Below is the text version of the Building America webinar, "Building Science is Critical to Whether Buildings Work or Fail -- Educating Workforce Professionals for Success," presented in July 2017 by Linh Truong, Priya Swamy, Sara Farrar, Sam Rashkin, Cheryn Metzger. View the webinar.
Linh Truong:
Hello, everyone. I’m Linh Truong with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. And I’d like to welcome you to today’s webinar, hosted by the Building America Program. We’re excited to have four experts with us today. Representing the U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, today’s topic is building science. Before we begin, I’ll quickly go over some of the webinar features. You can even listen through a computer or telephone. If you choose to listen through your computer, please turn the mic and speakers off on the audio pane. Doing so will eliminate the possibility of feedback and echo. If you select the health option, you see a box on the right hand side with a [inaudible] and audio PIN. Panelists, we ask that you please mute your audio device while you’re not presenting. If you have technical difficulties today with the webinar, you can contact the go-to webinar’s help desk with assistance. If you’d like to ask a question at any time during a webinar, please use the questions pane to type in your question. If you’re’ having difficulty viewing the materials, we’ll post the PDF copy and the audio from the presentation on the Building America website. Today’s webinar is being recorded and will be posted for the DOE YouTube channel within a few weeks. Before our speakers begin, I’ll provide a short overview of the Building America program. Following the presentations, we’ll have a question and answer session and closing remarks. For more than 20 years, the U.S. Department of Energy Building America program has been partnered with industry to bring cutting edge innovations and resources to market. The Building America webinar will provide an overview of how building science education efforts at DOE are transforming the building industry, and now [inaudible] webinar today is Building America. Building science is critical to whether buildings work or fail. Educating workforce professionals for success. Our first speaker today is Sam Rashkin, chief architect at the DOE building technologies office and director of the race to zero student design competition. Sam is joined by Sara Farrar of NREL, Priya Swamy with DOE, and Cheryn Metzger with PNNL. I’d like to welcome Sam to start today’s presentation. Sam?
Sam Rashkin:
Hey, thank you so much, Linh. Welcome, everyone. Before I begin, just a quick backdrop. Today, we can do easily zero energy buildings all across the country, both residential, commercial, and there’s a pipeline of innovations being developed at DOE research laboratories, private sector work that is further enhancing our ability to deliver more and more cost effective zero energy buildings. But it doesn’t serve us any purpose if the professional workforce is not prepared to apply those best practices, those best technologies, and deliver buildings that we need for the future. So building science education is fundamental to what we’re trying to achieve. The fact is the big prize. There’s a return on investment for the resources that we spend as a government institution. Often 30 80 percent return on investment for the investments we make. The economy benefits from over hundreds of billions to a trillion dollars of increased disposable income by building owners going back to be spent in the economy. We create hundreds of thousands of jobs and over a million of job years of work because of the green jobs that are needed to enable these buildings to happen. The clean air that’s available for everyone outdoors in the clean air that’s available for everyone indoors will enhance everyone’s life experience, and as a country will be more secure having a much more mix – and also have buildings that need so much less resources and can survive without having to depend on foreign sources. So we have this big prize sitting there. We look at the slide again, we’ll see that to get to that big prize, we need a market demand for high performance buildings. Consumers and transaction process both that value these better buildings.
But to get there, click it again, we need product on the shelf. We need those better buildings for the consumers and transaction process to be able to react to. Better buildings that have savings, comfort, health, safety, and durability, but we can’t get there if we don’t have a supply system, a workforce that’s competent in building science. Building science, again, is fundamental to whether the buildings will work or fail and deliver these impressive benefits to the occupants. So this is the supply chain that we have to build, and it all starts with the building science and the occasion. This is fundamental to what we’re trying to do in delivering a better economy. So moving forward, DOE has developed a building science education strategy, and the outlying addresses much of that strategy. A one is we’ll be talking about how we – we have the race to zero student design competition. We’re going to be inspiring university students to engage in building science courses, to make those courses available to integrate building science in the work they do across a diverse platform of subject matter. And then we’re going to develop better building workforce guidelines. So we’ll integrate accreditation and certification to critical skills within the commercial building sector so that the workforce is accountable to higher performing buildings. And lastly, we’re going to have a platform for consistent competency across all workforce classifications so that again, it won’t be a guesswork about how much building science do I need to be trained to, but they’ll be clear expectations for how the workforce should be trained.
So when I go through the strategy – if you hit the slide one more time, we’re going to start with the Race to Zero student design competition. The comp – a National Renewable Energy Laboratory will take you through the next module, and I’ll hand it off to Sara.
Sara Farrar:
Thank you so much, Sam. This is Sara Farrar. I am a senior technical project leader at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and with a fabulous team of colleagues, we understand direction, produce the annual Race to Zero student design competition for the U.S. Department of Energy. The two primary objectives we have for the project are to inspire and develop the next generation of building science professionals. So we’re creating a game out of energy efficiency and renewable energy as a way to motivate them in the form of a competition to challenge themselves and learn things they might not have otherwise pursued without this incentive of a competition against their fellow university students. We’re also looking to advance and enhance building science curriculum at universities, and we’ll talk a little bit more about how we use objectives in the following presentation. Next slide.
So as an overview, this is an annual competition. We’ve hosted four editions, starting in 2014. It’s a project that’s fairly easily integrated into existing curriculum. It can serve as a substance for architectural studio, a course for senior design or a capstone type course, it can be the basis of a masters level thesis type work, either in architecture or engineering and construction management degree program. It provides critical skill development in this – in these topics of building science. It absolutely is in work, and in particular, we like to motivate the cross-discplinary collaborations to happen, and that is something we see time and again with a successful team. It requires a comprehensive integrated design, so it’s not just about the aesthetics, but about the types of engineered systems that happen behind the walls, or within the various systems of the house. And to be successful in the competition, you have to marry all of those aesthetics design elements successfully together with the careful engineered building science systems. Ultimately, to produce market ready solutions. So the teams are a challenged to look at elements of design costs and construction that are market ready today with the zero energy ready home solutions.
The competition culminates in a weekend event that’s held at the campus of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL, in Golden, Colorado. The teams present their final written submittals in advance, and then give verbal and visual presentations of those designs to industry experts that we invite to serve as jurors. They have an opportunity to network with each other as collegiate teams, as well as with the thought leaders that give presentations and jurors and sponsors who participate in the career connections activity. Next slide, please.
