Charlie Cichetti, CEO and co-founder of schema AI, talks with Green Builder Media ESG intern Isa Glasson about training AI on a firm's own past project files to speed sustainable design decisions. He also weighs the data center energy debate, the need for trusted data across design and construction, and his advice for young green building professionals.
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Isa Glasson: Hello, I'm Elisa Glasson, ESG intern at Green Builder Media. Today I'm joined by Charlie Kelly, CEO and co-founder of schema AI, to talk about his experience in the green building industry. Let's go ahead and jump into a few questions. So, Charlie, can you tell us a bit about your journey in the green building industry and what first inspired your passion for sustainability?
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Charlie Cichetti: You know, after Georgia Tech, I got into commercial construction and then real estate development, and at that real estate developer, they were an early adopter of lead and the green building movement. In the early to mid 2000. You know, the first Leed projects came out in the year 2000. So we got 25 years worth of Leed certified buildings and homes.
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Charlie Cichetti: And so I just right place, right time. I, I really was, into construction and real estate in the built environment. But the fact that this great program called Leed was there, I just started shifting my career to it. And so while I grew up in a small town in the north Georgia mountains, close to nature, got lucky, got a scholarship to Georgia Tech.
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Charlie Cichetti: I saw that construction will be different in the future and involves green building, so that was kind of my cause. It was passing a lead professional credential exam, but working for an owner at the time that had in-house architects, in-house construction, in-house property management, that really said, hey, everything we build, everything we develop, we're going to make sure it's a green building and Leed certified.
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Isa Glasson: And your current work with schema AI focuses on AI and automation in the built environment. How do you see technology accelerating progress toward decarbonization? And if you don't mind just giving a quick, summary of what your company does?
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Charlie Cichetti: Decarbonization is probably what we all should be focused on. We can do all of our sustainability work kind of under whatever title we want to give it, right? What is important to the stakeholder, that schema, though, what we've focused on is, we want to be a fast forward button for architects and real estate developers. You've got some file sitting on your server from past projects.
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Charlie Cichetti: Let us ingest those, learn from them, and let's really give you a fast forward button with your best practices. It comes to sustainability. We want some real time sustainability. Let's say you're a young architect out of college, and you haven't really learned about green buildings too much yet. As you're moving things around, changing the windows, changing the insulation.
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Charlie Cichetti: Hey, how is that affecting my design of my next building or my next home? Is that helping my sustainability and my carbon, or is it hurting? So we've also got some of that baked in. So schema is a design tech tool that learned from our previous file sitting on a server collecting dust. We actually have found we're interoperable with all the other design tech construction tech tools you're probably using.
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Charlie Cichetti: And then I also sort of shown up with generative design. What's all the way layout based on what we've learned you probably would do on this site anyway.
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Isa Glasson: Have there been I'm just curious, have there been any challenges in using AI to advance sustainability that you've seen?
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Charlie Cichetti: You know, I think we can have a debate about data centers. And it's kind of ironic, right to power AI and what's possible. We need more data centers and they're going to use a lot of energy. Right. But as far as just in workflow, it does come down to data. You know, if you go to ChatGPT right now and you say, render this new hotel and, John Portman famous Atlanta architect style, we don't know if one day we have to pay a royalty to the Portman family estate to be determined, right?
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Charlie Cichetti: And that tool is guessing. And if I run it five times, you can probably give it five different results. The way we've built schema is actually different. We actually only ingest your firm's previous data and we don't share it with others. We're not creating one huge large language models. And so we've kind of taken a different stance on data.
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Charlie Cichetti: But I think that's what you'll find is for the AI tools to get better and better. You know, what are we letting the tools learn from? Is it theoretical? But it actually hasn't been tried in the construction world. Or is it? No. Even if you only ingest one previous project, that's a real project we actually built. So that's the kind of direction we went with data.
00:04:23:22 - 00:04:45:14
Charlie Cichetti: So I think data. But the other thing is, is adoption. Let's say, a company, whether you're a real estate developer, an architect, a supplier architect, spent so much time laying out rooms. Contractors and suppliers spent so much time counting things. But if I can open up a model, maybe that's coming out of schema. I can click on that light.
00:04:45:17 - 00:05:06:16
Charlie Cichetti: And I see exactly how many are in the whole home or the whole building, and I can just go order it like that's a big deal. So how do we get back to trusting the information that even the architect gives us if we're a contractor or supplier? And how do we make sure at the end of the day, it's okay to share data between these apps because it's actually going to have less error for everybody.
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Charlie Cichetti: Everything's faster. Everybody can make a little more money. Instead of everybody redoing, recounting and using different software at every phase.
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Isa Glasson: And then what advice would you give to young sustainability professionals entering this field?
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Charlie Cichetti: You know, go to your local, US Green Building Council chapter and make sure you go to the young professional events. Make sure you go to the luncheons. It's just a good place to not see the latest trends, but also just to meet people and just know that you're in a community where everybody here, you know, probably cares.
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Charlie Cichetti: Like, hey, we got some work to do. We're fighting the good fight. And and even if every building out there doesn't get living, building well or Leed certified, what are the green best practices? What's the latest tech over here? I might should try out my next project because that's part of your job too. So I think go to your industry events, but especially the young professional networks within like the US GBC chapters.
00:05:57:04 - 00:06:15:29
Charlie Cichetti: Get a credential maybe elite green associate. I have a podcast. It's called the Green Building Matters podcast. I've done it for over eight years, 400 interviews, and I interview people about their green building careers all over the world. And at the end, I ask them, hey, you know, what do you wish you learned earlier? And then I said, you know, someone's jumping in right now.
00:06:15:29 - 00:06:33:14
Charlie Cichetti: What advice do you have? So it's another example. Make sure you're reading publications and blogs like this one. But also there's there's podcasts. I'd love for you to check out my podcast too. And and just it gives you a peek into people that have done this. They might still be working on it, but they'll share their wins and they'll share their struggles.
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Charlie Cichetti: You're not alone.
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Isa Glasson: And then last question what gives you hope about the future of green building and climate innovation?
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Charlie Cichetti: Let's just say in the United States right now, maybe there's some, sustainability mandates trying to be slowed down. It doesn't mean they're not picking up in another part of the world. And so there's always going to be this ebb and flow. I think at the end of the day, we all need to become better storytellers, though.
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Charlie Cichetti: And so this is where I challenge your readers. You know, don't just rely on like, ChatGPT to help make a better written story instead and like, you know, how do you really put the emotion into it to convince someone like, hey, you really should do this? It's not like, what's the minimum we should do? But like, what? What what's possible?
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Charlie Cichetti: What? What's the max we could do? And okay, we might have to pull back on that a little bit. And so so I guess what I'm saying is become a really good storyteller, understand the kind of business case for green and green buildings. But what gives me hope is, there are still a lot of young professionals coming out of school and not just college, but high school and just so excited about, you know, getting into sustainability, getting into green, building something.
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Charlie Cichetti: So that's exciting because they're not jaded yet. And oh, this is hard. Or, you know, in this city you're not allowed to say these words or phrase ESG. So I think there's just so much, excitement towards, hey, I really still want to be a part of this. I think there's still some work to do. And, and I think there's still a lot of people who've been doing it for 20 plus years like me that, that keeps us excited.
00:08:05:10 - 00:08:25:24
Charlie Cichetti: It's like, okay, we got help. We need help. I think we've done a lot. And, I'm not going to look at the chart about, you know, where's where's our overall warming of the planet, and are we on track or not? But like, leaving indicators, I think there are a lot more, healthy buildings, green buildings and just green best practices getting baked in left and right.