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Phil Zito 0:00
This is the smart buildings Academy podcast with Phil Zito episode 330. Hey folks, Phil Zito here and welcome to episode 330 of the smart buildings Academy podcast. In this episode, we're going to be asking a question that I've been seeing pop up all over the place, which is, how do I get a job in building automation. If you are not watching this, if you are listening to this after the fact, you are definitely going to want to go to podcast smart builders academy.com, forward slash 230. Because we are actually going to do a screen share. And we are going to look at how to get a job like I'm going to look at some job postings, I'm gonna teach you how to analyze it. I'm going to teach you how to potentially find the hiring manager, and how to bypass you know, HR screenings, all sorts of stuff, as well as you know why you want to get a job in building automation and what building automation is all about. So that being said, let's kick it off. Why should you listen to me about how to get a job in building automation? Well, I'm Phil Zito. I'm the founder.
Phil Zito 1:05
That's not good enough right now. Okay, well, I'm Phil Zito. I'm the founder and CEO of smart buildings Academy. And we've trained over 10,000, folks, hey, in all aspects of building automation, so I've got to see a lot of different job requirements, from OEMs, system integrators, contractors, building operators, engineers, etc. So I've got to look at a bunch of different job requirements. And I understand how folks think, having been a former ops manager myself when it comes to hiring people in to building automation. So let's get started. First off, what is building automation? I'm not going to assume you know what it is. But quite simply, here's how I like to explain to people when they're like, Phil, what the heck do you do? If you think of a nest thermostat, right? Nest Smart Home thermostat, you think of that, and you think about it for your house? Well think of a bunch of nest Smart Home thermostats. But for like a hospital be pretty complex, right? Well add on to that complex ability, the need to control all of the systems that go and feed in to those Nest thermostats, obviously, you'd have to have a much more complex thermostat, right? Well, that is where a control system comes in place. And a control system simply processes inputs, and then drives outputs. And it does that through what is known as a direct digital controller, okay, direct digital controller, takes inputs, puts, in some logic, some code, processes that logic and drives outputs. That's all well and good, but those are pretty useless by themselves. Enter the building automation system, the building automation system, allows us to visualize control, monitor alarm, trend, do all these advanced capabilities, which you may not know what those are, don't worry, we got plenty of episodes about those kinds of things. But you can go and look at your DDC controller, you can see what it's doing, you can see the choices it's making Nowhere else in my life since I left the military. So you know, have I had as much fun as building automation, you know, I like to relate it to like adult Legos, right? Where else do you get to go. And you know, as a 20, something year old when, when I started, get to go and immediately impact things, you get to go and install these systems that are huge, and they are complex, and you get to learn it and mechanical systems and electrical systems, and all sorts of other things. So there's so much to building automation. And that's just on the installation side. Not to mention, depending on where you're located in the world, you can make a six figure salary within a couple of years in building automation. And as far as job security goes, this is one of the last trades that will be outsourced or will be taken over by artificial intelligence. I mean, eventually everything's gonna get taken over by artificial intelligence just is what it is. But, you know, I'm telling you, if you're like a bagger at Walmart, you're gonna get replaced a lot sooner than building automation. Technicians are so high salary, lot of fun, different every day, and great job security. That's why I think you should be in building automation. But let's cut to the chase. How do you get a job in building automation and by the way, we got someone from Denmark. That's awesome. See, killer DK. Awesome, thanks. Hey, great to see you on here. All right. So let's talk about how you get this job. The first thing we have to do is we have to go and figure Are out what we're trying to apply for. So I am going to get rid of myself. And we're going to take a look. And we're going to type in, we're going to go here, and let's type in building automation technician. And let's see what happens. Maybe we'll just type in job as well. Okay, so we go building automation job. Oh, look, there's 4902 jobs. Alright, so let's click in on control system specialists, I believe their customer of ours, let's take a look at this job requirement. So what do you need to do? You got to travel the job sites, right? So you got to be able to drive you need to collaborate with folks. So you need to be able to get along with people utilize brute blueprints, engineering specs and wiring diagrams to perform installation. What does that exactly look like? Well, let's take a look real quick.
