Recently, I had a discussion with a few design engineers who were complaining about the performance of air and water balancing contractors in the hvac industry. Taking the testing, adjusting, and balancing (TAB) contractor's side, I asked these engineers how many times they participated in the start-up of the systems that they had designed. Interestingly, none of these professionals had on-the-job training when it came to TAB.
These were the reasons why they had not taken the opportunity to observe and/or participate in testing and system start-up: