Joe Menchefski - Better Buildings for Humans - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Joe Menchefski of Advanced Glazings Ltd. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

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Heidi J. Ellsworth: Hello and welcome to MetalCast from Metal Coffee Shop. My name is Heidi Ellsworth, and we're here today to learn a little bit more about the overall building and to really look at what makes better buildings for humans. I love that. Better buildings for humans. So we have Joe Menchefski here, who is, I was lucky enough to be on his podcast and now we are having him back today. Welcome, Joe.

Joe Menchefski: Oh, it's great to be here, Heidi. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to speak to you again. We've got the roles reversed this time, but it is a joy to speak to you again.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Oh, I love it. And we really are big believers in metal buildings and how important that is. And I know you work with all types of buildings every single day and really have that bigger picture on what better buildings for humans, but also Advanced Glazings your company. Start with an introduction and go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your company.

Joe Menchefski: Sure, yeah. My name is Joe Menchefski. I do mostly corporate sales with Advanced Glazings, but I also host the Better Buildings for Humans podcast, which it is a big part of my day. Works out to be about a third of my time actually. So Advanced Glazings is a company that makes architectural daylighting products really, really simple. We make an IGU that diffuses light as opposed to being a transparent glass product. And what that does is it takes away the hot spots, takes away, you can control solar heat gain very carefully and you end up with a really beautiful daylighted space inside a more valuable building, a building that people want to be in and generally a healthier building as well. So very excited about that brief background as to how I got here. I'm a chemical engineer by training.

Yes, it's true. And many years ago I was, excuse me, working in the world of extruding acrylics and polycarbonates for skylights and for, we were also doing sunrooms and those sorts of things. And that was sort of my first introduction into the world of bringing light into buildings. And a little while into that, I discovered that there was a company in my hometown in Sydney, Nova Scotia, called, Advanced Glazings, bringing light into spaces in a very controlled way. And I sent them a resume and they called me the next day and boom. And here we are about 20 years later, almost 20 years later. So I'm really, really, I'm a very lucky guy.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Once you get in, you never leave. I mean, that's the thing with the construction overall, it's just such a great industry. I mean, when you really look at it, being able to make products that are protecting people.

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, exactly. Well protecting and also just making spaces that are healthier and really just a lot more enjoyable to be in. And that's the part of it that I really like.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love the light. Bring it in, bring it in. Well, you know what, tell us a little bit about Better Buildings for Humans, your podcast too. How did that get started and just tell us about it overall.

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, it was an interesting evolution. So it started with me just doing talking head videos. I was literally just doing how-to and understanding videos about bringing light into spaces. And one day the owner or founder, Doug Milburn asked me if I would come to one of the buildings. Doug owns several companies and he's got some really beautifully designed metal buildings that several of the companies are in.

And he wanted me to come and walk through and talk to him and experience as best as we could on video, what it's like to walk through a well, naturally lighted space. And it turned out to be the most popular piece of marketing that Advanced Glazings had ever done. It was seen by more people than anything we'd ever done before. So we started talking about maybe we should expand this. So I did a couple of just YouTube conversations with people from the world of building science, and they were also really popular.

And so then we sort of knuckled down and said, let's get serious about this. We hired a PR firm and we started just doing a much more serious concentrated effort to build this podcast. We can't just talk about daylighting all the time, although I could. I mean, I'd be more than happy to. But we wanted to broaden it. And what I suggested was the idea of anything related to the way that the built environment impacts our health. I say the spiel at the beginning of every episode, but the way that it impacts our health, our wellbeing and our productivity too. A lot of these buildings are the places we go to work and to the owners of these buildings, it matters that people are productive and happy in their roles. So that's a big part of the conversation as well. And that's sort of the evolution that ended us up here. And we've got about 70 episodes released and I've got about another dozen that are recorded and they just need to be edited and ready to go.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: That's great. And what year did you start again?

Joe Menchefski: '23.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: '23. Wow, that's impressive. Wow, that's great.

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, we had our one-year anniversary in August. It was really amazing that I get to keep doing this.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. Isn't it fun? I know. We love it too. We love our podcasts here at The Coffee Shop.

Joe Menchefski: I get to talk to really interesting, exciting and brilliant people and they pay me. I pinch myself every so often.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I would love to hear just what have been some of your favorite podcasts? What are some of your favorite topics that have come through?

