Miller Hull

At Miller Hull, the EcoOps team supports every project through research, design, performance tracking, and advocacy, helping teams move beyond baseline approaches toward higher-performing, more resilient, and more equitable outcomes. This work builds on our founding commitment to sustainability, established by Bob Hull and David Miller, and continues to evolve through tools like our Sustainability Action Plan. EcoOps celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

This Earth Day, leaders from the current generation of EcoOps, Chris Hellstern, Director of Regenerative Design & Climate Policy, Jay Hindmarsh, Director of Sustainable Design & Performance, and principal John McKay took time to reflect on the past, present, and future of the team.

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For those who don’t know, what is EcoOps?
CH: EcoOps is one of Miller Hull’s operations groups that support the work of the firm. Our charge is to work on every project to ensure that we meet the environmental mission of the firm through our Sustainability Action Plan. This ranges from individual buildings we design to Miller Hull’s operations. Just like Emission Zero, the work of EcoOps includes design, education and advocacy work with our prospective clients and the building industry.  

JH: EcoOps is the engine that propels our work to reach beyond baseline assumptions and prescriptive minimums to achieve better outcomes for clients and communities. Beyond project work, as an operations group EcoOps champions firmwide commitments, tracking and reporting performance, conducts internal research and initiatives, develops and maintains tools and resources,  provides internal firm education, supports business development (marketing pursuits, speaking, conferences and awards), external industry engagement including policy, advocacy, education and research, and assists firm leadership in setting sustainability goals and values.

EcoOps has evolved recently—how would you describe its role within Miller Hull today, and what has shifted in this next chapter?
CH: With the retirement of one of our sustainability directors [Jim Hanford] at the end of 2025, we are looking ahead to a new chapter.

JH: In the spirit of change being the only constant, we simultaneously celebrate the tenth year of EcoOps while writing the next chapter in the evolution our focus is making sure to meet every project where it’s at, harnessing the expertise and wide ranging interests of our staff to continue expanding the research and expertise to make sure our projects are looking seriously at resilience, civic health and wellbeing, equity, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity.

What does “prioritizing sustainability in all of Miller Hull’s work” look like in practice?
CH: We are fortunate to work for a firm with a founding vision from Bob and Dave who were so committed to sustainability that it was engrained in their first designs together. The power of this commitment to their values has remained with the firm today, evolving to lead sustainability for the architecture of today. This means that our commitment takes the form of a Sustainability Action Plan that sets the ambitious but achievable goals for every project we create. We may not always achieve the full regenerative design we aim for every time, but it is important to strive for it and learn along the way. We also know that sharing our successes and challenges with the industry is how we can all help sustainability succeed–this effort needs everyone working together.

JM: Prioritizing sustainability in all of Miller Hull’s work means keeping it at the forefront of every conversation, every decision, and every mind in the office. That means discussing daylighting strategies over lunch, stocking the materials library with red-list free products, and continuously sharing lessons learned both inside and outside the office. It means pushing each other to DO GOOD, GO DEEP, BE BOLD. Sustainability is not a checklist or certification. It is what we strive to integrate into our work every day.

JH: In practice – we know that every design decision is an opportunity to evaluate the impacts of our choices and imagine what good, better and best outcomes might be achievable as we push the project further and question business as usual approaches.

How does EcoOps influence projects across the firm—from early design through long-term performance?
JM: EcoOps strives to engage projects early, even in the pursuit phase to help  teams understand site conditions, resource constraints, align climate goals or harness regionally appropriate regenerative design strategies. Long after substantial completion and project handoff, EcoOps is engaged in building performance tracking, sustainable building certification, and post-occupancy evaluations to better understand how the actual buildings are operating over time and working with clients to make adjustments as needed to achieve the project goals.

In what ways does EcoOps support or elevate the work of project teams?
CH: While commitment from Miller Hull has given us the value of two full-time sustainability directors and some part-time staff dedicated to this work, our small but mighty group cannot realistically commit to every project in-depth. Instead, one of the best things we can do for our work is to lift up other staff to be empowered as sustainability leads on their projects. This helps to expand sustainability knowledge and skills throughout the firm and begins to build the next generations of leaders.

