidden behind ceilings, mass timber showcases every structural component. “Everything you do as an engineer is on display. All the connections, all the columns, the beams, the floor systems—they’re visible for people to either enjoy or not enjoy, depending on how well of a job you do.” This emphasis on exposure means early collaboration is critical. “We really want to be as integrated as possible with the architect and engineers, so when we do get drawings from the fabricator for the mass timber panels, it's definitely ready to be installed.” Robert’s team has also developed specialized connections. “Most of those off-the-shelf connections don’t work, so we’ve done a handful of specialized details that create that really seamless look in the building.”   Thanks to its prefabricated panels, mass timber also speeds up construction,. “The mass timber product is assembled in pieces that come to the site and are dropped in place. You’re saving up to 30 percent off your schedule just in the floor system alone.” The material also is highly sustainable, having much less embodied carbon than steel or concrete, he adds. And contrary to widely-held misconceptions, mass timber is fire-retardant. Unlike typical framing lumber, Robert says, “mass timber chars on the outside, forming a protective layer that insulates the core. That allows us to meet one-hour, two-hour, and even higher fire ratings—often without additional fireproofing.”   While upfront costs can be higher with mass timber, early planning can help overcome that, Robert says. “If you have designed for steel or concrete and then ask the team to ‘convert it to mass timber,’ you will almost certainly see a 25 percent to 30 percent cost premium. That’s the wrong way to approach it. To make mass timber competitive, it needs to be part of the project from day one. Doing that, you’re going to find the mass timber prices really drop dramatically.”

Mike Walsh, IMEG Senior Director of Industrial, joins this episode to discuss small modular reactors (SMRs) and their potential for becoming an integral source of power for manufacturers and industrial campuses. SMRs typically produce 50 to 300 megawatts of power, unlike traditional nuclear plants that generate between 1,000 and 1,500 megawatts. Mike is quick to clarify, however, that the adjective “small” is relative in comparison to traditional reactors. “They’re not small—they’re just smaller,” he says of SMRs. “They’re still large, sophisticated facilities. But their modular construction changes everything.” SMRs work on the same basic principle as traditional reactors: nuclear fission heats water into steam, which drives a turbine to produce electricity. Unlike traditional reactors, the reactor portion is manufactured within a factory—where conditions are controlled and quality assurance is consistent—and are then shipped to a location. They require significant real estate—typically 10 to 100 acres, but still far less than the 250 to 400 acres for a traditional nuclear plant. Their smaller footprint makes SMRs particularly well suited for industrial campuses. And while roughly two-thirds of a traditional nuclear plant’s thermal energy is lost as waste heat, SMRs can capture and reuse that excess energy. “If we can use that heat for industrial processes or building systems, overall efficiency on an industrial site could reach 80 or 90 percent,” Mike says. The 24/7 on-site generation of power also will be highly beneficial to industries as the reliability and strain on the grid continue to worsen, energy costs rise, and owners begin to see high demand factors on utility bills. With few new nuclear plants built in the U.S. since the 1970s, the path forward for SMRs is murky. “No one really knows yet how these will be regulated,” Mike says. “You can’t apply the same rules that were written for massive, one-of-a-kind nuclear facilities. This is new territory.” Economics also is a factor. Early SMRs will be expensive, but Mike draws a parallel to renewable energy’s evolution. “Solar was once prohibitively costly too,” he says. “Then technology improved, production scaled, and prices fell. The same thing will happen here.” The general perception of nuclear power will also need to be overcome. ”It's the not-in-my-backyard syndrome kind of thing,” Mike says. “There are reasons why nuclear accidents happened in the past, but it’s highly improbable that that would happen with these newer facilities and the way they have some passive ability, if they lost all power to the site, to still cool that reactor and not have a meltdown. Despite the challenges, Mike believes nuclear power will be an essential part of a diversified energy mix of the future, which will also include wind, solar, hydro-electric, and, for some time at least, coal. “There are a lot of pieces of the puzzle for how we are going to create energy now and into the future.” Several companies are now building various versions of SMRs. One of them, Kairos Power, is constructing a demonstration reactor in Tennessee; IMEG is collaborating with HDR on the project. The facility is expected to be online in 2027 and will provide essential data on performance, safety, and cost, laying the groundwork for future deployment. Compared to traditional nuclear plants that take decades to bring online, Mike believes that the faster production and startup of SMRs will be key to addressing current and future energy needs. “SMRs are made to help with a problem we have right now, not a problem we're going to have in 30 years.”