Phil Zito 6:04
So I'm going to go I'm gonna pull this up on my screen. And for those of you who are listening to the podcast, what I'm doing right now, is I am opening up a CTRL, C middle. So we're gonna go in here, and when I hit the MEP drawings, I'm gonna bring this guy up, I'm gonna go in here, I'm gonna open up a specification, let's, let's do this one. So basically, what you would be asked to do is go to a job site, and then interpret the stuff on these drawings. So if you're someone who likes to play around with Legos, and build stuff and read diagrams, this is kind of right up your alley, you're going to go and build this stuff up, then you're going to test diagnose and repair building automation systems. Okay, what does that look like? Well, that looks like, you know, potentially logging in to a control system, this is a Niagra Workbench work with a basically, software supervisor that I've got stood up here. So you'd log in, you'd have to go and test your points, you'd have to figure out so this is kind of a service role is what I'm seeing right here. And says Complete certifications is required. So if you got to do some OSHA or Niagara training, stuff like that, what do you need to be able to do in order to do this? Right? It's saying, right, be a good worker. I mean, that's pretty much basic. And that says, having some knowledge of controls theory, automatic temperature control. And this is where the excitement ends. For a lot of people. They're like, what went wrong? What do I do to get to this point, because they're all fired up about it, and then they look and they see, oh, I need to have two years experience, or I need to have knowledge of stuff. What can I do now? Obviously, you know, we're a training organization. So you know, I'm gonna I'm biased. So I'm not even going to mention our programs. I'm going to just walk you through like you've never heard of us. We're not in existence. And at least our paid programs aren't in existence. What can you do to get to this point, let me tell you what I did to get to this point, right. So I got hired on out of the military to work on control systems as an installer, right, got hired on as an installer and was told, Hey, you're going to work on these systems and got thrown to the wolves. I grabbed the Honeywell gray manual. So if you've never heard of that Honeywell gray manual. Just go here, type in Honeywell gray manual file type, PDF, man, I love Google dorks or Google primitives. They really let you go and kinda narrow down some information. So we're going to find it is the first response. We click on this sucker comes right up, Honeywell building controls gray manual, you're going to want to work through this first, right, this is going to help you understand controls theory, this is gonna help you understand some basic, it's a little weak in my opinion, in the H fac side of things. It does kind of go through them, but it could be stronger. It does well though, in explaining control fundamentals, controls theory, and has a really solid thing on sacred metrics, which people don't teach enough. They don't teach psychometrics enough. By the way, if you're looking for these links, they're going to be at podcast at smart buildings. academy.com Ford slash 230. Definitely go hit us up there. Alright, so I would go through this. Now the next thing you're going to be like is okay, how do I go and actually set this up? So the one software that I know is still pretty easy to get your hands on as easy IO software, most of the other software's you have to get go through distributors to get your hands on that. And it has licensing requirements, you could still if you message EZ IO, you can still get their CPT software, which will enable you to play with the control system. So what I recommend is an F W dash 08. And I'm talking like, lowest price, right? In an ideal world, you would like be serious about this. And you would invest, you know, 2000 ish dollars on a lab kit, you'd go get some edge 10s, you'd go get yourself Niagra workbench, and you would buy some AIOs, and relays and stuff. And you take this like really seriously, and you would knock it out, that would be ideal. That's what I would want to do if I were you. But
Phil Zito 10:49
a lot of people don't have that disposable cash or for whatever reason, they don't want to invest in themselves. And then they wonder why they don't ever get promoted or raises. But that's neither here nor there. All right, so I've no ties to this controls dash products.com. And as any of you know, who's followed me for any amount of time, I don't go and promote any product over another. But right, when you buy an EZ IODE FW dash eight, I liked this controller because it does combis, wireless, and Ethernet. Okay, so we're going to get to play with IP, we're going to get to play with wireless, and we're going to get to play with MSTP serial bus. So right off the bat, we're gonna get a really good labbing experience, it's going to have a series of ayos and bhios, and some UIs, right, so we're gonna get some different input types, we're gonna get some different output types, and we're gonna get three different comm buses, you can probably pick up two of these, and then you know, you get the CPT software. And you can play with that. Another company that you can do that is solid for labbing is going to be can temporary. I can't spell any of you have followed me for any amount of time. Know that my spelling is atrocious. But you go to contemporary controls. I don't know if they still have this. Yeah, they do. The BAS pi. So BS pi, it's a Raspberry Pi board, really inexpensive. It's going to also with their bas control tool set. It's based on the Sedona framework, which is very similar to Niagara, Niagara has got, you know, anywhere between, depending on who you ask 30 to 50% market share. And almost every major original equipment manufacturer OEM has a specific product set built on Niagara. So learning Sedona is gonna get you pretty close to understanding Niagra it's completely different than workbench. But you're going to learn things like drivers, you're going to learn things like setting up buses, etc. So if I'm sitting in your shoes right now, I've picked up either two FW zero eights, or two bas py POS. And I've got the software, what do I do now? Now I'm going to bring you to the next tool that I like, which is control SPEC builder. All right, so control SPEC builder here is really solid, it's something I share with a lot of our students, and you're gonna go to try it. Excuse me, and you are going to be able to build out a project. So here we're going to be able to build out a project. And at this point, I know you still don't have the H fac knowledge to build out a project. I'm going to kind of pull back and clarify. Like how do you get that H fac knowledge? How do you get that BAs knowledge to actually do this, but this is the next tool in your quiver that you're going to walk because what I can do, I can go to add equipment, I can select like maybe I want to do single zone unit, that's a good one to run off one of those FW zero eights. So we click save, right, we're going to get this and now we can modify this unit to do whatever we want, right? We could do DX staging, which would be binary outputs. We could do things like cooling valve modulating, which would be analog outputs. And we can start to build all this out. What it'll allow us to do is build out a sequence of operations, and a schematic and a points list. So you've been probably thinking to yourself when you saw those original documents, the mechanical and the specification, like how do I get my hands on one of those definitely can Google that but the nice thing about this is it's going to build a sequence for you. And it's going to build a schematic and it's going to build a points list. And this is what you can use in labbing Okay, so at this point, like we've skipped pretty far forward, and we haven't talked about the underlying skill set, what do you do to get that underlying skill set that you need, in order to be able to do labbing with all these things?
