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MARCH 2022 l The Wholesaler l PHCPpros.com
INDUSTRY NEWS
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HOME BUILDERS
(NAHB) has an- nounced a new agreement with Boys & Girls Clubs of America to introduce more of Americas youth to a future career in residential construction. The announcement was made at a press conference held during the NAHB International Builders Show (IBS) in Orlando.
The announcement comes as the residential construction indus- try continues to struggle to over- come the lack of available skilled trade workers. In fact, a recent survey of NAHB members showed nearly two thirds rank this issue as the most significant challenge they faced last year. As a builder myself, Im keenly aware of the lack of available, skilled workers in our industry, said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke, a custom home builder from Tampa, Florida. Thats why workforce development has been a top priority for the asso- ciation, and for me as chairman this past year.
Working together to promote construction career pathways, NAHB and Boys & Girls Clubs of America will connect young people to individ- uals in the industry, providing them with work-based learning activities and access to essential skills devel- opment programs to further their career exploration. NAHB CEO Jerry Howard and Boys & Girls Clubs of America President & CEO Jim Clark signed a proclamation at IBS in honor of their Workforce Readiness Agreement, emphasizing their shared commitment to building stronger communities by recruiting the next generation of skill laborers in the housing industry. The skilled labor shortage in our industry translates into housing affordability challenges and lower economic growth, Howard said. By working with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, we can address these potential future employees of our industry and build the workforce necessary to address our nations housing demands. Boys & Girls Clubs, with the sup- port of NAHB, can help teens recog- nize the opportunities available in the residential construction business and work with them to develop the skills necessary to succeed, added Clark.
To kick offthe pilot program, 10 local home builder associations (HBAs) will work with local Boys & Girls Clubs to mentor young men and women, showcase the multiple career opportunities available in the home building industry and help guide them to choose a career in residential construction. The local HBA chapters will host events, in- cluding career panels, jobsite visits and job shadowing.
NAHB and Boys & Girls Clubs of America Team Up to Promote Building Careers ThermOmegaTech and Grundfos Announce Partnership Armstrong Reaches Greenhouse Gas Emissions Goal
THERMOMEGATECH AND GRUND- FOS
have announced a partnership, bringing together two industry leaders to simplify and enhance domestic plumbing systems and installations for contractors throughout the United States. Beginning in late Q1, the partnership will offer a new packaged solution featuring Ther- mOmegaTechs CircuitSolver prod- uct line with the appropriate pump from the Grundfos MAGNA Series. We are excited about growing our relationship with a well-respected worldwide company like Grund- fos, said Tom Ruggierio, national business development manager at ThermOmegaTech. Having two companies with innovative, syner- gistic products working together will bring optimized solutions for domes- tic hot water systems that will serve the plumbing community well. The partnership supports the com- panies shared goals of enhancing the accessibility and conservation of water, our most precious resource, by providing solutions that exceed energy and efficiency standards. Working together allows us to save time for contractors who no longer need to source the appropriate pump style and size, Ruggierio said. The CircuitSolver solution will now come with an expert-recommended pump, allowing contractors to focus their efforts on what they do best - the installation. We continue to be impressed by the innovation of our ThermO- megaTech partner. Joining forces is a win-win opportunity for both companies as well as our manufac- turer representatives, contractors, and the homeowners, added Barry Nauss, Grundfos vice president of HVAC OEM. When used together, our products greatly minimize water consumption and increase energy efficiency by optimizing the recir- culating flow rate. This ensures the precise amount of water and power are utilized as water rotates through the system versus flowing down the drain. We're proud to offer our new, sustainability-focused packaged so- lutions to the market. Grundfos and ThermOmegaTech will also offer expert training ses- sions together in 2022 with the goal of increasing awareness of the ben- efits their product portfolios bring to a domestic hot water system.
ARMSTRONG FLUID TECHNOLOGY
announced a bold initiative in 2018, to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among its global cus- tomer base by 2 million tons, target- ing completion by the year 2022. At AHR Expo 2022 in January, Arm- strong proudly announced that they had reached and surpassed that lofty goal. In the process they have helped customers save 2.5 billion kWh of electricity usage, resulting in more than $300 million in cost savings. Achieving this goal is the equivalent of taking 600,000 cars off the road for a year, or off-setting the average annual CO2 emissions gen- erated by 100,000 people. Since June 2018, when the initia- tive was first announced, Armstrong has worked collaboratively with our customers and partners to imple- ment our innovative Design Envelope technology in building mechanical plants, worldwide. The application of this technology converts existing and new installations into ultra-efficient and sustainable systems said Todd Rief, Armstrong CEO.
We have now boosted Design Envelope Technology with our innovative Active Performance Management architecture. This 3-layer architecture adds the power of Digital Twins, Edge and Cloud computing to intelligent Design En- velope equipment. The application of Active Performance Management brings performance resilience and transparency to system design and operations. This helps our partners and our customers extract carbon from every stage of the lifecycle of a building. They can design a much smaller plant with lower construc- tion carbon footprint, and dramati- cally reduce their carbon emission from operations. All this while using predictive maintenance to preserve building performance without add- ing cost. We would like to sincerely thank our partners and our custom- ers for helping us reach this goal.
At the same time, we recognize that the work in this area is not yet done. Buildings worldwide continue to be some of the biggest con- tributors of GHG. Through our core competencies of Fluid Flow, Energy Transfer, Demand Based Control and Digitalization, we aim to bring a step change to the performance of build- ings through their entire lifecycle. Armstrong also launched a global validation effort in 2018 across a wide range of customer types and applications. The results were vali- dated by Bureau Veritas, and made available as a set of case histories.
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