The Infrastructure That Makes Places Possible with Adam Mekies

The most important parts of a place are often the ones you never see.

Beneath every building, streetscape, farm, neighborhood, and public space are the systems that decide whether a project can actually work: water supply, wastewater, stormwater, grading, energy, soils, roads, and the hidden infrastructure that either limits or enables what a place can become.

In this episode, Neal sits down with Adam Mekies of Sherwood Design Engineers to explore why civil engineering deserves a front-row seat in regenerative real estate. Adam is a licensed landscape architect, associate principal at Sherwood, co-author of Codify: Parametric and Computational Design in Landscape Architecture, and co-founder of the Geotechnical Urbanism Foundation. His work sits at the intersection of computation, ecological systems, infrastructure, and development.

Together, Neal and Adam go beneath the surface of real estate to ask how infrastructure can move beyond extraction and disposal toward reuse, circularity, and regeneration. They discuss why remote and off-grid developments often break down around energy, water, and wastewater; how water scarcity and water rights force better design; and why Adam says many places become “cities designed by sewer” when infrastructure follows the shortest path instead of the healthiest system.

Adam also shares a practical framework for thinking about infrastructure through inputs and outputs. Wastewater, for example, is not just something to remove from a site. It contains water, nutrients, solids, and biosolids — all of which can potentially become part of a larger resource system through reuse, biodigestion, composting, energy production, or nature-based treatment.

The conversation also gets into the role of computation and AI in regenerative infrastructure. Adam explains how tools like Ecocircuit AI can help teams rapidly explore circular infrastructure options, test ideas earlier in concept design, understand footprint and cost, and connect complex ecological systems back to development feasibility.

From Google Bay View’s water-positive campus to district-scale water reuse, digital twins, and pro forma modeling, this episode is a grounded look at what it takes to move regenerative real estate from aspiration into execution.

For developers, landowners, investors, designers, and anyone working at the intersection of real estate, infrastructure, water, and ecology, this conversation is a reminder that the future of place depends on the systems we usually hide.

———————

The Regenerative Real Estate Podcast is an independent show exploring the people, projects, and capital reshaping how land gets used and communities get built. Two organizations grew directly out of this work, and they're worth knowing:

Hamlet Capital finances and advises on projects that integrate agriculture and conservation with mixed-use development. If you're building one or looking to invest, let's talk.

Latitude is a real estate brokerage representing sanctuary properties rooted in nature, beauty, and meaningful living.

Transcript

Optimism And What Cities Hide

SPEAKER_01 0:08

I'm categorically optimistic that we can continue to build, construct, change our world in better ways. We can also do it in we can also make really terrible decisions as people. But the technology that we have at our disposal is only going to let us ask bigger and bigger questions, explore more and more interesting design. And I think that's where I'm so interested to see kind of what what we could prototype next that just kind of keeps moving the perception of what's possible for the city.

The Real Cost Of Linear Systems

SPEAKER_00 2:10

What I've found is that architects often get the glory associated with memorable places and projects. But beneath all that work, beneath the buildings, landscapes, streets, and neighborhoods we inhabit, are systems designed by engineers. For those of us that live in cities, these systems are largely hidden. And I might be so bold as to say we often take them for granted. We assume that the water, sewer, stormwater, electricity, and roads are simply there, available at the street and ready to be connected to. And to be clear, these systems, they are remarkable. They have enabled the sprawling metropolises that define our modern life, but these are linear centralized systems that come with astronomical hidden ecological cost. It becomes easy to ignore the energy required to pump wastewater to large centralized treatment plants, many of which carry complicated environmental legacies. It's also easy to assume that clean water should flow freely from our taps, without us ever knowing its source, the health of our aquifers, or even the watersheds we live within. And we've become utterly dependent on electrical systems that, in many places, are still tied to fossil fuels, large-scale infrastructure and the damming of rivers, systems that have helped power modern society while contributing to catastrophic climate disruption and biological loss. It wasn't until I moved to a rural area that I really began to feel the bottlenecks of civil engineering and how they present when trying to develop places that are needed by a community. Wastewater, in particular, has become this strange obsession of mine after countless project setbacks caused by the lack of available sewer infrastructure. And as the projects I'm involved with have become larger, wastewater has increasingly become either the enabling or restricting factor. Through these experiences, I become intimately aware that not all engineering approaches are created equal. In fact, I now see civil engineering and infrastructure design more broadly as one of the areas with the most latent potential within regenerative real estate and development.

