[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Consulting Specifying Engineer podcast. I'm your host, Anna Steingruber, joined today by Jeremy Johnson to talk about testing, adjusting and balancing or tab in conjunction with the associated Air Balance Council. Today's episode will break down tab in three parts. The value in specifying AABC TAB firms, understanding and comprehending an AABC TAB report, and the value in retro or periodic tab.
To discuss these topics, I'd like to formally introduce our guest, Jeremy Johnson, TBE cxa, who works with American testing. He has worked in the test and balance industry since 1997 and has managed various test and balance projects, including a wide variety of commercial, educational, healthcare and government projects. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Jeremy, Anna, thank you guys so much for having me.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Awesome. So we're going to get started with this first section, which is just the value in specifying AABC TAB firms.
So to start us off, can you tell us why independence is so important for aabc?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Absolutely.
Independence is the cornerstone of the aabc.
Members that are part of our organization are prohibited from having any affiliations with mechanical contractors, design engineers or equipment manufacturers.
This policy prevents any potential conflicts of interest and ensures that all members provide engineers and building owners with professional and unbiased test and balance services.
This is the cornerstone and this is what the AABC is about.
You know, if you're out there and you're thinking, hey, why? You know, what is it? What does it matter if my results are unbiased? You know, a test and balance industry, test and balance professional provides a report.
He doesn't show that he has a tool installed or there's a circuit breaker installed. Right. A lot of times you can't see what he does other than a report. You can feel the results.
Thus the reason. So why it's so important that unbiased testing is important.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Right. And so what resources are available for both members and non members of aabc?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: So the ABC puts in a tremendous amount of time and effort and resources for its members and non members.
I'll talk about the members first.
So what the members get is basically a immense amount of information with webinars, resources, education, webinars.
We have annual meetings that has a great amount of information and presentations that are put on as well.
As far as the non members go to, right. The non members are, you know, they have access to, you know, specifications. What are the ABC specifications?
Non members can also attend meetings, can also attend webinars. They have a lot of access to the same information, maybe not as much as a library or A portal format, but the resources are plummet for both. And I personally am also on the marketing committee and with that committee we're always developing webinars, topics, what's new in the industry, how to keep it fresh, make sure that the content is content that is valuable and it's, people want, people want to see the new content and we're not just redoing the same stuff over and over.
So I think that, I think that kind of covers that.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And you just kind of mentioned webinars and presentations. So does AABC have a specific continuing education program? And can you explain it in just a little more detail? If so?
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So as we know, a lot of industry professionals have continuing education programs.
I'm going to say within the last few years, five to 10 years maybe, the ABC has developed a continuing education program that engages its certified test and balance technicians as well as its certified test and balance engineers.
So those who don't know the difference, the technician, the certified technician is basically a certification that allows or it helps facilitate the field technicians to do the work, adhere to the standard. And the test and balance engineer is the overseer of the technicians. He is the report reviewer. He is holding the standards to the highest level per the ABC for individual companies.
So this, this program basically is a documentation portal that each person that's certified is required to do and it's on every three year basis.
And then basically, you know, you, you build your continuing education through, you know, company training, through watching webinars, reading articles and taking, and taking questions or quizzes at the end.
There's a multitude of ways and it's, you know, it's one of these things that, you know, the AEBC adopted and a lot of people initially were like, oh man, this is going to be more, more, more work. Do we really need this? And it is, it is remarkable how welcoming our industry has been with it. And I think a lot of it has to do with the benefits that the member companies are seeing with the, with the continuing education program and the resources that we have available.
Very, very good program that we have definitely adopted.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that, that overview. And so moving into our next portion, all about understanding an AABC tab report. Can you tell me what engineers should look for specifically in one of these reports?
[00:06:15] Speaker B: Sure, absolutely. You know, this is, I always try to, I always try to get a perspective on, on all parties are involved with, with anything that you're doing, whether if you're a building owner, an engineer, you know, a test and Balance, firm, a contractor, you know, whoever you are.
And you know, let's, let's be real. And I'm going to be real with this, this recording here. You know, if somebody's never looked at a ABC certified report before and they open it up, it could be very overwhelming.
Where to start? I got all these pages. I got this number. What do all these an acronyms mean?
Right? You get different quantities of air volume that might be shown. You know, what kind of test data sheets do I have?
You know, do I have, how do I get to the data, what, what unit am I looking for?
And there's a lot of.
I'm going to try to break it down as simply as I can and state that, you know, every ABC report has a cover sheet showing the certification, showing the project, all the other information about the project.
We have a table of contents. Table of contents, like any kind of reporter document is great. You can look at it, tell you where the equipment's at, easy to find. Don't have to scour 200 pages to find a piece of equipment that you want to look at.
