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All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us once again on Did
You Know the ESCO HVAC podcast. So we are hanging out at the 2024
National HVACR Education Conference. And as you can tell,
it is a hustle and a bustle here with 1200 educators from around
the country and Canada. And we're spending time learning how
to become better educators and making sure that we're providing
a very solid educational platform for our students. So I'm
spending time with Mr. Rich Benkowski. How are you, sir?
Very good. And we're glad to be here. This is a one of those
unique conferences that allows some great networking with the
HVAC manufacturers and their latest technology, and the
instructors getting that next generation ready for so, you
know, great job here. And as the numbers grow, that just speaks
to the integrity of how much there is to learn here.
It does. You know, when we talk about how many are here to learn
about the new technology, I think it's very important that
we we focus on the content that we're delivering, making sure
that we're doing a good job of building our curriculum, that
we're presenting in a way that is understandable. And you have
spent a good part of your career just in that taking, taking
technical concepts, but then helping deliver those in the
right way. Would you say that that's been an important part of
you?
Well, that's been part of my passion and part of my focus,
certainly, and making sure that and I would just call it making
it right. We want to get the right, right material of the
right quality to the right student, but at the right time.
And with technology changing faster than we can keep up with
sometimes, that that makes it more of a challenge for us
culturally as instructors to manage and meter the flow to
those students as we get nurtured them and help them
navigate so that they have value in the service truck so that
they the the hour of work that they put in, they're compensated
for, and they can have a nice life for their family. That's
that's what it's about.
It truly is. You know, we think about the delivery that we need
today is probably not the same delivery that we needed five
years ago that we needed 20 years ago, because the equipment
has changed and the learners have changed as well. And so a
lot of the classes that we're seeing here at the conference
are I wouldn't call them soft skills, I would say that they
are learning new skills for delivery and being able to
communicate effectively because you brought that up about
making sure it's right, the content is right, but even the
timing is right. So let's dive into that a little bit.
Well, and that's one of the unique things of working in the
HVAC industry, as you know, no matter how many years you go to
school, or if you earn a degree and what kind of technology you
understand, this career is a lifelong learning challenge, you
can never leave the classroom for the last time, unless you
retire, I guess. And that's for all of us, as things develop,
and the impact of technology and the manufacturers need an
ability to meet that market demand, that also then
translates into the education back into the classroom. So
today's instructors have a lot of a lot of these impacts, and I
would even say disruptions to manage when, when Google what
nest, that was kind of a disruption. Oh, yeah, Google
was buying a thermostat that was not a complicated device. But
they're abiding date buying data. So that meant that we, we
had to all sit back and say, Oh, what else is in that data? How
do you harvest the data? You know, how relevant important is
it? So it did force us to put things into the curriculum, maybe
the student coming into an HVAC industry was not expecting to
need to learn. Yeah, does that make sense? Oh, absolutely. It
does. And, and then even the changes in the core elements,
you know, variable flow systems. 15 years ago, 20 years ago, that
wasn't in anybody's curriculum. But now you can't, you know, and
heat pumps, look at how heat pumps today have surged to the
forefront of clean energy electrification, a lot of
incentivized systems then have to do with heat pump technology
that, yeah, we learned about we knew about, we said, Oh, don't
use them in Minnesota, you know. But now it's, it's, it's the
everyday piece of equipment, it's every man's piece of
equipment. So those are some of the challenges for us. And
reasons why we have to help somebody that's even been in the
field for 10, 15, 20 years, come on back to the classroom, we're
going to help you have more value for the contractor and for
your customer. The end result is the customer needs to trust what
we know and how we do it. So there are some challenges.
Absolutely. I've got a podcast scheduled for later today. I'm
sitting out here with a couple of our experienced educators,
one of which was 92 years old. And I said, Sir, what are you?
What are you here at the conference for? He says, I'm
here to learn. Oh, you're coming into a podcast if I can.
Yeah, exactly. Oh, exactly. But but that's, that's a great
example. That is a great example for a student to understand that
all of us are still looking to make sure we understand the
right thing at the right time.
