We talked with Stuart Fowler, President of the Tetra Tech High Performance Buildings Group and CEO of NDY, A Tetra Tech Company, about where he sees the greatest potential for the built environment in 2025.
Stuart works closely with colleagues and clients in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Ireland to help deliver sustainable projects globally.
A version of this article from Stuart’s conversation with Pip Trentham originally appeared on NDY.com.
What’s the High Performance Buildings Group’s focus going into 2025?
Decarbonization
Decarbonization and electrification are key themes in all the markets we operate in across the globe.
This is being led by market pressures. Our clients are seeking to do the right thing in response to climate change—to be good global corporate citizens. That’s also being driven by government regulation at national, state, and municipal levels. Governments across the world are increasingly focused on establishing regulatory frameworks and cultures to support decarbonization.
The built environment is responsible for an estimated 40 percent of carbon emissions, so it has an important role to play in decarbonizing our future.
We’re already involved in some impressive decarbonization projects with significant growth expectations in the years ahead.
The City of Los Angeles, for instance, is actively reviewing and implementing strategies to decarbonize its entire buildings’ portfolio. The municipality has engaged Glumac, also part of the Tetra Tech High Performance Buildings Group, as part of that undertaking to review a portfolio of 1,200 buildings. So, we’re seeing organizations taking action in terms of decarbonization practices, at both a corporate and government level.
In some cases, on-the-ground community sentiment is forcing corporations to be on the front foot. Company boards are acutely aware of what investors and the broader public expect and this is driving environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategies. They’re aware of the imperative to behave in a manner that satisfies customers, shareholders, and beneficiaries, including the wider community.
Adaptive reuse
There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic had, and continues to have, a significant impact on the commercial office market. It changed the nature of work for a significant number of office workers globally. Vacancy rates are at very high levels in cities around the world. In every city I travel to, I still see sizeable office buildings sitting, largely empty, for many days a week.
Tenants have taken the opportunity in terms of a significant “flight to quality”—moving to better buildings with green credentials, maybe taking the opportunity to downsize and relocate to a more desirable location. This is leaving many B- and C-grade commercial office assets largely empty. What do we do with these? How do owners respond?
In many cases—particularly given the current economic climate—it’s not cost effective to refurbish or upgrade these buildings to the level that tenants are demanding. There are alternative use cases for some but more often there’s not. So, that’s where the conversation is focused in the commercial office sector where we’re active. What can we do with these assets?
Every city has different planning and regulatory frameworks and, in some jurisdictions, these are evolving to encourage appropriate adaptive reuse of buildings. For example, can buildings that are presently designated as commercial office be converted to residential? Does the regulatory environment in a particular location support that? And what can governments and municipalities feasibly do to assist?
Artificial intelligence and data centers
Another growth area for our business is the global data center sector, in response to developments in artificial intelligence (AI). AI is hugely interesting from two viewpoints.
Firstly, what does the new technology mean for our business and other professional services’ businesses across the world? How will our own company be impacted by AI and what it can achieve?
And, secondly, all new technology needs to be supported by sufficient infrastructure that allows it to be delivered to the desktop. AI needs sizable increases in server capacity which means more data centers globally that, in turn, require a lot more electrical power to operate. This increased power load also generates additional heat output and requires increased data center cooling capacity to function.
The increase in use of AI means sizable increases in server capacity that require much more power to operate and increased data center cooling capacity to function.
We have a significant amount of work in the data center and mission critical sector as we prepare for the massive increase that’s expected in server capacity across the globe due to the demands of AI.
Of the regions that we operate in, the United States is leading the way. U.S.-based chip manufacturers and data center providers are leading the global thinking and direction, and we’re excited to be working with several global leaders in the sector. The innovation we are a witness to is impacting activity and design direction around the world – it’s an exciting time to be in the data center space.
How does the High Performance Buildings Group share resources and knowledge across global teams?
Sharing resources and leveraging specialist expertise
We’re able to leverage knowledge and innovation through our Tetra Tech network to bring the innovation and skills from different regions and share this with our clients and projects locally. I’ll use NDY as an example: NDY has offices in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada, and Ireland, but we also have NDY staff working on projects through the United States, Europe, and Asia. And we have U.S. and UK-based Tetra Tech colleagues supporting NDY projects in our various NDY locations.
This is certainly one of the significant upsides for each of our companies being part of Tetra Tech—the capacity to be part of solutions for projects anywhere in the world and, importantly, to bring the latest technologies to projects in our own backyard. In NDY’s case, we have evolved from being predominantly Australian based to being part of a global organization working with global clients, delivering projects around the world.
We’ve also established multiple HPBG technical and market sector-based collaboration forums. This is where our global collaboration really accelerates, and it’s been fascinating to see the concept grow in recent years. The dialogue and collaboration between our best technical subject matter experts globally is ongoing, and skill and knowledge sharing is happening each and every day.
I’ve watched the forums share, evolve, and grow and it’s been fascinating—when our people get involved, they can’t get enough! They want to engage with colleagues in other parts of the world, share concepts, ideas and work side-by-side on projects, in real time. It’s a phenomenal global collaboration.
How do you see these priorities evolving over the next 10 years?
I’m blown away by what’s happening with AI and how that will impact the work we do and how we live. Of course, there’s a massive upside potential but significant risk as well. For me, it’s fascinating to understand the AI technologies that are in use now and see how these are being employed in diverse ways to reengineer our work processes.
I can’t tell you what it’s going to be like in 10 years’ time, but I’m certain the world will be a very different place. Every technology that has come along through history has caused impact. But, as some jobs become redundant, new jobs always form. That’s the way it’s always been, and I think that will continue to be the way. AI won’t mean that we’re all out of work, it will likely mean that our roles might be markedly different in terms of what we’re doing day-to-day.
The last 10 years, for me, seems to have gone in the blink of an eye. It represents a quarter of my career. I’m so privileged to work with the incredible people at Tetra Tech and NDY—colleagues from around the world delivering projects that really do make a meaningful difference to the lives of so many people.
As we continue to grow the Tetra Tech High Performance Buildings Group’s presence globally, sharing our knowledge and skills across regions will continue to benefit clients locally. On highly complex projects, that’s our imperative—bringing together the best global minds to solve a pressing challenge and then sharing solutions that advance other projects. This is how we bring out the best in our people, foster meaningful collaboration and make a real difference to the global built environment.