Looking at my locals contractor list and there are a lot of control companies, however most of them have only mechanical in union and controls non-union. Why is that?

Hey, I work in BMS design, with a background in electrical/HVAC. I’m in my 20s so not a lot of experience.

I’m enjoying some aspects of the industry but unsure whether it’s what I want to do long term. Just find it a little uninspiring, and not very interesting.

Has anyone moved away from BMS into another career or started their own business? Or do you know people that have?

Curious what people ended up doing and whether they preferred it.

went through psychrometrics in hvac school and treated it as the theoretical section that would not come up much in actual work. three years in and it comes up more than i expected specifically when diagnosing humidity issues, sizing equipment for high humidity environments, and understanding why a system that looks correctly charged is still not dehumidifying properly

the challenge is applying the concepts quickly enough to be useful during a service call without spending twenty minutes with a psychrometric chart trying to remember which axis is which

how have working technicians built practical psychrometrics skills beyond what the training covers and what has helped it click in the field

Crossposting in r/BuildingAutomation and r/HVAC so I can hopefully get some code references. I have looked around but am clearly not Googling the right key words lol.

I am an electrician doing HVAC controls for a job and am trying to run 1/4" pressure tubing from RTUs to 2/3 of the way down the duct runs on the floor they serve per my engineer's requirements. What code covers how I'm supposed to safely run this pressure tubing through the HVAC duct shafts and shaft walls? The shafts are fire rated and there are fire dampers on each floor. I am only familiar with electrical code in the NEC/NFPA 70. What I found online was:

IMC 602.3.5 Pneumatic Tubing
Combustible pneumatic tubing exposed within a plenum shall be listed and labeled as having a peak optical density not greater than 0.50, an average optical density not greater than 0.15, and a flame spread distance not greater than 5 feet (1524 mm) when tested in accordance with UL 1820.

I understand that free air tubing is legal in the shaft if the tubing I use is listed and labeled. I know I need to have a sleeve penetrating the shaft walls to get the tubing inside the shaft. I do not understand if there are any vertical support/strapping requirements or "the tubing cannot touch the duct" type rules.

Do I just run the tubing where ever there's space in the shaft and hope the insulators and drywall guys don't kink it when they do their jobs? I can't wait until the shaft walls are up and then run the tubing, there is very limited open space around everything and it would be very difficult to fish after walls go up. Is it okay to ignore the shaft and instead drill holes through the top of the studs that surround the structural steel of the shaft and run the tubing inside the drywall sandwich of the shaft walls? That is what my foreman advised but he wasn't sure it was legal. Does anyone have relevant code references beyond the one I copy pasted above?

As the title says, I’m looking for a way to get my foot in the door. I’m currently a college student in Orlando pursuing my associate degree in Energy Management and Controls Technology, and I’ve been looking for entry-level jobs or internships in building automation and controls.
So far, I’ve applied to Carrier, Mitsubishi, McKesson, OUC, and Trane. I’ve also been checking LinkedIn and Indeed, but most of the positions I come across want someone with previous experience.
If anyone knows of any entry-level opportunities, internships, or companies worth reaching out to in Orlando or the surrounding areas, I’d appreciate the recommendations. I’m also open to sharing my resume if anyone would like to take a look.

Hi, I'm not in the building automation industry at the moment but it looks very interesting and I'm currently learning more about it in order to assess if a career in this space would be a good fit for me.

Would be grateful for any help with the following questions:

1. What's the work / life balance like? I don't want to work weekends - are there any roles in this industry where that's possible? (I may be open to weekend work for a short period as long as there's a clear path from there to a role where I'm not working weekends again).
2. I would eventually like to earn £80,000+. Is this doable in the UK?

For Milestone 10 of my conveyor sorting digital twin, I tried the simplest thing possible: I stopped keeping decisions as a one-time startup task and moved them directly into the repeating frame loop.

​No complex scheduler or new architecture classes—just a direct sequence running every single frame:

​Observe current data

​Make a decision

​Issue a command

​Move the physical box

​Check the sensor and update memory

​Suddenly, the machine has a true repeating loop. For those writing custom simulation or control loops: how did you structure your first unified execution pass before scaling it into a proper engine?