This episode features IMEG civil project manager Matt Pohlhaus in a discussion on how artificial intelligence is transforming site design. Based in the Washington, D.C., metro area, Matt leads land use and civil engineering projects across Maryland and West Virginia. Increasingly, he says, AI is becoming as much a part of his toolkit as CAD software or site surveys. “We use artificial intelligence daily,” Matt explains, describing how it’s woven into tasks both big and small—from communication to design. “If you’ve ever been stuck trying to get some language out the right way, just throwing a few prompts into ChatGPT or something similar” can result in a “very well-worded email” and freeing up time, he says.   On the conceptual side, his team is utilizing AI-driven generative design software. With just a site location and a few inputs, the program quickly produces fully fleshed-out site layouts. “When a client asks, ‘Can we put a 60,000-square-foot grocery store on this site?’ I can now show them in minutes,” Matt says. In the past, that answer might have taken days of drafting and another round of meetings. The ability to test ideas in real time with clients has proven invaluable. “The coolest thing about it is everything updates on the fly,” Matt says. He describes meetings where clients ask to move a building across the site or add a parking garage—what once required rescheduling is now an instant adjustment. “It becomes a lot more conversational,” he says. “I think clients tend to see us more as a partner than just a consultant drawing lines on a screen.” A medical office building project, for example, completely shifted direction during a single meeting. The client had arrived with a looping driveway design they thought was final, but after moving the building within the AI model, the layout quickly evolved into something more straightforward, visible, and cost-efficient. “That was probably a 20-minute conversation,” Matt says. “And the scheme they ended up moving forward with was completely different from what they came in thinking they were going to do.” Another project—an industrial site tied to a rail line—showed off the software’s deeper analytical power. The developer wanted to run railroad tracks into the property, but when Matt layered in topographical data, a problem appeared immediately: the proposed line ran over a 30-foot cliff. “If anyone’s been on a train before, they don’t go up and down hills all that well,” he says. By shifting the entry point half a mile, the team avoided an impossible design and a change that in the past might have taken weeks of back-and-forth.

Armand Harpin, Director of Federal Healthcare at IMEG, joins this episode to discuss the firm’s extensive work with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Defense Health Agency (DHA), and Indian Health Services. Under Armand’s leadership, IMEG has been ranked the top Veterans Affairs engineering firm by BD+C Magazine.   “We serve the VA across probably 75 percent of the campuses throughout the country,” Armand says. These projects span a range of services, from facility condition assessments and master planning to infrastructure upgrades like boiler and chiller plants. “We've also spent a great deal of time over the last few years and are still involved in electronic health record projects for the VA,” Armand adds.   For most of the firm’s federal healthcare projects, IMEG collaborates closely with more than 20 service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses—partnerships that are extremely valued. “It’s a real pleasure to support those architectural and AE firms,” says Armand. On larger projects, those $100 million and above, the firm partners with national AEC firms across the country.   Armand says the federal healthcare market is currently experiencing a transitional period, with shake-ups in leadership within the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management (OCFM). “They’ve lost their senior director, they’ve lost a good portion of their associate directors, and so they're in the process of rebuilding,” he says. This comes as the VA continues to face major issues with its building stock; most VA facilities are 50 to 60 years old, creating significant operational challenges. “It’s becoming more and more difficult... to provide for today’s healthcare needs,” Armand says. Some major campuses, he adds, are being “decanted,” with their services being moved to leased, community-based outpatient clinics in more population-dense areas. “That’s called ‘commercialization,’ and it's been a critical piece for bringing services and positive outcomes to veterans in underserved areas.”   Speed and efficiency in project delivery have become top priorities, with Armand citing increased use of design-build and integrated delivery approaches to accelerate project timelines. One such example is a $600 million healthcare center project in El Paso, Texas, currently being executed by IMEG in partnership with Clark Construction.   Armand has been involved in the federal healthcare market for many years and his work in the sector hits close to home. “My brother served in the Air Force. My father served as a Marine... and passed away in the VA hospital in San Diego,” he says. “This is an incredibly personal mission.”   His passion also dovetails with IMEG’s stated purpose to create positive outcomes for people, communities, and the planet.   “It’s a mission of stewardship, of accountability, and trying to provide the healthcare outcomes that VA and active military patients need,” he says.