Yeah, I think it's very important for us all to stay up
to date with the changes in the industry. And keeping an eye on
what's happening. So as educators, this we gather here
so that we can stay up to date. But as as students, and as
technicians, I think it is very important as well, to ask those
questions, hey, what's coming to the industry?
Oh, exactly. And then, and then to meter it in the right way. And
of course, we said with the right quality. Yeah. But, you
know, even with the we just spoke of heat pumps, a lot of
the heat pumps will have flammable refrigerants in them.
So now we're not just teaching about what the what the working
pressures ought to be. But let's talk a little bit about safety.
Yeah, you know, because as for customer service, when the
customer understands that we're going to have a propane system
near their house, we want to reassure them that we can work
safely with it. And it's no harm to their family. And oh, by the
way, it has a low GDP and low D P. So that if it should leak,
it's not going to be environmentally unsafe. But and
those are things that we must keep refreshing and learning the
thing to even if we were doing the best things for conservation
of refrigerants and reclaiming at all, that is still evolving.
Everything is always evolving.
Yeah, ever ever changing, which is the beauty of this industry.
So many of our students look at HVAC and all they know is, you
know, a furnace or maybe an air conditioner, they don't see the
the depth of what we are actually involved with and all
of the new technologies that come forward that is constantly
evolving us. We've seen so many changes in our industry, in our
career. And yet we look to the future going, we're just
constantly evolving. It's not like it's something new. There's
always something new.
Well, here, here's both end of the spectrum, the needle one end
says, it's always about heat transfer. Yes, it's always about
moving one BTU from where we don't want it to someplace we
don't care. Yes. So we move BTU from inside the building to
outside the building. But now as the the pressure is on everyone
to not waste any BTUs, that's energy. That's funny. Absolutely.
So when we look at thermal energy networks that move BTUs
from one building to another, or in the semiconductor industry,
take a lot of that heat generated and move those BTUs
around the building, we could be on the verge of not even use
needing cooling towers anymore. Who could imagine a system in a
10 story building or a 20 story building, or 1 million square
foot plant without a cooling top?
That's hard to fathom is but if you don't, but realistic, it is
realistic. And there's even some projects in New York City,
they're taking a six block area with 22 buildings, designing and
installing a thermal energy network that is going to create,
should I say a perpetual BTU. And I want to thank AGA thermal
for that term. But that's the idea if we could conceptually
get to a perpetual BTU, that we're not wasting heat. So
again, but one of the core elements being heat transfer,
we're still going to teach that we're still going to teach how
the legacy systems work. But if a tech walks up to a building
and there's no cooling tower, and everyone's comfortable, oh
mine, what did we just stumble? Right? Where's the heat? Yeah.
So the evolution into thinking never, ever stops because the
challenge of transferring large amounts of heat at the least
cost is always in front of us and as society, we're pretty
clever. Once we know the energy cost, we're going to work to
to, to, to lower it. But then that means come on back to the
classroom, let's talk about a perpetual BTU. Yeah, you know,
yeah, we didn't talk about that 10 and 20 years ago. No, we just
say, hey, throw that BTU lots on. We don't care. Get rid of it.
I just don't want it here. Yeah, we're not going to overheat
the counter. It's fine. And my utilities aren't that bad. So
just give me something that works. And I think those days
are gone.
Well, they are. And you know, how long geothermals have been
kicking around and how exchanging with with the Earth's
temperature has always been a way to cut costs. Now that's
that's back on the table too. There's more and more of it. But
so even though we understand compressors fans, you know, and
pumps, you know, we're still moving air, water and
refrigerant. But now we have to also understand that's that's
systemically, the components might be in a different spot.
