Standing-room-only crowd flocks to Devens job fair

A packed house: Job seekers and employers filled the Devens
Common Center on Jan. 25.

The Devens Common Center was packed to the gills on January 25 with better than a thousand local job hunters navigating their way through a room dense with displays for dozens of area employers at a very well-publicized regional job fair.

According to State Representative Sheila Harrington (R-Groton), one of the lead planners of the fair, "Fourteen hundred job seekers connected with 60 employers seeking to fill more than a thousand positions. There was a real sense of optimism in the room as job seekers passed out their resumes and spoke to employers. That was really why I wanted to organize the job fair in the first place: I wanted to do something to give people hope."

Among the employers on the scene were HealthAlliance and Lowell General Hospitals and Nashoba Valley Medical Center, as well as Rand Whitney Packaging Corp., Radant Technologies, and a host of local manufacturers. Several staffing agencies were also represented.

Rep. Harrington said, "I had the idea around August 2012 to hold a job fair for my district. The idea initially came from wanting to do something from my position as a State Representative to help alleviate the unemployment problem in my part of the state. My legislative office, headed by Kaitlyn Hyslip, in conjunction with a legal assistant from my law practice, Sean Rourke, went to work planning the event, picking the venue and calling companies."

A bipartisan planning team: L to R, State Sen. Jamie Eldridge,
State Reps. Jim Arciero and Jen Benson, and lead fair planner State
Rep. Sheila Harrington.

The fair's proportions expanded dramatically when the North Central Career Centers of Leominster and the Career Center of Lowell got involved, Rep. Harrington noted. "All of a sudden, we had 60 companies on board and 900 job seekers registered.

"We also had a lot of help from the Nashoba Valley Chamber of Commerce, as well as from State Representatives Jennifer Benson (D-Lunenburg) and James Arciero (D-Westford), and State Senator Jamie Eldridge (D-Acton), who helped us get in touch with companies in their districts."

In addition to the enthusiastic participation from companies looking for new hires, said Rep. Harrington, "we were especially surprised by the amount of manufacturing and technology jobs employers were looking to hire for in the area. Usually, that's a strong indicator of a strengthening economy and job market, so that was very encouraging in terms of looking forward to the improvement in the economy."

"I was heartened to see the immense turnout at the fair, not only by job seekers, but by employers as well," said Rep. Benson. "This is encouraging news to all of us who are actively tracking the economy and the opportunities available in our region."

Nashoba Valley Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Melissa Fetterhoff said, "In talking with several of the participating employers, they were quite pleased with the turnout and the quality of applicants. I am hopeful that the showing from hiring companies is a positive sign. Last November, the Nashoba Valley Chamber and four other chambers partnered with Mount Wachusett Community College on a hiring trends survey to the business community. The outlook for hiring trends in this region for 2013 was rated as 'fair to good' by a majority of employers who participated."

Besides helping to bump up participation in the job fair, North Central Career Centers of Leominster was on hand that day to provide free resume critiques. Job seekers queued up for brief reviews of their resumes' content, appearance and efficacy.  

 

Allen Camara, an Ayer resident who attended the fair hoping to connect with the right employer, had a mixed experience: "I was a little disappointed that there weren't more companies in my current field of study, energy management. I only handed out three resumes. One was to AEcomm, for an outdoor air quality technician position, and one to Microtech Staffing Group, who I stopped to talk with about their IT offerings, but that's looking backwards (to his former career) really. 

"The third was to UMass Lowell, in the hopes that it would have something amongst its advertised '60+ other openings.'"  But, he says, none was a fit for him.

However, he added, "There was a woman at one of the booths, I think it was Marathon Staffing, that looked at my resume, and when she saw that I was working towards a Bachelor's degree in energy management, said, 'That's really good, keep doing that, it's an up and coming field. Get that degree!'  Made my day!"

 

Gotta Say! Edition 2: A Passive approach to green building that's anything but

A few years back, I started a blog called Green Ayer News. It served as a clearinghouse for environmental news from town organizations and other local groups who provide services or educational activities to people around town and beyond. I moved on from the blog some time back, but still get updates and occasional invitations to events. Last weekend, I RSVPed yes to a couple of events and came home with both my green mojo and sense of community energized. Today, I'll cover the first: a Green Building Roundtable presented by the Devens Eco-Efficiency Center. Next up, I'll fill you in on the latest meeting of the Green Advisory Council for Middlesex and Worcester Counties, where State Senator Jamie Eldridge set the stage for a number of environmental bills he has just filed for the current legislative session on Beacon Hill.

Last Friday, the Devens Eco-Efficiency Center hosted its quarterly Green Building Roundtable. These roundtable discussions give participants a venue to gather new information about trends in environmentally-sustainable building practices and share their own insights and experience with others who might benefit.

This quarter, the roundtable zoomed in on Passive House energy design, an energy-design standard aimed at driving residential and commercial buildings' energy consumption toward and even below zero. A US take on the European Passivhaus standard, Passive House takes "buttoned up" to a new level, relying on tight construction and insulation techniques to keep the indoor climate comfortable and clean while slashing the need for power-chugging equipment to heat or cool the space.

Five elements
Neil Angus, an environmental planner with the Devens Enterprise Commission and moderator of the roundtable discussions, pointed to five key elements that make the Passive House standard what it is:

• superinsulation from a combination of double-wall construction and air sealing of all seams, which helps maintain consistent temperatures
• energy-efficient, triple-glazed windows and reduced thermal bridging (heat lost through gaps in construction or insulation)
• passive solar heat gain and thermal massing (using interior materials such as granite or concrete, which absorb heat and then release it slowly, as well as heat put out by other sources, like electrical equipment and even humans)
• avoidance of heat gain and reduction of the need for cooling via shading and well-thought-out window placement
• use of heat recovery ventilation (HRV) or energy recovery ventilation (ERV) units to provide fresh air while conserving heat and energy already in the building

With all these methods in place, buildings can be heated or cooled with one to two small, wall-mounted units, such as the Mitsubishi Mr. Slim. In fact, Angus noted, the savings on mechanical systems for heating and cooling are a significant offset to additional material costs for the difference in construction techniques.

A leading-edge standard
The move for builders to adopt energy-design practices like these is accelerating. In Massachusetts, it's driven in part by Governor Deval Patrick's Zero Net Energy Buildings Task Force, which is pushing for all new construction to be net-zero energy by 2030.

Passive House is out in front of many of the other current energy design standards, Angus added. For instance, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard calls for a finished building to use 25-30 percent less energy than a traditionally-built design; Passive House angles for a 60-90 percent reduction in energy usage. 

And while a house built according to the current Stretch Energy Code (which many Massachusetts towns have recently adopted in their quest to become Green Communities) needs to meet a Home Energy Rating System (HERS) rating of 70 (down from 100 for a standard code-built house), homes built using Passive House techniques typically achieve a HERS rating of no more than 20, and frequently a negative number. Angus noted that the latest of the Transformations Inc. Net-Zero Energy Homes built on Devens Green (which used Passive House methods) has a HERS rating of -36.

Angus rounded off the Roundtable discussion with two key examples of Passive House design at work:

• The Glasswood Passive House, a commercial retrofit in Portland, Oregon
• The Sonnenschiff, a commercial and residential complex in Freiburg, Germany

"It is really great to see these energy efficient design and construction methods catching on," said Angus,"and even better to have examples in our own backyard."