Welcome to Did You Know, the ESCO HVAC podcast,
the show where we explore the cool, the hot,
and the everything in between of the HVACR industry.
Each week, we dig into the innovations, the insights,
and the inspiring stories that power our trade,
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on excellence since 1889. Whether you're just
getting started or you've been turning wrenches
for decades like myself, there's always something
new for us to learn. I'm Clifton Beck, and this
is Did You Know? The ESCO HVAC Podcast. Let's
dive in. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining
us at the 2026 AHR Expo. We're spending some
time at the Johnson Controls Podcast booth. We
just had a conversation with Rob Tanner talking
about the manufacturing side of chillers, the
explosion that we are seeing in the industry
for heat -rejecting capabilities. We're primarily
in chillers, air -cooled chillers, water -cooled
chillers. The almost ridiculous amount of heat
that we are rejecting from data centers in particular.
Right. So a huge explosion. We're going to talk
about that here in a little bit. The opportunities
there. But when we start talking about the sophistication
of our industry, one thing that kind of gets
left out is all of the advanced controls that
goes behind it. Right. I spent most of my career
in grocery refrigeration. I. I had 116 different
locations that I could pull up from my couch
with a fresh beer in my hand and monitor anything
that was going on, as long as it wasn't on call.
I'm just saying, I could monitor any store, whatever
rack I could monitor. Probably every store had
3 ,000 to 4 ,000 thermistors and transducers
between the HVAC systems and all the refrigeration.
And at the time, though, that was kind of a limited
career. You know, you get to the refrigeration,
you learn that side of it. Not everyone in refrigeration
learned the control side of it. That is changing
so rapidly because now everything has some types
of controls and automations to it. And one thing
that we want to really point out is our industry
has opportunity for everyone. So we're going
to spend some time today talking about controls,
talking about how things are changing, and talking
about the opportunities that we see in industry.
So guys, I'm really glad that you're joining
me today. I love it. Like, where do we begin?
Well, we'll do some introductions. Yeah, let's
do that. So James Plotz, I've been with Johnson
Controls for 25 years. Awesome. And my expertise
is not chillers. So you found the right guys
previous to talk about big machines. So we are,
though, the lifeblood. We're the veins that can
run all those different pieces together. They
don't have a toggle switch on them. Right. They
don't work. That's my expertise. Exactly. James
Burke, I lead our product and lifecycle solutions
business for the Americas. Just like JJ, I've
had 24 years of Johnson Controls. I've spent
my entire career and done everything from. an
actuator engineer being a mechanical engineer
to to selling and applying the applications and
we like to say we love our york equipment but
uh it doesn't work really well without a great
control system and so we're really proud of metasys
and the jobs controls it's evolved so much i've
seen metasys evolve in five years you can't take
what's happened in the last year and compare
it to the five years ago to its beginning it
has escalated to the point where it's almost
like a gamification of how the system is operating
performing but you know what's even more interesting
is let me take a double click into that so yes
why yeah so my kid is 10 years old and i'm sitting
down with him and he said hey there's a robotics
link yeah at our school oh yeah great absolutely
It's a Lego robotics thing. Isn't that insane?
And my wife, of course, says, okay, you're going
to be a mentor. So I got assigned. I'm like,
Legos, I'm in. Okay, let's do it. So we sit down
and I start seeing the code these fifth graders
are using to program their robots. Yeah, absolutely.
It's Boolean logic. It's the same code that we're
using now. to program the children, right? So
the kids that are coming into grade school are
starting to use the same level of programming
that we're seeing that are running some of the
most complex data centers. So, I mean, it starts
so soon, right? Well, think about the opportunity
there, right? You know, when we start talking
about the future of labor in general, you know,
in the next 10 years, there are a lot of jobs
that are at risk right now because of things
like advances in artificial intelligence and
some of the machine learning engines that we're
building today. And so if we have that opportunity
to talk to some of our younger generations, in
the past, we always talked about HVAC as it's
all mechanical. It's a mechanical trait. You're
going to be turning wrenches the rest of your
life. Your knees are going to be shot. Your back's
going to be worn out by the time you're ready
to retire. Right. But that's not today's HVAC.
When you're talking about this type of role,
we're talking a very advanced skill set that
is going to be protected because of it's that.
that human input those mechanical controls that
it's actually operating so even if an i .t job
is at risk of of being replaced by ai things
like engineers and hvac that are building these
controls and monitoring these controls they're
in job security yeah so they're at the intersection
of a very mechanical world because there's still
valves and actuators and dampers and physical
devices that that are necessary for your operation.
