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The education of building technicians—people who operate the electrical and mechanical systems within skyscrapers and industrial facilities—is critical for long-term energy conservation and efforts to reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels. Forty percent of the nation's energy use and 40 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions come from buildings.

The energy efficiency of buildings depends largely on the skills of building technicians, because even new buildings will not run efficiently if technicians do not operate their systems properly.

For this reason the Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) Center at Laney College, in Oakland, California, has developed close partnerships with scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. These partnerships add the latest energy efficiency research to the working knowledge of technicians who operate large commercial buildings and the community college instructors who teach building technicians.

In the photo, Andrea Mercado, a senior research associate in the Building Technology and Urban Systems Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, shares her research on energy-usage benchmarking with instructors at a BEST Center workshop in June.

The BEST Center uses The Energy Information Handbook by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a primer on how to analyze and use the data from energy management systems for maximum energy efficiency. The BEST Center introduces this handbook to community college instructors at workshops, so that they in turn can use the up-to-date information to teach aspiring and employed building technicians.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s research on building technology and sustainable systems is the basis of BEST Center programs to help experienced technicians “re-tune” their skills so that they can run highly automated building systems.

Both national laboratories are part of the preeminent federal research system managed by the Department of Energy's Office of Science.

The BEST Center’s curricula also use problem-based learning scenarios developed by Laney College faculty to foster technicians’ critical thinking skills.

“We want to create technicians who will be putting on their critical-thinking caps in their daily routines so that they don’t just go through a building turning dials and what have you in rote, cookbook fashion. Building systems are so sophisticated now that you really have to be at the top of your game to manage them effectively,” said Larry Chang, BEST Center manager.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory previously collaborated with Laney College administrators and faculty on two ATE projects. The scientists created software for a computer simulation that allows students to see how energy use is affected by modifications to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. They also supported the Physics of Building Science course (which Laney College offers to high school students at Green Energy Academies in the East Bay metropolitan area) by providing material for basic thermodynamics lessons, serving as guest speakers, and hosting field trips to the national laboratory.

In addition to working with Laney College faculty on curricula, scientists from the national labs make presentations to community college instructors at BEST Center professional development workshops. At one such workshop in the summer of 2013, a scientist from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory took advantage of the collegial relationship that the national labs and Laney College have with the University of California, Berkeley: during his lessons for community college faculty, he used university buildings as demonstration sites.