Phil Zito 15:16
Well, there's several resources, obviously, I'm going to point you all to our YouTube page, everything on there is free, there's no opt in. So I'm not trying to like do a gotcha where it's like, come to our YouTube page. But you can go to the YouTube page. And once you're at the page, right, you can just type in the search bar, building automation, you can talk, type in it, H fac, etc. And you're gonna find multiple videos on h fac, and Bs, this is what I recommend you focus on. So like someone in the chat is saying that they're an HVAC, Commercial Industrial Tech, and they want to make the jump to automation. So H fac, and electrical is probably pretty solid with that person. So what they need to understand, though, is h fac control theory, because I tend to find a lot of mechanics. They don't understand H vac control theory, they understand H fac installation. But when it comes to theory, that's a little different because it's it operates different than how you would run a system just manually by itself. And there's all kinds of interlocks like if you go and change space temp by one degree that affects your air handler, and then that affects all of your things. service tech, okay? Got it.
Phil Zito 16:37
So you, you go to see those kinds of things, and you want to go and really gain that theory knowledge. Now, additionally, right, once once you've got that, it would be bas knowledge. And so in bas knowledge, you know, right, we got the YouTube page, we also got the guides. And what I would do is I would point you to this guide right here, which is going to be the ultimate guide to building automation systems. And I would go and I would read through this. And if anything didn't make sense to you, I would note it and then I would dig into that either through Google through YouTube. Once again, I am going and showing you free resources. Obviously there are paid resources that are much more structured, but I'm showing you kind of the low cost free approach. So you how you do it is you go and you say to yourself, alright, here's a building automation system. So for example, I type in building automation, architecture. All right, let me go to images. And I'm going to bring up a building automation, let's just say Siemens, we're going to do Siemens, alright, building automation, architecture, Siemens, here's the PX line. And then what I want to find is what's called a network riser. Okay, I got this network riser. Now, right? Once I have this network riser, I need to start asking myself, can I identify that point? The devices, this is the first thing right as architecture. I know this is a supervisory layer, these are field controllers. This is servers. Okay, great. I can identify. Now I need to identify what each one of these systems does. Okay, what is a supervisory device do? Well, that's where we come back to our F w 08, or our Raspberry Pi, we go and we start to use supervisory device functionality. We go and we create field buses, we map in our field trunks, all of these things that we start to do, once we feel like we've mastered one of these devices, or I don't want to say master, because that has so much connotation, but we feel like we have an understanding of one of these devices. Then we move to the next layer, I like to start at the supervisory device. And I like to move down from there. So you know, I say someone in chat is talking about delta. And he's talking about their line code programming, which, yeah, that's the thing, right is certain folks like KMC, certain folks, like reliable, like delta are gonna have line code, and other folks are gonna have graphical code, I wouldn't say focus on if you're really just trying to get a job in building automation, like starting job. I wouldn't say to focus on programming right away. If you can get super solid on mapping and controllers to a supervisory device, adding those configuring their inputs and outputs and wiring up inputs and outputs. And you can effectively communicate that to a hiring manager, then you're going to be in a good place. If you already can do programming. If you can already do scripting and stuff like that, then it's really just a matter of your resume. and positioning yourself to the right employer. Because, I mean, if you could program right now, pretty much anyone will scoop you up. I'm willing to bet actually, if you post in the comments that I could program, someone in the future is probably going to tag you or reach out to you and be like, Oh, so you can program do you want a job? That's how in demand programmers are right now. It's crazy. Now, we've went, we've done our supervisory device, we've went, we've added one of our field controllers, we've configured our inputs and outputs. What do we do now? Well, H fact knowledge and H vac theory is definitely something that's difficult to pick up, but it's not impossible. Right, I would point you once again, to our website, to our blog series. And I would point you to typing in HVAC, HVAC, if I click on the Search bar, and you would go and get a bunch of articles on h fat controls theory that you could learn, those are going to be very beneficial to you. Now you got h fac, and you've got bas at a communicative level, then you need to get solid on the electrical. So for the electrical, one of the YouTube channels, if you have never heard of them, that I really, really like, I'm gonna bring it up real quick
Phil Zito 21:30