And then sandwiched between this digital cloud
-based layer. And so the talent that we're seeing
come into the industry, it used to be a very
mechanical, pneumatics -led. And so as we're
looking through product design and where Metasys
is going, being able to access the information
on your phone and being able to take a dashboard
or a set of information that from a control sequence
standpoint so the industry is driving more sophisticated
sophistication and complexity into the sequences
for energy conservation as well as compliance
and things like that and so the the skill set
and the talent between uh it's not necessarily
a mechanic right but someone who's very computer
savvy, which is the vast majority of the youth
today. Oh, yeah, absolutely it is. And then the
advent of digital and AI and the opportunities
that are coming is really interesting from an
intersection of where we are from an industry
standpoint. Yeah. You know, Jocelyn from our
team, she used this term all the time, and I
love it. You know, she's 24, calls herself a
digital native. right like she grew up in digital
everything she knows is is digital and that's
what we're seeing and so what we're hoping to
do is we're hoping to you know educate young
minds on what some of those opportunities are
this is so interesting to me because so my son
just talked about is going to grow up in a world
and this is he gets up i kid you not he gets
up Alexa, turn on the radio. Alexa. And so then
my wife, turn on the lights. So she's talking
to an AI to interface with her residential space.
Absolutely. But then you start to take this and
you look at commercial buildings and we're not
there yet, which shows how much growth and how
much runway there is within commercial buildings
to take that to the next level. Because we talk
about smart buildings. But you haven't seen it
yet. We're just at the beginning to see how these
buildings and all these data systems can come
together. So on the building automation side,
it isn't just about turning those chillers on.
Those chillers are beautiful pieces of equipment.
But it's looking at all the systems that are
in a building. How do we optimize all that technology?
All efficiency of everything. Because at the
end of the day, it is these control systems.
that are the lifeblood of the building. And it's
not just temperature. It's your lighting. It's
the fire and security. It's your life safety,
right? If something happens and you scan your
badge in, what happens to the lights that go
to your office? What happens to the space temperature
within that room? What different cameras do we
want to turn on? And then how do we monitor it
all so we understand how to optimize it in the
future? See, that's the cool part about what
we do. And we already see it in residential.
We don't see it in the commercial industry. Yeah.
Oh, we're almost there. But you can feel it.
The inertia is tugging us towards it. And we're
going to need so many technicians in that field.
You're right. That realm that you're not completely
an IT professional. You're not completely a wrench
turner. You're somewhere in between where you're
managing both, right? You're going to be doing
some physical labor, but you're going to be doing
a lot of mental labor. And what is that job going
to offer? It's going to offer so much opportunity
and so much job security and money. Yeah, we've
seen it. So I would say. the commercial HVAC
part of the market is a little bit behind the
industrial automation. So when we think about
advanced manufacturing and the robotics and the
PLC nature, we are starting to see that in the
commercial space. And as JJ was mentioning, what's
what's really interesting is the amount of data
that we have now. within a control system is
like nothing we've ever had before and so a big
part of uh you know the medicines product as
well as where we spend time is how do you get
the information so that it's easily uh viewable
easily digestible without a bunch of nuisance
uh whether it's alarms and so things like fault
detection and fault triage that's that's a part
of the medicine platform what it's really trying
to address is the limited resources that a customer
may have Getting the right information at the
right time so that they can then go take action.
And the right person. And you're right, from
a reward standpoint of someone who likes living
in both a digital and a physical world, this
industry is tailor -made for that. So let's talk
about Metasys, because I don't think a lot of
people understand what we're talking about. We're
talking about really a brain of a building, in
essence. We're talking about seeing things even
remotely from a different set of eyeballs, almost
a digital set of eyeballs. So for those that
are, you know, they grow up gaming, which almost
everyone games today, right? Someone that grows
up in an environment where they enjoy interacting
with a digital world. Does Metasys bring you
into like a building, into a structure? It's
funny you say it that way. I would tell you the
more people who have experience with those kind
of settings, the more naturally you're wired
to just absorb what we talk about. It's a 3D
world. I mean, right away, because we've got
people who walk in and they're, oh, yeah, I've
done this before. I know how to interface with
a computer. Oh, you're doing IP -based technology?
Set up a Wi -Fi? Sure, we have Wi -Fi. I know
how Wi -Fi works. And there's such, and I want
to go back to something you said, there's such
a desire. For people who have those technical
skills, right? And we are, I mean, part of the
reason that Johnson Controls is invested in VR
in these Lego programs for fifth graders is because
we want to continue to encourage it because there's
such a demand. For people who understand, I love
what you said, the technical aspect of the mechanical
equipment. Yes. But at the same time, understand
the digital component, how to make it work, how
to make it work better, and how to make it work
in a digital world where somebody wants to control
it online or interface with it online. That skill
set, that's like the unicorn sprinkled with pixie
dust, man. We get those things and we hold on
to them for life. I'm more interested in that
technical skill than I am in a degree. And we
have a degree in engineers, don't get me wrong.
But the unicorn is somebody that can go out there.
And now if you talk to customers, too, it's all
great. Yeah, and what I'll add is, you know,
so kind of what is Metasys to the untrained eye?