So for each project that is submitted into the competition by the collegiate team, they must achieve the Department of Energy zero energy ready home requirements. So that essentially is the prerequisite for their designs is to meet the specifications that are provided with that zero energy ready home. So if you click ahead with the checkmarks. They have the principles and best practices. So their series of evaluation criteria that incentivizes how the jurors will evaluate and award points based on how effectively the team has integrated these principles and best practices, and they must demonstrate marketplace relevance. So we encourage each of the teams to effectively select their own target market. So which level of the housing market and which kind of climate conditions or other location constraints. So each team gets to select their own target market with those criteria. And they have to demonstrate to the jurors how their solution is relevant to that target market they have selected. Next slide.
In the last two editions of the competition, we have a structured for contest within the competition. So each team selects one of these four contests, either suburban single family, urban single family, attached housing, or small multi-family. Each of those contests have a fairly simple definition that constrains the condition square footage of the building and a lot size that they work within. So the team selects their target market in terms of location and climate aspects. And the size of the building matches one of these four contest definitions. Next slide. As I mentioned earlier, the teams are incentivized to do multi-disciplinary teaming. Some of the university teams can do that within their university. Many teams partner across multiple universities to be accessing the students who are attaining degrees in architecture, engineering, construction management, business elements, perhaps environmental studies or [inaudible]. Some teams bring in other disciplines for communications or other interior design type elements, and this is an important pillar for the successful teams to do this multi-disciplinary teaming. We enjoy sharing the feedback comments that come from the participants in the competition, including the one featured on the slide, that the interdisciplinary nature helps me learn more than they would have in the typical classroom. Interacting with and understanding the priorities of engineers, building scientists, et cetera, and that’s absolutely what we are wanting to achieve with this competition.
So the next slide, we compare ourselves to the shark tank in that each of the collegiate teams is developing a comprehensive report of their project design. They travel to NREL for the competition weekend. They present their designs in a 25-minute format to the industry expert jurors that we invite to ultimately adjudicate, evaluate, score, and rank the team. There is a question and answer period such that the teams receive feedback real time from the jurors. The jurors also provide a written feedback that we provide as a follow up to each of the collegiate teams. Next slide. Here are the ten evaluation parameters for which each of the [inaudible] evaluating each of the collegiate team entries. So architectural design, interior design, lighting and appliances, energy analysis, constructability, financial analysis, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing system design, envelope performance and durability, in – parameter for innovation to award teams who may be doing things that are new or less established or even with some risk. And the last parameter is the quality of the documentation and presentation that they give. So these 10 evaluation parameters are nominally worth 10 points. The perfect competition score would be 100, and this gives the – provides the scoring rubric, then, by which against these teams are scored and ranked, and ultimately winners are selected. Next slide.
So in addition to the competition guide that details the contest definitions and the evaluation parameters, really important part of this project is providing a series of valuable educational resources. The most substantial of these is building science training seminar. So this is roughly 12-hour seminar series that presents the principles of high performance homes taught by renowned industry leaders in the form of John Straub and Joe Stebric. So this is online, on-demand seminar training that each of the students who are listed on their team rosters accesses and complete as part of their participation on a collegiate team. We partner with NORESCO to provide access to the REM/Rate software as one of the resources for participating in the competition. We provide expertise from industry partners, both with competition level sponsors that provide a series of informational resources, product literature, and consulting services. Each team as they select their target market is also incentivized to work with local builders or other partners to – providing some mentoring or perhaps even more extensive collaborative partnering on working on particular housing designs. We have provided the teams with financial analysis tools to be able to do a reasonable costing exercise as they look at trade offs in their design. We provide the past winning presentation and design documents as a resource for the current and future teams, and a series of answers to frequently asked questions we’ve accumulated over time with the recurring competitions. Next slide.
So on each one of the collegiate teams, to be a successful team, they are learning new skills that will be critical to their career path. They are applying those skills as they collaboratively come up with the design for their vision of a zero energy ready home, and then ultimately preparing a compelling project package of design documentation. Scale models are optional, but often enthusiastically completed by the teams as part of their design vision. Also preparing technical posters of their work, and the final presentations that they give to the jurors. Next slide. So we provide a number of experiences as part of that in-person competition weekend for the collegiate team students to network and benchmark themselves with each other to present to the industry experts we bring in as the jurors. We have thought leader speakers that also serve as our grand jurors that the students learn from. They make career connections with the jurors and sponsors to participate in that activity. They tour the net-zero energy buildings on campus of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory facility – recognition for their effort as a team in the competition. Next slide.
As an example of all of this, in the 2017 Race to Zero, the first place team in the suburban single family contest was from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. They called themselves Team Woodridge, and they have a very strong partnership with Lauren Wood builders. Such that the final slide of their grand jury presentation was showing the survey markers for this home, which is on its way to being built. So that kind of collaboration with a local builder is an example of this kind of win/win synergy where the collegiate teams have the platform and inspiration of this competition, a network into either local or communities across the country to work with builders where they get both the facilitation and the mentoring of – from their builder, other industry partners, and in turn, that builder gets the benefit of the technology and systems approach, and a zero energy ready criteria with which to input into their product line. So we’re very excited to see, ultimately, this house built, and occupied, and replicated in the form of this partnership that the Ball State team had with Lauren Wood builders. Next slide.
So in the fourth annual edition we had in April of 2017 of the Race to Zero competition, we had 39 finalist teams who made their presentations to the juries. Universities that represented four countries that included the US, Canada, Brazil, and India, and ultimately 500 students both in-person and back at the home campuses who had received the benefit and the impact of the full suite of educational resources and design efforts across both the finalist teams as well as the participating teams that made it up to the finalist cut. So a little bit more about these teams in the next slide. In the first three years of the competition, you can see a diversity of locations across the country. Fifty-one collegiate institutions across the cumulative 92 teams, and then in 2017, we expanded upon that further with 33 collegiate institutions making up the 39 finalist teams. Roughly half of these teams were recurring from the previous three events. I think we have six teams who have been competing in all four years of the competition. And in 2017, roughly half the teams were new at entering the competition this year. We also added the international elements, and were very excited to have guests continuing from Canada and newly from Brazil and India. [Inaudible] our old team photo from the first day of – guests of students, faculty, and jurors attend the competition weekend at NREL in person. Very dynamic and exciting group. Next slide.