Also you have instrumentation sheet that shows you what kind of instrumentation is used.
And you also have a general note or an executive summary within the report, too.
And these ABC reports, these summaries, basically give us a chance to document and pull the highlights of the performance data and deficiencies you're going to have on a project and capture them in one place that is that anybody can go to and look at and get a really good picture of the content of the report, issues, performance and that kind of stuff without necessarily having to dive into 200 pages. Now, granted, the meat and potatoes is still within those 200 pages of test data that, you know, documents equipment manufacturer information, motor data, you know, actual performance on airflow, motor current, static pressure profile, all the type of data that you would find a report. But the standardization that the ABC has within its reports and, and hey, look, we're always, we're always growing, always getting better. We're doing peer reviews, we're very engaged with our reports and the quality, and we want to hear the feedback. We want to know what's going on.
But this is something that really separates us, I think, from a lot of others in the industry is equality in the report.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Right, right. And you talked about it being overwhelming, especially for professionals newer to the industry or somebody who maybe hasn't looked at one of these reports before. Do you have any tips and tricks or ideas on how to read it or make it less important?
[00:09:17] Speaker B: You know, I think maybe kind of understanding some of the. An acronyms that we use might help out too.
If you know, some of the an acronyms with. With airflow, you know, English units, you know, cfm, you know, if you know, design versus actual design versus final data, that's something that can be helpful for you, maybe understanding a static pressure reading, you know, what that means or how that relates to a report.
That's valuable too.
You know, air terminals, you know, air devices are documented with the design and actual column.
And, you know, I guess just looking at it by system is one of the. One of the tips and tricks that I would give anybody looking to report for the first time and just try to focus on a system that you're looking at, rather than looking at the whole report or being overwhelmed, try to absorb some of that information.
And, you know, I guess some of the other things to look for is, you know, how far away from design is some of the. Some of the data is. Is everything right on the money?
Are things not doing well? Is it. How. How well is it documented?
Those are some of the things that I think if somebody new coming in overwhelming could do to maybe make it a little bit easier for them. But honestly, a lot of it too is just kind of based upon experiences that you have.
And you can also ask questions too, right? ABC headquarters, your industry professionals. You know, I kind of feel like our company should be able to call up any engineer, any building ownership gonna call up and say, hey, I got a question about this report. Can I talk to somebody? Like picking up the phone, making a call too? I think that. I think that's another tool that anybody not familiar with reports or just want to get more information can do.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And so when it comes to actually using the AABC TAB report, can they be used to troubleshoot an issue with an H VAC system that's already been balanced?
[00:11:13] Speaker B: You know, they can. And, you know, there's.
I'm not going to necessarily say that you can actually, you know, hey, I want to know how much CFM a unit's doing without a test and balance professional. That might be a little bit advanced, but there are some things within a report.
If you have an air movement equipment sheet or static pressure profile sheet, you know, hey, what speed was the unit running at when it was balanced? Was the unit running at 60 Hz or was it running above 60 Hz? Was it running less than 60 Hz? 60 Hz is the frequency of the motor, which it runs at for speed and speed of the fan Relates to cfm.
You know, that's a troubleshooting tool that you can look at and you know, hey, look, my VFD is only running at 30 hertz. It's supposed to run at 60. Hey, that could be. That could check a box and say, hey, I might have an issue with this unit. I'm utilizing this report and this data to help me figure out what's going on. So that's one thing.
Static pressure readings too, are another thing.
You know, it's pretty easy to get a basic manometer, you know, pieces of equipment, air moving pieces of equipment typically have test plugs in them. It's pretty simple to take a reading.
You can document that compared to the report.
You can also, you know, do some other comparisons on, hey, is the same, you know, is this. I'm going back on a unit that was installed 10 years ago. You know, hey, did the motor change? Is it the same unit? Like, there's lots of information that's captured in a report that you can use to analyze the current performance and kind of get an idea. I don't think you're gonna be able to duplicate it necessarily. But I think those type of little tips and tricks are things that the building owner engineers can use as a mechanism to help out with issues that you might, that you might think they're there.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Right. And so moving into the specific values in retro or periodic tab, can you start by telling me what happen to building H vac systems that would require a retro or periodic tib?
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yeah, Anna. I mean, this is, I'm pretty passionate about this subject and I guess it's because I've seen the buildings be constructed, be test and balanced, and then years of degradation, years of facility upgrades or lack of upgrades, years of poor maintenance, years of renovations in a building.
And you know, where this building started off with when it was, you know, 20, 30 years ago, and it might have been generation one DDC controls. Now it's at a place that it's kind of lost its identity. It's kind of been kind of morphed into this thing where it doesn't perform as well as it did. It's not as efficient.
