ASHRAE Journal:
ASHRAE Journal presents.
Kelly Barraza:
Hello everyone. This is ASHRAE Journal Podcast, the flagship audio series of the Society. I'm Kelly Barraza, managing editor of the Journal.
Kaitlyn Baich:
And I'm Kaitlyn Baich, assistant editor.
Kelly Barraza:
Kaitlyn and I are co-hosting this episode today, live at the 2023 AHR Expo here in Atlanta. Today. Our guests on the series is current ASHRAE President, Farooq Mehboob. Welcome to the show, Farooq, and welcome to Atlanta.
Farooq Mehboob:
Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Kelly Barraza:
It's our pleasure. Okay, we're going to get right into it. So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your relationship with ASHRAE?
Farooq Mehboob:
Okay, so you've actually got two questions in one, something about myself and something about ASHRAE. So now I'm a very old guy. I don't want to tell you how old I am, but pretty old. And I was born in Lahore, and Lahore is a city in Northwestern Pakistan, and it's the gateway through which you access the Indian subcontinent. So just to give you an idea, where I come from, we've had coming through that same way, Huns, Greeks, Arabs, Mongols, 200 sets of invaders. So the culture is a mix, and Lahore is a city of about 12 million people. It's about 2,500 years old. I was born there, and as I told you before, that part of the world is just a mix of cultures. Personally, I have a great deal of a mix in my life. My wife is Chinese, and my three daughters-in-law come from three different cultures. So we're a very diverse family, and that's a little bit about myself. I'm an engineer by profession. I'm in consulting.
Now, my relationship with ASHRAE is, how would I say? It started off as a marriage of convenience. In 1980, I decided to become a consulting engineer, and the greatest source of knowledge on HVAC&R is the ASHRAE Handbook. So I went to market to buy the handbook, and my God, it was expensive for non-members. So I looked at becoming an ASHRAE member, which was a lot cheaper, and I got the handbook free. So I became an ASHRAE member. So it was a marriage of convenience. And then 20 years later, the region at large was formed and India started the first chapter in region at large. And so in Pakistan, we set up the first chapter, which was the Pakistan chapter. I helped found that chapter, and in fact, I helped found all four of our chapters in Pakistan. So then I got involved with ASHRAE first at the chapter level. I served as chapter president then at the region and finally at society. So that's been my journey with ASHRAE. That journey is a journey of 43 years, and I'm looking to make the next seven so I can get the 50-year award.
Kelly Barraza:
I hope so too. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. So in the August 2022 issue of ASHRAE Journal, you shared your story about being tasked with rebuilding the Intercontinental Hotel in Dhaka after it was bombed in what was then East Pakistan. How did that experience shape you as an engineer?
Farooq Mehboob:
See, that experience shaped me, not only as an engineer, but it shaped me as a person, and it shaped my, how would I say, worldview of things. As an engineer, it was a tremendous experience because you know when you bomb and gut a five star hotel, rebuilding it is no easy job. So I learned improvisation, I learned time management, I learned logistics, I learned a lot of things out of that experience. But as a person, it taught me the importance of relationships. And I only survived the breakup of Pakistan because I had relationships on both sides. My wife who's now passed away, she was from there, and I was from West Pakistan, and I had friends on both sides. So I had accurate information on what was going to happen, and that helped me get out in time.
So looking back, I realized that it's your relationships with matter. It's the information and the knowledge that you have that matters. And finally, what matters is that you're willing to change and take action. Because if you don't take any action, then those relationships and knowledge is not used. So I've brought that same philosophy to ASHRAE. We need to build our relationships with our associate societies. We need to build our relationships within society. So I'm trying, one of my initiatives is to get chapters in North America, connect with chapters at the other end of the world, because those connections will strengthen our society, give us information if we act with industry, and that's how we'll secure our future.
Kelly Barraza:
Absolutely. I think it's so important and look at things from a global perspective. It's truly a global effort, our movements here in this industry. So that being said, my last question before I change it over to Kaitlyn and her questions is, can you tell us about the work you accomplished last year at COP27?
Farooq Mehboob:
Okay. Now, this COP27 was really an eye-opener. ASHRAE partnered with Architecture 2030, which is connected with the American Institute of Architects to put up a side event at COP27. At that side event, we were trying to talk about technologies which apply to the global South. Now, let me explain this. If you draw a line horizontally across the planet, you have the global North and down below you have the global South. The North of the planet is well-developed with technology, with resources. The South is developing, it doesn't have technology and resources, but human beings have managed quite well before the modern era. I mean, air conditioning only came after Willis Carrier in the last century, but for 2000 years, people were having a good life. So our theme at COP27 was that for the global South where there is a limitation on resources, we should focus our efforts on going to passive strategies, designing buildings, so not too much heat comes in, natural ventilation, water bodies around. And so our presentation was centered on that. Those are the strategies we think can work in the South.
Kelly Barraza:
Yeah. All right, cool. So Kaitlyn, you want to start next?
Kaitlyn Baich:
Yep, sounds good. Farooq, thank you for joining us. I mean, I can't tell you how excited Kelly and I were to be able to do this interview today. The first question I want to ask is, is there an important trend in the industry that we could be doing better?
Farooq Mehboob:
Well, the thing is, we live in a world that is changing dramatically fast. If you look at everything that has been developed in the last 2000 years, you'll find that 90% of it has been developed in the last 10 years. So that tells you how fast change is happening, how dramatically change is happening, and that change is being driven by the digital age. I think in some way, the age of computers is going to evolve into the age of artificial intelligence.
On my phone, I have a poem about ASHRAE, which was written by ChatGPT in about 15 seconds. I have an essay on building decarbonization, 400 words written by ChatGPT in 30 seconds, things we cannot accomplish. This morning, I was at a panel discussion here at the show, and when I was a young engineer, the chillers and the equipment did not have any chips or any computing capability. So we transitioned from purely mechanical equipment to equipment which was interfaced with computers. We're going to enter an age where the equipment will be interfaced with artificial intelligence, and you would just have to walk up to a piece of machinery and say, “Hey, how are you feeling today? What's wrong?” And maybe the diagnostics will come to you. So I say this, if we don't get the bots, the bots are going to get us.
Kaitlyn Baich:
You actually said that yesterday during your press coffee and that, I think that made all our whole ASHRAE Journal group really—
Kelly Barraza:
I think we could really use that AI sometimes for getting articles for the Journal. Am I right Kaitlyn?
Kaitlyn Baich:
Right. Exactly.
Kelly Barraza:
That would really, the AI will scare the authors a little bit. Not really, but go ahead.
Kaitlyn Baich:
Yeah. So switching gears from AI, I want to talk about decarbonization. The movement has been gaining a lot of steam in the industry with countries incentivizing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and use renewable energy resources. Can you tell me what the future of decarb looks like to you?
Farooq Mehboob:
Well, you see, two decades ago, there were significant number of people who say, no, no, no, this climate change is not going to happen. It's not going to bother us. We don't have to worry about it. But the hurricanes, the wildfires, the floods, the extreme weather events have driven home to every person living on this planet that something bad is happening, and we need to act. So getting carbon limited and out of the atmosphere is critical to stopping global warming. So what I saw at COP27 and what I see around now is that there are no naysayers. Everybody is on that boat. We need to decarbonize.
And so it's no longer a buzzword. It's something we need to act urgently. ASHRAE has always been at the forefront whenever humanity is faced with a crisis. Go back to the 1970s, we had an oil crisis. We got on the job, we developed standards. 90.1 is one of them, and their used around the world. Then the pandemic hit. We got on the job, and our environmental task force brought out guidance on mitigation and how to design buildings in the post pandemic era. And today, decarb is something that is critical and urgent. It's now top of the line on our strategic plan, and we have more than 100 volunteers who are working to put out the tools, the standards, the trainings, the guidelines of decarb. We don't have a moment to lose.
