HPAC 'On The Air': Our Smaller World, with ASHRAE's New President

Our inspiring guest this month, joining us from Dubai, is the newly elected 2022-2023 President of ASHRAE, Mr. Farooq Mehboob, the international society's first-ever Asian-born president. 

An accomplished mechanical engineer with more than 50 years of industry experience, Mr. Mehboob is the founder and owner of his own engineering firm, S. Mehboob & Co., based in Karachi, Pakistan. There, he is also a founding member and current chair of the Pakistan HVACR Society. Over his career, he has been involved with more than 600 landmark projects across Pakistan and the Middle East. All along the way, he has been extraordinarily active in the growth and development of professional engineering support systems with his region and across ASHRAE internationally, during his decades of service. 

• To read Mr. Mehboob's inaugural speech to ASHRAE in June, click here.

This century, he has been a particular advocate of ASHRAE's ongoing globalization efforts, which perhaps are best exemplified by his own presidency. Here, he speaks with us about the theme of his presidential year, "Securing Our Future," and the urgent necessity of global cooperation and collaboration among engineers that can help to solve our planet's most pressing problems.

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EDITED TRANSCRIPT

HPAC: Mr. Mehboob, thank you for joining us. And congratulations on assuming the top spot at ASHRAE this year. I listened to your inaugural address and feel inspired by your remarkable life story. Can you please briefly recap your career path for us, which now spans over half a century?

Farooq Mehboob: Yes, thank you, sir. It's a pleasure being with you. As you say, my career does go back a long ways. After graduating as a mechanical engineer in 1965, I went to work for the local Trane distributor in Dakar as an applications engineer. We not only sold equipment, but offered design, as well. But back then, we were in the "slide rule era." Calculators and fax machines had not yet been invented. So, we communicated then with snail mail, phone calls, and telegrams.

A couple of years later, I joined Intercontinental Hotels, a subsidiary of Pan Am World Airways, and became chief engineer of the Intercontinental Hotel in Dakar. I went on to become the chain's regional chief engineer, looking after the operations and maintenance for hotels in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. It was a tremendous learning experience and I got to see the high and mighty close up and travel a great part of the world... After the breakup of Pakistan in 1971, I moved to Karachi in West Pakistan and worked with Intercontinental there.

In 1980, I went to work for myself. For an engineer with limited resources, consulting is a good option. I started in the garage of my home in Karachi with a couple of part-time staff, and my wife as the manager and accountant. We grew from a five-person staff to a firm of about 30 people by the late 1990s. By then, two of my sons had graduated as engineers and had joined the business. We grew rapidly and opened our office in Dubai in 2000. 

HPAC: And that was a very significant move for you in many ways.

FM: Yes. Dubai was a stepping stone for us to the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia. Across the region, I've been involved in MEP systems for airports, high-rises, hospitals and hotels. And we now have offices in Islamabad and in Lahore, as well... My business is now mostly run by my sons and my daughter-in-law who is also a mechanical engineer. All are active in ASHRAE. Today, I live mostly in Dubai, and this helps me to devote a lot more of my time to my ASHRAE family.

HPAC: Tell us a bit more about that extended family. You are now ASHRAE's first Asian-based president. That is a significant milestone, even for an organization with such a large international footprint. So, you personally have witnessed much of that global growth within the organization, which now has members in more than 130 countries. When did you first become involved with the organization and could you ever have foreseen that you would one day be its president?

FM: My interest in ASHRAE started about the time I had set up my consulting practice in 1980. I needed to understand HVAC design and have access to reference material. The one-stop shop for my needs then was the ASHRAE Handbook, so I became a member. As a consultant, one needs to engage with industry, so my network of professional contacts grew. And the same realization that gave birth to ASHRAE came to Pakistan HVACR professionals a century later. We needed a platform to engage with each other. So, I, along with about 20 other professional engineers founded the Pakistan HVACR Society in 1994. 

We were inspired by the ASHRAE model and applied for membership in the ASHRAE Associates Societies Alliance. By then, I had traveled to an ASHRAE winter meeting, so when ASHRAE created a Region-at-Large in 2001, I felt the time had come to form a chapter. So I carried a petition to the Region-at-Large Conference in Reading, UK. At that time, the region had three or four chapters. Today, it has 30 chapters in 16 countries. At that time, Europe was also part of it before it was spun off as a separate region.

So I have been involved with ASHRAE international activities across three continents. And I have received its John F. James Award for International Service. So ASHRAE has been a passion for me for the last 40-plus years. At Society, I have served on CTTC (Chapter Technology Transfer Committee) now for seven years and its my ninth year on the board. Frankly, I did not foresee that I would one day be the president of ASHRAE. That possibility only occurred to me when I became Vice President, because that's the big step on the ladder to top leadership.

And I have never felt constrained on account of my ethinciity or Pakistani origin because ASHRAE is a truly global community where race, religion, color, etc., do not count. What counts is our pursuit of our vision for a healthy and sustainable built environment for all. I wish the world were more like ASHRAE.

HPAC: To that point, has the fact that today we are ALL facing shared global challenges, like the pandemic and the climate crisis, made the world smaller, would you say? At least across the engineering community?