Joe Menchefski: Oh, goodness. There's been so many, certainly, I don't know if favorite is the right word, but some of the most interesting ones recently is the conversations about the negative, very serious, negative health impacts associated with not having exposure to full spectrum natural light. There's just a lot of research popping out these days that saying if we don't have full spectrum light, let me rewind on that a little bit. Humans have been living out and spending much of our time-out in the sunlight, out in the fresh air for centuries, for millennia and then all of a sudden in the last a hundred years, we spend more than 90% of our time inside of buildings. And we are just recently discovering that that is having a very serious impact on us in a lot of different ways. A couple of quick examples.

LED lights are so incredibly cost-effective, so energy effective, but they don't have red spectrum. And we're finding all kinds of, even diabetes and things like that are possibly related to an absence of red in the light spectrum. And that has been really fascinating and really eye-opening. So I'm doing a very deep dive on that. There's even research going on right now by some very, very well respected scientists, that low-E glass coating, which we all depend on, the low-E glass coating by eliminating the infrared and the near infrared is while it is doing a tremendous job on energy, it is actually having a detrimental health effect.

Not having exposure to sunlight is having a really serious impact on our ability to sleep. There's a portion of the light spectrum. I know I had a professor from Harvard that talked about, there's a very specific portion, he can even tell you. 480 nanometers of the visible light spectrum that without it, our internal clock gets all screwed up and we start waking up in the middle of the night and if we don't sleep properly, we get sick. So that whole thing really shook me up. And so I've been looking for people that I can talk to regularly about that and try to learn more. The myopia epidemic, they're tying to low-E glass and the absence of red. Yeah, that research is going on in California and in Canada right now, so it would be interesting to see where that all goes.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: So those sun lamps of old days really may be coming back.

Joe Menchefski: They are coming back. I've got a person who has founded a company to bring red sun lamps back as a health impact. The guest is coming on in February, I think. So yeah, so all of that is happening. Neuroarchitecture. I didn't even know what neuroarchitecture was until a few weeks ago. And I've since had, I've recorded with three different guests on the subject matter and at first it was probably a field where it was on par with healing crystals and that kind of stuff, manipulating auras and all that. But as it has evolved, it's becoming a really important science and a really important branch of architecture, understanding exactly what architectural elements do in our brain, how it affects our brain.

So that has been lots of fun. I had Adam Muggleton on the show. He's a funny guy and a really passionate guy. It was wonderful to have him on. My gosh, I could go on and on, but those are some of the really interesting topics. Oh, I've had a couple of guys in the world of mass timber, which I'm just amazed at how fast that's growing. But anyway, those are some of the ones that really hit home for me.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love that. Now you have a relationship or Advanced Glazing does with University of Waterloo, right?

Joe Menchefski: Yeah.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And tell us a little bit about that.

Joe Menchefski: Sure. So it really is part of our origin story. So our founder, Dr. Milburn, Doug Milburn did his PhD in mechanical engineering at the University of Waterloo and specifically in the Advanced Glazings lab at the University of Waterloo. And so Doug was studying optical measurements. His undergrad and his masters are in physics, and then he did a mechanical engineer engineering degree at Waterloo. So the work that he did in creating materials that let light through but have very high levels of insulation led very naturally to the creation of the company, Advanced Glazings and the name was down very naturally to our company. So yeah, the university is very much a part of our origin story. The connections aren't quite there anymore. I mean, it's been more than 30 years since Doug graduated. 20 years ago when I first on board, I did get to go there and meet some people and tour the lab, but since then, a lot of those people have moved on, retired and so we're not as close with them as we would've been a couple of decades ago.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Well, and it happens. I mean, that's kind of how it is everywhere. But what I would love to talk about too is metal buildings, because this is a MetalCast and we're on metal coffee shop and metal buildings. I was just at a metal building manufacturer's association. We're seeing huge growth in both commercial and residential, the barnuminium fad and it's not a fad, trend. It is homeowners residential looking for these metal buildings that can go up and have special design stuff. Windows and glazing is a huge part of this, because it's just a part of the architecture and stuff. Talk a little bit about what you're seeing there.

