2016 ASHRAE Annual Conference

Engineering, as a practice, is based on developing and applying tangible solutions to practical problems through a creative but calculated process. Engineering education at the university level is focused on difficult mathematical equation solving and test-score-based performance metrics. Professional certifications, field experience, and continuing education opportunities further promote technical competence and understanding of systems, equipment, codes and standards. While these forms of education and professional development can be in-depth, demanding and celebrate technical excellence, they overlook a crucial facet of the industry: engineering is a relationship-based business. Strong and diverse relationships with a spectrum of project partners, clients and owners are the backbone of an engineering firm’s health and growth. The ability to develop, nurture and maintain relationships relies on an ability to relate to other people and participate in the fluid process of Business Development. This is a vital component of a successful career in the engineering industry, but developing this skillset is often forgotten or glossed over. Engineers can learn and hone business development skills through outside training sessions and conferences, though concepts learned in the contrived setting of didactic presentation and roleplay can be difficult to adopt “in the wild.” Mentorship from seasoned and successful leaders is an ideal option, but this assumes a firm has such current leaders, and that they have the time and teaching skills to take the next generation of leaders under their wing. An innovative and remarkably effective option is to develop a custom business development training program, tailored to the firm’s values and strategic visions, and delivered by a dedicated BD leader who thoroughly understands these values and visions.  In this “learning by doing” environment, engineers are given the authority and confidence to go out and practice their new skills, knowing that they are contributing to the firm’s business development plan. This paper will present the perspectives of a Business Development Director who developed and is successfully implementing an 18-month, in-house BD training program at her firm, and a next-generation engineering leader who is further refining his business development skills by participating in the program and mentoring other engineers beginning to build up their skills.

New strong demands for a more sustainable built environment led to a more complex building design process. The most important decisions in building design are made in the very early conceptual phase. This happens often when there are no engineers involved yet and so the architect has to make all the decisions on his own. Especially in the conceptual design phase the different expertise of engineers could be used more effectively by architects to reach for new more sustainable solutions. To support diverse multidisciplinary building design teams a supportive design method was developed in cooperation with the Dutch professional organizations of architects and consulting engineers.  It helps architects and engineers with their new role in the conceptual design phase as it enables to structure each perspective on the design task as well as to structure the available domain knowledge by using morphological charts and morphological overviews. After testing the method in workshops as part of a training program in industry, the design method was transferred and applied at the department of architecture for master students for their multidisciplinary Master project Integral Design.  In the last 10 years Master Projects Integral design were held and there was a continuous development to optimize the cooperation between architects and engineers. The research showed that it is possible to engage engineers and let other disciplines learn from them within the conceptual building design phase, which makes it easier to achieve energy efficient and environmental friendly buildings such as nearly Zero Energy Buildings.  Also the approach can be used to analyse the design process and to focus on the communication within the design team as well as use it to represent a kind of mental map of the design team. This helps engineers to interfere with the conceptual design process and add additional knowledge and experience. In this way competences beyond engineering can be added to improve the outcome of the design process.

The refrigeration industry plays a major and increasing role in today’s global economy, with significant contributions made in food, health, energy and environmental domains which policy makers need to better understand and take into account. The need for engineering and technical staff is currently increasing due to the growing demand for refrigerating capacities, along with the unique skills required of refrigeration-related professions in the field of energy and environment. Women are still significantly and visibly under-represented in the refrigeration industry. The purpose of this paper demonstrates the current preliminary state-of-the-art of women in the refrigeration field collected from the national refrigeration institutions and associations. Incentive actions proposed are proposed are the outcomes of the first meeting of the IIR Women in Refrigeration workshop.