This episode of The Future Built Smarter examines modern high performance computing facilities and the opportunity to use their waste heat as an energy source. “High performance facilities for computing are different than what most people would consider a data center,” says Brandon Fortier, IMEG's Director of Science and Technology. “Data centers serve general purpose IT needs for a building or a company, things like web hosting, cloud storage capabilities, et cetera. High performance facilities for computing serve more of a scientific or other research need. They use significantly more computing power because they're doing things like climate modeling or machine learning for AI.” Such energy-intensive AI deep learning computing requires an intense amount of cooling, which generates a significant amount of waste heat. In the right locations—such as on a healthcare, higher education, or federal campus, as well as private research campuses—this heat can be recovered and pushed into district energy systems for use in the heating of neighboring buildings, greatly supporting overall sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction goals in the process. “These high performance data centers definitely produce a lot of heat,” says Ken Urbanek, a client executive in IMEG’s Denver office. “On the other hand, that's a great energy source. Let's grab that source energy from that data center and push that into the campus.” Ken provides several real-life examples of leveraging such an energy source, from an East Coast university that is planning to condition millions of square feet across its campus to more niche examples such as conditioning greenhouses in colder climates and even warming a pond at a trout farm. “There are a lot of synergies out there,” Ken says. For a campus, he adds, “as you're looking to decarbonize and you're looking at various options, part of that exercise should be if a data center makes sense… There's not a research facility, whether it's on a healthcare, academic, or other campus, that probably can't find a business case to say, ‘How can we utilize advanced AI to help further our research?’ Now you just have to say, ‘Where on this campus can we find 10, 15, 20 megawatts of power?’ In your decarbonization plan, you might be pulling that energy anyway. And better to put it into AI and utilize it for research than to put it into heat pumps or some sort of electric generation system.”

This episode of The Future Built Smarter explores the evolving landscape of healthcare design and engineering with guest Eric Vandenbroucke, Vice President of Healthcare at IMEG. “2025 started with a lot of optimism, but it’s definitely been a roller coaster,” he says. Despite uncertainty in the market amid potential federal reductions in Medicare reimbursements, Eric says many healthcare clients remain focused on sustainability initiatives. “Healthcare contributes about 5 percent of global emissions,” he says. “Owners are committed to reducing their carbon.” Resiliency and future proofing are also critical. From extreme weather to human threats, resilience demands a layered approach, including redundant power, onsite water storage, and cybersecurity. Vulnerability assessments set the stage for creating future-proof plans. “The biggest thing we can help clients with is understanding the state of their building or campus and what its vulnerabilities are,” Eric says. “Healthcare facilities need to be operational—period.” Security is a top concern as well, especially in the wake of increasing threats like active shooter incidents. “We take a holistic approach,” says Eric, stressing that security requires much more than just cameras and guards. Key additional components of an all-encompassing security plan include employing the principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and personnel training, including tabletop exercises. "No one wants to deal with these events, but being prepared makes a huge difference," Eric says. Technology, of course, is the main driver of innovation for healthcare facility operations, clinical operations, and delivery of care—all of which need to communicate with each other and be interoperable. “We’ve moved beyond siloed systems to a smart system approach,” says Eric. “Alarms, patient monitoring, building automation systems, command centers, medical records, real-time location solutions, robotics—all of those things and more have to work together.” As for artificial intelligence (AI), Eric says, “Where we are at right now in the industry is just the tip of the iceberg. Our clients are now using AI for clinical documentation, predictive analysis, optimizing their revenue cycle, using chatbots for scheduling, triage, and patient education. On the AEC side, AI is going to be a big tool for design assist. At IMEG we've developed our own AI system that helps us increase our design efficiency and accuracy. We've also developed many tools within Revit and Power BI to help with that efficiency and accuracy, and with coordination. And we continue to grow and expand the use of our virtual reality and augmented reality tools. It’s all very exciting. “Technology and trends are going to continue to influence healthcare care moving forward. That’s one of the cool things about healthcare: It’s never the same. It's always evolving.”

