Robbie Ferris, First Floor CEO and President, has wanted to be in this industry ever since he was a little boy. When he was young, the dream started when he wanted to build a house for superman. Ever since then designing innovative buildings that are ahead of their time has been his passion.
In this video, Robbie is at Sandy Grove Middle School, one of the first energy positive schools SfL+a Architects and Firstfloor worked on. Today it is considered one of the most energy efficient buildings in the U.S. and creates around 40% more energy than it consumes.
Video Transcript (Source – YouTube):
00:04
So I decided I want to be an architect
00:07
because I really wanted to design a
00:09
house for Superman that was where the
00:10
dream started. SfL+A is an architectural
00:13
firm and our B hag or big hairy
00:16
audacious goal is to become the nation’s
00:18
preeminent designer of high performance
00:20
facilities with a specialty and
00:22
alternative delivery methods. I meet with
00:25
clients a lot talking about energy
00:27
efficiency and then I spend time on
00:29
projects working with our architects to
00:31
design the next iteration of our work
00:35
Firstfloor is a company that was
00:37
established to do public/private
00:39
partnerships that is designed to build and
00:42
finance buildings for public owners. So
00:44
Sandy Grove middle school is a school
00:46
that was started before the recession and we
00:49
worked with the school district to
00:51
program the building we worked with them
00:53
very closely to decide what the building
00:56
would look like, what the finishes would
00:57
be and then the recession had in the
00:59
building went on hold the superintendent
01:01
came to me and said number one we have
01:03
to have this school. They said if you can
01:06
find a way to do the school and have it
01:09
not cost us more than four hundred and
01:11
fifty thousand dollars a year, we can do
01:12
it. So I said to the superintendent if
01:15
you let us in the building and lease it
01:18
to you and allow us to make it an energy positive building
01:21
, I believe we can
01:23
reduce the cost from 1.5 million a year
01:25
to 450 thousand a year. If you did a pie
01:28
chart of the total cost of ownership of
01:30
a school you would see that there are
01:32
basically three roughly equal pieces of
01:35
pie capital cost the cost to build the
01:37
building interest cost and electrical
01:41
cost or energy costs so those are
01:43
roughly three equal pieces of pie we can
01:45
pretty consistently eliminate the
01:48
electrical cost so we can eliminate one
01:51
third of the pie by designing a building
01:54
that doesn’t have a power bill
01:57
and when we did that superintendent the
01:59
school board said proceed and we
02:01
designed and built a building. these are
02:04
pretty advanced buildings but it’s not
02:06
anyone’s system that makes them advanced
02:08
it’s how they work together that makes
02:10
them advance LED lighting reduces the
02:13
amount of heat in the building which
02:15
means the mechanical system can be
02:16
smaller which means that can change how
02:19
we think about insulating the building
02:21
so all of these things begin to work
02:23
together so the word synergy takes on a
02:25
very powerful meaning it’s not just a
02:28
word but it’s very real.
02:29
My name is Robbie Ferris. I’m the CEO of
02:33
SfL+A Architects and First Floor and I
02:35
absolutely love what I do each and every
02:37
day.