Brenner to Retire at the End of the Month

National Institute of Building Sciences Vice President William A. Brenner will retire at the end of July. He joined the Institute’s team when the organization first began staffing up in 1978, starting out as a project manager for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Rehabilitation Guidelines project.

In 1980, Brenner told an old Navy friend, Dave Harris, about a job opening. (Harris joined the staff and went on to become the Institute’s president for more than two decades.) Brenner himself left the Institute in 1982 to go into consulting. He became vice president and partner of Building Technology Inc., a Washington, D.C. consulting firm, and then senior vice president of CODEWORKS Corporation, a database company.

In 1992, Brenner returned to the Institute to manage the Construction Metrication Council. In 1993, he became an Institute vice president. Over the years, Brenner did a lot of work for both HUD and the U.S. Marshal Service. In 1998, he brought in the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities (NCEF) project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Since then, NCEF has been Brenner’s primary focus. Its website, www.ncef.org, is the largest source of school facilities information in the world, with over 18,000 resources. More than a million users visit the site each year.

“Bill’s contributions to the Institute have helped the organization to become what it is today,” said Institute President Henry L. Green. “His work to bring NCEF on board and expand its program has made the Clearinghouse a valued resource for the educational facility community. We wish him well in his retirement. He will be missed.”

Brenner is a registered architect, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, a past president of the Washington Chapter of the Association for Preservation Technology (APT), a past director of the APT Foundation, a fellow of the U.S. Metric Association and a former council member of the town of Somerset, Maryland.

He has a Bachelor of Architecture from Miami University (Ohio), a Master of Urban Planning from Yale University and an Executive MBA from the University of Maryland. During the Vietnam era, he served as an officer in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps.