I always wanted to do quality work, but basically everyone who goes into construction wants to do quality work. It took us a while to realize that quality needs to be evaluated in four dimensions — not just level, plumb, and square, but how it performs over time. Inevitably, it has to include a large MEASURE OF EFFICIENCY, reducing [a house’s] resource consumption.

A lot of the problem with the GREEN-BUILDING MOVEMENT is that nobody keeps score. I was Exhibit A for many years. I was calling myself a green builder before I was one. Now that we have some good scorekeeping mechanisms in place with regard to energy consumption, water consumption, durability, we’re just getting much better.