2017 teams were evaluated and ultimately the winner selected by 20 industry expert contest jurors and three grand jurors. The jurors enjoy their opportunity to serve in these roles. For example, with this [inaudible] with their peers, learn from the next generation of practitioners and share and mentor with these students. Next slide. So sharing from a student perspective, this competition is a great opportunity to go beyond regular materials and resources that are introduced in their typical classroom, and that is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish with the Race to Zero. So in 2017, the grand winner with the Lane Zero project of the Future Cities Collective Team from a joint university effort, Ryerson University and the University of Toronto. They entered into the attached housing contest. Their Lane Zero project seamlessly integrates into currently thriving neighborhoods as an on grade net zero energy lane weigh home. So this team was quite innovative in wanting to address urban Toronto housing shortage, and seeing the alleyway or lane way garage type space that can be built out into this very livable communities, adding some density, adding the additional housing amenity, potentially adding income potential to the existing properties, while still creating and enhancing these very vibrant, walkable communities. So terrific projects with just very sharp execution in the elements of the evaluation parameters and ultimately their presentation to the jurors. So as we mentioned earlier, part of the experience that we offer to the participating team is the opportunity to learn from our keynote and thought leader of Dr. Martin Keller, the director of the National Renewable Energy laboratory addressed the students. Of course, our director, Sam Rashkin, provides them quite the tutorial and power words as well. Also, our three grand jurors served as thought leader presenters, and this kind of interaction allows the students not just to have this culminating experience in their presentation, but to continue their learning experience as making up their competition weekend. Next slide. Shows a few pictures from the tours we provide in particular of the research support facility, and the energy systems integration facility at the campus of NREL. So some of our building science research staff provides the tours of both how the facilities meet the mission of the NREL, but also in themselves are essentially living laboratories for building science, and that’s the topic of these tours that the students benefit from.
And the next slide, another wonderful testimonial. Enjoy the exposure to the NREL facility with a tour and meeting the people who work there. So this opportunity to plant seeds with the students and hopefully inspire them to pursue their careers in clean energy and in providing our building stock of the future that we’re very honored to provide as part of their competition experience.
In the next slide, we hear a little bit of the feedback from one of our faculty advisors. The students love competing against others, getting an opportunity at this platform, and meeting other teams seeing their work. So what Race to Zero offers is something much more than what we can do in the classroom alone. Again, this is exactly the experience that we’re setting out to provide through this Race to Zero [inaudible].
In this next slide, it’s a bit dense with text, but what I’d like to show here is we really want to complement and enhance what academia is able to do. So trying to fit everything into a standard 120 credit format and creating interdisciplinary courses across college faculty is a challenge. Sometimes academia is slow to take in this new and evolving curricula opportunity because of the nature of accreditation and the other kinds of limited resources that universities, collegiate institutions, even community colleges have to meet. So with the Race to Zero, this competition encourages collaboration with local industry partners, which increases the rate at which students are able to process through the various design phases and topics. So the platform of the competition encourages this outreach of the students into the industry, which enhances the – otherwise the curricular experiences that they’re having in their schools. This industry collaboration and real world design scenario has a practical motivation that stretches or challenges the students beyond the curricular classroom examples. In another note, a feedback from faculty, this is essentially a capstone course opportunity to put together part and pieces that they have in the classroom, and the students bring this classroom knowledge in this singular package with all the challenges and tradeoffs that are required for them to synch through – to be successful with the competition entry. And finally, the competition forces students to get involved with not just local industry – and that’s inspiring to them, and pushes them out of their comfort zone. But beneficial to ultimately preparing them for their careers. So why do we have these race – like Race to Zero, these student design competitions? They’re becoming increasingly trendy across the federal government and even professional society. Because they give this hands on design experiences that give resume type experiences with which they can launch their careers. And being able to enhance and augment what otherwise academia can provide given the constraints they have with their accreditation programs, we hope it’s motivating. Particularly to achieve the cross-disciplinary efforts as well as the interaction with industry. We would like to thank our sponsors, so 2017 competition was made possible by ten competition-level sponsor partners. ASHRAE, DuPont, Building Knowledge Center, National Association of Home Builders, Mitsubishi, Noresco, Owens Corning, the Plastics Pipe Institute, The Spray Polyurethane Foam Alliance, Instructional Insulated Panel Association, and the Spray Foam Coalition. So we are grateful to have their partnering and the resources that they provide to make the collegiate student experience complete. So I have one super exciting announcement in closing for this segment of the webinar. Just today within the last hour, we’ve announced the 2018 U.S. Department of Energy Race to Zero student design competition. So if you’re a subscriber to the E-blasts that come out of the Department of Energy gov delivery system, you should have that announcement to access the website for the Race to Zero student design competition. Most easy to type that into a search engine to find this Energy.gov website for the competition project. So we will be releasing the next iteration of the competition guide in July, and making it available at that website. We will ask for all participating teams to complete their team application in November. We’ll be providing the building science training seminar and the webinars through the fall, winter, and spring, and posting the competition weekend again at NREL in April of 2018. So just very exciting to use this webinar today to finally announce our 2018 competition. We’re also adding a fifth competition, and expanding into commercial building. So there will be a K5 elementary school building that will serve as the fifth contest in the 2018 competition. And look forward to the innovation that the collegiate teams will be bringing not only to the zero energy home contest, but also to the commercial building contest that we are adding. Finally, any questions – we have an e-mail box for the project RacetoZero@ee.doe.gov. So there’ll be a time for questions at the end of the webinar, but I would now like to introduce the next segment of today’s building science education and workforce webinar. The topic is integration with commercial building [inaudible] guidelines.
I would like to introduce to you Priya Swamy. She is the commercial building workforce development manager at the Department of Energy. Priya, I turn it over to you.
Priya Swamy:
Thank-you. Good afternoon, everyone. Can we advance the slide, please? Great. So today, I’ll be talking about the Better Buildings Workforce Program, and the Better Building Workforce Guidelines. This is part of the Better Buildings Initiative, which I’m not sure how many of you have heard about. It’s a DOE and ERE wide initiative. It’s a broad multi-strategy initiative to make commercial building more energy efficient with 20 percent over the next 10 years or so. And so a number of strategies are being pursued to accelerate private sector investment in energy efficiency. And a skilled and qualified workforce is one of them. So developing a skilled and qualified workforce is key to making American buildings more energy efficient in the future. Next slide, please.