This episode of The Future Built Smarter features Robbie Jones, an IMEG project executive and mechanical engineer who led the firm’s design of the new Advanced Engineering Building at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas—ENR’s 2024 Best of the Best Project in the higher education/research category.  The Advanced Engineering Building (AEB), located in the university’s “Innovation Corridor,” is designed to foster innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration within UNLV’s Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering. The AEB supports growing enrollment, education, and research in robotics, cybersecurity, biomedical engineering, energy and water, and artificial intelligence. The three-story, 52,000-sf building features wet and dry labs, classrooms, a maker space, an outdoor aviary for drone testing, and a flexible auditorium or “flexatorium” that can be used as a lecture hall or event space. IMEG provided MEP and technology design for the facility, which also will aid start-ups in Nevada’s growing tech industry. To ensure the MEP design would meet the needs of the university, Robbie, a UNLV engineering graduate, met with several engineering department faculty members—some of whom had been his professors when he was a student. “Never in a hundred years would I have thought that I would be designing an engineering building for UNLV,” says Robbie. “I was excited about doing it, and it was a cool thing for me … kind of a feather in my hat. I've done some billion-dollar gaming projects, and I think this is one of my favorite buildings.” Read the IMEG case study to see photographs of the AEB and learn more about the engineering design. For a tour of the building, watch this UNLV video.

In this episode of The Future Built Smarter, Abby Coleman discusses IMEG’s use of immersive extended reality experiences, thousands of which have been provided by the firm to project stakeholders. “Extended reality is an umbrella term for virtual reality and augmented reality,” says Abby. “I essentially use those technologies to help our clients and engineers visualize their design before anything is even built.”   As IMEG’s Innovation Extended Reality Specialist, Abby also incorporates VR and AR technology into the firm’s engineering workflow to revolutionize the design process and bolster IMEG project team collaboration. “Whether reviewing a critical space or evaluating workflows, both the engineers and clients will be able to make confident and well-deformed decisions,” she says. Overall, she adds, immersive experiences help accelerate the decision-making process, reduce the number of costly revisions, and optimize project outcomes.   IMEG’s immersive experiences are utilized in many markets and for different purposes. Among the experiences, Abby singles out one in which IMEG designers “sat” on a hospital bed within a 3D model of a patient room to determine the optimal size and number of footwall digital display screens, based on the patient point of view. In a similar vein, higher education project stakeholders “sat” in various locations of a conference room 3D model to determine the best locations and number of projector screens, again based on the end users’ perspective. And in an augmented reality experience, an engineer inside an existing mechanical room saw how a new chiller and its piping, as designed, would fit in the space.   Floor plans, the AEC industry’s traditional medium for communicating designs to clients, cannot truly represent a space. IMEG’s immersive experiences, however, are created using the firm’s robust 3D models, which provide spatial awareness and understanding. “When we're able to put a client in a headset, some of the feedback is like, ‘Wow, now I understand this design. I know how it feels.’ “   In the future, Abby foresees every engineer having a VR headset on their desk and “essentially just using that on design from start to finish.” She also expects to see “VR more heavily incorporated with our client engagement,” with the annual number of stakeholder immersions growing from year to year. She bases her predictions on extended reality’s proven ability to bridge the communication gap between designers and clients.   As she says, “I believe that VR is a universal language of design.”   Watch IMEG extended reality experience videos of a patient room, conference room, and job site.