And you know, there are. And I'm, you know, you might ask me a question here in a minute. What type of buildings need it other more than others. But you know, generally speaking, if you have devices that need to be calibrated as far as airflow sensors and airflow monitoring stations and large systems that have a lot of components, have a lot of controls, you know, there's a level of tab. There's a level of verification that could be very beneficial to a building, even though the owner might not see it immediately. It's really something that we're, that we're advocates for.
And you know, it's something that I think as a whole, as we kind of evolve to our society evolves or maybe some metropolitan areas have less commercial space and you're going to be doing more of retro work and you're going to be utilizing equipment. I think it's going to have even more value to get the longevity out of equipment moving forward to the future.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, speaking of building types, you mentioned buildings that have a lot of controls and all that, but are there specific building types that are going to require this more often than others? And can you expand on what those are?
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think where we're.
For me, a lot of things that come to my mind when you definitely need more periodic retro tab is definitely laboratories.
Buildings that require pressure critical areas too, like ORs and hospitals, isolation rooms at hospitals. You know, a lot of times there's those testing and those certifications happen once every year.
But as far as like the, the retro balancing activities or periodic tab, you know, they, they're sometimes needed to be done.
You know, I don't say as frequently as every year, but keeping those buildings in line, keeping the sensors calibrated, the controls functioning correctly is really important. So to cut to, to kind of answer the question, I'm going to say probably laboratory type of buildings. Anything that's pressure critical, you're probably going to have it needed more often than other buildings. But you know, honestly, you know, if you have a, if you have a tab report and you have a piece of equipment, you know, I think, you know, from a comparison point of view and from a value point of view, you know, it's a test and balance that's done at a new state or new condition or any time. It's kind of, it's like, it's timestamp, like it actually says, all right, here's our snapshot during this moment in time. Here's what we had. And it's a, it's a great, it's a great tool, great troubleshooting tool and it's a great history with equipment, especially because we're not, nobody's getting any, any younger here. So we have to, we have to definitely get the most out of, out of the equipment that's there a lot of time. So.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I mean, going off of this timing track can you tell me when you know that a building is going to need this service?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you know, I don't know if this is kind of, this might be a little new territory for, for maybe the industry, you know, I'm going to call generation one direct digital controls came out in the 1990s, right.
So you're like, you know, let's say mid-90s. So you're like 30 years ago that a lot of these buildings, you know, had controls that required, you know, a K factor. It wasn't just a pneumatic controller for calibration. It was actually a digital controller that had a K factor, that had a sensor.
Right. That had a component, a measuring device that inevitably doesn't last forever and that needs, you know, calibration, maintenance, repair, replacement, some point.
So for me, and kind of what I'm seeing in the industry, you know, like a lot of buildings that are hitting like a 30 year old mark as far as like the Generation 1 DDC controls, we're seeing a lot of those buildings that are being upgraded now, if not maybe in the 20 to 25 range. So that's my feedback, that's what I'm looking at, that's what I'm seeing.
So I hope that helps.
[00:18:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's super helpful and all of this has been really great. Those are all of the questions that I have prepared. But is there anything else that you feel like you didn't touch on or that you'd like to say or expand on at all?
[00:18:28] Speaker B: I would just say that, hey, you know, if you're interested about testing and balancing, if you want more information from the abc, we're always here to help. We have lots of people, lots of resources. They're willing to help.
Lunch and learns. We have annual meetings, lots of opportunities to get educated on testing and balancing, not to, not to mention help picking a, you know, a local testing and balancing provider.
You know, the, there's many, many, many test and balance providers for the ABC throughout the country.
We even have Canadian chapter and some other chapters overseas too. So we're definitely far reaching here to help and we're just big advocates for the industry of H Vac and, and my pleasure.
[00:19:12] Speaker A: Great. Okay, I lied a little bit. I do have one more question for you, but it's not so.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: All right.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: All right, so I don't know how much it counts.
We talked a little bit outside of work. You said your family is really important. Can you tell me what kind of things you like to do with your family and with your kids.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. You know, I definitely have.
I have three children.
My youngest is now 12.
Like to do a lot of fishing with them, a lot of outdoor time.
My kids are in sports. I'm definitely involved with, with coaching and mentoring and being involved.
Also member of a community, too.
So, you know, I'm just, I'm all into everything I am and, and whether it's abc, American Testing and my family, I'm definitely very passionate about everything that I'm working on.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's great to hear.
Well, thank you so much. This has been a really wonderful conversation. I appreciate you coming on and talking to us today.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Anna. Appreciate your time as well.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: Great. And for our audience, once again, this has been Jeremy Johnson with the AABC and American Testing to talk to us about the values of an AABC tab report. For any more information on commissioning projects or testing, adjusting and balancing, make sure to visit Consulting specifying
[email protected]. thank you for listening and we'll talk next time.