Meet Adam Mekes And Sherwood

SPEAKER_00 4:34

That's why I am honored to have Adam Mekes of Sherwood Design Engineers join me for this conversation. Adam brings a fascinating lens to this work. He's actually a licensed landscape architect, but an associate principal at Sherwood. He's also co-author of Codify, Parametric and Computational Design and Landscape Architecture, and the co-founder of the Geotechnical Urbanism Foundation. His work sits at the intersection of computation, construction, ecological systems, and urban infrastructure. And Sherwood itself is an especially compelling firm for this conversation. They describe themselves as a civil engineering firm motivated by art, innovation, and the environment, with a mission to design sustainable infrastructure that has a lasting positive impact on communities and ecologies. Their work expanses, campuses, mixed-use districts, ecological restoration, water and wastewater systems, eco-communities like agrihoods, and large-scale urban development. So today we're going to go beneath the surface into the systems, materials, flows, and infrastructures that make places possible. So without further ado, let's get into it with Adam Mickeys of Sherwood Design Engineers. All right.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

I

From Computation To Infrastructure Design

SPEAKER_01 6:25

think at this stage in my life for me to answer. But I often start out with the idea of uh, in many ways, a recovering designer. Um, I've found sort of this love over the last five, 10 years for systems um design uh in engineering now. Work with Sherwood Design Engineers uh here in New York uh in the civil infrastructure space, uh the regenerative uh sort of ecological restoration often is our work. But it started with computation. Uh it started with really sort of robotics, computer coding in high school, um, and these spaces that underpin that systems could kind of bring things to life that might be static construction. I'm really enjoying now kind of getting to work with a great number of folks that bring a lot of systems within cities to life.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Interesting. Whenever you say uh computation, did you see yourself in the built environment whenever you're getting into this profession? Or was this what what's the the arc here in terms of working at an uh engineering and design firm?

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Yeah, definitely in the built environment. I think when I was maybe three years old, five years old, there's a little scribble of mine that my mom still has where I said I want to dig holes and you know, plan things and draw pictures when I was young. So I knew generally throughout my youth and in the high school days, kind of home construction, renovation, uh, some heavy highway kind of concrete work. Um, and from there found design, kind of being able to influence more and more at the earlier stages of projects. Now maybe kind of coming back full circle to the applications of technology and kind of the infrastructure space.

SPEAKER_00 8:05

We we get a lot of people that are trying to figure out their way into the industry. It's why I do like to just give an homage of like what's the background that people are bringing into this? Is there what kind of degree did you get to enable your work?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Yeah. So my undergraduate was from Iowa State University in landscape architecture. Um, sort of a pretty typical planning, urban design, architectural kind of training alongside more kind of prototypical landscape degree. Um, I worked in Aspen, Colorado on a lot of hospitality, sort of ranch development that I think underpinned some of the conversation we're probably going to go through. Um, but from there, I ended up going to Harvard for my master's degree in urban design. Uh kind of starting to think at a more systems-based urban and regional kind of scale. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 8:57

Yeah, let's actually double-click on some of the ranch stuff.

Why Off Grid Plans Break

SPEAKER_00 9:01

One of the things that that I've noticed throughout my career, especially putting on the regenerative real estate podcasts, is people create these renderings or these ideals of these off-grid or very remote properties. And you start to scratch the surface of the level of thinking that that goes into them. And granted, the pictures are very pretty. You can do incredible um kind of land management or even landscape design things. But then whenever you get into the systems, we're talking energy, water, wastewater. That's where things start to fall apart. Um, and I know you've you've done some really innovative stuff, but what was it like getting into that side of things? I mean, how do you how do you start to work with uh particularly ranch properties in Colorado to start to approach uh those big things that that are underpinning a project?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah. Um, I mean, definitely the Western US, it's water that comes up often first and foremost. Um Colorado River watershed, uh, water rights, and just the sustainability of a very scarce resource in that framing. And the amount of infrastructure behind that is always complex, but always underpinned by sort of fundamental physics. Uh gravity, right, drives water downhill. Um and when you can use every drop of water along a path as many times as possible, it often forces you to think about that precious resource in different ways. Uh whether it be aesthetically, how can I enjoy it multiple times, whether it be sustainably, what can we grow with it multiple times, um, or any combination, right, of the above, whether it be heating and cooling exchange off of those systems. But my first forays into ranch planning and the infrastructure of ranch planning was really as a designer. And I kind of call it kind of the surficial level. I was sort of complaining to the infrastructure engineers about why are you putting a manhole in the middle of that beautiful pathway? Why are we building a sewer line through this grove of trees that we hopefully don't need to disturb? Um, and it was sort of recognizing the impact that large-scale infrastructure can have to the natural beauty of a landscape, which is often why people buy these properties, right? Or often why they get attached to the land. There's an unfortunate common phrase in a lot of land development, right, which is master plan communities are often named for the thing that they destroyed in order to be built. Uh oak grove, you know, prairie meadows, these are what they used to be, right? Before they became something else. And so how we integrate ourselves into infrastructure while retaining that landscape value often asks us to kind of create new types of infrastructure.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

So much of what I've witnessed is a very linear type of thinking that does not necessarily set up a conversation around how how can water get reused in in a variety of fashions. It's almost like we're gonna put a road here, water gets treated this way, it gets removed from the site. Um, you know, we're we're thinking about fire lane access and and the fire truck has got to have lanes this wide. And and and I don't know if that's necessarily on the private development side that is pushing for the linear um process, or if that is on the public and municipal side that's saying we don't want to actually risk any deviation in our process. Where do you find, particularly, you know, we this is the regenerative real estate podcast, we are looking um at the edges in in many instances of how we do development. Where do you think that there's a breakdown of uh an ecological approach versus a very conventional approach towards development?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah.