Yeah, they have to run at a different speed. You're a couple
of different manufacturers do it a couple different ways. So that
that for, you know, for an instructor, I think that's all
part of the fun. And if we can translate that to the students
to help them understand, we're glad you're graduating from our
program. But we hope to see you soon. Yeah, exactly. And that
that helps us to make it right to get the right information to
right quality, but also at the right time, you know, because
with the ATLs this morning on our workshop, we talked about
we talked about the national brazing certification that actually
that idea that moment of dawning comprehension was in 2014 at
this conference, really, you know, when ATLs were starting to
come up, manufacturers were saying, well, who's going to
braze all that pipe on the variable flow system if it's
broken? How do we know this person can braze? Well, in 2014,
that discussion started. And now today in Colorado, they
alleged they have legislation that says if you're going to
work on an ATL system, and braze that pipe, you need to be
certified to braze and also trained in ATLs. Really? That is
landline. That is so you know, so that the techs out there that
they're thinking, I've been doing this for 15 years. No, no
big deal. It is a big it is a very big. And that's another
reason to come back. And sometimes, and you may have
heard this too, especially in the educators conference, are
you guys a teacher just looking for ways to trick us to come
back? Yeah, yeah. No, it's not. There's no magic. There's no
pixie dust. Yeah, it's not a trick. No, you know, the market
shifts, the market moves. If you want to maintain your lifestyle,
you need to keep learning. You have to adapt. And that's not a
bad thing. No, it really isn't a bad thing. It's a commitment.
So a lot of the schools, it's a commitment to have new
technology come in. It's a commitment by the manufacturers.
And by the way, this is one of the few conferences annually
you can go to, to witness firsthand the manufacturers
commitment. Yeah, you know, it's real, it's true. And we're not
nobody's opposed to this marriage of manufacturing and
education and the labor, because we all need each other to be
successful. You better believe the manufacturers want to a
certified brazier or somebody trained in a two l's as much as
the homeowner. Exactly. You know, so that's that moving
forward. Those are the challenges.
Yeah, I've seen more manufacturers represented at our
conference this year than I have ever seen. And I think it does
it comes back to an entire industry that is moving at light
speed making transitions that are happening faster than people
would realize we I have seen educators that are asking me if
they should be teaching low GWP safety in their classroom. And I
had one educator that came to me and told me that his
administration give him 30 days to become a to L certified, or
he wasn't maintaining his job because they were going to be
focusing on the safe handling of refrigerants going forward. And
that's really the system the transition that we are seeing is
that we're having to reevaluate not just our programs, but
ourselves, to make sure that we are prepared for the changes
that we know and even some changes that we're not aware of
yet. Oh, that that's exactly right. And for the
administration of a of a school system to recognize and react
that aggressively to it. Very. That's not unusual. Yeah, that's
not because the headlines are out there. It does take time for
things to ice in. And that's the other part of of of our challenge
as educators is that we if we're not looking five years out,
we're going to be behind 100% agree. And one of the other
reality to that cliff is when we look at best opportunities for
all of our students to have a good career. It's about early
adoption of technology early adoption of new equipment or new
refrigerants. But at the same time, sometimes early adoptions
are lonely road. I live that life. And it's and it's but it's
behavior modification, the same as safety training is behavior
modification, you know, with that. But when you look at all
the studies and the analysis of it, the early adult when you
compare the slope of early adoption to the slope of market
share, early adoption and market share cross at the highest
point. Makes sense. So as educators, we can't ever not
think about the one product that we're building, we build one
product, it's sold one hour at a time. That's it. I'm not
oversimplifying it. We're getting a student ready to go
out there and be viable to a contractor that's going to build
that time one hour at a time. That's our product. So with
that, we have to make sure that in the assembly line and
conveyor belt of learning that that product is is relevant and
viable. So that's where the struggle becomes and for
administrators to look at and say, okay, now's the time this
is this is the meaning of the right quality at the right time.
So we've been hearing about brazing certifications and
chatter since 2014. Hearing about A2Ls and code since since
what 2015 2016. It's time. Time's on. You have to prepare your
students for both the contractors on your advisory
councils that participate, I'm sure probably helped the
administrators understand the sense of urgency. Because even
with some of the code language that came out, the the
manufacturers were telling the code bodies, the product is
ready, it's safe. Let's go. Some of us in education says, wait,
we don't have the we don't have the safety module training yet.
