Blog » core competencies

Three Things You Need to Know About Energy Efficiency in Houses

Shawna HendersonFebruary 20, 2017

If you work in home construction and renovation, you know about energy efficiency measures. But do you really know it? If you’re trying to figure out if you need this course or not, take a shot at answering these questions: What happens to the neutral pressure plane when you air...

The Value of Continuing Education for the Homebuilding Industry

Shawna HendersonMay 03, 2016

Shawna wrote about the value of continuing education. The article was featured in Tarion's latest 'Breaking Ground newsletter. Posted here for all to read! Competency training and continuing education/professional development are the things that fulfill Blue House Energy's mission to help build industry capacity. Gaps in training and knowledge have...

7 Areas of Business All Builders Need to be Successful

Shawna HendersonMarch 24, 2016

Builders need to be good on the tools. But they also need to know about construction technology and building science, building codes, have a certain level of business savvy, know about project management, the legal issues that affect their business, and they also need to cultivate mad customer service skillz....

A deeper discussion of deeper energy efficiency measures

Shawna HendersonSeptember 25, 20142 comments

    Here's a good read from Nate Adams from Energy Smart Ohio, on problems associated with energy efficiency programs, single-action bias and low-hanging fruit. It comes with the above GREAT graph showing the fallacy of diminishing returns on energy efficiency measures. The red line indicates what we think happens...

More Thoughts About Core Competencies in the Value Chain.

Shawna HendersonMarch 25, 2014

How do we draw up guidelines for identifying core competencies in home performance/energy efficiency/building science/green building across the many segments and sectors of the home construction and renovation industry? The other week I posted a down and dirty graphic showing most of the players and the top-level relationships. That chart could use some refinement, but it gives the basic picture. Holy complexity, Batman! X

Value Chain and Core Competencies

Shawna HendersonMarch 05, 20141 comment

Training in building science and energy efficiency is essential to moving the house building industry forward into Net Zero Energy, successfully. Many people in our industry do not see the entire value chain. It’s a complicated one – easy to see in this diagram how the home building industry is a hot, fragmented mess of experts and expertise, completely at odds with itself sometimes.