is the engineering mindset. I really liked his videos. He keeps everything pretty simple and pretty basic. It's more geared towards engineering. But he does have a couple H fac videos that are really nice. Couple things about chillers. I feel like he leaves some stuff out. But I understand that it's coming from an engineering perspective. I mean, it's literally called engineering mindset, right? So be aware of that. Good videos, in my opinion, and a good place to start. If you want visual kind of inexpensive resources. Well, it's free. So it's not inexpensive. It's free resources on some basic H fac theory, and some basic electrical theory. So pretty helpful for you right there, right, that's another resource that I would point you to Okay, so we come back to this job control system specialist. I don't want to go and bring this company up. Because I don't know if they want all their like info and everything put on display. But let's just pretend I was the person who was hiring. So I would look for my company. And then once I look for my company in the search, and you know my company comes up, right? So it would look something like this, the company would come up in LinkedIn, that's where you should be searching. And then once the search comes in, you're going to go and look for employees, you're going to try to find like, who are the employees at this company. All right, and once you know who the employees are at this company, so let's like view this as a member. Okay, and we would see people and so we would see kind of some information about the employees, then we're going to try to narrow down, like, Okay, this job description is located in Denver. So we would say, Who are the people in Denver? Then once we know who the people are in Denver, we would be like, Okay, who are the managers in Denver for this company? Okay, now I'm going to LinkedIn connect to that manager. And here's what you're going to write. I saw your job posting for XYZ. I am a motivated, reliable individual, who does a ton of building automation studying on my own time, I'd like to talk to you about the job position. Is that always going to work? No, but you're hitting the key things. One, you're reliable, you're motivated, and you have a passion for building automation outside of work hours. You know, that means that outside of the work hours, you actually are going and you are studying building automation, and applying yourself makes me think of one of our former students Armando, who paid for training himself did a lot of work. Outside of hours, he would send me text messages on the weekend about the labbing he was doing and he ended up I think he's been in the industry a year and a half now and he's a programmer. Already, like that fast. Boom, done. because he applied himself. So you know, you find a job you want, you identify what they're asking for, you get that initial LinkedIn connection. Once you've got that LinkedIn connection, now you need to address what is going on, I'm gonna take a sip of water real quick.
Phil Zito 25:20
What is going on in this job description, so they're saying knowledge of controls theory, automatic temperature control, building automation systems and other building sub systems. So what you can say to him is, I see in your job description that you need someone who is knowledgeable about this, this, this, this, here's how I'm knowledgeable about it. And here's how I became knowledgeable about it. I'd love the opportunity to have a quick phone call with you to demonstrate my knowledge, so you can test me on my knowledge, and so that we can have a discussion about this role. Now, I know that's scary. Now I have a 16 year old who just went got her license, and she was really worried about what if I fail? What if I don't get the license? I was like, well, guess what? You learned what they're going to ask on the license test. And you study what she didn't know. And you come back. And there you go. So that's what you do. They're like, now you know what? I asked you about PID loops. You couldn't explain PID loops. And you're like, Okay, I don't understand PID loops. What do I do? The search bar here, I type in PID, I watched the 30 minute video on how PID loops work. I go to my FW 08 and CPT software, I create an PID loop. And I go through it a couple times I change settings, I understand how it responds. So now I go back to this person say, You know what, you said that I didn't understand PID loops. Well, guess what? I went, I watched videos on PID loops. I researched PID loops. I practice them on my home lab, once you asked me some more questions. And the thing is, managers are not going to have ever experienced this in people before. They've never experienced someone who goes, takes the feedback from the interview, goes and learns the knowledge in the material and then comes back. And it's like, okay, test me again. And that persistence, that knowledge is either going to get you told, Don't ever call me again, or more likely is going to get you a potential job offer. And best thing is, is you don't have to do it with one company at a time since there's over 100,000 bas jobs open at any given point in time, you can take this exact same process, and go to another company and another company. And as you start to get asked questions by these companies, you're going to learn what you do and do not know. And because of that, you're going to learn what you're going to be asked. And as you learn what you're going to be asked, then you're going to be able to come back. And I'm telling you, if you do this exact process I've outlined, you can get a job pretty fast in building automation. And yeah, will it be a programmer job? No, of course not. But it will be a installer or technician job, that will get your foot in the door, that will then start getting you experience on project work or service work, which is going to enable you to be able to go and move up the ranks. Now. Let's talk about like this person in chat who has programming experience. Okay, maybe that programming in service experience, right? Should be pretty easy to leverage that into bas. So why does this person not have a BAS job if they want one? I don't know. Could be maybe lack of resume. Could be the market they're in doesn't have a lot of bas jobs available. I mean, I'd be really surprised if that were the case, considering there's so many jobs available. Or maybe the person just didn't know how to approach it. So what you have to do is do an honest assessment of your skill. So here's how you do that. I like to use mind mapping software, I like to use, I use the software called X mind. I'm going to bring it over. I don't know if it's free anymore. But what I like to do is just grab a mind map, and I would type in something to the effect of let's do it no one there to know. Okay, I'm just gonna go and change its layout. So it's just like this, but I'm gonna type in skills I have and then I would type in you know, service experience.