So improving the performance of schools, commercial buildings, it offers many energy – significant opportunities for energy savings, but it also requires skilled and qualified workers, particularly as building technologies become more advanced. However, there have been a number of barriers that have been in place. So up until now, there have been no national guidelines for energy efficiency related professional credentials, and this has led to a lack of quality, consistency, and scalability of the workforce. So because there are or were no national guidelines, many different training certificate and certification programs emerged, and they all addressed different scopes, different [inaudible] through various degrees of quality and rigor, and so this created a lot of confusion and uncertainty in the industry drove up costs. So next slide, please.
So DOE responded to these barriers by working with the National Institute of Building Science and some of the industry stakeholders you see here on the slide to develop the Better Buildings Workforce Guidelines. The guidelines are voluntary national guidelines that will improve the quality and consistency of the workforce credentials for four key energy related jobs, which I’ll talk more about soon. They are energy manager, building energy auditor, building operations professional, and building commissioning professional. And through the Better Buildings Workforce Guidelines, Industry now have a national framework to develop high quality and nationally recognized training and certification programs. So this addresses the consistency, quality, and scalability issues I spoke about before. Next slide, please.
So this is the structure of the program. We work with the National Institute of Building Science, as you can see up there. So NIBS, they have convened the industry stakeholders, and so – and subject matter experts to help develop the technical content. So to do that, NIBS created the Commercial Workforce Credentialing Counsel you see there, and the CWCC is made up of a board of advisors and a board of directors – of direction. So we have subject matter experts on both, and they have been – they’ve provided input into the four jobs that I spoke about earlier. The building energy auditor, commissioning professional energy manager, and operation professional. So for each of these four job titles, the committee developed an industry job – which outlines key duties, tasks, knowledge, skills, and abilities. So based on the JTA, each committee then developed complete guidelines. And so the outcome of this work, it resulted in the JTA’s program – all four of these jobs, and for competency based certification, the guidelines consist of the validated JTAs along with certification schemes, eligibility criteria, prerequisites, exam structures, you know, just a whole host of information that certification organization can use to develop their training and curriculum that will eventually lead to a certification to receive DOE recognition. So we also have work – similar work for assessment based certificate programs. So the certificate program providers can use these guidelines to, again, inform curriculum development, and it provides content outlines and learning objectives. The difference between a certification and a certificate just very quickly is that a certification requires not just the education. So you know, not just the education for a certain type of work, but also professional experience. And the certificate is something a professional would receive after taking a course or training, at the end of which they take a test, and they can get a certificate. The certificates don’t come with the experience that are often required to get a certification. Next slide, please.
OK, so here is the program structure. I went over it briefly on the other slide. This slide shows you how after all that work is done and a certification organization or a certificate program takes the JTAs created by DOE and uses it, and their exams on, they can take that – they can take their work and have it reviewed by a third party, such as ANSI. So here we have – or and ANSI will accredit it to ISO 17024. And for certificate programs, they will be reviewed by IREC. Again, style 14732, or another standard. That’s still TBD. So once certificate organization and a certification organization have gone through third-party accreditation process, they can apply to DOE for DOE recognition. And the DOE recognition, we review it, and based on the recommendation by the third party organization and our own internal review, if their curriculum and exam and training is based on the Better Buildings Workforce guidelines job task analysis, they will receive DOE recognition for their certification or certificate. Next slide, please.
OK, so after the certification, this process, like I said – can you just click through all the – thank you. Fantastic. So the certification schemes that we have developed for the certifications and certificates, these provide the industry a consensus based method by which they can pursue and attain accreditation, like I said, through ISO or IREC. And this basically helps define all the skills that are needed, and it basically reduces the confusion I told you about before in the market. Among energy efficiency professionals, help them determine what sort of certification or what certificate they should spend their time pursuing, and then it also helps reduce the confusion among employers. Employers that will be employing these energy efficiency professionals. It helps them wade through all the credentials they see on resumes. So how do they differentiate between a certification from organization A versus – like for example, an auditor certification from Organization A versus an auditor certification from Organization B. If one of – organization A has a DOE recognized – is a DOE recognized certification, the employer knows that certification is helps with a different standard, so they can have confidence in the content and training that that [inaudible]. Next slide, please.
OK, here is a little bit more in depth going into the four job titles I mentioned. So I won’t go into too much detail here. The energy auditor, they assess the building system, they look at the energy usage and they recommend strategies for resource to optimize resource utilization, commissioning professional. They manage the commissioning team to implement the commissioning process, the energy manager. They continuously improve energy performance in commercial buildings, and they also help support an energy program to manage symptoms in – to manage the system. And the building operations professional, they manage the building system O&M. They perform general maintenance, and then otherwise ensure comfort and productivity and safety to the occupants. OK, so to date, we have four certifications that have received DOE recognition. The first was the certified energy manager certification from the Association of Energy Engineers. The Association of Energy Engineers also has received DOE recognition for their certified energy auditor program.
Next, the Building Commissioning Association, they have DOE recognition for their commissioning certification. And AABC also has DOE recognition for their certi – commissioning certification. And ASHRAE is – we expect more certifications to come through the pipeline in the next couple months or so. ASHRAY is commissioning certification and ASHRAY’s auditor certification, and so that should be coming through also. Next slide, please.
So here are some of the benefits to – for the entire industry. So the Better Buildings workforce guidelines, it benefits everyone with a stake in improving the commercial building energy efficiency sector. So workers, employers, building owners and managers, administration regulators, training, and certification program. So these credentials are built upon a clear stat of industry developed guidelines. New and experienced professionals, they’ll be able to better understand their training, certification options, and really be able to differentiate opportunities to improve their technical skills. Employers and building owners, government officials, program administrators across the country, they can use the guidelines to identify skilled and qualified workers. And overall, nationally recognized and consistent guidelines, they’ll help reduce the market confusion and uncertainty, thus helping lower cost and produce better credentials, better workers, and better buildings. Next slide, please.