Pause a little bit. Now we're ready. The manufacturers are
ready. The codes are in place for for that type of buildings
with that type of equipment. That's good. Yeah. But there's
a lot of moving parts there, right? Yeah, there's a lot of
moving parts of things that evolve. So somebody that would
walk into your conference today and said, I heard about this
propane stuff, you know, so I barbecue at home with it. And
and now somebody saying it's in my air conditioner. Yes, don't
worry, as an industry, we've been figuring this out for a
long time. Absolutely. You know, but then, so what do you think
the next challenge will be? We talked about how when when
Google bot nests that was kind of a disruption to our industry
because they were buying data. So fast forward to today, if
we're not preparing our students to navigate and harvest
data that with AI and machine learning, we're going to be
behind their teeth, because that's that's going to accelerate
and move faster than anything. It's almost like, you know,
they first they said data was the new oil. Well, if it's the
new oil, then clicks are the currency. The more things you
collect, the more money you're going to make a less money
you're going to make. But at the same time, it's great to have
have that ability with cognitive buildings for your tech to sit
in his living room and the facility manager from the local
community college called and says, Hey, our children
temperature is a little warm. And he looks at his iPad said,
Yeah, it is. Let me reset it for you. Click. Yes. So that's, I
know it sounds like we're just, you know, it may sound like,
oh, that guy's just ramming. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
moving pieces that are landing on our desk at one time at one
time. And when they saw moving, became real. Yeah, I almost
feel like you and I are the sports broadcasters. And we're
in the last few minutes in the last quarter. And everyone is
excited. And everyone's waiting for the final outcome. And we
know know that there's something big getting ready to
happen. Exactly. And that's what we're trying to do. We're
trying to just prepare for that to make sure we're doing it
right, make sure that I can have the opportunity to make it
right for myself, for my school for my administrators, for my
students, for the contractors that I'm preparing those
students to take these skills to. Oh, exactly. So the
management of that flow of information, you know, and one
of the things we have to understand about technology,
technology isn't used to save time, right? It's not. It is
used to feed and expand the system. And what it does as an
educator, it just, it just fills our, we're just crammed with
stuff. Yeah. But we can't ignore it. It's too big to
ignore. You know, you can't go on are the days where that
student is going to put his cell phone in the cardboard box on
your desk until the end of class. That's a tool. It's a
teaching tool. And if you think about it, you know, we NASA got
astronauts to the moon with a slide. So great analogy. Oh,
wait a minute. Our students today, our students today, your
cell phone is going to be your side. Yeah. For those students
and their wives are going to say, well, how many slide rules
do you have now? Which why do you have so many slide rules in
a drawer? That's going to be cell phones. It is a generation
from now. So, so, so that's, that's why the early adopters
can pick up the bigger part of the market share because they
normalize. So, and how do you normalize the information while
you're metering it to the right person at the right time? You
know, conceptually, that's still another challenge, but, and it
sounds like some of these is insurmountable, but it's not. The
reason the educators are here and the reason this, this crowd
is here looking for information. They have the expertise, large,
maybe 80, 90%, if not a hundred percent have worked in the
field. They're living it and they're teaching it. You can't
get a better combination in the classroom than somebody that
lives it and is coming in to help you understand. Absolutely.
You know, so, and, and that helps the normalization too. Oh,
that guy can do it. I, I, doesn't it right? You know, it's
sometimes, you know, students may be intimidated by walking in
front of a thousand ton chiller as, as, you know, just out of
school and the service tech is working on it and it's like,
okay, he'd learned it somewhere. Absolutely. There are she and,
and I can, I can do the same thing, you know, so it's, it's
a normalization of the material that takes time to it. And I
had an engineer tell me once, which you got to give the
student soaking time, you have to let it soak. So that's,
that's what helped me understand that concept of the right
amount of material, the right time to the right person, not
just throwing it out or filling up a blackboard class here, go
to all these schedules and come back to me where you're done.
Yeah. Somebody will be done in a week, other people a month,
but if you're not sitting there with them, whether it's a
digital platform or not, if you're not there with them,
help them navigate, then it might be a disservice to the
student. Yeah. I think we're going to see a lot more of
technology being that kind of tool because we're not going,
we're probably not going to be adding hours onto our program.
