Accepting the job as editor of GBA was a risky career move. For about a decade, founding editor Martin Holladay had set an exceptionally high bar with a dedication to detailed, helpful, practical, and accurate information, and an unrelenting willingness to call out greenwashing and generally bad ideas when it comes to designing and building good homes.

I was well prepared for the job, though. With over a decade under my belt at FHB, I was, by the time I started at GBA, a decent journalist with a strong grasp of the subject matter. Still, it took a while before I could stop obsessively checking the comments and responses after I posted a new article or an answer in the Q&A forums. You all are a smart and demanding audience!

I know my successor, Kiley Jaques, had similar nerves when she jumped into the job. I was sad when Kiley recently resigned, both because I enjoyed working with her and because she did an excellent job. What Kiley lacked in subject matter knowledge, she made up for with her sharp skills as an acquiring editor.

For those of you who don’t know, there are many types of “editors.” Some focus on spelling, grammar, and style; some focus on the content or subject matter; some manage deadlines and production; some focus on the general direction of the publication. An acquiring editor is responsible for finding, cultivating, and managing authors. Thanks to Kiley, we have one of the best crews of regular contributors we’ve ever had at GBA, including Jon Harrod, Leah Karmaker, Christy Weber, Justin Wolf, and Randy Williams.

For Randy, I owe Kiley a particular debt of gratitude, because this week he started as the full-time editor of GBA. To introduce him to you all, and get to know him a bit better myself, I sent him some questions to answer for this post.

Where would I go to get an original copy of your birth certificate? Where did you take your driver’s license test? And what happened in between?

I was born about 30 miles from where I currently live, in a small community in northeastern Minnesota called Hibbing. Hibbing is a mining town with several large iron ore mines nearby; the area is known as the Iron Range. I moved across the state when I was 13, to the Minnesota–North Dakota border community of Moorhead (Fargo is right across the Red River). A couple years later I moved back to the middle of the state, to a small town called Grand Rapids (yes, Minnesota, not Michigan). Grand Rapids is where I learned to drive, where I graduated high school, and where I continue to live today.

FHB hadn’t launched #KeepCraftAlive yet, so how could you have possibly thought it was a good idea to go into the trades?

The trades are the best career decision I’ve made, and it was something I just fell into. Back in the mid-1990s my younger brother had just started a company called Williams Septic and Electric (he almost had the motto “We’ll clean your shorts,” but his wife said absolutely not), and I was looking to leave the hospitality industry (my father owned several restaurants when I was growing up). I ended up becoming one of my brother’s first employees. I worked for him for 10 years, performing many different jobs. Some days I was an electrician (I eventually became a licensed journeyman electrician in the state of Minnesota), and other days I would operate heavy equipment while working on sewer systems or install residential plumbing systems and HVAC systems.

During this 10-year period, my father took on the job of constructing a vacation home for his sister. Both my brother and I were heavily involved in the building of the “cabin.” We built out the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems and completed the interior finishing. I was bitten by the carpentry bug. A few years later my father, brother, and I started a licensed general contracting business called Willcon (short for Williams Construction), a company I own today.

We’ve talked about projects where you formed the concrete, did the framing, were the electrician, and installed the windows, doors, and insulation. I know you can do trim work and install some HVAC equipment. And I know that until recently you’d still take an occasional tile job. What can’t you do?

Working in the industry for as long as I have, you gain confidence in your abilities. My biggest problem was learning the word “no.” In a small community, customers often have work that they can’t find anyone to take on. I said yes to a lot of jobs I wouldn’t even consider today, but I learned. Are there jobs I don’t enjoy? Absolutely. But if they were in residential construction, I’ve probably done them.

What got you started in energy auditing, and what has this work taught you about the way we build?

A little more than 15 years ago there was a downturn in the construction industry. The name was the “real estate bubble,” and the industry lost a lot of its workforce. I became worried about not having enough work and took a weeklong class in energy auditing. I was already a licensed electrician and a general contractor, but learning about building science completely changed how I looked at a building.

As a company, we were doing some things right and some things wrong. Unfortunately, some of the things that were wrong are still mistakes I see others in the residential construction industry make today. An example would be continuity of the control layers, a basic concept of building science, but many of the builders I’m working with had to be taught to think much differently from how they were trained.

I’ve now been an energy auditor for more than 15 years. Much of the content I write about comes from what I see in the field while performing these duties. As bad as the “real estate bubble” was, I wouldn’t be where I’m at without it.

Why did you start your own blog, Northern Built? Did you not know about GBA?

