The Future is BRIGHT: Stacks+Joules Building Automation Training Program

Staffing the Workforce of the Future With an Innovative Building Automation Training Program

On a recent afternoon, groups of teenagers trained their focus on banks of wireless LED lightbulbs in a classroom at Chelsea High School in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Turning to coding terminals on adjacent laptops periodically, they made small changes to compel the bulbs to flash along precisely to a soundtrack of their own choosing.

Move a decimal point, and a color popped on the beat. Tweaking a six-digit combination of letters and numbers dialed in the shade to any of six million color combinations. Then a final edit to make the bulbs burn with increasing intensity for a few bars.

Satisfied, one team sat back to watch the results without realizing they had just programmed sophisticated technology that is the backbone of the building automation industry.

This classroom, along with another across the city at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, represents the intersection of energy conservation and youth employment initiatives.

The students are engaged in a curriculum designed by Stacks+Joules, a nonprofit building automation training program that aims to build a strong new labor force skilled in the complex computerized systems that control equipment in modern buildings. They’re bringing young people, especially those from under-represented demographics in technology careers—namely individuals of color and women from under-resourced urban areas—into the fold, to play an important role in the future of energy efficiency.

The Workers Needed For More Energy Efficiency Buildings Everywhere

In 2014 as a participating engineer the Building Asset Rating (BAR) study sponsored by the Department of Energy and the state of Massachusetts, I witnessed that need for a building automation training program like Stacks+Joules first hand. In a sample of 50 facilities located throughout the Boston area, we found near universal issues relating to deficiencies in the programming of building automation systems.

The facilities heated and cooled spaces at the same time, fan systems operated independent of schedules and large percentages of office lighting failed to take advantage of modern energy saving features. In buildings both large and small, improperly configured building management systems were to blame.

The observed building efficiency challenges are symptomatic of an industry struggling with a labor crisis. Across the energy efficiency sector, as high as 80% of employers report consistent difficulty finding qualified job applicants, with over 40% finding it “very difficult.” Employers attributed hiring difficulty to lack of qualifications, education, training, experience, and/or technical skills.

The building automation and controls sector is no exception. If anything, the labor crisis is exacerbated by rapid changes within the industry in recent years. Central players transitioned from large Fortune 100 corporations that can afford to subsidize training, to small regional firms that lack comprehensive staffing and capacity-building strategies.

On top of that, a sea change in building automation technology has transformed the industry. Wireless networking and the computerization of systems means that coding and programming, along with data aggregation and analysis, are more than the wave of the future—they’re the tsunami of the now.

Facility-operating staff from the boilermaker days of old who lack updated training are not getting it. That places an exaggerated burden on the building automation industry to train a new generation of workers. That, in and of itself, poses a challenge.

Visibility of Diverse Technical Careers a Hurdle

“The trades, and specifically the HVAC Controls Industry, provide significant career opportunities but suffer from low visibility to the student population,” says Steve Feinberg, President of BCM Controls, a building automation, energy services, and security systems company in the Boston area.

In part, that’s because HVAC, lighting, fire safety, security and other mechanical systems operate behind the scenes, largely unnoticed. The same can be said for the workers responsible for their calibration and management. And yet as the BAR study results indicated, they’ve never been more important. That makes this building automation training program particularly important.

At the same time, the young people enrolled in Stacks+Joules need this kind opportunity as much as building automation needs them. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently over 5 million youth ages 16 to 24 who are unprepared for either college or career. Specialized training like this is one way for them to jump the low-wage, low-growth employment shark tank.

Stacks and Joules is a collaborative effort with MIT-based BELLEDS Technologies. From day one, students are engaged in hands-on, project-based, career-focused learning. Students master application programming indexes (API), develop their own lighting control APPs and learn the fundamentals of building controls.

The lightshow set to music is the capstone project for the program. Just as with the rest of the curriculum, the project has the feel of an exercise in fun, but their mastery of the BELLEDS LEDs, students and demonstrate their capabilities in using controls that are key to realizing energy savings.

Due to the exceptional revenue savings potential of appropriate building automation controls configuration, much of the work that the Stacks+Joules students are being trained for can be completed at no net cost to building owners. A 2016 Department of Energy project found that re-tuning controls of more than 70 federal buildings achieved a median 15% energy savings. Nationally, that effectively 15% fewer carbon emissions and billion dollar benefit—a figure that compounds annually—if Stacks+Joules can scale its building automation training program beyond Boston to cities and states across the country. In the program and the kids in it, it’s clear the potential is there.