HPAC On The Air

Our guest this month, joining us from Dubai, is the newly elected 2022-2023 President of ASHRAE, Mr. Farooq Mehboob, the society's first Asian-born president. An accomplished mechanical engineer with more than 50 years of industry experience, Mr. Mehboob is the founder and owner of his own engineering firm, S. Mehboob & Co., based in Karachi, Pakistan. There, he is also a founding member and current chair of the Pakistan HVACR Society. Here, he speaks with us about the theme of his presidential year, "Securing Our Future," and the urgent necessity of international cooperation and collaboration among engineers to solve our planet's most pressing problems.

As we enter an already steamy summer, our subject this month is refrigerants, and our guest is Jim Cika, director of PMG technical resources for the International Code Council, where he serves as a subject matter expert on plumbing, mechanical, fuel gas and swimming pool and spa codes. Jim represents ICC in federal and state coalitions, task forces, committees, and councils where expertise in I-Code subjects is required. With more than 20 years of industry experience in manufacturing and construction, including time as an HVAC design engineer, he holds a mechanical engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Here, he previews major code changes on A2L refrigerants that will impact our industry much sooner than many may realize...

Our guest this month is Mr. Jim Pauley, President and CEO of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), where he also chairs the NFPA Research Foundation. Prior to joining NFPA in 2014, Pauley had spent 30 years in the electric and energy industry, serving the last several of those years as a Senior Vice President at Schneider Electric. An electrical engineer by training, he has also served the industry in a number of other leadership roles, perhaps most notably as Chair of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Our guest is Dean Saputa, an HVAC industry veteran of more than 30 years, and vice president and co-founder of UV Resources, based in Santa Clarita, CA. He helped to start that firm in 2005. Saputa also has been very active in ASHRAE, where he is a member of the ASHRAE Epidemic Task Force and past chair of the group's Technical Committee 2.9 on Ultraviolet Air and Surface Treatment. He is the current chair of ASHRAE Standards Committee 185.2, which has been particularly active since the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. Our discussion focuses on that committee's ongoing work, which is about to involve some significant updates.

This month's guest is ASHRAE's Ginger Scoggins, who has run her own engineering firm in Cary, NC, for the last 25 years. She also recently represented ASHRAE at the UN Climate Conference in Scotland, and led the committee overseeing the building of the organization's new Net Zero headquarters outside Atlanta... all during the pandemic!

HPAC 'On The Air' welcomes two past presidents of ASHRAE, Dr. Donald Colliver of the University of Kentucky, and Thomas Phoenix, of Mechanical Contractors Inc. in Charlotte NC. Last spring, they were named as co-chairs of ASHRAE's new Task Force for Building Decarbonization (TFBD), an important new effort they will detail for us in this podcast.

Delayed by the pandemic, the American Boiler Manufacturers Association's big new show on the supply chain is finally near. ABMA's Shaunica Jayson and Webster Combustion Technology's Eric Graham explain why that's such a big deal.

Our guest today is Elizabeth Beardsley, senior policy counsel for the U.S. Green Building Council, which she represented in November at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, or 'COP26', for short. A longtime environmental advocate, Liz holds a civil engineering degree from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of Virginia. She speaks here on key COP26 takeaways and also highlights important climate components in the new federal infrastructure funding.

This month's engaging guest is Mick Schwedler, P.E., the 2021-2022 President of ASHRAE, installed last June. Now in his 40th year at Trane, Mick is passionate about the next generation and ASHRAE's stated commitment to serve humanity, especially during this extraordinary time. Here, we speak with him about ASHRAE's evolving role through the global pandemic and its new focus now on decarbonization and organizational equity and inclusion. Listen and learn how that all fits in to the theme for his ongoing year as society president: “Personal Growth. Global Impact. Feed the Roots.”

October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, so our special guest is online "security fanatic" Nick Espinosa, the Mechanical Contractors Association of America's go-to consultant and a member of the Forbes Technology Council. A sought-after speaker across multiple industries, Nick is a prolific podcaster and social media thought leader focused 24/7 on business vulnerabilities and how to reduce growing cyber risks, both at work and at home. Oh, and if you think your engineering firm has nothing to worry about, you are almost certainly wrong, he says.