Phil Zito 30:00
And I would say, Okay, what does that mean to people? Well, I'm able to troubleshoot electrical, we're able to troubleshoot, mechanical, etc. So detail out that out, and I would add a value associated to that, okay. And then I would say, you know, it may be right, what it knowledge, the programming, we're programming, and then you know, whatever, whatever, whatever, and then soft skills. So I would outline the skills, and then what you've created is essentially a skill matrix, you've created a matrix on which you can overlay this matrix on any job you run into. So you know, we pick another building automation job, this is building automation and service technician, New York, right. And we start to dig into this, where they have, it says, three to seven years building automation experience, or deep experience with mechanical systems, and a desire to learn building automation, okay? So that's like an inroad, right there, right? That's a good position for this person who kind of said, their skill set, because they can take their service experience. And they can overlay it on to this right here. So that's an example of taking a skill matrix. And using that skill matrix one to communicate what you do and do not know, as well as being able to use it to kind of be a source of truth of whether or not you really can apply for a position. You know, this position may be like, oh, man, I can never do building automation. I've never done building automation, whatever, whatever. But then you actually take an honest look, and you're like, okay, but I've worked with this software. I've done this, I've done that. And while it may not have been called Building Automation, that may not have been my title, my experience matrix shows that I can do it. And so then it's a matter of just taking your experience matrix, slicing up this job description, and pulling out what's in it. So let me take a sip of water one real quick. Installing building automation systems, setting up panels servicing, okay, so those are three tasks, I would pull out reading blueprints and wiring diagrams, okay, pull them out some electrical wiring, okay, pull it out, installing sensors, and actuators and controllers, okay, pull it out. service calls and troubleshooting. Okay, pull it out. Now, you take your skill matrix, and you take your little list of tasks, job tasks that I laid out, and you cross them, like you make lines. So for one skill, which may have been service in this person's case, you line it to all the skills that that attaches to, you keep that with you. So when you go to talk to the person, you're able to explain exactly which skills you have, and how they align. And that additionally, is going to generate your revenue resume, what you could do with your resume is you can say, as a such and such I did such and such, which directly correlates to such and such. So as a service technician, whatever, I went and serviced HVAC systems, which directly correlates to this. And then you point that out. And once again, use the information I told you, which is you look up the company name, where they're located, you find the ops manager, and then you reach out to the ops manager on LinkedIn, make that introduction, then provide that proof, an example that I was talking about. So I know this was largely theoretical, but I hope I gave you a lot of healthy health helpful. Oh, my gosh, helpful nuggets of information throughout this video. Definitely reach out to us at podcasts at smart buildings academy.com Ford slash to 330 Sorry, not 230. My gosh, we're in the three hundreds. So reach out to us at podcasts that smart buildings academy.com Ford slash 300 at 330 Oh, my goodness.
Phil Zito 34:23
And you will find links to the resources I've mentioned here today. And if you could do us a favor, if you're listening to this on iTunes and you feel like it deserves five star review, please leave one, like and subscribe on YouTube. And share this with people you know definitely helps grow the channel helps grow our reach and helps, you know, encourage us to continue bringing this great free content to you. So thanks so much for being here. And I look forward to talking to you on Wednesday, where I think we're gonna dive into certificates. So A Wednesday is our technical day Fridays are sales training day and Monday is our skill and workforce development day alright folks thanks so much and I look forward to talking to you on Wednesday take care
