Crossing the Great Divide: Training Building Operators for Digital Monitoring and Control

Asit Patel, Association for Energy Affordability
Howard Styles, Local 94 of the International Union of Operating Engineers
Kimberlie Lenihan, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
Michael Bobker, CUNY Institute for Urban Systems

Keywords

Abstract

New York State funded commercial retro-commissioning and multifamily weatherization activities strongly suggest the need of building operators for greater sophistication with digital
monitoring and control concepts, equipment, and procedures. A logical model is shown connecting building performance and operator capabilities in terms of persistence of savings,
control tuning, skills with data acquisition, trending and visualization, and acceptance of demand-response functions. Training solutions are suggested as a necessary enhancement to
programs and program design for market transformation. Two example programs are described: the Training Center of the Local 94 International Union of Operating Engineers and the Multifamily Energy Management Training Center of the Association for Energy Affordability. In both cases steps are being taken through a new Building Performance Lab at the City
University of New York, to build upon existing training to create new curriculum specifically bridging between physical equipment operations and digital representations of the same
operations.