Adding Ecology Back Into Projects

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Um, I mean, ecologies first and foremost are complex things. Uh there's systems dynamics of uh many different insects, flora, fauna, right? If we think about it in a natural ecosystem standpoint, biology is a set of layered components that are messy in their nature, in their origin. Um for us, from a societal standpoint, we've probably tried to, or we've spent the last century kind of engineering out unpredictability and creating very organized, ordered systems for our infrastructure, for our developments, for our construction. And that's extremely efficient in terms of setting up a set of standards, setting up a set of goals and a set of uh risk management uh methodologies within a development uh pro forma overall. And what it really just takes is making sure that when we're looking at shifting a variable, we're looking at it in context of the full ecosystem. So if we're expanding a fire lane, what other uh creature, what other system is dependent on that? Is it shifting a water line out? Is it impacting a grove of existing trees that we wanted to preserve? Um, whatever it might be, but it takes a little bit more time, and often you can actually reap a greater benefit. So rather than just sort of saying, okay, shortest path um is to connect the sewer downhill, um, often we see systems designed by sewer, right? Cities designed by sewer. The most efficient path for sewer becomes the layout uh for infrastructure, which then begins to drive a development pattern in that. But what other variables might have aligned? And I love the aspect of gravity designing from a watershed uh of where a sewer might have historically run. Often when you see these historic sewer routes, they tend to follow the drainages um of a city. They'll remap the streams that were underground that are buried on top of them. Um, versus today, when we see these sort of brutalist kind of routes of infrastructure, we're not quite as sensitive. We're fighting gravity a little bit more in today's day and age. So I've kind of meandered a little bit there, but where you kind of come about the idea of how do we co-optimize these pieces of infrastructure a little bit, I'd say it's about adding complexity a little bit to the equation and not being afraid of it. Uh can we do water reuse? Okay, maybe we can't go all the way back to potable, but can we do it for irrigation in this instance? Um, can we do off-grid power or water? Sure. What else can we mix with that? Could we do biosolar versus just solar on the roof? Um, and sort of always asking that question of what else could co-optimize our benefit as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

What are what is the process to add complexity? We in the private development industry are very cognizant of time. You know, there even financial returns are are measured on a yardstick of an IRR. Um and and so on one side you're saying we've got to get through this. You know, our our investor, our investment returns are predicated upon this. But it and then another way, a lot of people are saying, look, we actually have to sit and understand what is possible with the land. And and I think it's um it's becoming, I don't want to call it cliche. Like I I love that listen to your land approach, but it can be so overplayed and and ungrounded of like what is the process that integrates the ecological realities and sensitivities with adding in the complexity of a project uh that that threads the needle of the financial, the social, the political, and the community realities of of this. Um is there a best practice of how you've you like to approach a project?

Inputs Outputs And Circular Wastewater

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Um I think for me it's about inputs and outputs. Um often we look at development as how much more can I add, right? So how many more units, how much more square footage, how much more open space, whatever it might be, right? Arcing stalls, et cetera. And we look at infrastructure from how much can I remove, which is great from a cost perspective. If we can engineer infrastructure, the need for it out from the very beginning, then we have more space left over for development and other benefits, nature itself. What I think though is also really important as a question for infrastructure is not just um what is it getting in the way of, or what um what space does it need, but also what else can I do with it besides the one use that I'm asking it for? So for example, if we take sewer water, inside of sewer water is water, nutrients, solids, biosolids, um, and a few other things, likely. Um if we come down to the fundamental engineering, right, sort of the elemental component of it, we can begin to say which one of those three things do I actually want or not want um within a system and begin to focus on the subcomponent of each part. With biosolids, I could go through biodigestion, create energy, um, come back to compost or other aspects for soil um within a farming regime. Obviously, through proper burning, proper sanitation technologies, these are being done all over within the world. Uh with wastewater itself, we can treat it in a number of different ways, whether that be mechanically, sort of in a basement underground as a utility, or within a wastewater treatment wetland wetland, um a black water uh sort of nitrogen phosphorus uh set of cells. And so really it starts to ask all of us to become chemists, physicists within the process to break things down to that level. Um and not everybody has that amount of time, right? To spend three years doing a chemistry project of their development uh master plan.

Using AI To Accelerate Options

SPEAKER_01 20:01

And so this is where um Yushin and I on our team have been developing out this thing called Ecocircuit AI, which is essentially a large language model that um just does that for us. Um and it starts to just make lists of inputs and outputs that might come from a system. Because this was the kind of question I was typing into, whether it'd be a Gemini, a ChatGPT, a LoRa model, right? All the time in this to try and get the answers back out. Um and so we were just wanting to graphically kind of see that and then know the kit of parts that we could play with.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Can you do more innovative and circular solutions on smaller projects? Was that it, you know, if it takes three years to figure out the chemistry and the biology of a more circular and ecological system, it's really nice to be able to amortize that over, you know, call it a number of homes or commercial development. So you've you've got the juice there to justify it, or the juice is worth the squeeze. Would that enable smaller, more human-scale projects to have innovative solutions come into them?

