HPAC On The Air

EPISODE XXII: AHR Expo Preview, with Nicole Bush

HPAC On The Air's first guest of 2023 is Nicole Bush, press officer for AHR Expo, our industry's premier annual trade show, set to jumpstart the new year next month in Atlanta. Based in Connecticut, the AHR Expo show office runs year-round, so Nicole is here to preview the big event and give us a bit of a behind-the-scenes look at how it all comes together...

EPISODE XXI: COP27 Recap with USGBC’s Elizabeth Beardsley

Just back from Egypt, the U.S. Green Building Council's lead emissary to the latest United Nations Climate Conference, aka "COP27", fills us in on the global event's most relevant news for our industry, as well as its likely impact on broader sustainability efforts. 

EPISODE XX: Pandemic Pulse Check, with ASHRAE’s Bill Bahnfleth

We are pleased to welcome back this month our first return guest to HPAC On The Air, Dr. William Bahnfleth, P.E., former chair of ASHRAE's recently ended emergency Epidemic Task Force, and current vice chair of the society's Environmental Health Committee. He updates us on the latest pandemic-related guidance for indoor air quality (IAQ) and reflects on the state of our industry as it still strives to make both new and existing buildings healthier for their occupants. 

Episode XIX: Honoring the Profession, with ASPE’s Jim Zebrowski

Our guest this month is Jim Zebrowski, P.E., new president of the American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE), and a plumbing /fire protection engineer with DLR Group. Zebrowski has been an active member of ASPE for 36 years now and was elected to the top spot for a two-year term this September in Indianapolis. He spoke with us about the goals of his presidency and his views on the role of character in all that we do.

Episode XVIII: Construction Technology Outlook, with Burcin Kaplanoglu

Our guest this month is Dr. Burcin Kaplanoglu, VP of Innovation at the new Oracle Industry Lab in Deerfield, IL. An avid technologist blessed with energetic curiosity, Kaplanoglu previously spent 15 years with Lendlease and holds multiple degrees in civil engineering and construction management. Today, he also serves as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and chairs an advisory committee to the A.I. in Construction Institute at the Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Episode XVII: Our Smaller World, with ASHRAE’s New President

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.

Episode XVI: Refrigerant Standards Update, with ICC’s Jim Cika

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...

Episode XV: Fire Protection Pulse Check, with NFPA President Jim Pauley

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).

Episode XIV: Updating ASHRAE Standards on Ultraviolet Testing, with Dean Saputa

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.

Title: Episode XIII: ’HPAC On The Air’ Celebrates Women in Engineering

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!