JM: Miller Hull has people who want to make a difference. They often have the tools to make their projects better, but sometimes they need a sounding board, or a subject matter expert, to talk through how to proceed with the best path forward. EcoOps remains a resource every step of the way.

JH: A big part of engaging with teams is listening deeply to what the project and client goals are, what the site constraints might be, and offering strategic suggestions (at the appropriate time) to improve outcomes. EcoOps works to cross-pollinate sustainability solutions across project teams and leverage the great work of past projects to continue elevating performance.

Are there specific strategies, tools, or areas of focus you’re especially excited about right now?
CH: Public policy is always exciting because of the opportunities that exist, or have not even yet been dreamed of. Sustainability work in building codes, state laws and even at the Federal level has the possibility to scale and expand our efforts and help solve climate issues equitably. Even when things may be more dire at the national level, I’m excited about the many people who remain committed to this work and the new people that step up to join the effort all the time.

JH: I’m excited for the energy around circularity and biobased materials. Better buildings start with better materials, and design choices must be rooted in a thorough understanding of how and where our building products are sourced and the fenceline communities that may be impacted by the manufacturing of said products.. Emerging technology allows us to peer deeper into a manufacturer’s supply chain, or push farther into procurement tracking to understand the true impacts of our choices. Much like prioritizing existing buildings, the use of salvage and reclaimed materials is an easy win in reducing embodied carbon impacts, and avoiding the ecological burden of sourcing virgin ingredients. The proliferation and scaling of products using minimally processed nature based solutions from the forests, oceans, and fields is a promising reminder that we have choices that better support the ecosystem health of the planet.

Looking ahead, what opportunities do you see for EcoOps to push the firm—and the industry—forward?
CH: This is always the question on our minds and one we often face from the industry after developing our portfolio of Living Building Challenge projects. Part of the responsibility we have in this position is to realize when we have not yet met our goals. Not every project we send out the door is regenerative yet. We have set the goals of net positive energy and water, carbon neutrality, healthier environments and all within an equitable framework. These goals are the right ones but we must face that the real goal should be achieving these standards consistently for every project. In many ways it is about continuing to drive towards our ability to meet the vast challenge of climate change but to do so every time.

But of course, there are always more things to improve on, more scientific knowledge to evolve with and more voices to bring to the table. We need to do more to protect water. We need to do more to bring back wilderness and expand biodiversity. We need to move to tackling the other categories of environmental product declarations besides only global warming potential and we need to be able to scale all of this and more at a much faster pace.

JM: Regenerative design remains our overarching goal! Reducing consumption of natural resources while addressing the environmental harm of the past is not just our firm’s mission, it is where the entire industry needs to head. We have demonstrated that buildings can be genuine stewards of nature, and the opportunity ahead is to go further, expanding that work in ways that are both equitable and inclusive.

JH: You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Embracing radical transparency is how we push ourselves and our projects further, especially sharing those valuable lessons learned with the larger industry. We work in markets that are demanding measured performance, often publicly disclosed. This is an opportunity for us to not only build better baselines, tools and accounting methods, but to deliver better buildings that perform beautifully.

What motivates you personally to be part of EcoOps right now?
CH: For me, sustainability is my life’s work. It’s why I specifically chose architecture–to reach an industry that while necessary, had not yet met the environmental challenges of our time–and even more so–the challenges our future generations will face. Sustainability work is good work and a good challenge and in the words of the late John Lewis, “good trouble” to be involved in anytime.

JH: For me, the opportunity to drive deep innovative thinking on projects (with measurable results!) is exciting, developing new tools and education to disseminate deep (historically siloed) technical knowledge across varying interest and skill levels within the firm to enhance the dialogue with clients and communities,  and ultimately  working to cultivate our growing  EcoOps team and future sustainability experts within the firm and larger industry through continued public advocacy.