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yeah, and I mean there's kind of the ideation end of it, right? And then there's the implementation and the execution, and then there's the return on investment, kind of the operation side. And so on the ideation side, definitely the AI models are helping us a ton in being able to get the ideas out there quicker so that what might have been a six-month feasibility engineering, you know, sustainability scope before, right, is starting to be able to be done at the same time, right, as a concept design, a concept master planning stage within a charret. Let's explore 150 sustainable ideas that might be possible. And then we can quickly get them on the wall, knock out the ones that may not fit the site right now. Kind of come down and say, okay, here's the five, the 10 we really want to test, right, fit within this project. The other piece with the AI models that we're starting to play with is that they'll uh they know the terms for us in this and they know the rough sizing. So we're training them on kind of built work. So we can get really quick 3D models as placeholders for this infrastructure, because footprint, right, land is so important within these, and we can begin to kind of box out and see does this idea or that idea begin to claim too much footprint within the overall framework? Um, in terms of the implementation, the costs of doing a lot of these regenerative technologies, sustainable, resilient, pick your word, kind of of the of the decade, right? That's kind of driving the ideas, but so much of this has been tried and true now. And a lot of these are available even in modular solutions. Uh, there's some great um initiatives at sort of Google Bayview, uh, Microsoft, various different technology companies that are so water forward, energy forward, that have really de-risked and really piloted a lot of the technologies out there.

Water Positive Campuses And ROI

SPEAKER_01 23:11

Um, so for example, Google Bayview in California is giving water back to the grid from a wastewater treatment system, um, in that for its purple pipe or reuse water. And these projects have been able to kind of build out the models um to test for the ROI. So, from a construction perspective of a call it a neighborhood scale, district scale infrastructure, we often say, those models are pretty well known now. And then really that just speaks to the construction ROI. We're seeing on some of these neighborhoods, districts, right, a 10-year to 20-year return on investment for various sort of regenerative systems. And that's completely overgeneralizing, right? The specifics of the infrastructure are where the model really comes to life. But these are um experienceable time frames, I guess, from an investment standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

The Google project is is interesting. I I had heard that they were net positive on water, and I I was like, oh, that's that's fascinating. Let me let me double-click on this. Isn't it like two million square feet of commercial development or something just astounding? And and for the listeners that are tuning in, like imagine the amount of people that are going to work every day and and using water and flushing toilets. And like they're able to be net positive on that and and have water go back into the grid. That that to me is just pretty incredible that we can get to that scale. That it's not just at the residential level of we built a house, we're capturing rainwater, and you know, we're able to be net zero on that. I mean, that is a great achievement. Not many people are getting there, but also to to scale that up to something that the size of a small city uh is able to do.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

And I mean, a lot of these corporate campuses, a lot of these corporate clients are looking at it across their whole portfolio in something called volumetric water benefit accounting. Um, and this was piloted by a few different firms, uh, Limnotech being one of them who kind of helped write the standards um in the books for how do you account for water benefit? Is it just any random act of goodwill with water counts? Not necessarily, but how do you do things within your watershed, within your scarcity, right? Your network of water of where you take out, how do you give back within that system? And it's a it's a set of volumetric techniques, methods, practices. Um, and this is across uh many, many different companies that are out there in in kind of the network. And it's a growing focus among, I think, sort of corporate clients that see the risk from a water scarcity standpoint in some of the the networks that they work in. They see the risk from sort of a perceptions uh standpoint um and a goodwill, uh, but even from a retention aspect and sort of what are they doing to kind of innovate and to set the set the goalposts further and further as sort of corporate entities. But I think the especially the hospitality world is asking a lot of these same questions now. We saw this at in Dubai, we see this in a lot of our Middle East uh sort of projects where water scarcity is really front of mind because of the costs of desalination, uh, the costs to agriculture in terms of pulling down aquifers over time and some of the desertification of the savannas and things that did exist there at one time.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And do you see you had mentioned hospitality and we were talking about office as well. Do you see this being sector agnostic? Or like is this happening across all the sectors of the built and human environments that we have, or is it bubbling up in just particular industries that may be thinking about this from either an ethos or even an operating uh financial reality?

SPEAKER_01 27:25

I think maybe across the early 2000s, um Sherwood Design Engineers did a number of these projects that I work for now, but we saw sort of the corporate entities um at a district scale, at a campus scale, driving a lot of this work. Um it was because of the order of magnitude of a demand and supply that they were able to see within a singular project that was being implemented at that time. So a particular corporate campus. But that model has really repeated itself across so many different development sectors. Domino Sugar here in New York actually has a water reuse facility underneath one of the park plazas that uh is part of the aspect of taking the sewer, you know, off-grid, part of the sort of combined sewer efforts of the city of New York, um, as well as part of that. And you're seeing even rebates, right, from some of these older cities that have combined sewer systems for the developers that are helping to de-risk the costs of that upfront infrastructure.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Hmm. Interesting. This

