Inside the Firm Archives

Teamwork in Progress!

March 15, 2023March 15, 2023Matt

At CopelandBEC we’re big proponents of leveraging technology to improve our work, including improving flexibility and work-life balance for our team. Often that means we we’re connecting online via services like Slack Huddles or Google Meet conferences. Our team is empowered to work at whatever time and place is most effective to accomplish our goals.

Sometimes that still means meeting in person. Our sunlit industrial loft-style office in central Mass. is perfect for the kind of collaboration and connection that is best achieved face to face.

Members of the CopelandBEC team deep into a plaza waterproofing design charrette.

As you can see we’re not dogmatic about analog vs. digital media… as with most things the answer is “both/and” not “either/or”—we use whatever works best (and that can vary from person to person).

Read more about our approach to our work.

Hands-On with Roof Coatings

January 31, 2023February 7, 2023Matt

The CopelandBEC team traveled to Chelmsford today for a hands-on roof coating workshop with our friends at Atlantic Restoration and Neogard. Atlantic graciously hosted at their facility and provided some great mock-up boards to try out the Neogard materials on.

Roof coatings are not the answer on every project but do offer some significant benefits where applicable:

Let’s use color on drawings.

January 24, 2023January 24, 2023Matt

It’s 2023 and the time is right to start using color on engineering drawings.

For as long as I’ve been in the industry engineering drawings have been produced in two colors: black and white. Apparently back in the day they were blue. We haven’t come very far.

Why are we here?

January 19, 2023January 19, 2023Matt

The post below is taken directly from our internal team wiki. The intent of sharing it here is to give a bit more context to what it’s like working with us and lay out our motivations for doing the work that we do. We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section below.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
– apparently not Albert Einstein

We are here to solve problems.

We want more buildings that last centuries instead of decades. We want durability and resiliency so that we can conserve limited resources. We want to help people create sustainable shelter for generations to come.

But building problems keep occurring. Roofs leak or blow off. Windows leak or get covered in condensation. Basements (you guessed it) leak or become dank and unusable.

We know how to build so that performance problems are avoided. The fundamental knowledge about how to build better is readily available.

Yet, we keep making the same mistakes and problems keep occurring.

Why? What can we do differently to create better outcomes?

So Long, 2021!

January 12, 2022January 4, 2023Matt

In a blink, we’re almost halfway through January! We have a lot to be excited about coming up in 2022, and we’re eagerly looking ahead to the new year. Before that, though, let’s take a minute to reflect on 2021 at Copeland Building Envelope Consulting.

On January 1, 2021 CopelandBEC had 3 employees. Over the course of the year we have added 5 new team members bringing us to 8 total!