It's a set of physical and it's both hardware
and software that orchestrates all the different
mechanical systems to make a building comfortable.
um for whatever the use case whether it's a k
-12 school or a hospital or a data center and
so what what that user would experience is a
graphical user interface where you're interrogating
a system that could be thousands of controllers
hundreds of thousands of points and you're really
trying to understand the health of where that
that building is and whether whether the mission
is this is a this is serving an or air handler
and so Maybe energy isn't the critical priority.
Maybe it's temperature humidity because that's
the outcome we're trying to provide versus a
K -12 school district where outside air quality
became a huge driver, particularly with the pandemic
that we all face. Absolutely. And so that graphical
user interface for somebody who grew up... as
a digital native will look very familiar and
it's really taking understanding the insights
that you get from from that user interface and
going and applying to then the physical piece
of equipment or pieces of equipment and so at
some point it's a little bit like a treasure
hunt yeah um and that's been a huge design philosophy
within medicine how to make finding those little
nuggets Simpler and easier for the operator.
Well, think about that fifth grader. I really
like sticking with this fifth grader that is
building its own algorithms, right? Absolutely.
That's what we're doing. We're taking code and
we're taking inputs to create an output. That's
really what we're doing. So we actually do. It's
kind of interesting. I didn't even know that
you could have under 13. um viewers on youtube
until his last year and we started getting a
following of under 13. and and so for any of
you that are out there that are in that realm
and you're that fifth grader or you're that middle
school or you're in that junior high even in
high school and you're sitting in in a chair
imagine looking around the room that you're in
wouldn't it be cool if you were the person sitting
in that room and you looked over on the wall
and you seen a little bitty cube, a little something
that you've never noticed before. And all of
a sudden that turns into veins of the building.
And now with the right software, you can actually
open up. the entire building you can look at
how it flows you could look at all of the interconnecting
veins and arteries and components that move and
manage that building you can see how air moves
you can see how the equipment is affecting everyone
around you and all of a sudden you realize that
you're the one that is watching that building
and Every one of those things, if you see one,
you see something that maybe is not quite right,
you could even be that person that follows it
physically right back to that component. So it's
a 3D world of the environment that you live in.
And everyone's different. Just like the analogy,
let's continue with that. One day, we're in a
K -12 school, and I'm working on a school that
literally I grew up in. The next day, I'm working
at a stadium where the NBA players play, right?
And I'm making sure that the environment is safe
and comfortable for them. Then I'm working on
a military base. Then I'm working in a skyscraper,
right? The quantity and the uniqueness of the
different jobs, pharmaceuticals. You say, well,
what would a technician impact? Are you kidding?
Right now, the tech, our pharmaceuticals are...
booming and the technical traits to assist us
to make sure that we're maintaining the temperature
the quality of those those environments for the
pharmaceuticals that are going to treat cancer
they're going to treat the next diseases that
are coming out yeah like we're directly impacting
so it isn't just turning a wrench we're impacting
the quality of life around you around us right
and so there's people who actually come up like
like because of what you've done You've changed
the world. Working in cancer centers and bringing
an experience to some of those kids that are
in these cancer centers and tying the technology
together and say they're a big fan of Mickey
Mouse. So every time they get up in the morning,
Mickey Mouse is on the wall or on the monitor,
right? So just try to do a little bit something
more to help the experience of those that live
in the buildings. I mean, you say that's crazy
talk. No, that's the world that we're talking
about. That's what we do. And that's what we
need, more people who have that ability and that
passion that want to come and do that. Yes, I
agree. You know, when we look at our youngest
generations, particularly Gen Z and Alpha, which
Alpha is just starting to enter into the workforce,
but they're looking for their careers. They're
looking for things they can do. There is a similarity
between Gen Z and Gen Alpha that is very, very
profound. They want to. change the world around
them and many times they don't know how it's
a big world but if they would take a minute and
look at the things like we're talking about they
actually have that opportunity you do you absolutely
do and that's you're so right you see these college
grads and they come out and a lot of the reason
that people job hop yeah is because they don't
feel like they're making they're not accomplishing
something they don't feel like they're accomplishing
something meanwhile there's us here in the medicine
side of the world come to us because we need
people that can make that difference right if
we fail right we're having an impact on a student's
learning ability absolutely a patient's environment
right so we're making differences every day and
it's it's fun it really is fun you know you're
in the catwalks walking over the viking stadium
experiences it's so cool to see that right and
saying you had a part of it your fingerprints
are you know 20 years later i'm looking at buildings
that people are now taking the stuff out that
I originally put in. And you're tied to those
buildings forever. You're part of them because
of what you did. And it all starts with controlling
the equipment. I agree. Well, guys, I really
appreciate you helping us understand Metasys
and the way that we're managing buildings and
changing lives with it. Where can we learn more
about Metasys and the products that are part
of this ecosystem? So johnscatrolls .com. We've
got a beautiful section all dedicated to our
building automation system product and portfolio.
And you can find all the information out there.
Okay. Thanks for joining us today. I appreciate
it. Thanks.