Sunday, July 19, 2015

NFRC Back in the News... Again

When the news dropped with the announcement that Jim Benney was leaving NFRC, I was curious if there was going to be another part to the puzzle played.  Sure enough there was with news that the NFRC was “renewing” their commitment to the commercial fenestration industry with a certified rating system.  The whole story made me chuckle and also made me think of my old pal Greg Carney who’s probably laughing uproariously up in heaven over it.  There’s a ton I can go into, especially since I have been banging this drum for 10 years or so.  But I’ll just say a few main things… First and foremost the industry needs a quality rating system.  We’ve never been against a system, just the way these folks went about it.  We need a logical one that makes sense and provides the results and details that everyone involved depends on.  It’s a part of the commercial landscape more and more.  And we need a program that is not what’s best or easiest (or biggest money maker) for the test labs or NFRC, but one that’s best for the products involved and industry at large.  (Remember NFRC for years thought commercial and residential industries were virtually the same.) In any case, ease of use and logic was something we hammered on for years during the process and were summarily ignored.  So it’s going to be interesting to see what this new collaboration will be.  Will it be a true collaboration?  I have my doubts as the same people who ramrodded the old system through are still in major positions of power on the NFRC Board.  Regardless I will have an open mind, because it is something that is needed.  Second, when did the “partners” listed become actual partners in the process?  So all of a sudden three major organizations in our industry are now back in the process.  I have to assume it was news to them.  All will do what is right for the industry I believe, but I also found it odd that NFRC did not mention a few others that had involvement back in the day including the National Glass Association.  I guess they missed the blogs and articles their Ex-CEO would provide for Glass Magazine eh?  I bring this up because how do you get to true collaboration without all of the main players?
Last, personally I feel vindicated in the fact that I warned (along with many others of course) that the current program would not work, and it sure looks like we were right.  I took (and still take in some areas) a ton of abuse over my role in this effort but in the end my goal has and will always be to look out for the best interests of our industry….

Elsewhere…

--  OK from one worry to another.  To my friends in the Pacific Northwest… I sure as heck hope this article on an earthquake hitting your part of the world is wrong.  Really frightening read…

--  Interesting news via the Dodge Momentum Index.  It trended down in June and has been relatively flat all year.  This has been flying in the face of other indexes and also just the overall business climate.  Especially the current put in place spending, which has been tremendous and has a future-facing component to it.  The new ABI is due out this coming Wednesday the 22nd, so we’ll see what they say on the process. 

--  Last this week… which of you awesome glaziers, fabricators, manufacturers and suppliers will be working on the worlds largest “NetZero Plus” retrofit building in Los Angeles?  The Electrical Training Institute in LA will be 142,000 square feet and is being promoted as upon completion the largest NetZero Plus building in the US.  They’re calling it the “intelligent building of the future” so I surely can’t wait to see what glass and glazing products are involved here.

LINKS of the WEEK

--  I am so anti fireworks it’s not even funny.  Maybe I am an old fuddy duddy but I see no value in them and stories like this are more and more common every year.

--  Like the ending of Caddyshack but for real.  Wow.

--  Never thought I would see this.  The Autobahn succumbing to the heat.  Wow.

VIDEO of the WEEK

So there’s a snow farm in Boston and that’s where 70 feet of the stuff went after the brutal winter there… and now a time lapse of it melting over the past few months.  Wild.


1 comment:

Terry Newcomb said...

Max,
We share your feelings about the NFRC. Their CMAST "commercial program" is OK in theory, but in practice, it is SLOW, and gets worse with every update. I can only imagine how badly it will perform when more manufacturers get into it!