We’ve also developed some materials and resources to help certification organizations and certificate issuing organizations develop content based on the Better Buildings Workforce Guidelines. They can be found here at the DOE website, and also on the National Institute of Building Science. That’s a job task analysis and certification schemes are on the NIBS website. Next slide, please. At the end of last year, early this year, we produced the community college guidance. This guidance provides community colleges with content on how to design courses and modules based on the Better Buildings learning objective, and so the community college guideline is really geared to community colleges that are developing training and curriculum that will lead to certificates. And –
Sam Rashkin:
Great, I think that’s my handoff. Isn’t it? Hey, so we’re running a bit late, so I’ll try to move a little faster. But we’re going to go through now the Building Science – guidelines for building science education, which is the third category. We go to the next slide. The starting point here is that guidelines for building science education need to be fully coordinated with the Better Building workforce guidelines. So we know that’s the gold star for how we get complete certification and certificates for professionals. So we want to make sure that we completely work within that system that’s already set up.
So let’s examine how the similarities between these two – if we go to the next slide, our guidelines for building science education and the Better Buildings workforce guidelines both want to improve – and the mass of knowledge among the workforce. And on the development side, want to keep industry involved, we want more opportunities for stakeholders to keep improving the process for education and for aligning with all the efforts going on around the country. And ultimately, we need a collective impact profess where people can rally around a common agenda for how we get building science education into the workforce rather than all the individual wild west show self-determinations of competence and everyone inventing their own curriculum and knowledge materials. We need some way to get a collective impact process and a common agenda. So this is where we’re similar. Where these two efforts are different is that the Better Buildings workforce guidelines is addressing currently four specific workforce classifications at a very high level of certificates and certification and accreditation and some very exclusive involvement with these organizations they work. In contrast, the guidelines for building science education would be underpinning all that work as it’s developing. It’ll be a full spectrum of classifications. So it would be 31 additional workforce classifications we address. It’ll be a national platform for competency, if not certificates and accreditation, and everyone will work with partners as much as possible as they can, and won’t be very much of an exclusive partnership that we set up for who we work with. So two very different activities, and the guidelines will always basically be subservient to the workforce guidelines as they develop. And I’ll show you how that works.
So starting with the next slide, what we have first is all the career classifications we’re going to address. There are basically eight bundles of workforce classifications, and within each bundle, there’s various level of granularity in terms of more detailed classifications that exist. For instance, building science as it relates to buildings. When you get to builder and remodeling professionals, then we want to address the builders to foremen and general contractors and modelers insulating contractors and so forth. So we can see there’s a very full set of workforce groups who want to work with – there are four that are being addressed by the workforce guidelines that are in the tan color. The maintenance professional commissioning auditors and energy managers. And then there are three additional ones added to our original group that we started with that our additional commercial building workforce professionals that we’re missing. And so all told, there are four for the workforce guidelines that we don’t address, another 31 workforce classifications that we will attempt to provide a platform for consistent competency for building science education. So we have the workforce groups. The next thing is to have the skills.
So on the next slide, you see we set up four bundles of skills, integration of home building systems, building science principles, operations and maintenance and building testing. And then within each of these bundles, there’s again various degrees of granularity, but all the detail competency categories that you would expect in each group. So for instance, in home building systems, there’s performance and life cycle costs and disaster resistance and interior design and construction, quality management, modeling, cost trade off analysis. So all those things to be all the categories within that bundle, the first, and the second, same for principles, O&M, and building testing. So there’s a whole array of competencies that you’d expect to be fully represented for building science. And what we’ve done is basically then looked at how do we have degrees of competency.
So we went to Bloom’s taxonomy in the next slide, and used their six point scale – starting with the lowest, one, where you remember the principle or the content to where number six, you can actually create and design with it. So there’s six levels of skill, 1 is the lowest and 6 is the highest. And so the final step in terms of developing guidelines was to create a matrix approach to doing this.
So on the next slide, we see the matrix where we have all the gory detail that you cannot read in this slide. So let’s show you basically what – you have a hidden slide. OK, in the vertical axis, you have all the skills we just discussed. If you hit the slide again in the top row, we have all the workforce classifications in the bundles we discussed. And so what we did was we used a group of experts to fill in as best we could with a basic group expert – subject matter expert profess, 1 to 6 scale, for each of the workforce guideline groups. And with that, basically, if you hit the slide again, go ahead, we have what we consider a work in progress. And because we did this all in one batch approach, we know we don’t have all the industry vetting we’d like and is impossible to do in the development process. So we know that on a regular real time basis, we’ll continually work with industry groups and stakeholders to keep refining this. And therefore, this – these numbers will continually evolve as we get better and better feedback about how they represent the real needs for the workforce in each job – workforce classification. Now we can take one column – in this case, I took mechanical engineer column under design and construction professionals, and what you see is – that column represents a guideline for each of the four bundles of skills is a degree of 1 to 6 rigor of skill competency that – building science. And that in fact becomes a guideline.
So we can go to the next page. Here is a guideline where you have the four skill bundles kind of at the top, graphically representing the most approximate number, 1 to 6, that all the individual numbers within that category would come to. So in the case of integration of whole building systems, it’s a five, and the same for building science principles. But basically, you see the graphic approach – so what is general overview of the competency, and then below, you see the details within each of those groups. You have the integration of whole building systems, the full granular set of sub-skills, and the full scoring that happens six through five through four or whatever it may be, and that’s how we got to the average of five. Same for building science principles on Page 2 of the guideline and the operation and maintenance, and with the building testing and certification. You have all your skills, all the column numbers transferred here. You have the graphic, and then you have the sign off on the bottom where you’d be interested in collaborating with DOE to follow these guidelines.
And so we go to the next page. What we need now is a way for people who do want to collaborate with these guidelines to be able to train and teach consistent with the skill of competency that’s being represented. So here is where we’re developing a solution center or a tool and resource for our stakeholders or collaborators to start training and teaching on a consistent basis. So if you look at this as a database, we have the four skills represented on the left, and then we have proficiency in terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, 1 through 6 across the horizontal access. So what we need to do is fill in content, you can hit this again for this entire matrix, and we – and break that content at the appropriate point to level content, 3, 4, 5, or 6. And let’s take an example to show how this would work.
