ASHRAE, a global nonprofit membership organization with more than 57,000 members in more than 130 countries worldwide, has been leading the engineering and development of facility standards and guidelines for 120-plus years.

My last article, “The Critical Facilities Labor Market,” discussed the current shortage of qualified and experienced labor. It focused on how the labor shortage came about and how it is impacting the overall industry. Basically, it honed in on the problem and associated causes.

There is a crisis developing in the critical facilities labor market. The available pool of qualified and experienced talent is not keeping up with the demand.

Over the last few months, I have heard various experienced and knowledgeable experts state (emphatically no less) totally contradictory opinions regarding quality assurance (QA), quality control (QC), and commissioning.

The critical facilities industry relies on industry standards to establish the minimum requirements necessary to design, build, and operate critical sites. Some of these standards get adopted by federal, state, and local governments through legislation as enforceable codes.

The future will certainly see this trend continuing. Between edge-computing and the Internet of Things (IoT), we are continuing to bring more technology, automation, and information to the individual everywhere. Information overload is not only an ever-present danger, it is the new norm.

Integrity is often used to describe people and their traits. Merriam-Webster defines integrity as the adherence to a code, the quality of being honest and fair, and as the state of being complete or whole.

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