BMS Professional Development Membership

Why should you invest in yourself?

Initially, the membership will cost AU$ 35 per month (AU$ 420 per year). If you invested in your professional development for 10 years, it would cost you AU$ 4,200.

AU$ 4,200 is not a lot of money over 10 years when considering how much more money you could earn, or that promotion you could secure, or that dream job you could negociate.

I asked Chat GPT how much money I would make if I invested $35 per month for 10 years, with an interest rate of 8%. Answer: If you invest $35 per month for 10 years at an 8% annual interest rate (compounded monthly), the future value of your investment would be approximately $6,403 ($4,200 + $2,203). ​

Investing in yourself, in your career, is a no-brainer!

If you invest $35 per month for 10 years in the markets, your profit would only be $2,203. If you invested the same amount in your career, your first years salary increase could be higher than what the markets would return over 10 years. And massivly higher over 10 years. $30k? $50k? $80k? My salary has gone up AU$ 100k in the past 10 years.

I am going to compress my +25-year learning curve down to 5-10 years for you. This will help you significantly shorten your salary growth timeline.

Program

I have a plan for the production of content for the first 6 months of 2025. I will then develop what the members want.

For the second half of the year, I am considering a deep dive in demand control ventilation (IAQ/CO2 control), as this is generally wrong on all projects, and is the most complicated control strategy in a building. Expanding on AHU control system design and visualisation, similar to the for 6 months of chiller management system design (starting January). Peak Demand Management, service, commissioning, anything.

January 2025:

• Points list design course (plus spreadsheet template).

• Chiller water system control strategy course (plus control strategy template).

• Project management for engineers course (50 lessons, existing paid course).

February2025:

• Control panel design course (plus Visio template).

• Chiller Management System advanced reporting (existing paid digital product).

March 2025:

• Network architecture design course (plus Visio templates).

• Chiller Management System advanced alarms, warnings and insights (existing paid digital product).

April 2025:

• Chiller Management System advanced trend (existing paid digital product).

May 2025:

• Chiller Management System advanced graphics (existing paid digital product).

By the end of May, you will be able to design a best-in-class chiller management system. Points list, control panel, control strategies, advanced graphics, alarms, trends, and reports. This will immediately differentiate you from your colleagues and start to position you as a specialist. That is just the first 6 months. Imagine what you can do after 2 years.

The project management course will teach how to achieve the sold target margin every time. This is the process that I refined over 33 projects. I hit the target margin on every project, plus I generated about $90k in additional profit over and above the target margins. This course, on its own, is worth a year's investment in the membership.

How does the membership work?

I have been spending about 1 day per week for the past 6 months building the first batch of courses, setting up the membership, and staring at the ceiling, trying to work it all out.

My plan is to continue spending 1 day per week supporting the membership. You are basically buying 32 hours of my time per month to teach you something new every month. Each month I will publish something new, it could be a self-paced online course, it could be a design template, we may run a live workshop, etc.

We are going to build on complex topics over time. Rather than me spending 6 months building 1 comprehensive course and only getting 2 out per year. I am going to cover many areas of the BMS each year, and then add more detail each year. Or, I will create a self-paced mini-course to kick off a topic, then run a live workshop to supplement more detail, then review two people’s designs during a Q&A session, etc.

Why did I create the membership?

I have tried many different ways to help the BMS industry.

• Live in-person technical training at BMS companies offices, for their staff only.

• Live in-person open sessions, where I hired a room with a mixture of people from different companies.

• Live virtual training courses (Zoom, MS Teams).

• Pre-recorded self-paced online courses.

• One-to-one live weekly coaching.

• Done-for-you digital products.

Each of these methods had different advantages and disadvantages. But there were still three main issues:

1. They weren’t cheap enough for an individual to pay for themselves with their own personal money. The cost was fine for a company but not for an individual. The last batch of courses I ran cost AU$ 2,500 each (in time, all that content will find its way into the membership for free). Companies would pay, but an individual was not going to pay from their own savings. So, I needed a solution that was cheap enough for an individual to pay, rather than relying on companies to train their staff.

2. My personal opinion (not a fact) is that a high percentage of people fall back to business as usual 6 months after a training course. It’s human nature. So, I wanted a solution that had continual reinforcement. I wanted a long-term product. I wanted people’s attention for more than just a few weeks. The membership is never-ending.

3. No matter how much time I put into a training course, it was not possible or practical to cover everything about that topic. There needs to be compounding growth on each topic, year-on-year. E.g., energy efficiency and control strategy optimisation is extremely complicated, it can not be taught in a start and finish course. We have to build on this every year. Layer more and more on every year, going deeper and deeper every year. The membership creates a never-ending learning experience.

What do you get out of this?

• The membership does not upsell into more expensive courses. Everything is included. For one low fee each month, you get everything I produce. Except for courses that don’t apply directly to BMS engineers, e.g., the BMS for mechanical consultants course is separate.

• E.g., the project management for engineers course has been moved over into the membership. The currently free advanced optimisation courses have been duplicated and are being expanded on in the membership. Digital products are being integrated into lessons in the membership. I.e., within a year, there will be no separate courses or digital products relevant to BMS engineers and managers. Everything becomes the membership. A one-stop shop for everything you need.

• The membership will evolve over time as I will build and support the members in whatever they need. But initially, it will start with 3 core subjects: Design, optimisation (energy efficiency), and strategy. Strategy is the non-technical stuff that no one is teaching. How to take technical topics (learnings) and leverage that new knowlege to make lots of money for your company. When you make your company money, then you get rewarded.

• The membership will improve your personal brand. You will become an expert in your company. You will be overtaking people with more experience than you (unless they are also in the membership, lol).

• The membership module within the learning management system that I pay for has a community forum. I don’t know exactly how it works as I haven’t used it before. But, there is a community aspect as part of the membership. It is possible that this will grow into something of high value, where people can ask each other questions and share solutions and designs, etc. But we will see how that plays out.

What the membership is not

There are no software programming courses. You need to go on controller programming courses provided by the manufacturer of the products that your company uses. There is a high number of different BMS systems in the world, and they are growing with more independent BMS product suppliers entering the market. It is impractical for me to try to teach you how to code an AHU in 20 different languages and keep up with updates, new revisions and features, etc. (I was only trained on about 4 products when I was on the tools).

I will teach you what information to put on graphics, and how to design alarms, trends, and reports that actually provide value (what we currently provide is embarracing), but I am not going to teach you how to convert the design that you learn from me into software code. Believe me, the coding part is the easy part.

The membership program is not associated with any BMS product or company.

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