Bring Engineers In At The Start

SPEAKER_00 28:31

is jumping into the the process question, but it comes in like what moves first? Where do you think an engineer should come in to a project? Or when should they come into a project? I the people that I don't think are are very experienced, they go first to an architect. And I found sometimes the architect should comes in a little bit later on, unless they're they're really exceptional at the planning stage. It's it's not one of those professions that I think a lot of people are are really realizing that it is a one of the key teams on the larger development team. But do you think that is a a first call that a developer needs to make? A second call, like where where do you guys come in into a project? Or when would you like to be called into a project is a better question.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Yeah, I mean, we we love being called right, you know, from the very beginning. But um that being said, it's there are great architects, there are great landscape architects, there are great engineers. There are also mistakes that have been made across the given, uh, myself included in that process. And it's really about bringing, I think, a holistic team together at the get-go that wants to think in a co-optimized, systems-based way. So not necessarily making decisions from a particular discipline's ego or a particular discipline's expertise only, and saying this system has to win out, no matter what. Maybe, right? There might be a particular variable, right, within a site, within a particular algebra or equation, right, of the land. But it's about letting all of those variables kind of bubble up at the beginning of a project and being willing to kind of see what's the largest number, what's the largest value we can get out the back end. If we give up a little bit of this, can we get a little bit more of that? And I think where engineering being there at the beginning, particularly from an infrastructure standpoint or from a mechanical systems cooling standpoint, is some of those front-end decisions have such a ramification of cost down the road. The direction you orient your architecture to your solar gain and your cooling costs, the uh locations from a sewer access or a stormwater implication or a grading um implication, these early stage decisions, if we can get the foundations right, what's going to underpin sit below a development and really support it over the long haul, um, often the return on that investment is magnified over the the longer that that decision kind of can sit in place.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Hmm. Interesting. Do you have kind of a repertoire of projects that you really like to reference of like, I just loved working on this project, uh or this is really innovative. I think we had originally talked a while back around uh Middlebrook, right? The agrihood in in Iowa that Steve Brewer did. If anybody is interested in in that story, uh Steve does a great job. He's he's on a in a previous episode. Um so it's really fun to actually get to talk with people that have supported that project in in different professional capacities. But what's the highlight reel, Adam, that that you've you've been able to work on over the years?

Middlebrook And Farm First Planning

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Yeah, I mean, the the highlight reel certainly includes sort of the early conversations with Steve on on Middlebrook when I did not have as long a history in the urban design side, was much more focused on the landscape architecture component of a project. And the early planning of Middlebrook with Steve was so incredible to see how farm first and farm systems, right? Steve was, given his expertise as coming from people's company, coming from an agriculturally just grounded family in that landscape. And the ability to make a farm operate and run on Middlebrook over the last now 10 years. I think we started on that project with him in 2015. Um, at the time was sort of the first sketches and drawings we were doing of the master plan. Um to see that farm having been the underpinning and then the development to sort of really come about around it, versus kind of that farm being a leftover corner, right? Of, okay, well, we'll get all the development put in, and then maybe we can fit the farm over there on that wet ground that we can't really build on. It is many times antithetical. And I think as a core farm kind of uh practice, that was fundamental for Middlebrook, was that that was at the center, uh, center stage.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Yeah, that that's an incredible. Before you go into another project, for people that don't know, Middlebrook is is an agrihood in uh Cummings, Iowa, that think uh a commercial center with different housing types, with the agriculture being really front and center of what is the the drive of this place and and what makes it tick, or I guess the DNA of of a neighborhood. And and what I find is that there are these master plan communities that try to go in that vein. A lot of agrihoods that are predecessors, they treat it as what you're talking about, Adam, is like we're gonna put the farm over there. And it's kind of out of sight, out of mind, where you know it could have been that leftover parcel that it didn't actually go towards development uh potential. And and I think that's where we are today is like there's this a new way that we can actually put agriculture and other really meaningful ways and or tenets of how we think that a a community and individuals and nature can be harmonized uh together. But let outside of of Middle Brook and Agrihoods, which I think we go over a fair amount on this show, um you mentioned Dubai earlier and and you dropped that.

Rebuilding Aquifers And Full Systems Care

SPEAKER_00 34:58

Like you guys are working on some really fascinating projects across the globe. Um, and I'd love to hear more about that because I I think it's just so inspirational to to know what is happening.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Yeah, and I the interesting piece I think that I take away from all of these projects that I've seen that have been super successful is that there was nothing left to just chance. There was nothing left over that was like, oh, that's the agriculture part over there. Oh, that's the park over there. When that kind of happens in a planning framework, those pieces become just this sort of no man's land, back of house um aspect that don't get loved. And if something's not loved, it's not going to get maintained, it's not gonna get used, it's not gonna reap the value, right, that it might be for real estate frontage, you know, crop demand, whatever it might be, right, that the the play is to make money out of that open space, right, in in many ways. And so from a Middlebrook standpoint, it was farm first, right? We need to hire a farmer. Steve understood we need to get the land certified, organic. Um, it was really thinking about the systems of agriculture and making that work, the business model, right, of a farm. From an Aspen, Colorado and the sort of private ranch estates, I think I really took away the level of a fence detail, the level of the edge of a driveway, the fact that you can pick the binder and the definition of every detail of even an agrarian landscape. While they might be soft, understated, um, this idea that making something look effortless is actually kind of complicated in many ways. Um, to the Middle East projects, where truly just starting from scratch with an infrastructure or a landscape that at one time was like Northern Africa, savannas, and has been depleted in its aquifer uh for the last, you know, three, four decades, and really having to rebuild the aquifer beneath your feet of a large-scale nature reserve in order to get the grassland to come back so that we can get the native grazers, so that we could support the predators, which can then keep those grazers in check and create sort of that balance, right, of a of a valley ecosystem that can then support long-term rotational grazing within a framework. Um, and I think it's about not leaving just any system to chance, not leaving the uh water balance of a region to chance. It's actually putting guidelines and frameworks on wells and groundwater extraction. It's actually putting practices in place for how re-greening or how fence line design standards might define the edge of a property. When we care for all these systems and all these elements, just as much as we maybe care for the kitchen detail or the countertop finishes we might pick out in a normal real estate program, it makes the public realm bean a lot more.

