Episode 4: Kerry Stackpole, Pete DeMarco, and Nimish Shah, Ph.D

On this episode, we'll be speaking with a returning guest, Kerry Stackpole, CEO and executive director for Plumbing Manufacturers International, in our news and information segment; Pete DeMarco, IAPMO executive vice president of Advocacy and Research, in our policy segment, and Nimish Shah, Ph.D., and managing director of IAPMO India, in our good vibe segment. 

To get in touch with Kerry Stackpole, visit www.safeplumbing.org. 

To get in touch with Pete DeMarco, email pete.demarco@iapmo.org.

To get in touch with Nimish Shah, look him (and IAPMO India) up on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Christoph Lohr: Welcome to this episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical. On this episode, we'll be speaking with a returning guest, Kerry Stackpole, CEO and executive director for Plumbing Manufacturers International, in our news and information segment; Pete DeMarco, IAPMO executive vice president of Advocacy and Research, in our policy segment, and Nimish Shah, Ph.D., and managing director of IAPMO India, in our good vibe segment. 

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Let's get at it. Here's my conversation with Kerry Stackpole, where we discussed the 2022 forecast for the the plumbing industry and some of the supply chain issues we're facing.

Kerry, welcome back to the show. I think you're our first returning guest on the show. So congratulations. 

Kerry Stackpole: Thanks, Christoph. It's great to be with you today. 

Christoph Lohr: It's great to have you, as the last time. I think we had such a great conversation about the state of plumbing overall and from multiple perspectives the last time you were on.

And for those listeners that haven't heard that episode, it was, I believe our second episode that we recorded for season one. It was with you and Dave Viola and Billy Smith representing the manufacturers, the installers, inspectors and engineers and plumbing design professionals from the various facets of plumbing.

So it was a great episode in terms of talking about the big-picture look of the plumbing industry. And so we wanted to kind of take that big-picture approach and recently, Kerry, you wrote an article that was in Supply House Times where you're talking about sort of a forecast for 2022 and talking about supply chain.

And I think we have a lot of listeners that have been very interested in this and have spoken about the desire to learn a little bit more about it, and hence why I reached out to you and you graciously accepted the invite to be on the call. So I wanted to pick your brain a little bit on that article and if there was any other updates. 

Kerry Stackpole: Sure. It's more, I don't want to say more of the same because it's really more of the same but accelerated, if that doesn't sound too strange, since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in 2020; basically consumers who couldn't go to movies or sporting events or restaurants began using that income on projects like home improvement and renovations, and that demand in the midst of the COVID pandemic I think really surprised a lot of folks. And so you had overseas factories that were closing because they were concerned about COVID-19 spreading that infection among their workers. And then you had this unexpected demand for product, which sort of overran

the ocean carriers, overran the ports, which then overran the truckers and the rail lines trying to get those materials to warehouses, and then trying to get them from the warehouse to the manufacturers, the wholesalers, the distributors and the retailers, all created an enormous traffic jam is too kind a word, but that's essentially I think for most folks, we can all understand that. 

Christoph Lohr: Well, and my sense is in terms of looking at it from a systems approach is, I've read a lot of articles or at least some articles I should say that perhaps some of the streamlining and efficiency building within our supply chains was almost too optimized and there wasn't enough redundancy in place.

Is that what you're sort of seeing play out as well? 

Kerry Stackpole: Yeah, I think that part, absolutely, I think that part of the challenge has been that we all, when I say all, I really mean companies of all sorts — manufacturers, not just in plumbing, but lots of other industries — went to a, just in time, management strategy.

And the idea was that you could just replenish as you needed things kind of in a short order, and lo and behold, when that chain got disrupted, just in time became just as many, and the idea being that you had to have multiple sources of supply in order to assure that you had a single supply of parts for your products.

So yeah, I think that is certainly part of it. We've seen that evolve in many, in fact, I think my recommendation in the article is that folks are going to have to start looking for multiple sources of product and be able to, something we might not normally do, but really have the ability to pivot to other sources and supplies going forward. So yeah, that's still very much part and parcel what's happening certainly in the plumbing, manufacturing, business. 

Christoph Lohr: Interesting. And then I think what you even mentioned in your article is it's not just an issue of material supply, but also of people supply. And I think you had a really great section in there that talked about some of those issues. What are you hearing and seeing in the realm of plumbing industry in terms of the supply of people?