So the next page, what I’ve done is hit – oh, first, yeah, hit this again, that’s good. Now go back a couple – go back. One more. Keep going back one more time. Here is basically what is the challenge. When we get content, we have to figure out where those brakes are level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 that I mentioned. So one row here would be heat transfer into building science principles. When we get material, we have to figure out whether it’s appropriate level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. So now let’s apply this and see how this would work. We’d basically let’s say have – let’s pick a category like mechanical engineer, so let’s go there, hit it again. So when we pull those numbers, 6, 5, 4, whatever they may be from that column that I showed you earlier and transfer it to this matrix, that is a content that would be pulled from the solution center so you had content that was fully matched to the competency that was best supplied for mechanical engineer. And you can see it’s very rigorous content. You’re pulling so much of what’s in the database. So mechanical engineer is really responsible to learn a lot of building science. Now in contrast, I can show you what the guide would be for an appraiser.
So if you hit it again, here is an appraiser, and you can see how much less content would be pulled for the appraiser because as you would expect, an appraiser would not need nearly as much expertise in so many categories. And so they would get a lot less training material – less rigor that they would teach to. The key thing is once you have your database, you can basically provide the content for training for any of the workforce professional classifications simply by knowing the guideline and have it go to the solutions center and then pull the appropriate content. And so here is where I’m going to basically let Metzger take you through an example of how this works.
Cheryn Metzger:
Thanks, Sam. So I will just go over this slide really quick, but first I wanted to say hi, everyone. I’m Cheryn Metzger, as Sam said. A senior engineer at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Thanks so much for having me today. I’ve been working with Sam on this since about 2012, and we’ve been having some great study progress since then, so I’ll talk a little bit about how we’ve built on the guidelines that Sam has been talking about. So I think if you could go to the next slide, I think this may be it. So yeah. That’d be great right there.
So as Sam said, we – he was talking a lot about the guidelines themselves, which you’ll see were first published in 2015. So since then, we’ve actually launched a solution center that uses the framework for those guidelines and really makes that content easily accessible. So in this fiscal year, 2017, we’ve actually been working diligently to populate this website with the content that will be used and can be categorized and sorted automatically from the framework that’s already there. So what I wanted to do today was actually show everyone a live demo of this website. So let me see if we can – okay. Can any of the presenters verify that they can see my screen?
Sam Rashkin:
Yeah, you’re sharing.
Sara Farrar:
Yes, we can see it.
Cheryn Metzger:
OK, great. So I’ll just start where we are here. This is the home – really what we’re trying to do here is create a space where we can actually collect content, but also share obviously that content with as many folks as possible who are interested in using the – a really rigorously peer reviewed set of materials that they can just plug and play into any module that they may be developing for any level of training class. So I’ll talk more a little bit about the audience in a second, but for now, I’ll just kind of go through this website that is live. And you can see the website address up here in the address bar. So it’s BSESC.energy.gov. That’s Building Science Education Solution Center. We’re currently calling it a beta version because we do have content. But because we’re still in the process of really populating it to that critical mass, we’re just calling it a beta for now, but we’re very close to probably switching over. On the left navigation here, we do have some information just generally about the effort in general, the background for the guidelines, another webinar you can refer to which describes them as an information that you’d see here. We have access to training resources which I’ll get back to in a second, and then information about stakeholders who are involved in providing content. And then an opportunity for all users to provide feedback or to offer content themselves. So the main bulk of the use for this site is going to be searching for content and using that content.
So I’m going to dig right now into a specific topic. Searching by building science topic for me is the easiest way to see kind of [inaudible] have that content. So an example that I’m going to go to right now is the heat transfer module. And you can see here that we have the heat transfer module is its own landing page, and when you do click on that, what you’d see is actually all of the preference levels we have populated in the site so far. On the right, we have a little icon that helps quickly understand where you’re at. So this is a kind of depicting heat transfer, a little information about what we plan to cover in this module. And then here, we have links that help filter this content if by level. So if you’re looking at more of a trade organization, maybe you’d just be interested in proficiency Level 2 information. So this will automatically filter content by that level.
So I will go through now the tabs. So we start with learning objectives, and this is really where we set the stage for what kind of content we’re going to have in each proficiency level and also just overall in the module itself. So all of the content that we have that shows up after the learning objectives really support these learning objectives. So you can see, for example, in Proficiency Level 1, we have these two learning objectives, and Proficiency Level 2, we have these three learning objectives. As you go up, obviously, the sort of rigor gets more intense. So if we move to lecture notes, you can actually see that we have lecture notes that support each of those learning objectives, and they could be anywhere from one hour or less than one hour – sometimes pieces of content can come in in even ten minute or – may call them. And then all the way up to a full three-hour course or like a week of modules. None in this – none of those three-hour modules in this particular topic, but we do have those in there. I will actually jump really quick to problem sets, which show that each of those learning objectives and lecture notes have matching problem sets that actually support the sort of testing and evaluation of those learning objectives. And then the teaching materials we have kind of apply to all the levels. We want to make sure these are available to everyone. But they do show up no matter where you filter your information by. But these teaching materials come in the form of Power Point presentations, any – and potentially handouts. We also have videos, and really, the point is to support those professionals who are developing curriculum in this way. In a way that really helps it be plug and play. We want to make it as easy as possible for folks to use this content. And so as anyone who is listening to this webinar has any feedback in terms of how this is presented, we welcome feedback on that as well. So actually, that’s the end of my demo. So I think we can switch back to the slides.
OK, so one of the things I just wanted to draw attention to with this webinar was the content that we do have, and then the content that we’re looking for. I think they’re calling in today who may actually have content that they would be willing to share. And if you are, this is sort of a quick picture of what we’re looking for. As you can see, there’s a number of things that would be extremely helpful to us at this time. Again, anything from Level 1 to 6. You can see obviously in which categories, but even any content that falls in those levels would be helpful. Next slide, please.
So I want to talk quickly about the collective impact campaign that surrounds the effort, but the website as well. So the point being that we understand that professionals around the country are working on this type of content. And again, we want to make sure to capture all of those efforts and really try to help everyone kind of come together and work towards some of the same goals so that we’re not duplicating efforts. So that’s really what this collective impact campaign is all about. The stakeholders that we’re targeting, it’s really one in the same for the campaign and for the website. But educational institutions and then trade associations, and also in the future, we’ll really be looking more at the general public as well. So if we go to the next slide, I can talk a little bit more about the details.