Clients Vision Versus Engineering Reality

SPEAKER_00 38:17

I whenever I hear you talk, I there's some things that I'm curious, are you driving as an engineer to the point that your client may not even be, they they don't know what they don't know, right? Like you're talking about stuff that it's like, no, we can get there. You know, like this is truly possible from an innovation and a technology and a design perspective. Or or do you find it's the other way of like your clients are really pushing and you're you're trying to figure it out of of like where are they trying to go and and let's let's do this. Is is there a tension point there?

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Tension, I don't know, but I think learning always, um and it's both on our side and theirs. Um often the greatest projects are clients that have a vision, a mission, right? Sort of in mind. I've got this piece of land that has been in my family and I really want it to be uh maintained in some agricultural legacy somehow. Or I have a massive nature reserve, I, but it has no water. We need to think about the ecosystems of that site. There's a there's a larger vision, there's a larger why, right, sort of in place. And then it's about working with them to understand the hows of their region, understand the what's, right? The pieces of infrastructure, the pieces of pipe we may or may not need to put in the ground to kind of figure it out. And I'm, you know, piloting here on kind of Simon Sinek's framework of start with why, but it it really is always that that nestling right together of if we can understand the core vision, we can then begin to understand the variables that matter more, less, et cetera, sort of in in that push and pull.

Predictive Models For Living Systems

SPEAKER_00 40:09

Adam, as you're talking, I'm curious, like what led you to Sherwood Engineers? Is it Sherwood Engineers or Sherwood Design Engineers? How design engineers. Design engineers. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that I was getting the name of the firm right. Like what drew you to a firm like that? And and I then want to go a little bit further because it goes down into the practicality of selecting the right type of engineering team. Because I there's massive uh civil engineers and engineers that that like you guys work on projects around the world, there's multiple offices, uh, but then you know, you can find engineers that are they just work in this one particular municipality. Um why why did you end up going towards Sherwood? And then what like was there advantages at working at that scale with that type of aperture?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Yeah. Um I and I will say what I've learned since I got here is we love working with all of those other engineers and all of those other expertise. It's incredible the um breadth of knowledge that falls under just the term engineering in the world. If I've learned anything over the last five years, it's it's not to underestimate the complexity, the brilliance of some of the folks that are that are out there in the world. It's it's truly inspiring in all of that. Um and I think what drew me to that sort of framework of uh a design engineering firm, a uh firm that was innovation sort of forward in its framework was when I looked back to my robotics club in high school. And I was really on that team because I liked welding, I liked cutting steel, fabricating as a contractor at that time, right? Um I could build static things out of static materials. It was all the other kids in that club and the coaches that knew electronics, knew coding at that time that could bring it to life and could make it respond, could make it adapt to everything around it. And I was I was a little bit lost in that magic. Um, because I my brain just didn't work in that way. But over time, understanding that there are so many different folks in the background of our world around us that make what seems effortless, turning the temperature up and down in our room, turning the lights on and off with a remote control, things we take for complete granted in this day and age, the amount of engineering, the folks that make that happen are are pretty unique.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Do you get exposure to that at a larger firm?

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Um, yeah. I mean, that's that's really what I believe Sherwood as a civil engineering firm is trying to do for the outside world, where our interior world is almost optimized, right? Our glass is triple pane windows, our insulation is incredible. Uh, we can control the thermostat, the humidity within our indoor environments. The next realm of that is what can we do with the outdoor, the ecological, the wild world. And civil infrastructure in so many ways, whether it's the hydrology and hydrodynamics of floodplains and the predictive modeling of how do we work with infrastructure and development within a grading scheme, or whether it's the restoration ecology in being able to work with specific plant species in a in a native ecosystem. Um these all Take kind of predictive models. It's a space that is rapidly becoming possible because of the computational engines that are becoming more and more efficient. It takes that many more variables, right, than sort of a pure physics calculation. But there are some really amazing ways that we can push the ecological fitness of our environment around us. Not necessarily to get a landscape to perform like a day-to-day individual, but actually push our environments, whether it be our agriculture, our ecosystems to perform like an Olympic athlete every day. Hopefully without the drugs, right? Hopefully without the fertilizers, the steroids that might push something for a week for a season, right? But then really deteriorate the soils or the muscle structure over the long term. And so I think there's a little bit of a stretched, right, kind of analogy there. But the fact that biological systems work the way they do for reasons, um, but you can train them to do more. You can co-optimize them in ways that are a healthy version of sort of getting them to perform higher.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Do you need specialized place-specific knowledge in order to do that? Like, how do you work across geographies so diverse as Iowa to Dubai?

