ASHRAE Journal And The Origin Of The ASHRAE Pakistan Chapter

From eSociety, December 2017

Before there was an ASHRAE Pakistan Chapter, there was the ASHRAE Journal Club.

In December 2002, about 40 people attended the first ASHRAE Journal Club meeting in Karachi, Pakistan–about a year before the ASHRAE Pakistan Chapter was formed. Fifteen years later, the club continues to discuss technical features from the Journal in addition to other chapter activities.

Two of Pakistan’s senior ASHRAE members–Ainul Abedin, Fellow/Life Member ASHRAE, and the late Humayun Zaheer, Associate Member ASHRAE–formed the ASHRAE Journal Club because “there was no source of technical information relating to HVAC, which could be disseminated to practicing engineers within the country,” said Mohammad Abbas Sajid, P.E., Member ASHRAE, who has served as a president of the ASHRAE Pakistan Chapter and a sub-regional chair for ASHRAE’s Region-At-Large.

Pakistani ASHRAE members wanted to provide technical activities to encourage young engineers, but the members initially had difficulty garnering enough support to apply to become a chapter, he said. So, the ASHRAE Journal Club was born to provide technical information to those members.

The first ASHRAE Journal article the club discussed was “Economics of Cogeneration” by William Ryan, Ph.D., P.E., which was published in October 2002, according to a news story provided by Akbar Zaheer, Member ASHRAE, who is the president of the ASHRAE Pakistan Chapter.

Over the years, the ASHRAE Journal Club has professionally helped ASHRAE members by exposing them to new ideas and technologies discussed in the Journal articles as well as connecting the Journal Club members with the authors for a “complete dissemination of knowledge,” said Sajid.

When the ASHRAE Journal Club meets six times a year, Abedin chooses a technical feature from a previously published ASHRAE Journal for the group to discuss, said Sajid. Club members discuss that article for about 30 minutes, and any questions are sent to the article’s author.

Generally, articles that address energy efficiency and energy conservation create lively discussions, said Sajid.

“Pakistan is a country where energy is scarce and very expensive, so energy efficiency is of interest to everyone and more so when it relates to HVAC, which constitutes major portion of building energy consumption,” he said. “With our emphasis on understanding the implications of energy-efficient technologies, our focus remains on this subject in most of the presentations.”