Green Building Advisor, Fine HomeBuilding, and other publications and websites were (and still are) a major influence on my career. I’ve been subscribing to and reading these publications long before I started writing a blog.

The Northern Built blog came about because of what I was consistently seeing during energy audits, code-compliant blower-door testing, and building investigations. Homeowners seemed to all have similar complaints; their homes were not meeting their expectations. My original hope was to give homeowners living in cold and very cold climates a source for information. After seven years, my audience grew to not only homeowners but builders and architects.

A few years ago, I got the nerve up to submit a piece to GBA, which got published. This led to where we are today.

And then you started teaching? Who do you think you are—Mike Guertin?

I remember reading articles back in the mid-1990s written by this guy from New England who seemed to always wear shorts and had wild hair. His informative articles were regularly featured in FHB and other publications; he was someone I looked up to as my career advanced. Mike is a legend in this industry, and I’m honored to call him a friend, but I’m definitely not at Mike’s caliber.

Much like how I entered the construction industry, teaching was something I fell into. I gave a short presentation on high-performance homes at a meeting of my local builder’s association back in 2018. A few months later I was asked to present a one-hour continuing education class about the energy code. This was in front of more than 100 builders. I’ve been teaching that same class once a year ever since (different energy code topics every year). I’ve been fortunate to present at the International Builder’s Show, at a couple of the Building Science Symposiums, at 2024’s Build Show Live event, and at a few manufacturer’s booths at different trade shows. Recently I’ve been teaching the BPI Building Analyst Technician (BA-T) class at a local community college with another colleague, architect Rachel Wagner. If you would have told me 10 years ago that I’d be getting up in front of large groups of people and presenting on building science topics, I’d have called you crazy.

What are some of the most positive things happening in the building industry today?

I believe we are in the early days of homeowners asking for healthier, more resilient, energy efficient, and better built homes. I have the opinion the homeowner is the one to change the industry by asking for a better end product. There are several publications and social media networks that are working hard to educate both builders and homeowners on what is required to construct a better home. Homeowners during my peak years of building new homes were mostly interested in the fit and finish details, those custom showers and fancy countertops. Today I’m discussing energy- and heat-recovery ventilators, continuous exterior insulation, and blower-door testing with customers.

One downside is that we are still missing a lot of opportunities in existing structures, at least in my market. I get called to a lot of energy audits where the heating or cooling system was simply replaced with the same fuel-type-and-size system that was just removed. (I was just at a home with a brand-new fuel-oil forced-air system.) Or the home was just re-sided and they missed their only opportunity in the next 30 to 50 years to install continuous insulation.

Recently I’ve been involved with the weatherization assistance program, performing some education. I’m extremely impressed by what these organizations are able to do to a home for an underprivileged customer. I’d like to see the training these people in the weatherization community receive scaled up for the “for-profit” contractor.

What makes you nervous about today’s green, or high-performance homes?

I’m most apprehensive about the training building contractors are receiving. Codes are requiring better-insulated and tighter homes. These measures can greatly improve a home’s performance, but there are things that need to be understood to have a successful project—like how the structure will dry if it becomes wet, how to properly ventilate a “tight” home, and why it’s important for a general contractor to communicate and coordinate with the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) trades. Back to Mike Guertin, I once heard him say that every new home is a building science experiment and that it will be 10 years before we know the outcome. I think education is the key to producing homes that last a century or more.

Training requirements should also apply to those MEP trades. To keep my Minnesota electricians license, I’m required to attend seven hours of continuing education every year. Plumbing licenses also have CE requirements. There are no licensing or training requirements for the HVAC trades in my state. To me, that just seems wrong.

What makes you nervous about your new job as editor of GBA?

I’ve been completely self-employed for 20 years. Moving back to having a boss and a set schedule will be a change. That being said, I am much more excited than nervous about this new chapter in my work career. My limited time so far working with the FHB/GBA (and now Old House Journal, or OHJ) team has made the transition easy. My hope is to help improve our industry; even a small shift I would consider a huge success.

I appreciate Randy’s honesty, but having had the opportunity to be his editor, to spend days with him on job sites, to attend building industry events with him, and to just generally chat about life over dinner, I’m 100% sure he’s the right person for this job, which Martin clearly defined for us. So Randy, just be dedicated to detailed, helpful, practical, and accurate information, with an unrelenting willingness to call out greenwashing and generally bad ideas when it comes to designing and building good homes, and you’ll do great. Feel free to let Randy know how he’s doing via email at [email protected].

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-Brian Pontolilo is editorial director at Fine Homebuilding, Green Building Advisor, and Old House Journal.