Hot stuff at the booth
At TABB's Expo booth, visitors saw two demonstrations: One of leak-testing apparatus, and another of proportional balancing. "Contractors and engineers loved it," reports Jack Webster, TABB's Director of Certification. "They could see just how the process works, and were able to perform these tasks themselves.

"It was really interesting to engineers who have to specify this as the way they want their designed systems to operate. They got an opportunity to see how the duct is constructed, what the gauges should read, how to properly adjust the dampers, and where they should be set to achieve energy savings and good indoor air quality."

In a typical booth incident, two ASHRAE-member contractors listened intently as John Hamilton, TABB's assistant director of certification, took them-step-by-step-through adjustment and balancing tests. Hamilton told them what his gauges reflected with each action.He then explained the reasons TABB offered them more (and would deliver) than other certification programs. When he finished, one contractor said to the other: "I'm not even going to do that anymore-I'm simply going to hire TABB-certified people to do it."

Attendees on the bus
Visitors to the TABB booth were offered could learn more. Prearranged tours of the Chicago area's Bellwood , Ill. training center were scheduled; architects, engineers and contractors got on buses to see it. Opened in 1996, the Apprentice and Journeymen Technical Training Center was built by SMWIA Local 73 and the Chicago Sheetmetal and Contractors Association. Co-hosts for the tours were Stanley Karczynski, president/ business manager of Local 73, and contractor William L. Niehoff Jr., a principal in Fresh Aire, Inc. (Lemont, Ill.).

Brief initial remarks enabled Niehoff to provide perspective: "Keep in mind the apprentice is going to spend four years being trained to learn sheet metal. When he finishes a journeyman, he's going to come over to the testing and balancing laboratory.

"But before he begins that training, he spends 96 classroom hours learning the formulas to prepare himself for the lab," Niehoff said. "For the next three years he comes here, two to four nights a week-on his own time- to better educate himself.

"This is why we are so proud of what we have here and what it means to the workers-and to our customers, who are assured of quality from start to finish of any and every project."

Tony Adolfs, Executive Director of the Chicagoland Sheetmetal Contractors Association, noted that, "This state-of-the-art sheet metal industry training facility, recognized as the finest in the United States, is our field of dreams." He added that Chicago has long been known as the leader in the testing, adjusting and balancing field.

Erik Emblem, executive director of NEMI and TABB's administrator, provided background: "They were at the forefront of testing, adjusting and balancing certification," he said at the press conference. "They led the way with this magnificent facility."

In fact, the first certification program for testing and balancing was created in Chicago-in 1976.

Terrorism lured media members away from the AHR Expo - to the sheet metal industry's Bellwood, Ill., training center-for a press event.

"Our level of security in buildings is being challenged like never before," Dr. James E.Woods said. "We need to have credible information because our lives may depend on it." Dr.Woods, author of an article in this insert, is perhaps the best-known expert on building security issues involving air and water-perhaps best summed up in a relatively new word, "bioterrorism."

Further, his name is on the phone list of every reporter covering the bioterrorism beat. After the anthrax attacks of 2001, he was a guest on numerous TV news shows and quoted in major newspapers. The executive director of the Building Diagnostics Research Center, Dr. Woods chaired ASHRAE's ad hoc Committee on Building Health and Safety under Extraordinary Incidents.

"Fear of terrorism demands a new risk management strategy for building owners, to deal with extraordinary incidents, intentional or accidental. We have to understand what the risk is, what the vulnerability is, before we can make recommendations on how to respond," Dr.Woods said.

"We need to know that what we deliver, works. Building diagnostics is the procedure that leads us to find the weaknesses and then be able to identify the treatment necessary to overcome those weaknesses. And TABB is the procedure that allows us to deal with that.

"You've got to be able to trust the people who are out in the field who are doing the work, setting up the systems to work they way they're supposed to work. TABB gives us those people."