Integrating CVAR engineering

by ACAIRE

We must protect future generations from the irreversible consequences of the depletion of our lands and their bio-climates, as well as from predictable climate changes, which are predictable precisely because of their dire consequences for all of us who share this earthly atmosphere.

Integration

CVAR engineers in Colombia have accepted this historic responsibility. Hence, the need to integrate and rethink engineering management with the associations that make up FAIAR (Federation of Ibero-American Associations of CVAR) and AASA (Alliance of societies affiliated to ASHRAE).

This integration should be quickly materialized in the permanent exchange of proposals and in the transfer of technology between the countries that make up the FAIAR, with ASHRAE as the axis of this process. To make that experience a reality, it is necessary to accelerate this transfer and anticipate the needs of a new sustainable world, which we will have to design and build from now on.

As a concrete beginning of this task, ACAIRE (Colombian Association of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration) is leading the development of a proposal for statutes for the FAIAR, which allow the efforts to be integrated in a coordinated manner. To this end, documents were circulated among the members for the meeting that took place in Chicago last January, in which progress was made in proposals and studies such as:

• Share the experience of AMERIC to promote, with the support of the Mexican Government, the professionalization and certification of technicians in installation and maintenance of commercial systems in air conditioning and refrigeration.

• Implementation of systems that are recognized and endorsed in our countries with common ideas, cultures and similar needs.

• Creation of a legal figure to give formality and in due course access to obtain resources to develop activities.

• Formalize a space for the exchange of experiences such as business relationships between companies and people.

• Publication of articles in the journals of the MEMBER Associations of FAIAR, or edition of a regional journal with the contribution of all members.

ASHRAE has accepted this plan to share its research and technological advances with the other FAIAR associations or the ASHRAE chapters established in the region, in a similar way in which it has been doing with other regions of the planet through AASA.

Future conversations and plans are now shown not as a possibility for years to come, but within support programs and global strategies that should be initiated in the short term.

Meeting in Chicago

In the framework of the ASHRAE Meeting in Chicago in January 2009, ACAIRE held meetings with FAIAR, AASA and also with ASHRAE on different topics: the advancement in joint programs of translation of various standards and engineering guides into Spanish; analysis of the integration of efforts in the region with FAIAR and in the world with AASA and worked on the proposal to create the Andean Chapter of ASHRAE, which will integrate the efforts of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

All these initiatives will mean that future generations will thank us for the commitment to provide them with a sustainable and stable future.