We are your local boutique Canadian sustainable design consulting firm. We believe that sustainable buildings create a more resilient and thriving future for our country.
Discover why we should be your trusted partner in creating energy-efficient, sustainable, healthy and climate-resilient buildings that meet Passive House performance standards.
Certify Your Green Building—Faster
We are a tech-enabled boutique green building practice that will help you get your green building certified without the typical headaches.
Holistic Sustainability Solutions
Don’t just follow a path that gets you a plaque on the wall. We will help you create a journey to a meaningful destination. Whether you want to stand out in your development application, or want to whether the tides of climate change, let’s forge a future that’s greener, brighter, and more impactful together.
We have found Sandra’s input valuable in pushing our design team to look at a variety of different solutions to design a better and more sustainable building. Her perspective and contributions have been a catalyst for achieving a high level of energy savings and sustainability in an incredibly complex buildi
Spencer Andres, RPP, MCIP (he/him)
Senior Planner + Project Manager for the Salvation Army’s Harbour Light in Vancouver B.C., CitySpaces
About Us
We are a tech-enabled boutique green building consulting practice dedicated to sustainable design. Since 2010, we’ve been working on award-winning projects across Canada, helping building owners, developers, architects and design teams deliver buildings that are energy efficient, healthy, sustainable, and climate-resilient.
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Who We Help
We work with building owners, developers, and architects who are designing new sustainable buildings or retrofitting existing ones. Whether you’re looking to reduce your building’s operational costs, and carbon impact, or you are navigating green building certifications and for solutions for certifications that make it more streamlined for your team, we’re here to make the process clearer, faster, and more effective.
What We Do
affectingchange is an female-owned independent Canadian green building consulting firm with a commitment to the green building revolution. We have a high level of expertise and we provide strategic green building design support, project management tools, and certification expertise to help you design and deliver low-carbon buildings that are:
✔ Energy-efficient
✔ Healthy
✔ Climate-resilient
✔ Aligned with ESG goals
From feasibility to certification, we work on new construction and building retrofits to help you plan, manage, and document your project’s sustainability journey. We have in-depth knowledge about building systems, including modular construction so we are a great asset to a team working on affordable housing projects and a worthwhile addition to a construction team.
Reducing carbon emissions is important to us. Using building simulation and state-of-the-art project management systems, and other high-tech tools, we work on a variety of building types including apartment buildings, low-rise multi-family buildings, multi-family mid-rise buildings, commercial buildings and institutional buildings, including healthcare.
We stand out from the sustainable design industry because we have worked on numerous projects throughout North America, in a variety of different climates and we are tech-enabled, utilizing an online project management system to enhance the integrated design process.
We were pioneers in the green building movement. Our work on net zero building design (that achieved the equivalent of the Living Building Challenge) dates back to the early 90’s. We have worked as green design consultants for over 30 years. We have been often hired by Sustainable Buildings Canada as specialized design charrette consultants.
We work with a wide range of sustainable certification programs on a variety of building types including commercial buildings, institutional buildings, and multi-unit residential buildings and we are very familiar with the technical requirements for each program.
Featured Services
Green Building Strategy
We combine green building strategies from LEED®, Green Globes, Passive House, and more) to guide your design team in order to meet your goals.
Whether your objective is to reduce your utility bills, do a renovation right the first time, or create more climate resiliency, we can help.
Passive House is an excellent baseline for energy efficiency, but misses out on opportunities to address the ecological impact of construction materials, site water use, and regenerative design measures.
For existing buildings we help our clients with data gathering, energy audits, and certification through BOMA BEST Sustainable 4.1, LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance or CaGBC’s ZCB – Performance.
The best green building strategy is determined by discovering your goals and then figuring how to measure success.
Streamline Your Certification
Our enabledchange™ platform comes with preloaded task lists, and templates, giving your design team the resources they need.
Get your green building certified—faster. Bring your team together to achieve certification thresholds easily, without the overwhelm.
We have templates and tools for: LEED®, WELL®, ILFI’s Living Building Challenge, ILFI’s ZC 1.1 and CaGBC’s ZCB. You’ll have what you need at your fingertips to create an energy efficient, healthy, and sustainable building.