SPEAKER_01 45:27

Um we partner. I mean, I grew up in Iowa myself, but we partner with biologists, horticulturalists, flora and fauna experts from around the world on specific locations. Many of these tend to be sort of incredible academics, incredible network that kind of know each other, right? And know who the who the expert is in that. But at the broader system of the models, gravity always goes downhill. Fluid dynamics are pretty much the same, thermodynamics are pretty much the same. Newtonian physics, in terms of the computational models behind simulating a lot of this work, are the same. And being able to have sort of an incredible team of computational designers that wants to work with those variables, but then get more and more complex inputs from these sort of local expertise allows us to kind of continually train those models over time. Um, and then the critical part to this, I think, is being able to test them, right? Being able to run those models past these expertise, being able to test them in the real world. It may not be hardware, it may not be just pure software, but it's a it's a wetware, right? That's out in the world around us. Um and these are responsive sensor networks, uh, these are feedback systems uh that we're seeing more and more integrated into our projects that give us real-time data points.

Place Connection And Local Partners

SPEAKER_00 47:00

What what about the soft skills of this? If you're like you're in New York City, am I right? If you're working on a project that is rural Texas, and you've got to go in, you're doing pre-application meetings, you're working with the local health department and the planning commission. Are you phoning that in, or do you need local engineers or designers that can represent the the planning and design that's gone into it? How do how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 47:38

I think more than anything, you need a connection to place. Um great design often comes out of that connection to place. And so is this a landscape that we have somebody in the office who's from that locale, that city, um, was the connection right to that specific piece of land, that client, et cetera, and that wants to travel back. Um a lot of these sort of barriers to entry, we can get over by a willingness to fly, right, on the weekends and be there on a Monday morning to have the meetings that are needed and kind of come back as as part of the week. Um, but I think that at the same time, um partnering with folks all over the world is where we learn um from everybody else around us at the same time. And so, yes, and uh the more the merrier, really in in the broader equation.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

So interesting. I mean, the these aren't the questions that I I think a lot of people are asking. This is really just informed by whenever we are engaged in a development or a project, we we we're asking this behind closed doors. It might not even be with the engineers um in the room of like, how do we make this project work? Who needs to be on the team? What are the considerations that that go into that from budget to location to expertise? Um, so I I'm just trying to shine some daylight on this and and help so many people that are like, how do how do we actually do this? And what are the things outside of the models? Um move an idea forward into the world to to actually become real. Because I think that's really the time frame that we're in now. And I saw this, you know, in 2019, we started this podcast, and a lot of the conversations were, wouldn't it be cool if we could do this? And then we started to get together and and have more national type of uh audiences and getting in person. And, you know, 2020 was, you know, uh still pretty generative idea based. By 2021, 2022, people are starting to say, and here's what we're doing. Um, and and we're not exactly sure if it's gonna work yet. Now we're starting to move into like, wow, there's some really fascinating projects that are getting put up. Uh and the the needle is starting to get moved. You know, a lot of the conversations that we're having now is around capital. This is the first time that we've really had a design and engineering uh specialty come onto the podcast. So I just I'm I'm coming at this from a lot of different directions, trying to get people familiar with uh what do we need to do to not just have this kind of fluffy permaculture-based language, no shade on permaculture uh at all. But I think people understand like, how do we really do this and put together really high-performing teams uh that can do some really innovative stuff that the world needs right now, uh, more now more than ever.

Linking Pro Forma With Digital Twins

SPEAKER_01 51:00

But how do you restructure a performa, right, around all those different variables that have to come together? Um it's not a standard uh real estate pro forma, but there are models, right? There are pieces that exist, whether it be for the permaculture component, whether it be for the commercial agriculture, CSA component, the water, whatever it might be. And it's it's that systems engineering in in our world, at least that I love of kind of rebuilding those. And they do have to come together, as you say, and first the pro forma for the developer, but then physically, right? In the in the lab.

SPEAKER_00 51:38

How so that's a great point. Um, the Proforma. How integrated of thinking or how participatory are you in the building of a pro forma with some of these projects that have more complexity involved in them?

SPEAKER_01 51:56

We love working in the Proforma itself, in the data model. Um, and whether that be linking it live through sort of some of our digital dashboard, uh digital twin, or if you want to call it that, it's a 3D model that has information mapped to it, right? BIM, there's lots of different fun words for it, but it's just designing computational. And so when we move development around, when we move infrastructure around, when we move open space around in a model space, does it inform right the numeric model as well? And what I've loved is that there are some folks here that as much as they understand numeric stormwater modeling, hydrology, hydraulics, as much as they understand energy modeling, they also understand real estate spreadsheets really, really well. And I love seeing these sort of dynamic links when all of those spreadsheets start talking to each other. Um, and so whether that's building out the pro forma for the developer as sort of an initial first pass and then beginning to kind of question, right, some of the baselines, the what's the land cost, what's the, you know, what are the local construction values that you're seeing? Um, or whether it's kind of taking an existing model and saying, okay, what are the inputs you need in order to finish your performa model? And then just kind of plugging in a few of those variables as well. It it could definitely work either way.

