Our team at Practica Consulting is deliberately small, because we pride ourselves in offering our clients only talented, experienced residential green building consultants. Our team members have all spent many years working in the field for both the private and public sectors, both on the construction site and managing projects and programs from the office. This allows us to have honest empathy for our clients and therefore, to offer very realistic advice on how a corporation, government, or non-profit can most successfully implement green building activities.
Marc Richmond
Founder and Manager
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Marc Richmond has been involved in the construction industry since the late ’80s, both as a builder and a green building consultant. His depth of experience in developing and implementing green building programs both for government agencies, non-profits and within private firms is significant (see “clients” page). He develops comprehensive green building educational programs, helps professionals be effective at their green building efforts, and teaches consumers to make good purchasing decisions. Marc spurs on market transformation by bringing together stakeholders and effectively educating them on their role and benefit in the transformation. He specializes in designing green building tools, rating systems, and training programs that are understandable, buildable for professionals, and valued by consumers. He highly values clear guidelines, good writing, construction details, and effective marketing. His experience as a builder, businessperson, educator, and green building program manager makes him focus on simple solutions that will make the target audience take the actions that are needed.
For the past four years, his largest effort has been in fulfilling a recurring contract with the California Public Utilities Commission and Pacific Gas and Electric to conduct an integrated San Francisco Bay Area green building market transformation by developing and implementing local green building programs, organizing stakeholder groups, training professionals and the public, and developing new technical resources. Marc is also a team member for the emerging Green Homes Northeast Program in Boston, which is working to implement a similar residential market transformation in the greater Boston area.
During his seven-year tenure as manager and program manager for the renowned Austin Energy Green Building Program, the oldest and largest such program in the country, he doubled both the staff and the operating budget, while expanding and improving the program’s activities and level of resources in educating local building professionals and the general public. He helped a local production builder, Newmark Homes, become Austin’s first company-wide, three-star green production home builder, and the recipient of the Department of Energy’s Silver and Gold Energy Value Housing Awards.
Marc serves on the Board of Advisors for Healthy Home Designs and the West Coast Green conference, and as a Technical Advisor for Build It Green and Alameda County Waste Management Authority. He is also past chairman of the US Green Building Council’s LEED-Residential Steering Committee, which is developing a national residential green building rating system.
Prior to 1997, Marc worked in Texas, California, Colorado and Pennsylvania as a construction supervisor, green building consultant, university lecturer, and energy services company project manager.
He has been interviewed by numerous magazines and newspapers and his projects have been featured in many magazines including Architectural Record, LA Architect, Interior Design, Metropolis, and Natural Home.
He received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Moravian College in Pennsylvania, and his Master of Business Administration and Master of Energy & Environmental Policy from Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles.
When Marc is not engaged in green building activities, he can readily be found following his other passion in the various argentine tango dance halls in San Francisco and the rest of the country.