2022 40 Under 40: Megan Gunther Hardman, PE, LEED AP BD+C, WELL AP, 35

Project Manager/Building Performance Department Lead, Affiliated Engineers Inc.; MS, Architectural Engineering, University of Texas at Austin

By Amara Rozgus, Chris Vavra, and Christina Miller May 16, 2022

As a participant in a high school robotics competition, Hardman and her team represented her school as the only all-girls team. It was at this point that Hardman realized how much she loved learning about the broad spectrum of engineering. After working at a different firm for a couple of years, she joined AEI in 2014 and immediately displayed technical competence as a mechanical engineer and maturity as a team member working on complex projects. Within her first year, Hardman took over project management for a large project at Roche, which ultimately achieved LEED Gold certification and was the joint first-place recipient in the ASHRAE Golden Gate Chapter’s 2021 Technology Awards program. She provided building performance expertise on her first significant project with UCSF, identifying key energy conservation measures, which were incorporated into the facility design with minimal impact to the project budget and design schedule. From that point, Hardman began growing AEI’s energy modeling portfolio in San Francisco, helping carve out a national practice. Today, Hardman heads the building performance practice group for AEI’s San Francisco office, designing efficient engineered systems for high-performance buildings, processing and analyzing data from building energy simulations to positively influence design. For the past two years, she has been volunteering with the ACE Mentor Program of America and also devotes time to Leap Sandcastle, an event to aid San Francisco elementary schools. Extracurricular passions include cooking, travel and being outdoors.