Comment on tasks without annoying the rest of the team. Upload draft plans and mark them without leaving the platform. Ask for further guidance. Stop having to search your email inbox!
Get through the certification process faster by using a platform designed by a designer especially for design teams.
Energy Modelling
We use building simulation to do performance analysis and achieve a wide range of goals, including energy efficiency and high levels of indoor environmental quality.
Communication between team members is key to thee integrative design process and this happens continuously on our platform.
Want help with achieving net zero or fuel switching (including finding funding)? We can help you implement the latest renewable energy technologies and cold climate heat pumps.
Interior Design
We have a talented in-house interior design team that specializes in creating beautiful modern, healthy and sustainable interiors in robust Passive House projects.
We have the capacity to work on commercial office spaces, residential, healthcare, institutional and hospitality projects.
We love optimizing daylight in low window-to-wall ratio buildings and implementing biophilic design that augments the indoor environmental quality and the health and wellbeing of the occupants.
Construction Review
We will work with your design and construction team to build capacity to automate the review and approval of sustainable construction materials.
Your green building consultant does NOT need to be the bottleneck for your construction project. Start streamlining this review process, using our proven technology partners being implemented on projects across Canada and in Northwestern U.S.
Contact us to discover how you can reduce your construction costs by bringing automation to the sustainable materials review process.
Climate Resiliency
We will guide your design team and help them implement design strategies that make your new or existing building more climate resilient.
We start by helping you assess the risk for overland flood, wildfires, wildfire smoke, future pandemics, heat waves, cold snaps, and more frequent and more intense storms as well as associated power outages.
Reduce your insurance costs, and protect building occupants by assessing your climate risks today!
Enabling Sustainable Operations
Want to lower your operational costs without renovating? We do energy audits, water audits, and occupant comfort surveys that will optimize your building’s operations.
Low and no-cost measures discovered with a water audits can have a payback of less than two years.
Ensure that your mechanical systems are optimized, and working efficiently. Stop the needless waste of water and energy. Book a free intro call today!
Data-Driven Asset Management
It’s not how you operate the building sometimes, it’s how you make decisions about real estate assets.
Should you renovate that property? Is this a good property to purchase? Which properties should we choose to renovate in this portfolio?
Let us help you build your organization’s capacity so that you can make better decisions today.
Book a free strategy call, and start today!
Select Projects
Fogo Island Inn, Fogo Island, Newfoundland
29-room five star eco tourism resort and winner of over 80 awards recognizing its innovative design, social impact and sustainable tourism.
Humber River Hospital, Toronto, Ontario
2nd most energy efficient acute care hospital in the world and first to implement 100% air ventilation in Ontario. Winner of many sustainable design awards including awards from the Engineering News Record, Modern Healthcare Design, the Canada Green Building Council, and ASHRAE.
Salvation Army Harbour Light, Vancouver, British Columbia
which is a complex mixed-use building that is cost-effectively hitting a very ambitious energy target of Step Code 3 while mitigating the effects of wildfire smoke.
“They were able to help us meet Step 3 levels of performance on our new headquarters in downtown Vancouver and help us create a low-carbon building. Their green building design consulting helped us cut costs, make the building more climate resilient and improve building performance while meeting our ambitious sustainability targets. I would recommend affectingchange to any building owner or design team.”
— Michaela Jones, Project Manager, Salvation Army
Our Founder and CEO
Sandra Leigh Lester is the Director of Sustainable Design Consulting and a Certified Passive House Designer. Previously the Sustainable Design Area Leader at HOK Architects, she brings over 30 years of global experience delivering high-performance, low-carbon projects.
Sandra specializes in passive design, certifications, grant applications and renewable energy integration. Sandra leads with clarity, integrity and technical precision—bridging science, strategy, and innovation to shape a sustainable built environment.
BTech(ArchSci) MCOD ARIDO IDC CPHD CSBA LEED® AP BD+C HLC3
Get started on your project by booking a free intro call today
Discover why we should be your trusted partner in creating energy-efficient, sustainable, healthy and climate-resilient buildings
that meet Passive House performance standards.
We are 100% Canadian, with projects from coast to coast in Canada. When you hire us, your fees stay in Canada, your expertise is Canadian, and your solutions are optimized to Canadian codes, climate and realities.