Translating a Building Operations Pilot with Fullbright Scholar
Michael Kane, a Northeastern professor of civil and environmental engineering, works in his lab, which focuses on automated systems. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
CEE Associate Professor Michael Kane helped build a 14-hour building operators training certification pilot, that he is now going to take to Argentina as a Fullbright Scholar, and translate the program into Spanish.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cesareo Contreras.
This Fulbright Scholar trains the next generation of smart building operators
For the past few years, Northeastern University professor Michael Kane and his team have been taking students at Madison Park Technical Vocational High School in Boston on virtual reality building walkthroughs to help them enter the mind of a building operations manager.
As students learn the ins and outs of pipes, heating and air conditioning systems, and the building’s electrical underpinnings, they are asked to consider several questions building operations managers think about on the regular: What in this building affects its power and energy use? What in this building impacts people? And lastly, how, as building operators, do we navigate those questions and solve workers’ challenges?
These exercises are part of a 14-hour building operators training certification pilot that Kane, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and a few collaborators have developed with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The program has a few primary goals: to introduce entry-level workers to modern automation and smart technologies that are being integrated into buildings — think smart battery energy systems and smart lights — and to train them to take a human-first approach when solving challenges, he explained.