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. BHS integrates medical and scientific principles with building diagnostic and remedial activities. Our integrated approach combines our 30 years of environmental medicine expertise with 30 years of design/build construction expertise, enabling BHS to simultaneously resolve occupant health issues, identify construction defects, and remedy the root cause of the building failure. Our medically-engineered solutions form the basis of our managed response to your critical environmental incident and long-term proactive prevention program. We are medical doctors, toxicologists 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 and engineers, again, with exceptional experience. As a result, Building Health Sciences has the broadest integrated understanding of incident-driven risk management for developers, facility (residential, public and commercial) managers, and health-critical environments of any group in the country.
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Professional Health Staff
Professional Building Staff
Professional Science Staff
We have personally witnessed nearly everything that can go wrong in the handling of such incidents, reviewing hundreds of problems, both in and out of litigation, in which unexpected or unrecognized health related cost drivers have emerged. These health related cost drivers arise on the front end of environmental incidents through failure to manage properties properly and effectively. They emerge on the back end through risk communication miscues and misguided investigations after a building failure has occurred. Ultimately, our goal (premum non nocere1) is 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 quality of the delivered end product.
BHS utilizes the public health model coupled with a clinical medicine approach, which enables us to:
- Ensure the health and safety of the building occupants,
- Provide effective risk communication, based on relevant medical and scientific literature, delivered by highly-skilled, medically-trained, communication experts,
- Internally collaborate with multi-disciplinary contractors on the hard cost issues of remediation,
- 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.
Our Competencies for Critical Environmental Incident Management:
- Occupant Health Evaluation
- Facility Condition Assessment
- Risk Communication
- Remediation Plan and Retrofit Design
- Construction Defect Root Cause Analysis
- Focused Remediation
- Clearance Evaluation
- Prevention and Support
We are distinguished by our ability to interact with all participants:
- Occupants and their Physicians
- Building Management
- Building Owners
- Facilities Managers
- Federal, State & Local Municipalities
- Architects and Engineers
- General Contractors
- Construction Managers
- Mechanical and HVAC Contractors
- Specialty Remediation Contractors
- Attorneys
- 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, as taught by Hippocrates. In order to be trusted, it must be so.
Our Team
PROFESSIONAL HEALTH STAFF
Barbara Ann Gots, M.D., is a Principal and 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. Gots 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. Gots 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. Gots 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.
Nancy J. Layton, B.S.N., R.N., L.N.C.C., is a registered nurse. She received a B.S.N. degree from the University of Iowa and earned certification as a legal nurse consultant from the American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants. She possesses a broad range of experience in review and analysis of medical records, medical and scientific literature, and technical environmental reports associated with IEAQ events. Prior to joining Building Health Sciences, she provided technical assistance to private and governmental insurers in matters concerning utilization of medical services, quality assessment and critical issues in coverage decisions.
PROFESSIONAL BUILDING STAFF
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Donald E. Franklin, C.P.A., is the President of Building Health Sciences, Inc. and is the founding Principal of Building Health Sciences, Inc. Mr. Franklin has extensive experience in the construction industry, previously serving as president of Encompass National Accounts and Global Technologies, a $170 million division of Encompass Service Corporation, a $4.5 billion mechanical and electrical contractor. This division emerged from the design/build/maintain service company that Mr. Franklin owned and operated for 10 years prior to its being sold to Encompass.
During his tenure at Encompass, Mr. Franklin received numerous awards, including the 1999 Pinnacle Award for software innovation excellence from Microsoft. Mr. Franklin served as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer for Commercial Air, Power and Cable, Inc. from 1989 until its sale to Encompass in 1998. During this period, Mr. Franklin successfully reorganized the business from $7 million in revenues to more than $40 million. Before acquiring this business, he was a senior auditor with Peat Marwick, where he specialized in audits of publicly traded companies. He received his A.B. in accounting from Franklin and Marshall College and a certificate in International Business from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Allan E. Burt, MBA, is a Principal and 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.
PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE STAFF
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Courtney J. Millin, Ph.D., received a B.A. degree in sociology and anthropology from Amherst College, a B.S. degree in human biology from the University of Cape Town South Africa and a Ph.D. in biology and epidemiology from the University of Cape Town. Over the past 5 years, she has conducted and managed several international research projects. Dr. Millin has prepared technical reports for the Medical Research Council of South Africa, as well as the South African government. Additionally she has presented her research findings at international conferences and symposiums. She has authored several reports and peer-reviewed articles related to cardiovascular disease, obesity, adipose tissue distribution and glucocorticoid metabolism in various ethnic groups.
Dr. Millin has extensive experience managing complex research projects in diverse research fields. She is currently a Project Executive for Building Health Sciences and most recently has been involved in a large Congressionally mandated indoor environment and air quality investigation and epidemiological study.