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, well, let me answer that in three ways. I'm very excited about metal buildings for multiple reasons and very interested in them for multiple reasons. I mean, first and foremost, it's an industry that's growing more rapidly than the rest of the construction industry and there's reasons for that and we know a lot of them, but the growth of the industry says, "Don't miss out, Joe. Get in there and recognize that this is a really important trend." The other thing about the industry that I find really exciting is how sophisticated and beautiful the buildings are becoming. I mean, just pop onto the [inaudible 00:13:28] website and Tony Bucco and I have talked about this. Tony's been a guest on my show, and I knew Tony 20 years ago in a previous life in my plastics days, I knew Tony. Anyway, look at some of the buildings that are being designed, the metal buildings, they're gorgeous, they're sophisticated, they're interesting.

So these aren't grain storage barns anymore. These are gorgeous buildings that I'd be happy to go shopping in or I'd be happy to work in. So that's the second thing that's most exciting. And then the third, purely from the perspective of Advanced Glazings is that the way we can serve this industry is really, really simple. You literally would just swap out some of the transparent glass windows for a light diffusing glazing, and then you get higher insulation levels. But more importantly, you get a nice even distribution of light in the building and you can start turning the lights off for one thing, but also you're going to have happier, more productive people inside of these buildings. And guess what? The buildings are worth more. All of the research that's been done on this points time and time again to the fact that you end up with a higher value building when you have the right level of connection between the inside and the outside.

And that's what we do. We control the connection between the inside and the outside through natural light. So I'm excited about that. We've got a partnership with WinTek Windows out of Missouri, Monett, Missouri. I work very closely with Chesney and Adam there, and so they've got the framing systems that are already built for this world and literally we just have to supply them with the IGUs and we're very well positioned to serve this industry and I'm excited about the growth that we're starting to see there. We're finally getting a foothold. It took a bit of work, but a year and a half later, we're starting to see some projects popping up and you'll see me, you'll see my face more and more in your world.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. I love it. Well, it's interesting because, I mean, this is going to be 20 years ago when I was working with Carlisle, they were doing a lot with skylights and we had skylights in there because there were all of these conversations about daylighting and how important it was and the skylights in the roof, let alone with the building envelope and all the great windows and stuff. And to me getting to know you and hearing about this, it's funny how the trends, it's kind of a big trend. It goes down a little bit, but now it just really seems like people have, the science has really made itself apparent that we need to have not just windows on the outside, but skylights when we can get as much light into the buildings as possible, both residential and commercial. What are you seeing from the rooftop side of this? Are you kind of seeing some of that growing trends also?

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, so when you talk about skylights, it is actually optimal to have the light coming down from above, have the light hit a skylight and then with a good diffuser in the skylight. So you don't get the just big, the bright square on the floor. Everybody knows about the bright square on the floor, but if you have a diffused properly, the same as putting a diffuser over a bulb or a lampshade on a light bulb, it's actually the optimal way to do it. But we hear that. What we're told is that there's a lot of people that would like to avoid a skylight. If you've got a really, really large floor plate, you can't avoid the skylight and do daylighting.

You do have to do the skylight. But a lot of the work we do is on the vertical because if you can spread the light evenly, bounce some of it off the ceiling so that it goes deeper into the space, then more often you can get away without having to put up a skylight and you can daylight just from some ribbon windows or a large punch out or some clear story. So it saves people having to cut into the roof. In many, many cases, like I say, a really large floor plate, you're putting up the skylights and we know how to put up skylights now, everybody, we know how to do it properly. So it is just depending on the geometry of the building, and in most cases, you can get away with daylighting from the vertical.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I just keep thinking about the architecture that I've been seeing, especially coming out of the Barnum in IMS. I mean whole walls of windows that are coming out that way that are just absolutely beautiful. So as you are bringing all these folks, professionals from various fields, I mean architecture, science, health, wellness, everything and discussing your building design, talk a little bit about how you bring those guests in and how you are really kind of seeing the collaboration of the trades that are really, to me, it seems like there is more collaboration between and it's always hard, but between the architects, the design and understanding that final use plan.

Joe Menchefski: Yeah, that's an interesting one. So I'll start with the idea of how I bring people in to talk to. And in the early days it was very time-consuming, very time-consuming. I was literally pulling scientific papers and reading the author's names, finding them on LinkedIn and reaching out to them and having to do explanations about what it was I was trying to do. It's getting easier and easier all the time as our listeners grow and people, especially in the building science industry, it's been a very, very good audience in that world. So now I literally have people reaching out to me. We have PR firms reaching out saying, "I'd love to get my company on your podcast." So it's gotten easier. I try to, as much as possible to stay within building science, architecture, talking to architects, talking to consultants, consulting engineers and products, people who I had Alchemist paints on.