We're probably going to try to maintain our program, but add
additional information into it. And how do we do that? We have
to be the early adopters. We have to make sure we're
understanding the tools that are around us and bringing those
into the, like you said, the normalcy of it, understanding
that it's not a significant change when we present it as
this is where we are. This is where we're going. This is what
you need to know. Let us help you understand it. And then it
becomes a common practice for us. Well, and that's all very
true, but here's one aspect of it that sometimes for the
instructors may sound a little bit intimidating, but as you
lay out your digital platforms, one thing that will happen will
happen is self acceleration. Yes. The students that
understand the platforms and are able to look ahead, let's
say, they may self accelerate and look to get to a program
sooner. But as an educator, I look and say, okay, if we
manage the self acceleration, that is helpful to everybody in
the classroom. But that's not new. Before there were
computers, you had some kids that would read ahead in a book
or some that would understand troubleshooting. And then they
became kind of a co-instructor with you. You go into the lab
and while you have 15 people troubleshooting, you may say,
hey, John or Ed, please help your friend over there. Go to
this lab desk and help them with that meeting. So now you
have peer to peer conversations, which to the student are
very valuable. Oh yeah, absolutely. I hear you. I can do
this. So, but self acceleration accelerates for technology and
that's not an overuse of the word, but that's something else
that if we learn and understand that we come get comfortable
with it, or we normalize in the classroom, it becomes a plus.
So we don't fear it. We can encourage it because we're
giving students the tools to move at their own pace. And you
students in the HVAC industry are self motivated. They know
there's a job when they're done. They see it out there. They
hear it every day from other podcasts, from other entities
about how the trades need more workers and they can work as
many hours as they want, as long as they want, as often as
they want. So they can manage their own margins, their own
life's margins. But for us, we should not fear the technology
in the classroom because that's something that's never going to
go backwards. You know, when they talked about the speed of
it, you and I may be young enough to remember that as well
that one time technology rolled over every seven years, then it
was every seven months, then it was every seven weeks, then it
was every seven days. I think that's it moves quicker. I
think especially with AI. Yeah, Howard Weiss and I keep having
this conversation about how rapidly technology is advancing
and if we're not at least being open minded to utilizing that
technology in the classroom, we may have a false sense of duty
to our students because they're going to be learning at a rate
that we may not even be able to comprehend because they're
being introduced to this technology at such a faster rate
than we are as educators. There's no question about that. I
like that phrase of false sense of duty because that because
that just kind of unmasks our fear. Yes, it is and and we we
can't be fearful of it because it's so much a part of even
life. Yeah, you know when you when you look at the students,
if you ask them to put their cell phones away during class,
we're forgetting one thing, everybody and everything that
means anything to that student is a one or zero on their cell
phone. It's exactly everything. If educators aren't there and
that one stream of ones and zeros were invisible. Yeah, if
you were invisible in a classroom, how could you teach
you know and there's so many tools that enable that in in
today's industry and that's that's what we do is we try to
bring these tools to the conference every week on the
show in our podcast help people understand that we're all here
going through the same process. We're all seeing these
technologies and innovations. We all have a sense of fear
going into it but together we absolutely are going to be
successful. No question about it and we're not endorsing it to
the point that we're saying it's infallible. Murphy always
comes in uninvited but what what's the difference between a
screen going black or you had a vacuum pump. You're trying to
evacuate a system and the motor burned out. Yeah, same thing.
Same thing. It's just unplugged. Put another one in. I mean so
the obstacles for us are the same whether the digital or
analog in our experiences in the classroom but we we just
knowing that we as educators and the educators that come here
that of all ages that want to keep learning if we could get
that emotion if we could hand that emotion and passion to our
students, they'll they'll have a successful career. They'll
never be without work.
Mr. Rich Binkowski, I'm so grateful to have you here. I do.
I feel like we're these news broadcasters or sports
broadcasters and that's wonderful and there goes two
more ones. That's right. That's right. Bye. Alright, everyone
have a wonderful day and we'll see you on the next episode.