About Us

Building Health Sciences, Inc. (BHS) provides a comprehensive, medically-focused, single source solution to Indoor Environmental and Air Quality (IEAQ) issues that adversely affect building occupants as a result of building failures. Building Health Sciences integrates medical and scientific principles with building diagnostic and investigative activities. Our integrated approach combines 30 years of environmental medicine expertise with 30 years of design/build construction, building science and moisture intrusion expertise. As a result, Building Health Sciences is uniquely poised to resolve occupant health issues, identify construction defects, and remedy the root cause of the building failure simultaneously. Our medically-engineered solutions form the basis of a managed response to your critical environmental incident and long-term enterprise risk management.

We are medical doctors, toxicologists, building scientists and nurse consultants with exceptional experience and a unique perspective regarding indoor environments and the associated financial risks to property managers, owners and other stakeholders. We are also construction professionals with extensive building science and construction defect experience. Building Health Sciences' unique and broadly integrated understanding of incident-driven risk management for developers, commercial or residential facility managers, government agencies and health-critical environments is unmatched by any group in the country.

Building and health science efforts are generally initiated by occupancy dynamics which means "people" in the building. People, their individual health profile and comfort demands, create the need for a health component. Healthy buildings mean healthy people and healthy business.

Building Health Sciences' team has seen nearly everything that can go wrong in the handling of indoor environmental incidents, having reviewed hundreds of problems, both in and out of litigation, in which unexpected or unrecognized health related cost drivers have emerged. On the front end of environmental incidents, health-related cost drivers emerge when situational adversities are not managed efficiently and effectively. Frequently underestimated, they emerge on the back end and persist through denial, risk communication miscues and misguided investigations undertaken after a building failure has occurred. Ultimately, our goal (Primum non nocere¹) is to manage the situation intelligently. We want to keep those with risk management responsibility from doing too much or too little in response to occupant complaints: each of which can lead to disastrous financial consequences, regardless of the severity of the incident or quality of the delivered resolution.

Building Health Sciences' proprietary Critical Environmental Incident Management Path® unites a clinical medical approach with scientific principles and building diagnostics which enables us to:

• Ensure the health and safety of the building occupants through a parallel investigative methodology
• Internally collaborate with property management and building maintenance professionals during the investigation to maximize contaminant source identification and correction
• Provide effective risk communication throughout the entire process of investigation, based on relevant medical and scientific literature, delivered by highly-skilled, medically-trained, communication experts
• Work with multi-disciplinary contractors on the hard cost issues of remediation and, if needed, the forensic causal challenges of root cause identification and repair
• Effectively estimate, manage and control your financial exposure, and
• Prevent costs from becoming disproportionate to the prescribed health-based solutions.

Our unique medical evaluation and oversight bring focus, economy and credible risk communication to clients when adverse health effects emerge, or costs driven by perceived health risks escalate and threaten day-to-day operations.

Our Competencies for Critical Environmental Incident Management®:

• Onsite Occupant Health Interviews with BHS Physician
• Facility Condition Assessment
• Environmental Sampling – bio-aerosol, VOCs, dust, formaldehyde, lead, asbestos
• Risk Communication and Critical Thinking
• Health-based Remediation Design, Planning and Co-ordination
• Chinese Drywall Evaluations, Remediation Planning and Oversight
• Construction Defect Root Cause Analysis
• Focused Remediation Implementation with Medical Oversight
• Medical Clearance Evaluation and Certification
• Building and Moisture Intrusion Investigations
• Large Scale Environmental Incident Management
• Prevention Models, Support and Training

We are distinguished by our ability to interact with all participants:

• Occupants and their Physicians
• Asset Managers
• Building Owners and Developers
• Building and Facilities Managers
• Condominium and Home Owner Associations
• Federal, State and Local Municipalities
• Design Professionals - Architects and Engineers
• General Contractors and Construction Managers
• Mechanical and HVAC Contractors
• Specialty Environmental or Remediation Contractors
• Attorneys and Insurance Carriers
• Indoor Air Quality Experts
• Regulatory Agencies

Building Health Sciences maintains a notable national presence with our portfolio of services and national network partners. This further facilitates the client's incident management through the opportunity to maintain a single point of contact.

¹ Translated – first do no harm. This is the guiding principle of physicians. In order to be trusted, it must be so – a fundamental medical precept of the Hippocratic Oath and BHS. This phrase is a hallowed expression of hope, intention, humility, and recognition that human actions, even those performed with good intentions, may have unwanted consequences. It is a reminder to consider the possible harm that any intervention might cause.

Our Team

Barbara Ann Manis, M.D., is the Chief Medical Officer at Building Health Sciences, Inc. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees from Temple University. Following several years of teaching, she entered the University of Southern California School of Medicine where she received her M.D. degree. She interned in internal medicine and completed a residency in ophthalmology, both at the George Washington University Medical Center

Since 1980, Dr. Manis has overseen the review and analysis of hundreds of indoor environmental matters to determine the relationship of the environment to health complaints or diagnoses. Board certified in Quality Assurance and Utilization Review, she has written a book dealing with fetal pharmacology and toxicology and articles in the legal literature and in the scientific literature, including indoor air quality. She has overseen and directed projects in large scale workers’ compensation programs, regulatory consulting, risk communication and product risk assessment. Dr. Manis was the Acting Medical Director for the city of Philadelphia, involved with its workers' compensation claims, return-to-work, and medical pension fund. For the past twenty years, Dr. Manis has specialized in environmental medicine dealing with commercial and residential IEAQ and exposure issues, in building and health hazard evaluation for residents, occupants and workers. She has spoken at national meetings and symposia on issues related to indoor air, toxic exposures and adverse health effects.

Dr. Manis spoke at The Technical Symposium on Corrosive Imported Drywall, in November, 2009. Click to see a video of her Health Effects of Corrosive Drywall talk.

Allan E. Burt, MBA, is the Vice President of Field Operations at Building Health Sciences, Inc.. He has an accomplished career as a private business owner of a mechanical contracting company and a key executive for the national design-build division of Total Site Solutions/Encompass Global Technologies, part of Encompass Service Corporation, a publicly held, $4.5 billion mechanical and electrical contractor.

He has expert knowledge of building mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, as well as building envelopes. He is a trained commercial arbitrator and mediator and has been appointed to the Panel of Neutrals at the American Arbitration Association for general, mechanical and residential construction disputes. He has been the project executive to more than $500 million of design/build/maintain projects over his career. Mr. Burt's multi-faceted expertise enables him to understand construction projects from their inception through occupancy. In conjunction with BHS physicians, he has developed "medical engineering" means and methods investigating and resolving indoor environmental matters, after building occupant health complaints have been received.