FM: Rob, the pandemic has brought about the realization that no one is immune. No matter where we live, we are all in it together, for better or for worse. The challenges we face today will impact everyone. It doesn't matter where the molecules of carbon dioxide and methane are coming from to get into the atmosphere. Their impact is global. And there is an interconnectivity now in the world on a scale we have never seen before, whether it's on complex supply chains or distributed manufacturing. Instant communications have made the world smaller in many aspects and more interdependent. 

It has impacted the way we work and collaborate with each other. Not so long ago, 'work from home' was not something that organizations seriously thought about. But technology has spawned an evolution. I have engineers in my company working and collaborating in real time in half a dozen different countries. I believe this is great for the world, actually. It brings people together, unleashing the power of collaboration. And the engineering community is certainly a beneficiary of this. In fact, I don't think we will ever revert to our old patterns of work. We've passed into a new digital age, which will define the way we work. And the virtual experience is evolving in a manner that is more akin to the face-to-face environment. This will take more time. Because the workforce needs to learn the new technology and the way it will work. So I believe workforce training is an area that we will really need to concentrate on. 

Bottom line: The world is smaller and engineers are now closer.

HPAC: The theme for your presidential year is "Securing Our Future." Could you please speak about that a bit and what those words are meant to convey in these insecure times in which we now live?

FM: Well, ASHRAE has now experience 60 years of unparalleled success. We grew from 72 chapters in North America in 1956 to 200 chapters worldwide today. But we're now at a critical point in our evolution. Our past success could lead us to believe that we are invincible, but without change, we'll become stagnant. "Securing Our Future" speaks to the need to adapt and be ready and able to overcome the challenges we face. Whether these are from the pandemic, from climate change, the need to develop new technologies, and so on. To "secure our future," we must equip our members with new tools, new skills, and new resources, so that they remain on the cutting edge of their profession.

I have drawn from my personal experience on how this can be achieved. I believe it is important for us to have strong and trusted relationships across our industry, as well as accurate and insightful information about the state of our industry and the needs of our members. And if we use these relationships and knowledge together, along with a willingness to adapt, then we will be able to secure our future. But to do all this, we will need to espouse diversity in its true meaning. Diversity of thinking, in a welcoming environment. Not simply ticking boxes for race, color, gender, etc.

To be more truly diverse in our thinking, there are two prerequisites: transparency and participation. As an organization, we need to be fully transparent to our members and encourage participation to develop the strengths that we need to secure our future. So, we have a number of initiatives and actions planned for the year to build strong partnerships with our associate societies and industry. We're going to be having a Global HVACR Summit in Istanbul this October, along with ASHRAE's second international board meeting, and the region-at-large's chapters regional conference. The critical issues of the day which impact our industry will be discussed and an action plan developed. Moving forward, we hope to have these summits every couple of years.

To interact and understand the needs of our industry, we are planning in the coming year to have three industry roundtables where we will sit down with industry leaders in manufacturing, distribution, etc., and discuss how ASHRAE can fulfill the market and industry needs and serve our members better. To make ourselves more transparent, we're going to distribute agendas and "livestream" our key meetings of the board and councils. And we'll continue to streamline our processes, so that ASHRAE is more ready to react and provide the technical services needed. That's how we intend to secure our future.

HPAC: Finally, like a number of senior leaders at ASHRAE, you are now an accomplished engineer in your seventies. And you have seen a lifetime of global steps both forward and back, successes and continuing challenges, more so in international relations than in engineering. In our February podcast, we recently asked your colleagues, former presidents Don Colliver and Tom Phoenix, co-chairs of the new Decarbonization Task Force: Why not retire? How would you answer that same question? 

FM: Rob, I'm going to confess something. I'm of the view that as long as a person can contribute, or give back something that he or she has learned or gained over their career, then they still have to be in the game. I have learned almost everything I know about my profession from ASHRAE. I have trusted friends across the world in ASHRAE now, so it is like family for me. So retirement would mean that I am ready to give up my family, and I am not ready to do that.

But I have reduced my work commitments, and my sons practically run the business now. I simply advise them on key points if they ask for advice. So, that has been wound down and you might call me semi-retired from my company. And after my presidential year at ASHRAE is over, I will have much more time to do the other things that I want to do. I'm always reminded of this quote from Winston Churchill when he eventually retired, after winning the war and being prime minister and everything else in his great life. He then took up painting, and sat by a brook and did landscapes. And he was a lousy painter. So, someone asked him why he did that. Churchill said, "I had always wanted to be a painter, but I just never had the time because I had more important things to do. But now I do have the time and this is what I love." 

Me? I love history. I love to travel and go places and interact with people of different cultures, see how people live and so on. So I hope that I will have the time to do that and that I may even write a bit about my experiences over my lifetime. Because I really think that one of things you need to do when you go is to leave some thoughts behind. That's important, I believe.

HPAC: That's a good goal, it would seem. Hopefully we can connect with you here another year or two down the road to hear want new insights you have gained. In the meantime, thank you again for your time here and we wish you the best of luck with all that you have ahead of you in your presidential year and beyond. 

FM: Thank you for having me, Rob. It's been a pleasure. And thanks also to HPAC Engineering for all that you do, as well.

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