They do these completely non-toxic, non-volatile mineral based paints. It's absolutely brilliant. And their PR people reached out to us. At first, I was a little skeptical. It turned out to be one of our best episodes. It was just wonderful. So there's that. A big part of what I do when you talk about the collaboration is I want the architects to be listening to the building scientists to know what the latest developments are. I want the, and have easy access to it. Nobody wants to sit there going through reams and reams of scientific papers because it's hard. It's really exhausting, and we're all busy. So if I can get the scientists to talk about it and all the architects have to do is listen on the way to work during their commute, then I've made a connection and vice versa. I want the building scientists to hear what the architects are saying about design. And we very practical engineers, like I had the right side. My brain surgically removed when I went to engineering school.

We want to hear the things that are important, what the scientists are learning. We want to hear what the architects care about. Because at the ultimate, at the end of the day, we serve design. That's what we do. We serve design. And so without all of that information and people understanding all of that, what each other is doing, siloing is really an impediment to innovation. Siloing is an impediment to innovation. So if I can eliminate some of that siloing play any role at all to eliminate some of that siloing, I'll be very, very happy. And you're right, I mean if you look at the industry, the project managers certainly design build world, they bring everybody together at the beginning, right at the outset. And that way everybody understands the objectives and the challenges, and that is the way to go forward.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so interesting. I love that. Okay, so we talked about really the science of better buildings for humans and what you're bringing together and the daylighting along with that. But I would love for you to talk a little bit about what you're hearing on your podcast around energy efficiency and sustainability. It's a hot topic in metal. We're talking about all the time, long-term performance of metal, long-term performance of metal buildings. What are some of the things that you're hearing from your podcast?

Joe Menchefski: I'll tell you about some of the things that I think are most interesting, and let me start with talking about sustainability and metal. So the two components of sustainability that really stand out. One is obviously energy consumption. How much carbon are you using? And then on the other side of it is what happens to the building in 20, 30, 50, 100 years? And if we look at this, that's sort of like the circular economy they call it or sustainable materials, what could possibly be more sustainable or a bigger contributor to a circular economy than steel and aluminum, right? It's 90% recycled. Steel is 90% recycled. It's almost 100%. It's way ahead of everything else in terms of a true circular economy. So I don't know if the industry promotes that enough. I don't think it does, but it should be right, 90% recycled. Look at some of the plastics that they use on the building facade plastics, and they're very popular and they don't get the wrap.

Steel gets sometimes because of the energy intensity of creating steel, but it's still energy intense to create plastics. And guess what the recycle percentage is? Less than 10. Less than 10, right? I mean, for decades, China took the world's recycled plastics and accumulated it and then they stopped a few years ago, but we know that it's less than 10%. We know that recycled plastic doesn't have all the same mechanical properties as new plastic, whereas steel recycled is still steel, right? It's completely there. But these plastics, the reason it's only 10% recycled is that all the properties are diminished after it goes back through the screw again. So the other 90%, what happens to it? Burned, that whole, we're worried about carbon and here we are burning plastic or it goes to a landfill or it ends up in our oceans. So steel and aluminum, which is the bread and butter of the metal building industry, guess what?

There's nothing that contributes to the circular economy better than these metals. So this industry has very strong positioning, and I'm excited about that. Now, on the energy side, I think the industry has responded very well. You see insulated metal panels are coming up a lot more. I went to the Butler dealer meeting in April, and they introduced the new systems that they have in place to allow for more insulation on the facade, on the walls. The industry gets it. The roofing guys get it. They're making all of the changes that are necessary to build tighter, more insulated spaces. If anything, I worry a little bit about the many trade-offs between a singular focus on energy and creating a beautiful, healthy building. And let me explain that. For example, the ideal building in terms of energy consumption is a black box with no windows, no doors, no connection to the outside world.

