By Sonya M. Pouncy
More than 190 persons attended the Women in ASHRAE Happy Hour during the recent ASHRAE Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, USA. The WiA Happy Hour was a perfect ending to a day of committee meetings, workshops and seminars, including the seminar “Minding Your Business—Preparing for Tomorrow’s Workforce Today,” which discussed the on-going expansion of the HVAC&R industry to include women and people of color in diverse roles including service technicians, design engineers, commissioning providers, and company presidents. The session featured presentations by Lisa Knapp for INWIC member Jane Sidebottom and by Dr. Ina Colombo, a former INWIC President. Dr. Patrick Ata also spoke. The seminar was chaired by this author, also an INWIC member.
The day was filled with golden nuggets of learning and professional development opportunities; and at its close, women from around the globe gathered in a relaxed environment to network and discuss various HVAC&R issues. There were conversations about a myriad of topics ranging from AI uses and impacts, the data center boom, indoor air quality, new standards for building design, tools for project delivery and commissioning, heat pump, geothermal and thermal storage technologies, to best practices for operating and maintaining facilities. We caught up with treasured friends, discussed new opportunities with colleagues, introduced mentees to paragons of the industry, and cultivated new and on-going business relationships. We exchanged business cards and bumped phones as we strengthened old connections and forged new ones that will help sustain our careers and strengthen our contributions to the HVAC&R industry.
One of the women in attendance was INWIC member, Sara Maston, PE, who is also the incoming ASHRAE President. Hours earlier, at the President’s Luncheon, Sarah had announced the theme for her presidency, “Changing the Game: Retrofitting for Resilience” complete with a literal game—the ASHRAE HVAC Hero. The game presents various problem scenarios in facility operations such as boiler breakdowns, fan-coil failures, and crashing cooling towers. As part of the facility management team, your objective is to rack up energy savings by properly identifying the problem and finding the solution. Fun for folks new to the industry and to seasoned professionals, the game reinforces analysis and problem-solving skills while introducing players to or reminding them of HVAC concepts and system operating characteristics. We get to learn, practice, and refresh certain competencies such as how to read and interpret data, and how to troubleshoot equipment failures.
The game is available from the ASHRAE website. Test your skills and see how much energy you can save, by visiting https://www.ashrae.org/professional-development/hvachero and downloading a free copy of the game. Good luck! And, if you need to “phone a friend”, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone in your INWIC network.