"The recent escalation in the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 is alarming on a global scale,” says 2019-20 ASHRAE president Darryl K. Boyce, P.Eng. 

With demand for skilled labor projected to reach an all-time high the next decade, the future of the male-dominated building trades rests on the industry’s efforts to roll out the welcome mat for another generation and gender. A new research project, seeking to understand how women thrive in the skilled trades, may pave the way for more people to call the sheet metal industry home.

After a conversation at the 2002 AHR Expo, Ruth King and Gwen Hoskins established Women in HVACR with one simple mission: women supporting women. “This conversation between two women was the catalyst for the organization,” explains Karen Lamy DeSousa, Women in HVACR’s 2020 president. 

The City of Nashville, Tennessee, may be the capital of country music, but at Nashville Sheet Metal it is heavy metal all day and all the time. Established in 2003 between longtime sheet metal workers Kevin Elliott and Tracy Cross, the small but mighty shop has quickly made its mark on Music City by diversifying its construction catalog. 

Ohio schools, union contractors working together to help high school students build a path to the skilled trades.

SHEET METAL WORKERS LOCAL 88 TRAINING DIRECTOR Ed Abraham was a third-year apprentice when he started drafting for one of the largest mechanical contractors in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

You buy your field workers the best tools, software and devices to keep them on track and productive. Yet too few business owners and project managers give the same attention to the connection technology that accounts for much of the labor at job sites. 

Kuck Mechanical, a commercial and industrial mechanical contractor based in Northern Colorado, recently won an “Excellence in Construction” award for its ductwork design at Colorado State University’s Nancy Richardson Design Center.

I recently received a somewhat anxious call from a friend in the sheet metal industry. He won a nice duct order, but his submittals were being rejected because he needed to provide published performance data for his duct fittings. 

Before selling Kenco Industrial Equipment Inc and retiring from the sheet metal industry, Thomas C. Kuschel, who passed away last year at age 85, taught his employees the value of a firm handshake and honest eye contact.