I appreciate this post, thanks for sharing it! I’m curating it. I should flag that I haven’t properly dug into it (curating after a quick read), and don’t have any expertise in this.
Another flag is that I would love to see more links for parts of this post like the following: “In an especially egregious example, one of the largest HVAC companies in the state had its Manual J submission admin go on vacation. The temporary replacement forgot to rename files and submitted applications named for their installed capacity (1 ton, 2 ton, 3 ton, etc.), revealing that the company had submitted copies of the same handful of designs for thousands of homes.” I don’t fully understand what happened or why (the company was cutting corners and was pretending the designs were customized when they were actually not?), and a link would help me learn more (and see if I agree with your use of this example!). (Same with the example about building managers in schools in the early days of COVID.)
I’m really grateful that you’ve shared this; I think the topic is relevant, and I’d be excited to see more experts sharing their experiences and what various proposals might be missing. I particularly appreciated that you shared a bit about your background, that you used a lot of examples, and that the “Complexity and opacity strongly predict failure” heuristic is clear and makes sense. I think further work here would be great! I’d be particularly excited about something like a lit review on many of the interventions you listed as promising (which would also help collect more readings), and estimates for their potential costs and impacts.
Minor suggestion/question: would you mind if I made the headings in your post into actual headings? Then they’d show up in the table of contents on the side, and we could link to them. (E.g.)
Thanks! I’m not totally clear on what curate means in this context but am definitely amenable to editing for clarity!
Those are very valid criticisms. Before posting I felt there were two major shortcomings. 1) It’s argumentative (vs scout mindset), and 2) the claims aren’t well verified. Taking a different approach with 1) felt disingenuous, but 2) remains problematic.
I’m not aware of any quality empirical work directly focusing on the shortcomings of this workforce. I think this is partly due to a significant disconnect between people working in public health and people working in the industry. So when public health people encounter this argument they say something like “yes we’ll need more training for technicians” which isn’t really the claim I’m making (an important person from a PH thinktank actually just did this in response to this post lol). I’ll try to better corroborate the claims or come up with more readily documented ones. Ultimately I think we’ll still be left with something tantamount to a firehouse of anecdotes, which readers will have to decide whether or not to take at face value.
I can definitely better explain Manual J. I’ll also give some thought to illustrating the school building manager point more effectively.
Feel free to edit the headings however you see fit. I’ll look for that feature if I make any future posts.
Is it OK if I share the original draft with you? Thanks!
My libertarian-ish/yimby sensibilities don’t love it. It also seems to already be a feature of many US states—eg I hold a NJ master HVAC license—and I don’t see it as have much benefit thus far.
I appreciate this post, thanks for sharing it! I’m curating it. I should flag that I haven’t properly dug into it (curating after a quick read), and don’t have any expertise in this.
Another flag is that I would love to see more links for parts of this post like the following: “In an especially egregious example, one of the largest HVAC companies in the state had its Manual J submission admin go on vacation. The temporary replacement forgot to rename files and submitted applications named for their installed capacity (1 ton, 2 ton, 3 ton, etc.), revealing that the company had submitted copies of the same handful of designs for thousands of homes.” I don’t fully understand what happened or why (the company was cutting corners and was pretending the designs were customized when they were actually not?), and a link would help me learn more (and see if I agree with your use of this example!). (Same with the example about building managers in schools in the early days of COVID.)
I’m really grateful that you’ve shared this; I think the topic is relevant, and I’d be excited to see more experts sharing their experiences and what various proposals might be missing. I particularly appreciated that you shared a bit about your background, that you used a lot of examples, and that the “Complexity and opacity strongly predict failure” heuristic is clear and makes sense. I think further work here would be great! I’d be particularly excited about something like a lit review on many of the interventions you listed as promising (which would also help collect more readings), and estimates for their potential costs and impacts.
Minor suggestion/question: would you mind if I made the headings in your post into actual headings? Then they’d show up in the table of contents on the side, and we could link to them. (E.g.)
Thanks! I’m not totally clear on what curate means in this context but am definitely amenable to editing for clarity!
Those are very valid criticisms. Before posting I felt there were two major shortcomings. 1) It’s argumentative (vs scout mindset), and 2) the claims aren’t well verified. Taking a different approach with 1) felt disingenuous, but 2) remains problematic.
I’m not aware of any quality empirical work directly focusing on the shortcomings of this workforce. I think this is partly due to a significant disconnect between people working in public health and people working in the industry. So when public health people encounter this argument they say something like “yes we’ll need more training for technicians” which isn’t really the claim I’m making (an important person from a PH thinktank actually just did this in response to this post lol). I’ll try to better corroborate the claims or come up with more readily documented ones. Ultimately I think we’ll still be left with something tantamount to a firehouse of anecdotes, which readers will have to decide whether or not to take at face value.
I can definitely better explain Manual J. I’ll also give some thought to illustrating the school building manager point more effectively.
Feel free to edit the headings however you see fit. I’ll look for that feature if I make any future posts.
Is it OK if I share the original draft with you? Thanks!
Would objective licensing standards help? Training itself can be BS’d but maybe a test run by the state is harder to rig.
My libertarian-ish/yimby sensibilities don’t love it. It also seems to already be a feature of many US states—eg I hold a NJ master HVAC license—and I don’t see it as have much benefit thus far.