JCI Engineering Tour

Thanks to our recently retired member Dan Spacek, 6 – 8 WSJ Society members were able to get a tour of the new Engineering building in Glendale Wi. It is across the street (Florist Ave.) North of the Corp HQ onGreen Bay Rd. JCI bought a 2-story building and did a major remodeling of it for the Engineering staff that was relocated from the now empty 507 E. Michigan facility. The first floor is mostly labs, with a cafeteria and a few meeting rooms. The second floor is meeting rooms and cubicles. Most of the cubes were set up for daily use by staff that are otherwise working remotely. So, the occupancy was rather light.

The labs would look very familiar to most of our former engineering staff of the many different specialties that have worked at JCI in the past. There are labs full of racks with all versions of digital controllers going through various thermal and extended life cycle tests. I was encouraged to see several rooms still dedicated to tests of the controlled devices (valves, dampers, and actuators), along with performance graphs of the mechanical equipment they connect to. A control system is only as good as its weakest link, so all the great things today’s digital controls can do, are subject to being thwarted by the end devices that actually regulate the heating and cooling fluids and fresh air that ultimately deliver the comfort HVAC systems are installed to provide. If those end devices do not perform accurately, repeatably, and reliably, the best the high-tech controls can do is sound an alarm and, if smart enough, pinpoint the problem area. Electronics and digital have done great things for the buildings industry, and they get most of the headlines, but they do not directly change the psychrometrics of comfort, without those controlled devices. (There’s a term you put on the shelf a long time ago;-)

To those of you that may not quite be this deep into control loop function, let me try an analogy to your automobile. If the vehicle design teams put lots of fancy sound systems and computer screens in the car, along with high tech cameras and self-driving features, but neglect the engine, transmission, suspension and brakes, the vehicle will not perform very well.

Please pardon my getting a bit geeky on the controls topic, but I believe it points in the right direction that JCI is striving to get back their focus on the “Commercial” building market. Residential and light commercial have never been very willing to pay for the higher quality that is required for better HVAC control. Quality Commercial buildings with a leaning toward Industrial may be closer to what we used to be.

Gene Strehlow PE