KANSAS CITY, MO (Oct. 18, 2023) — BNIM announces Sarah Hirsch as Director of Technical Services. Sarah Hirsch, LEED AP BD+C RA CSI CCS, is an Associate Principal at BNIM who has held an integral role in developing and streamlining BNIM’s processes, embedding materials and systems knowledge within projects, and guiding multi-disciplinary teams across BNIM’s studios.

As Director of Technical Services, Sarah will continue BNIM’s legacy of technical excellence in design and documentation to improve our projects for the health and well-being of people and the planet. Sarah will work internally with design teams and individuals in the firm to advance building information modeling, quality assurance, project management, and sustainability.

For three decades, Sarah has worked on a wide variety of project types with a diverse range of clients including governmental, cultural, corporate, institutional, and residential. She has focused primarily on specification writing and coordination of contract documents, bringing a vast knowledge of materials and systems to each project. Many of her projects focus on integrating sustainable design strategies, including multiple buildings designed to achieve Living Building Challenge (LBC) certification.

Sarah has contributed to the success of notable projects across the U.S., including the REACH Expansion at the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington DC; The University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art in Iowa City, IA; the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University; the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City, MO; and the Omega Center for Sustainable Living in upstate New York (the first LEED Platinum and Living Building Challenge certified project in the world).

Throughout her time at BNIM, Sarah has helped lead initiatives for greening the firm’s specification masters to address LEED and LBC requirements as well as efforts to reduce each building’s carbon footprint. Sarah has worked diligently to push the marketplace to a level of higher sustainability through BNIM’s specifications, and she has prioritized her work in steering the firm toward an increasingly efficient documenting process.

Sarah has worked with teams and software vendors to identify the most appropriate means of communicating each type of information, helping to fine-tune and develop specification sections, drawing schedules, and assembly types. She has also made numerous modifications to BNIM’s specification template to reduce the “paperwork” required in the construction process, eliminate redundancy, and improve coordination with contractors.

"Sarah has worked tirelessly for years elevating the projects she has worked on at BNIM. As Director of Technical Services, Sarah's expertise and dedicated pursuit of excellence in project execution and delivery will now benefit all of our clients and project teams."

– Dev Malik, Principal and Chief Operating Officer, BNIM.

Sarah is a registered architect in Missouri who received her professional degree in Architecture from the University of Kansas in 1988. She joined BNIM in 1995 and is a member of the Construction Specifications Institute and a LEED Accredited Professional. Outside of her role at BNIM, Sarah recently retired from homeschooling her three children and now co-manages St. James Communal Garden, knits, runs, and continues to implement and test sustainable practices in her century-old home.

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ABOUT BNIM

BNIM’s core purpose is: “We design and deliver beautiful, integrated environments to inspire change and enhance the human condition.” The services we provide—architecture, interior design, landscape design, sustainability leadership and consulting, graphic design, and planning—are guided by this mission. BNIM has been recognized with more than 500 awards for exceptional design and thought leadership, including the 2011 AIA National Architecture Firm Award, and the firm has emerged nationally as a leading resource for established methodologies, innovative technologies, and cutting-edge research in architecture, planning, and landscape design. Through a process of integrated design, which is both an organized collaboration between disciplines and an interweaving and interconnectivity of building systems, our team creates designs that are both environmentally responsible and achieve the highest level of design excellence.

For more information, contact Beena Ramaswami at [email protected].