Kaitlyn Baich:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate your thoughts on that, and I know our audience probably appreciates that too. I do also want to switch gears to talking about your presidency. In your presidential address, you said the two prerequisites for ASHRAE's diversity is transparency and participation. How do you feel you fostered these values during your time as president?
Farooq Mehboob:
You see, there's a saying, there's no stopping an idea whose time has come. And I think that like everything else that's happening today, it goes slow, slow, slow for a long while, and then it takes off. IBM invented the computer in the 1940s, but until 1980, we didn't have a desktop machine, and so they were developing very slowly. But the last 40 years, they shot up like a rocket. So my feeling here is that transparency and participation will bring to ASHRAE a sudden burst of energy, and that energy will propel us into the future. So I'm betting a great deal on transparency and participation.
Kaitlyn Baich:
And how do you think women factor into the industry when it comes to DEI?
Farooq Mehboob:
I wish there were more women in our industry. Women account for about 3% of the workforce in HVACR industry, but they are 47% across the United States. And that is one of the things I think that's hampering us. We need to attract women to our industry. One of my thoughts this morning was that we have an opportunity because women are homemakers, they have to look after children, families, but there's an opportunity in remote work. There are new ways of working coming up. Maybe we bring women to our workforce by saying, Hey, you don't have to work full days. We know you're going to look after your home, but go to a pattern where it's part-time work, but we need women in the workforce. We are not going to get better without that.
Kaitlyn Baich:
And a few episodes ago, we actually did a podcast on young engineers in ASHRAE. And so I want to kind of give you the opportunity to give young engineers advice about making it in this industry.
Farooq Mehboob:
You see, young engineers are the future, not only of ASHRAE or this industry, but of all the industry in the world. And this industry is the bedrock on which every other industry sits. You can't have data centers without HVACR. You can't develop biotechnologies without HVACR. And the message I'd like to put out is that, Hey, guys, it's not overalls and grime. This is really something on which the future of the planet hinges. So we need to inspire our young engineers with a message that the work you do in this industry is critical to the future of the planet. That’s my message.
Kaitlyn Baich:
Thank you so much.
Kelly Barraza:
Yeah, absolutely. I think ’t's really important to bring up the point how the breadth of our industry, and what all things that it touches from data centers to healthcare, to schools, to have the air that we breathe, all of it, right? So I want to thank you for joining us today, Farooq, and for your contributions to the HVAC industry. So thank you for your time.
Farooq Mehboob:
I've been delighted talking to you two, and thank you so much for all that you do to push the message across.
Kelly Barraza:
Thank you. And I—
Farooq Mehboob:
It was my pleasure being here.
Kelly Barraza:
Thank you so much. And I want to thank Kaitlyn for co-hosting this episode of ASHRAE Journal Podcast with me.
Kaitlyn Baich:
Thank you so much, Kelly. We'd also like to thank the listeners at home and our live audience for joining us today. For anyone interested in learning more about Farooq or the decarbonization initiatives laid out at COP27 last year, the live stream of that event is available on ASHRAE's website. Before we sign off, Farooq, do you have any parting words for us?
Farooq Mehboob:
Keep on doing the great job you guys are doing. We're depending on you. And we're a volunteer organization. Volunteers can volunteer part of their time, but you're devoting your lives to this business. And I want to say a big thank you to the anchors.
Kelly Barraza:
Thank you Farooq. Thank you so much. Seriously. Okay. Thank you, Mr. President. Join us next month for another episode of ASHRAE Journal Podcast, a platform for leading voices in the industry.
ASHRAE Journal:
The ASHRAE Journal Podcast team is editor John Falcioni; managing editor, Kelly Barraza; producer and associate editor, Chadd Jones; assistant editor, Kaitlyn Baich; associate editor, Tani Palefski; and technical editor, Rebecca Matyasovski. Copyright ASHRAE. The views expressed in this podcast are those of individuals only, and not of ASHRAE, its sponsors or advertisers. Please refer to ashrae.org/podcast for the full disclaimer.