So in terms of trade associations, there’ll be things like licensing exams or continuing education where our opportunities are to infuse some more of this kind of building science material, and that’s really what we’re going after is trying to figure out if we can add – of the guidelines at a – like one component at a time kind of leading up to eventually being able to have complete guidelines available with the different stakeholder organizations. So for universities or colleges, again, kind of infusion with existing curriculum, even just a simple problem set that refers to the building science principles would really help open some students’ eyes to the fact that this is a great industry and a possible option, where sometimes that doesn’t even exist in some universities or colleges. As seen in with some of the Race to Zero professors that we talked about recently, sometimes they actually introduce new classes. Or even a structured minor, which I’ve heard recently. And again, state licensing exams. In terms of the general public, this is something we’re looking at more towards the future, but the idea here – and Sam mentioned this, is to really integrate building science content into high school type client textbooks. So these are all kind of targeted stakeholders that we’re looking at for this effort. Next slide, please.
So there’s two levels of stakeholder classifications that we have currently created. And so one of them is a collaborator where we’re really looking at the content that’s provided by a stakeholder being used on the website, and then potentially also the peer review of some content. Because all the content that is on our website is peer reviewed. So we obviously do need the peer reviewers as well. Then the sort of major stakeholder category would be more of an agreement to collaborate on the final guideline content. So as Sam was talking about how our matrix is really a work in progress, this is really where an organization could be a little bit more involved in helping us kind of finalize a specific guideline itself. For a specific job classification. And then also to agree to have the curriculum in their program obviously be consistent with that guideline. And yeah, so I’ll move quickly to the next slide because it looks like we’re running out of time.
So I just wanted to also kind of express that on the website, as I mentioned, we do have a place where stakeholders who have – and collaborators who have worked with our program are actually accessible in two different ways. So the first way is this locator map. The second way is a kind of stakeholder’s A to Z list. And once you click on a stakeholder or collaborator that is on the map or the list, if you go to the next slide, it’ll show the kind of information that we provide to show people sort of what this stakeholder is really all about, and how they have some background in this area in order to be able to provide that content or use it. So that’s kind of – this is just kind of a quick showing of how we sort of show that kind of content.
And then that’s really all I wanted to discuss today. But if anyone who is listening to this webinar has content they’d like to share or is using content already on our website and we’re not acknowledging that, please let me know, and I think you’ll see my contact information on the next –
Sam Rashkin:
So to wrap this up, I want to thank you all for attending and listening to these three different initiatives that all really work together for a common purpose. We need to again build that workforce, that supply chain for innovation. There’s all this pipeline of best practices and new technologies. We need a workforce that knows what to do with them, and we have to get somewhere past the wild west show reality we live in now where everyone has to figure it out for themselves, and so this is kind of an integrated approach. We had one way we work with the students directly in a competition to bring them both inspiration and a path forward to changing their careers. We have the workforce guidelines that bring a full certificate and certification process with accreditation so that those groups that they can get to at that level currently for have this incredibly robust way for ensuring quality work. And then we have the guidelines for building science education that bring 31 different workforce classifications in addition to those for with a consistent platform for competency and a resource for how they can train and teach to it so that people can begin getting the skills they need in a consistent basis and working collectively with stakeholders to make this a stronger and stronger solution for the building’s marketplace. So those are the three programs, and if there’s time for any questions – I’m not sure, but I’ll get it back to Linh to kind of close us out.
Linh Truong:
Thank-you so much, Sam. And thanks, Sara, Priya, and Cheryn. Yes, we’re going to go ahead and for our Q&A session. If you haven’t done so already, feel free to enter a question in the question pane at any time. So Sam, I’m going to give the first question to you. It’s about the Race to Zero, and we have our participant who is asking a question. When Sara was talking about the different contests, we have a participant who is just – what about Race to Zero remodel, remodeling to zero is cheaper than a completely new structure. Would you like to respond to that one?
Sam Rashkin:
Yeah, absolutely. Remodels are able to be part of the competition as long as they fit under one of the now five contest categories. So it could be a single family urban, single family suburban, attached, or multi-family or K through 5 school, and it could be in any of those five categories you could be retrofitting a building or new from scratch. The key challenge will be in a retrofit is you have to achieve in the residential space zero energy ready home specifications. And so there needs to be strategy for how you do that for many parts of construction that may be less accessible once it’s an existing building. And the same will be true for schools. So retrofit – particularly gut retrofits would be able to qualify under any of those categories.
Linh Truong:
Great, thanks, Sam. The next one is also related to the Race to Zero, and we have a participant asking whether or not using natural gas appliances will help or hurt her student design team.
Sam Rashkin:
The competition like the Zero Energy Ready Home Program is fuel neutral, product neutral. Basically, you can achieve program requirements within a fuel or technology or type of construction, so it’s up to you to meet the metrics of the program, and we don’t specify the how.
Linh Truong:
Great, thank you, Sam. The next question is for Priya, if you’re available. Can you speak a little bit to how Better Buildings fits with the building technologies office? And also, another part of that is that you mentioned the four DOE recognized certifications. Can you sort of speak to how long that approval process took?
Priya Swamy:
Sure. How does Better Buildings fit with the building technologies office, is that correct?
Linh Truong:
Yes.
Priya Swamy:
OK. So the Better Buildings program, it’s really an EER wide effort, and the Better Buildings Alliance and the Better Buildings Challenge is administered by BTSO – the majority of folks who work on the alliance and the challenge are in our office here with the commercial buildings integration team. And so you know, the majority of the funding for the Better Buildings program are – the rest with BTO. Their other offices here in EERE that also contribute significantly to the Better Buildings program, such as the office of intergovernmental affairs. And the second question was the timeline for DOE recognition for those certifications, is that right?
Linh Truong:
Yes, that’s correct.
Priya Swamy:
OK, so the entire process to get DOE recognition includes getting the third party accreditation. So that part – that step in the process is the most time consuming, and so because of the third party accreditation, either through ANCE or IREC is really out of our hands. And so I can’t really give you a timeframe for how long that process takes. It’s really with ANCE or IREC. But I can tell you we worked with ANCE and IREC to make sure certain parts of the Better Buildings workforce guidelines, for the folks there who are reviewing it are very familiar with what the guidelines are. So we’ve worked with them and they’ve seen it. They know what our job task analysis looks like, so they’re sort of trained up on what to expect. We’ll expedite the process.
