FLOOD
MITIGATION
for
EXISTING
BUILDINGS

ABOUT US

Building Resilient Solutions, LLC (BRS) is a joint venture launched in 2018 between Commonwealth Preservation Group (CPG) and Museum Resources Construction and Millwork (MRCM). The purpose of the company is to create empirical data on a suite of tested flood retrofit materials and techniques and their effectiveness in older buildings. We us this data to inform our retrofit designs, our customers, state and local floodplain managers, building contractors and trades, and real estate professionals.

We provide retrofit consulting services with technology, data, and professional expertise for residential, commercial and institutional buildings that are being impacted by recurrent flooding and moisture damage - be it form storm events, tidal flooding, or groundwater infiltration through foundations and basements. As preservation professionals, we specialize in retrofit design for pre-1970s-era construction. We know how older buildings work and what works for older buildings! We recognize and respect the inherent water-resilient qualities and dynamics that traditional building materials and traditional construction methods offer, and seek first to use these in our retrofit designs. However, regardless of the building's age, we can diagnose the problem from a data-informed perspective and recommend an appropriate water-resilient retrofit solution. Our methodology uses a whole-building and site systems approach, and tests retrofit design effectiveness before installation.

Both CPG and MRCM are long-established Virginia businesses and conduct work in Virginia and beyond. We have been working together for the last several years to seek effective solutions to the building preservation challenges endemic to the Costal Virginia region as a result of rising water all around us, which threaten our historic and cultural resources. Our desire and commitment to preserving the building environment led us to form Building Resilient Solutions. We want to help owners understand the nature of their flooding problems and design appropriate retrofit solutions in a way that is attentive to their goals and their investment constraints. We work with you to improve your building's resiliency and longevity by reducing risk from water damage during and following a flood event. Reducing flood risk and damage can also enable you to return to your home or business more quickly. Informed flood resiliency retrofit design can be a viable alternative to costly building elevation or FEMA-required floodproofing measures that may not be appropriate for older buildings.

BRS is an awardee of the inaugural 2019 RISE Coastal Community Challenge for Hampton Roads. We received a quarter-million dollar grant to become a costal resiliency entrepreneur in the Hampton Roads region and to help this region adapt to sea level rise, with a commitment to transferring our knowledge to other regions. We service all of Virginia and other states.

2018

Year Established

Specializing In:

Thoughtful Solutions

Site and building analysis
Property owner goals
Viability of retrofit to solve problems
Desired level of investment

Informed Retrofits

Designed to respond to site data
Tested in a controlled lab setting
Monitoring after installation

Effective Design

Owner peace of mind

WHO WE ARE

ABOUT

MEET THE TEAM

Paige Pollard

Owner

Paige Pollard is the co-owner of BRS and is responsible for client consultation, retrofit recommendations, and overall business operations and development. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia School of Architecture, and Masters in Historic Preservation from the University of Georgia. She opened Commonwealth Preservation Group (CPG) in 2004 as a historic preservation consultant after working as a local preservation planner and at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. In response to increasing retrofit consultation requests for historic buildings experiencing repetitive water inundation and nuisance flooding, she initiated a joint venture with Museum Resources Construction & Millwork to establish Building Resilient Solutions (BRS) in 2019.

Kerry Shackelford

Owner

Kerry is a Licensed Class A Contractor and the owner of Museum Resources Construction & Millwork (MRCM), which performs restorations, reproductions, additions, and remodeling on a wide variety of historic properties, including private homes, commercial buildings, and museums. At BRS, Kerry is responsible for client consultation, pre- and post-retrofit monitoring design, building retrofit design, and lab operations for retrofit testing. Kerry has gained a reputation for authentic, accurate historic reproduction. He has extensive experience in-- and special interest and appreciation for-- the traditional Historic Trades, and has worked "hands on" in traditional historic woodworking and forest product manufacture for 30+ years. His experience was developed initially through a degree in Natural Resources Management from the University of Tennessee and then through a traditional apprenticeship of 6 years in Coopering at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He is one of only two tradesmen to complete this long and challenging program.

MEET THE TEAM

Ashlen Stump

Data Analysis & Operations

Ashlen provides support for data analytics, including moisture monitoring equipment installation and removal, data extraction and analysis, development of data libraries, and research to inform data collection and interpretation. She also assists with client coordination and business operations.

Education: B.A. History, with a concentration in Public History, and minor in American Studies from James Madison University, and a Master of Historic Preservation, with a Certificate in Cultural Landscape Conservation from the University of Georgia.

WHAT WE DO

SERVICES

Using a combination of monitoring equipment, data collection, past study, and experience, the BRS team can assist property owners with diagnosing the causes of water intrusion and developing recommended solutions to address recurrent flooding and its negative impacts on the building.

Our Services include three key areas for property owner clients:

Conditions Assessment

BRS can provide a comprehensive assessment through specialized moisture monitoring using our customized data collection kits. We use this information, in conjunction with historic and current meteorological, topographical, and tidal information to determine the extent and sources of site conditions contributing to recurrent flooding. This equipment can diagnose and inform remediation efforts for minor and major flooding, whether nuisance, tidal, or storm related. The data collection enables BRS to determine precise triggers to inform tailored solutions.

Recommendations

BRS staff can then perform on site and historic research to determine the original site conditions, building construction techniques and materials, past alterations impacting resiliency, and an analysis of current conditions. As appropriate, we coordinate with colleagues focused on water and land-based flood resiliency retrofits to determine the most effective retrofit solutions for each client and their property. This information is provided in a client report, and serves both current and future planning efforts, such as the type and extent of investment appropriate for a particular property, what impact retrofits might have on flood insurance rates, and what types of events the retrofits will address.

Implementation Assistance

We use our recommendations to provide specific and targeted approached to address unwanted water infiltration, and assist property owners and contractors in implementation of targeted retrofits. The outcomes of our recommendations are tracked with post retrofit data collection to help demonstrate the effectiveness of the retrofit to the client. We also use this data to build our library and database of successful retrofit techniques.

TESTING

To support the mission of BRS, we are working to build a library of effective retrofit design solutions for existing buildings based on data gathered through both field and control testing environments.

We recently opened our lab in Suffolk, Virginia and began control testing.

FIELD

TESTING

BRS is using field testing at private and publicly-owned sites to gather data. Monitoring probes are installed to track moisture content, relative humidity, temperature, barometric pressure readings, as well as water alarms that detect inundation.

These probes:

continuously send data to an on-site computer

which then transmits wirelessly for remote monitoring and analysis

collect data for a specified period of time

(between 30 to 120 days) and are then removed

provide data to inform retrofit solutions

that BRS will then test in the lab before making recommendations to the client

CONTROL

TESTING

At present, there is no research lab dedicated to this purpose in the United States. BRS has constructed a lab in Suffolk, Virginia for building materials and systems testing in a controlled flood environment.

Our first lab test module was

designed in 2021 and

began testing in 2022.

Testing includes: