Lisa Podesto
Director of Mass Timber & Sustainable Construction Innovation Swinerton Inc.
A “unicorn” in the world of construction technology, Lisa offers 15 years of design and construction management experience focused on prefab and modular buildings. Her unique blend of expertise in building codes, structural engineering, acoustic performance, building envelopes, embodied carbon analysis,fire science, permit approvals, cost planning, supply chain, procurement, logistics, scheduling, and sequencing is topped off with a deep personal network in the emerging mass timber and construction innovation field.
As one of the leading experts in the US on Mass Timber, she sits on several industry and professional advisory boards and supporting mass timber market development through individual research projects and organizations like the Tallwood Design Institute and the Council of Tall Building and Urban Habitat. As a co-author and peer reviewer for the 2012 United States Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) Handbook, Lisa began her contributions to the market development of CLT and mass timber well before the design and construction industry realized its potential. In 2016 she peer reviewed the Nail Laminated Timber Design and Construction Guide and by 2018 had completed a two phase research program establishing a new design methodology for the blast resistance of CLT, accomplished through seven full scale live blast tests and opening a new market for timber structures.
Seminars
- Understanding the planning impacts of accelerated design decisions and material
commitments - Reviewing contract models that enable early trade involvement and design assist
collaboration - Evaluating the planning implications of custom prefab vs. componentized prefab and
single trade vs. multi-trade - Exploring the opportunities and motivations behind a direct-buy model
