ASHRAE REGION VIII

Director and Regional Chair's Message

 

The 2024-2025 ASHRAE year is already well underway! Our chapters across Region
VIII have been hosting many great meetings, fundraisers, product expositions, and
social events. I encourage all our members to support these events by attending or
volunteering your time and talents to host them. Our industry is facing an enormous
workforce challenge, but ASHRAE events like these not only strengthen our chapters
but provide a chance to showcase the wide breadth of rewarding opportunities available
in the built environment space.

This year’s ASHRAE Society theme is “Empowering Our Workforce: Building a
Sustainable Future.” 2024-2025 Society President M. Dennis Knight’s theme looks to
showcase the new and emerging technologies in the HVAC&R and building sciences
and how ASHRAE is playing an important part in ensuring that our workforce is both
adaptive and forward thinking.

Our members and fellow colleagues in the construction industry are facing a great task.
The demand for talent to design, construct, and maintain a more sustainable future is
increasing by the day. The world is projected to add approximately 2.5 trillion square
feet of new building space by 2060. To understand the scale, that is the equivalent of a
New York City about every 30 days. While most of that new construction will take place
outside North America, we too will certainly see historic growth in both new construction
and renovations during this time.

As planned construction and renovations are underway, we are also seeing the terrible
devastation as increasingly violent weather impacts so many of our communities. Our
members will be called upon to help quickly rebuild these communities.

We have a great challenge in front of us, but as they say with great challenge comes
great opportunity. We have an opportunity to impact our communities and our world in a meaningful way. We can help build more efficiently, more resiliently, and with more
innovation than ever before. But we will need more help! As we empower our
workforce, we must also expand it if we are going to meet the needs of our industry. As
ASHRAE members we will play a part in that growth.

I challenge each of our members to not only look for ways to grow our chapters, but to
help grow our future workforce. Continue to be active in our universities, vocational
programs, and K-12 schools. Be more open to finding talent through non-traditional
paths. Let’s all be ambassadors for our industry as we build a sustainable future.

​

Joseph Sanders, DRC 2023-2026