So and it also really depends on a lot of certification organizations may do a crosswalk, taking their current curriculum and training, comparing it with – and doing a crosswalk against the Better Buildings workforce guidelines, and to see how equivalent they are or not, and do a sort of gap analysis. If they’re fairly equivalent, they go through the accreditation process much faster, and if there are major gaps, that’s going to take up some time. Once they’ve gone through the third party accreditation and it gets to DOE, the process – the time for us to review it is much much shorter, definitely. You know, within four weeks or so.
Linh Truong:
OK, great. Thank-you, Priya. The next question is related to the resources that you mentioned. Did you – where are the resources posted? Are they on the Better Buildings website, or is it on a different source?
Priya Swamy:
Yeah, so if you go to BetterBulidingSolutionsCenter.Energy.Gov/Workforce, it’s on – there is a link there on our website to the JT and certification schemes, the workforce guidelines staff sheet, and then some more information on how to receive DOE recognition. So if you follow those links, you’ll get to the materials. The JTAs and certification schemes, there is a link to the National Institute of Building Science website. They house a lot of the actual core materials. It’s on the Better Buildings Solution Center website, and then the Commercial Workforce Credentialing Council, which is part of NIBS, and it’s on their website also.
Linh Truong:
Thank-you so much.
Priya Swamy:
[Inaudible] should have been in the presentation.
Linh Truong:
And we’ll definitely share those links to all the resources and all the pieces mentioned. So [inaudible]. The next couple questions are for Sam and Cheryn. So Sam, I think this first question relates to that chart where you had the Level 1 through 6 showing, and the question from the participant is have you devised a test to evaluate where individuals stand on each of the sections, Level 1 through 6?
Sam Rashkin:
Again, Cheryn may answer this better, but when we get the content, our job is to parse it out relative to those six categories. There’s some detailed kind of explanation of what each category does, and then we use our best judgment to draw a line where Level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 exist. At that point, we’re basically then just putting content into a cell on a database, and it’s there to be pulled up as needed. Cheryn, I don’t know if you would add any more detail to that explanation.
Cheryn Metzger:
Yeah, that’s a great explanation.
Linh Truong:
OK, great. The next question is related to the support that you’re asking for for the guidelines for building science education. You mentioned collaborators and also the need for peer reviewers. Are the peer reviewers – are they doing that as volunteers, or is there compensation for that?
Cheryn Metzger:
Yeah, at this time, we are asking for volunteers, and I think part of it is that if some folks are willing to provide content, then it’s possible they also might be willing to peer review. Or if they don’t – content that they feel like would be ready to provide to the public, that maybe they’d be willing to just spare an hour or so of their time to peer review some other folks’ content.
Linh Truong:
Great, thank-you. So the next one is related to – we have a participant who is organizing a building science summer camp in middle June for high school students. And they’re wondering if they’re using the DOE building science guidelines – education guidelines for the topics and activities. How – or is there a process they need to be an official partner with DOE, or is there anything they can do to help let you know what their plans are with the summer camp for the students?
Sam Rashkin:
You know, that’s such a great idea and such a – sounds like such a fun project. First thing I would put as a suggestion, in addition to the guidelines to building science education solution center, which is starting to build up, there’s something else that DOE does again through Cheryn’s office at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and that’s to use the Building America Solution Center. That’s a completely robust, fully populated resource that has a wealth of information about all things Building Science and buildings, and it’s very, very accessible information, and it has an app, so you can get the information from your tablet or from your smart phone. So it’s a great resource for getting content. What would be great about the building science education solution center is the content would be so well parsed out in terms of their 1 through 6 competency scheme, which is so important to get the right level of – until the solutions center – Until the Building Science Education Solutions Center is fully populated, the teacher can pull out content as they need from the Building America Solutions Center, which is really designed for professionals to apply best practices. And still have a lot of good material for which to help the summer camp idea. In terms of what to do joining forces and so forth, the best I’d say is you have two e-mail addresses on there you can reach out to. One is myself, Sam Rashkin, the other is Cheryn Metzger. And send me a – some ideas and information about what you’re doing could start a conversation about how we can help you the most.
Linh Truong:
Cheryn, did you want to add to that at all?
Cheryn Metzger:
Yeah, no, that’d be great, and we can set up a call to kind of talk about a path forward, which [inaudible].
Linh Truong:
Great, thank-you, and since we only have a couple minutes left, I’m just going to ask a couple more. But feel free- Sam mentioned all the folks, the e-mails that are on that slide, feel free to reach out to them after today’s webinar if we can answer your questions today. So the next question is for Sam and Cheryn, but have you reached out to the Society of Building Science educators yet? And if you have, are you partnering with them?
Cheryn Metzger:
Yes, and – I can –
Sam Rashkin:
Go ahead, Cheryn.
Cheryn Metzger:
So we have reached out to some folks who are in the Society of Building Science Educators. We’re kind of trying to gear up to figure out how we can best approach sort of the whole thing. So that’s something that is on our radar and in progress.
Linh Truong:
Sam, did you have anything to add to that?
Sam Rashkin:
No, that’s pretty much where I was going, and also I was going to mention that just there are a number of groups also that – similar associated schools of construction, there’s National Consortium for Housing Research Centers. There’s many different groups that are just a great wealth of guidance and feedback for us that we want to reach out to. There are a number on our radar screen.
Linh Truong:
Great, thank-you so much. Since we have run out of time, I just want to go ahead and thank all of our participants for their time and all the speakers for providing such a wonderful wealth of information. So thanks, Sam. Thanks, Sara, thanks Priya, and thanks Cheryn. Just wanted to remind the participants that we do have a Building America newsletter, so if you’d like to learn about upcoming webinars and resources and things like that, we totally encourage you to sign up on the Building America website. With that, I just want to give Sam the opportunity to close out today’s webinar if you have any final words, Sam, for the participants today.
Sam Rashkin:
Oh my goodness, I think I kind of did that in the last slide, but it’s the same message, which is that we really need to act as a collective impact as Cheryn said. This is going to require all of us to rally around a common agenda, that we have to be completely dedicated to the importance of getting a consistent level of competency and building science across the entire country, if not more internationally. And it begins with having a platform like we’re developing with certification programs, like we’re developing in competitions that inspire students to want to just embrace this as part of their whole career path. So that’s what this is all about, and I thank you so much for spending the time to kind of go through our programs.
Linh Truong:
Everyone, have a great week.