Is the Real Barrier to Sustainable Building... Us?

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My Sustainable Encounter with Antonio Hernán-Pérez

by Albert Schiller

Beyond Blueprints: Architecting Sustainability Through Innovation and Mindset

The built environment stands as a monumental consumer of resources and energy. How, then, can we fundamentally reshape its impact?

My exchange with Antonio Hernán-Pérez Sánchez, an architect serving as Head of R&D at MSI Digital Builders, offered profound insights into this challenge. His work exists at the intersection of architectural thinking, digital innovation, and a relentless drive to lessen the environmental footprint of construction, revealing that the path forward involves not just new technologies, but crucial shifts in perspective.

R&D as a Catalyst for Impact Reduction

Antonio’s role transcends traditional architectural boundaries. It's situated within a dedicated R&D function aimed squarely at sustainability, leveraging digital tools to achieve tangible results.

His approach involves proactively identifying opportunities to minimize energy and material requirements across diverse projects – from buildings and factories to infrastructure, and now even extending into aerospace applications. Antonio described a fluid, dynamic role: pinpointing possibilities, assembling the right expertise, and steering projects either as a Product or Project Manager, adapting his function based on the maturity (TRL) of the innovation, while contributing his own expertise where needed.

This signals a departure from reactive problem-solving towards proactively architecting efficiency into the very fabric of projects.

The Human Factor: Mindsets and Talent

While technological innovation is central, Antonio pinpointed obstacles that lie firmly in the human domain. Budget constraints are a familiar reality, but the more stubborn barriers often relate to perspective and people.

"The Challenge...finding open-minded people in the companies to really understand and think 5-10 years in the future."

This highlights a critical bottleneck: the resistance to forward-thinking. Why does a focus on immediate concerns so often overshadow long-term strategic gains, even when sustainability is the goal? Antonio’s observation suggests that fostering genuine openness and a capacity for future-oriented thinking within client and partner organizations is paramount. Compounding this is the difficulty, at times, of securing the right specialized talent, emphasizing that progress hinges equally on human capital and innovative ideas.

Deconstructing Processes, Reconstructing Value

How can companies begin this journey? Antonio proposed a method rooted in rigorous self-analysis. He advised organizations to meticulously "re-track" their processes, examining each step to understand its inputs and outputs. What resources are consumed? What waste or emissions are produced? Can these steps be optimized?

This introspective approach forces a granular look at operations, potentially revealing inefficiencies obscured by routine. Is the greatest potential for improvement unlocked not by external solutions alone, but by this disciplined internal examination? His follow-up questions push further: Is existing technology available to help? If not, can R&D create it? This methodology transforms sustainability from a vague aspiration into a series of concrete, addressable questions.

The Unspoken Incentive: Profitability

Perhaps the most compelling argument Antonio raised addresses a common misconception: that sustainability is solely a cost center. He asserted the opposite is increasingly true.

This shifts the paradigm. If investments in sustainable practices yield financial returns within reasonable timeframes (e.g., 10 years) through reduced operational expenditures (OpEx) and even new revenue streams (like selling excess generated electricity or participating in carbon markets), why does the mindset challenge persist? It suggests a crucial gap in understanding or communicating the robust financial case for sustainability, moving it from an ethical imperative to a strategic economic advantage.

Antonio’s insights paint a picture of sustainable transformation driven by proactive R&D, yet fundamentally reliant on overcoming human inertia. It requires not only architects and innovators devising better systems but also decision-makers willing to embrace long-term vision and the increasingly clear financial logic underpinning a more sustainable approach to building our world.

So what can we take from his approach?