SPEAKER_00 53:25

Where where does the data come from for that? Are you to build that up into uh an LLM or or is it you're getting that from your client?

SPEAKER_01 53:37

We've done a lot of that um through sort of past projects, right? Now 20 years of sort of built, um engineered, constructed kind of projects. Um we've done a lot of that from just getting the information that might be first and foremost, a developer often has their own approach, right? And they have a set of standards that they like to work with, um, a model that they're very comfortable with in that. And you can start from there and then say, okay, what are the pieces that we all believe in? What are the pieces that we actually think are a plug, right? In this model. And then it's just about finding ways to test the plug numbers. Because as I think for anybody who's worked on a pro forma, we we know that over the course of a process, right, there's always that kind of plug number that we've got in. And that's the one that we're we're wondering if we're right or wrong on.

SPEAKER_00 54:31

Fascinating. Adam, this is great. I mean, I I think what what you guys are doing is just so cool. I mean, and and it's so needed, uh, particularly being able to handle the level of complexity that you're talking about, plus just really cool, practical. Like, we need to get into the pro forma and we need to help inform that and guide it. And and how do you start to pull that apart and see what changes? Uh, that is one of the the really most dynamic parts of of this industry that I love of like we start to make micro decisions and we see the the output and and how it changes.

Influences Resources And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 55:12

And so uh for anybody that is starting to kind of light up with this conversation, um, I would definitely say that there's something to the engineering, the design side. Where I want to go from here is is what are the some of the resources or maybe some of the the books or or designers out there that have really influenced you that you think would be additive to the broader conversation around regenerative real estate and development?

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Um there's a number around the world, and I I often often try to look locally, right, to any project. Um, but there are a few out there that really speak to the sort of systems first kind of underpinnings. We've worked for decades with DRK Engels, right, who's sort of made a a huge name at a very large scale uh with sort of very early systems thinking, and I think he called it hedonistic sustainability in his early frameworks. Um we worked on the floating cities projects for the UN with him, uh, which was around many of these same cycles, right? Not necessarily what we could take and optimize from the land, but what we could take and optimize from the ocean in that framework. Similar systems kind of dynamics. Other aspects of work with Grimshaw, um, who really focus on the architecture of infrastructure, whether it be rail stations or uh we did the Croton Water Treatment Plant here in New York with them, where it's essentially a golf course is the roof deck that is a hundred percent water reuse on site for the irrigation, with that on one of the largest water treatment plants in in New York City in that. And so again, there's sort of this idea of co-optimizing, right? Recreation with sustainability with large-scale municipal infrastructure in that, and how many different things we can kind of do at one time. Those are a few that sort of come to mind in that. I think there are others out there, Neil Spackman, who's done a ton of work with regenerative aquaculture around the world. And we've collaborated with him a number of times in the Middle East. Um, in some of his work with uh Wadis, we'd call them arroyos here in the United States, just these ephemeral, right, sort of desert waterways and the dynamics of aquifer recharge there. But there's so much interesting work going on, and it's it's really about just kind of reaching out there and trying to find what are the variables for for your site.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Yeah. Adam, this has been great. I'm so glad that we had the opportunity to do this. I I think anybody that that's looking for a great design and engineering firm, reach out to Adam at Sherwood Engineer Design Engineers. Um, I am I'm really just so enamored with the fact that you get a really broad perspective on a lot of interesting and innovative projects across the world. Like it's I are you hopeful? I mean, are you sitting in a in a spot of being like, this is we've got a shot at at making a really cool uh dent in the world here, or do you still feel like we get a lot of room to go here?

Categorical Optimism And Closing

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Uh yes, and I'm categorically optimistic that we can continue to build, construct, change our world in better ways. Uh, we can also do it in we can also make really terrible decisions um as people. But um the technology that we have at our disposal is only going to let us ask bigger and bigger questions, explore more and more interesting design. Um and I think that's where I'm so interested to see kind of what what we could prototype next that just kind of keeps moving the perception of what's possible forward.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

Amazing. All right, everybody. You heard it from Adam. Thank you so much for for coming on. Um this is a pleasure. We gotta we gotta do it again, um, and we'll get into more innovative projects and cool things that you're up to in the future. Um, and with that, we will sign up.

How To Reach Out And Support

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Thanks for tuning in to the Regenerative Real Estate Podcast. The show production is a reflection of the work that we do through Latitude Regenerative Real Estate and Hamlet Capital. This episode was edited by Asher Griffith at Cicada Radio. If you're a landowner, investor, or developer exploring regenerative projects, or if you're sitting on land and wondering what's possible, you can learn more or reach out to the links in the show notes. And if this conversation was useful, consider subscribing or sharing it with someone working at the intersection of real estate, investment, and impact. Until next time, this is Neil Collins signing off, and the other one.