That's from an engineering perspective. Yay, two thumbs up. You've minimized your energy, but it's a healthy crappy building that nobody wants to be in and nobody's going to pay for when you sell it in 50 years or whatever or try to reuse it. So those are the kinds of trade-offs that I'm looking at all the time. And there's other ones with energy, HVAC systems. Having fresh air is counterproductive to a singular engineering focus on minimizing heating and cooling costs, heating and cooling loads. If you want more fresh air, guess what? You're going to consume more carbon to get more fresh air. But we humans do a whole lot better when we have fresh air. So I love having guests on and provoking some conversation about those kinds of trade-offs. I'm uncomfortable with the singular focus on energy. We can make some pretty damn ugly buildings that way for one thing. And secondly, we are creating buildings that aren't optimized for human beings. They're optimized for carbon.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: And that's not good all the way down the road. I mean, you cannot do that because humans will not survive in those kinds of conditions. And I've seen them in some of the large cities, when you go in and you see these just block, these concrete block buildings with no windows, very little windows, very tiny and architecturally not exciting and just like it is not good long term. I think, and I have to say, Joe, not just internally, but externally too. I just love it when you go into the cities and you see all the beautiful architecture and the beautiful buildings. I think that's part of who we are too and that it is worth taking that time to make the building healthy and to make it beautiful.

Joe Menchefski: Absolutely. Look, it's the connection. I keep talking about connections, but it's the connection between the occupants and the community. It's about the connection between the occupants and the natural world, and it's a connection between the building and the community. If you got shitty, boring buildings, you've got a boring community. Excuse my language, but I'm hoping I can get away with that one. But it's true. An uninteresting building, a community built around uninteresting buildings is going to be a less desirable community and it's going to be a darker, a less desirable community tends to become a dangerous place.

So we have to keep those things in mind. And is it a balancing act? Yeah, a lot of it these days is a balancing act, but sometimes you can decouple the beauty and the energy and have both simultaneously. I mean, it's my world. I create highly R-25, R-18 glowing walls for people. So now you have lots and lots of natural light, an appropriate amount of view as well, but you're not sacrificing anything in terms of the energy efficiency of the building. So those solutions are out there, the solutions that take away the conflict between energy and creating something beautiful and healthy throughout there. And that's a big part of what I'm searching for.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, that's so great. I love it. I love your journey. I love your curiosity and how people always say, "Well, to be a podcast host, what's the most important?" I always say, "You need to be curious. You need to be curious about the world." What would you say? What is the most important thing?

Joe Menchefski: Oh, it's the curiosity. I'm blown away. Almost every episode, actually. I would say every episode, there's always a moment where I'm going, "Oh my goodness, I never thought of that. I'd never heard of that before." And it's those moments that get me excited about doing this. So yeah, the curiosity, it's essential. You just wouldn't ever do anything like this-

Heidi J. Ellsworth: You wouldn't. You have to care.

Joe Menchefski: ... if you weren't curious. Yeah, I feel like a little kid when you were learning in school and you were learning things that you're actually interested in, those magic moments. I get paid to do it now.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I know. It's so cool. I do too. I love it. I love it so much. Oh, this has just been so great. Okay, so how can our audience engage with your podcast? Tell them where to find it. How did it start listening over these holidays?

Joe Menchefski: Sure, yeah. The Better Buildings For Humans podcast. It's available on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts as well. So just type in Better Buildings For Humans. You'll find it. There's like 70 episodes there. That's a lot of listening time. If you have a little bit of time on your hands and some of it's very, very informative, we try to, in the description of each episode, we try to be as descriptive as we can so people can choose what episodes they would be most interested in.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I love it. And for all of our erectors out there, our general contractors, our overall, as their kind of looking at their day lighting situations, how would they interact with Advanced Glazing and give them a little bit of how can they get more information that way?

Joe Menchefski: Super easy. Joe@advancedglazings.com. Just reach out to me. We'll chat, or if you're familiar, if you worked with WinTek before, just reach out to Adam. Adam Verstraete at WinTek. Either one of us is a good starting point.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: Yeah, it's a great thing to talk to your customers about, whether you're commercial or residential, talking to them about daylighting and getting with the experts listening to these kind of podcasts. It can only help build your business in 2025. So Joe, thank you so much for being on today.

Joe Menchefski: Thanks for having me on, Heidi. It's always a pleasure to chat with you and don't be a stranger.

Heidi J. Ellsworth: I won't. We'll be seeing you. We've got a lot of shows coming up here in the new year, so we'll be seeing each other there and we'll be seeing all of you. Thank you so much for listening. Be sure to check out all of our MetalCast podcasts on Metal Coffee Shop underneath the RLW, read, listen, watch navigation or on your favorite podcast channel. Be sure to subscribe and set those notifications. And of course, we're always on YouTube with MetalCast, so to be sure to ring that bell so you don't miss a single episode. We'll be seeing you next time on MetalCast.

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