Thank you for your interest in HVACLive - an opportunity to reach out and promote our industry to young professionals and current students. We as engineers (or any professionals for that matter) have the experience of what makes up this industry. Whether you have been in the field for 30 days or 30 years, your experience and feedback matter to the success and fulfillment of what's to come.
I started out in this field as a Junior Mechanical Engineer at a local design firm in Rochester 3 years ago fresh out of graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology. My responsibilities were simple: plan review, basic system design and layouts, load calculations, specification writing, and submittal review. It opened my eyes to an exciting field with endless opportunity for those willing to embrace it.
I thought to myself: "Why wasn't I aware of this when I was going to school? Were there no courses offered for this?"
The answer was not clear cut. RIT offered a couple of courses, to their credit, but the professors and advisors never pushed it upon any of us to take them. It was not one of their priorities. In fact, this is true across most of the country. HVAC design engineering courses are few and far to come by.
I had become extremely fortunate that I found my position at the design firm in the first place. It was by chance that a friend of mine who was currently working there as an interior designer gave me the tip that they were looking for someone. If not for her, I would have been left scrambling applying for hundreds of other jobs completely unrelated to HVAC because I wouldn't have known to look for it.
Over the past 12 months I have heard from numerous company executives that they have a hard time finding qualified talent. Most of them say that the interviewees know absolutely nothing about HVAC - not even the basics. This isn't necessarily bad, but it leads to more training the company must invest into that employee and many times the employee just isn't interested in the field and leaves. If we can target the engineers early enough and generate interest then we can provide more qualified talent and increase the longevity in our industry.
With your help as well as from the Young Engineers of ASHRAE committee of Niagara Frontier, we will tackle many of these issues and this website will provide a resource of information ranging from case studies, to career advice and opportunities, to local events that are currently being planned. Again, thank your for your interest and I look forward to providing you with pertinent information that can benefit us all.
Looking for more content? My LinkedIn account (click here) gives tons of links, case studies, and more access to what I'm doing for the industry plus additional content for ideas I support.
How To Become A Contributor And Guest Author
In order for this website to be "live", it needs to have active contributors in addition to myself. We welcome all to submit so we can get a true, 360 degree view of the industry from the eyes of everyone involved. Why should you submit an article and what's in it for you?
First - this website is the first of it's kind: An interactive blog dedicated solely to the local region of Western New York. It's unique in that it allows everyone to see exactly what's going on in our industry today while educating those who want to learn more.
Maybe you figured out a solution that saved your owner big bucks? Or you were able to create a successful design for a project using the latest and greatest system our industry has to offer. Whatever it is, our industry wants to hear about it. Once you submit you will have your name and company featured on the website. We want you to be able to showcase your accomplishments.
Send your ideas, articles, and submissions here. Once they are ready to be published on the site we will let you know.
Thank you for supporting the promotion of our industry!