When most people hear about green technologies, they think of solar panels, windmills and alternative fuels. While energy efficiency is certainly part of the green conversation, building automation systems don’t usually come readily to mind.
“Yet 40 percent of all energy is consumed in buildings, and learning how to more-efficiently control and conserve that energy to reduce waste is very much a green technology,” said Brian Lovell, director of the Green Technologies Academy and the building automation systems program at DeKalb Technical College.
Making, installing and running the automation systems that are used to integrate and control HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), refrigeration, lighting and alarm systems in commercial buildings is a $12 million industry, Lovell said. “And that industry is starved for skilled talent.”
Lovell started an automation company in the mid-90s and sold it a few years ago.
“It wasn’t that I wasn’t making money; I had millions of dollars in contracts. I just couldn’t find people who could do the work,” Lovell said.
He has helped design an associate degree program at DeKalb Technical to remedy that situation. The school established the building automation systems program in 2009. Industry giants Trane, Ingersoll Rand, Siemens and others donated $500,000 in lab equipment and served as curriculum advisors.
“The program is cutting-edge because we asked employers what knowledge and skills they needed in their building automation technicians and then [we] built the program backward to prepare students for this specialized field,” Lovell said.
The word is getting out. Lovell recently visited the University of California at Berkeley and Laney College in California, both of which want to imitate DeKalb Tech’s program.
Ideal candidates for the program should know something about building automation systems, see the field’s opportunities and want to learn the skills needed to get a job, Lovell said.
The challenging program produces what he calls, “technicians on steroids.” Students learn about the fundamentals and components of refrigeration, electrical, electronics and commercial HVAC/R systems.
“They’ll need to understand information systems networking and basic control theory,” Lovell said. “Computer skills are essential, as they’ll be working with various kinds of software, and we emphasize soft skills throughout. Our students have to know how to communicate well.”
They also learn how to install, design and troubleshoot systems in the lab, and practice applying digital logic.
“We’ve had students build eight-bit adding machines and encoder and decoder machines to figure out how they work and where to look for problems,” he said.
About 100 students are enrolled in the program, which DeKalb Tech wants to increase to about 300. All classes are in the evening. The program ends with an internship.
The average cost for the degree is between $8,000 and $10,000.
“Our first cohort of 12 graduates is out and about half already have jobs,” Lovell said.
He expects the rest of the grads to find positions as field technicians, installers, support/service engineers and sales representatives, making average starting salaries of $45,000 to $55,000.
For information, call 404-297-9522 (ext. 1265) or e-mail lovellb@dekalbtech.edu.
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