Bloomberg published an article today talking about "climate-friendly apparel startups." One of the companies is a British one called Techniche International. Their main target market seems to be construction workers and supposedly their clothes can lower skin temperatures by as much as 8C.

The way they work is through evaporative cooling. Workers start their day by soaking their "StayQool" suits. Once activated, the uniforms will then consistently remove heat from the body for up to 7 hours. (I am curious if it's akin to putting on somebody else's wet life jacket.)

This is an obviously useful thing in a place like Qatar -- the example that Bloomberg gives and where summer temperatures can hit 50C. But the overall trendline suggests this is going to be a growing market. Especially if the tech works really well, it doesn't feel like you're putting on a wet life jacket, and if there are demonstrable productivity improvements.

According to Bloomberg, the company did £150,000 of revenue in 2014 and £7 million last year.

A friend of mine just sent me this blog post from the venture capital firm, Shadow Ventures. They specialize in the built environment (i.e. real estate and construction) and the post is called, "What McKinsey gets wrong about the built environment." Here's one of the points that they make:

We are project based. While we are much larger, the most similar business is the movie industry. Project based, different source of funding/budget every time, the team changes (but we have our faves).

This is very true. Oftentimes what happens in real estate is that you start with an opportunity. Something like, "buy this building, fix it up, and then sell it for more." If the opportunity sounds compelling, a common approach is to then "get control of the asset and figure out how to capitalize it."

What this means is a conditional deal so that you can (1) do your due diligence and (2) figure out how to pay for it. This gets back to the three-legged stool that we've spoken about before. To do real estate stuff you basically need 3 things: a piece of real estate, relevant experience, and, of course, some money.

This speaks to the entrepreneurial nature of real estate. But it also speaks to why it is maybe unfair to evaluate the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry as you might the automotive industry. The auto industry doesn't capitalize and make each car slightly differently.

This is one of the many things that makes real estate unique. And it's why we have seen an enduring effort to figure out the "productization" of housing. It's about being less project based.

We poured the concrete footings/foundations for Parkview Mountain House this week. Above is a photo of the pour. We're about two weeks behind schedule because of delays related to site works and excavation. (We're building into the side of a mountain.) But I'm hopeful we can make it up once we finish concrete work and move on to wood framing next month.

For those of you who like details, here's a section showing the footing and retaining wall on the back of the property facing the slope of the mountain:

Our tallest retaining wall is going to be 15 feet high, which, as I understand it, is more or less the maximum we could have done here without getting into more elaborate structural solutions (such as tiebacks). So the team spent a lot of time solving a design puzzle that involved the height of this retaining wall, the maximum allowable zoning height for the site, and our choice of established grade.

Onward. More concrete to come and then we move to wood. It's a race to get "closed in" before the snow starts up again.

Bloomberg published an article today talking about "climate-friendly apparel startups." One of the companies is a British one called Techniche International. Their main target market seems to be construction workers and supposedly their clothes can lower skin temperatures by as much as 8C.

The way they work is through evaporative cooling. Workers start their day by soaking their "StayQool" suits. Once activated, the uniforms will then consistently remove heat from the body for up to 7 hours. (I am curious if it's akin to putting on somebody else's wet life jacket.)

This is an obviously useful thing in a place like Qatar -- the example that Bloomberg gives and where summer temperatures can hit 50C. But the overall trendline suggests this is going to be a growing market. Especially if the tech works really well, it doesn't feel like you're putting on a wet life jacket, and if there are demonstrable productivity improvements.

According to Bloomberg, the company did £150,000 of revenue in 2014 and £7 million last year.

A friend of mine just sent me this blog post from the venture capital firm, Shadow Ventures. They specialize in the built environment (i.e. real estate and construction) and the post is called, "What McKinsey gets wrong about the built environment." Here's one of the points that they make:

We are project based. While we are much larger, the most similar business is the movie industry. Project based, different source of funding/budget every time, the team changes (but we have our faves).

This is very true. Oftentimes what happens in real estate is that you start with an opportunity. Something like, "buy this building, fix it up, and then sell it for more." If the opportunity sounds compelling, a common approach is to then "get control of the asset and figure out how to capitalize it."

What this means is a conditional deal so that you can (1) do your due diligence and (2) figure out how to pay for it. This gets back to the three-legged stool that we've spoken about before. To do real estate stuff you basically need 3 things: a piece of real estate, relevant experience, and, of course, some money.

This speaks to the entrepreneurial nature of real estate. But it also speaks to why it is maybe unfair to evaluate the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry as you might the automotive industry. The auto industry doesn't capitalize and make each car slightly differently.

This is one of the many things that makes real estate unique. And it's why we have seen an enduring effort to figure out the "productization" of housing. It's about being less project based.

We poured the concrete footings/foundations for Parkview Mountain House this week. Above is a photo of the pour. We're about two weeks behind schedule because of delays related to site works and excavation. (We're building into the side of a mountain.) But I'm hopeful we can make it up once we finish concrete work and move on to wood framing next month.

For those of you who like details, here's a section showing the footing and retaining wall on the back of the property facing the slope of the mountain:

Our tallest retaining wall is going to be 15 feet high, which, as I understand it, is more or less the maximum we could have done here without getting into more elaborate structural solutions (such as tiebacks). So the team spent a lot of time solving a design puzzle that involved the height of this retaining wall, the maximum allowable zoning height for the site, and our choice of established grade.

Onward. More concrete to come and then we move to wood. It's a race to get "closed in" before the snow starts up again.