Kerry Stackpole: Manufacturing in general has far more jobs than they have people to fill them, which is certainly a large-scale problem for a number of companies. And part of what's interesting about it is as you look at the, I'll call it the statistics or the demographics of this, you've got baby boomers who in the face of the pandemic decided to step back from work. You've got new folks coming up, but not thinking of manufacturing as necessarily a viable career path. And then you've got all the folks in the middle who may be in manufacturing, may have those jobs, but are suddenly finding that the demand for the product is enormous and the amount of time that they're spending on the job is growing exponentially so that companies can fill those orders. So it's kind of an interesting compression, if you will. And of course, for manufacturers, the challenge is that many manufacturers now find themselves competing for workers with fast-food restaurants and coffee shops and other places where the hourly wage has now been escalated significantly in order to attract people into the retail market and into other service jobs.

So again, manufacturing had traditionally been one of the higher-paying pathways to middle-class living, and increasingly they're finding themselves competing for workers against a number of I'll call them non-traditional job competition. 

Christoph Lohr: Interesting. And with all those challenges going on, did you have any recommendations in your article for your readers in terms of how to solve for those issues? 

Kerry Stackpole: Yeah, I think the article talks about a couple of different strategies that we've recommended over the years, and the start of that has a lot to do with sort of wearing the other person's shoes if I can use that phrase, which is to say that when you talk about opportunities in manufacturing, you really do have to talk about it from the perspective of the potential employee. So the man or woman who's coming out of high school or perhaps out of college who's thinking about career opportunities isn't necessarily automatically going to start thinking about working in the plumbing industry or in the plumbing engineering industry, and part of what we get to do in our industry, whether you're a plumbing inspector or an engineer or manufacturer, is our work contributes to the health and safety of society, and it's not just society in the U.S.; it's around the world. And so when you start to talk to young people about opportunities to contribute and make something important happen in the world, you can talk about plumbing manufacturing, and that's part of one of our suggestions and certainly one of our recommendations to manufacturers, engineering firms, government agencies who may be involved, is to connect the social good with the work opportunity. And I think when you do that, it's hard to beat the plumbing industry, frankly. 

Christoph Lohr: I don't disagree. I think there's a very incredible impact that plumbing has on society. 

Kerry Stackpole: All the problems are not solved. 

Christoph Lohr: No, certainly not; there's a lot of work to be done.

So the article was released at the beginning of December. We are now three months later, almost three months later, at the time of this recording. We're recording at the end of February and likely when the podcast is released will be mid-March. So it'll be almost 25% of the way through 2022 already by the time that this podcast gets released. What are some of the biggest shifts that you've seen that could impact plumbing here over the last three months?

Kerry Stackpole: Sure. Yeah, the things that I'm seeing and the things that frankly raise some, I don't wanna say red flags, but certainly raise some flags of notice, are we're continuing to see significant jumps in the cost associated with transportation of products. The overall road and rail shipping costs have jumped about 23% in 2021; they're still continuing to rise. If you wanted to ship a 40-foot container from Asia to the U.S. West Coast, in 2019, that cost was about $1,500. In 2022, it's expected to be somewhere between $6,500 and $7,000 for the exact same service; it's dramatically different. And when you look at industrial warehouse space, rents in that area have jumped about 25%. I think manufacturers certainly are seeing significant increases in their costs for transportation and logistics, so I think that catches our attention. PMI has been a strong advocate for getting a grip on some of the costs that are related to the delivery of products to ports and the storage of containers at ports.

And as we're looking forward, one of the more interesting things is, on average, there's something like 102, 103 ships off the coast of California waiting to get into the port to be unloaded. And as you look ahead, something that's on the horizon, for example, is the collective bargaining agreements between the operators of the ports in Southern California and the international longshore and warehouse union are coming up for renewal in July. And we've joined with about two dozen other trade groups to encourage the Biden administration to do whatever they can to help accelerate those bargaining efforts in a way that will minimize any kind of impact on the ports.

There's about somewhere around 44%, 45% of all containers come into Southern California, so containers that are distributed nationwide, almost half of them are coming through California. So a disruption there has a huge economic impact on the U.S. and certainly on the economy, and our view is that if we can do anything to make that renewal of those agreements smoother, that's a plus.

Christoph Lohr: Well, to wrap up our conversation here today, it's been almost a year since we've had you on the last time. In a year again, we'd love to have you back on; what do you think, if you were going to predict in terms of supply chain concerns, what are you seeing, over the next year, what would you predict would occur or at least things for people to keep an eye on, to wrap up your talk here?

Kerry Stackpole: What I would say is making predictions in these uncertain times is always a little bit risky and perhaps somewhat more difficult than they normally are. But I think what we've all got to be watching for in this coming year is the impact of inflation on the products and services that we're all buying, and I think manufacturers are going to find themselves facing that challenge as well. I think we're going to see some normalization, assuming we don't end up with port strikes or some sort of labor disruption. We should see some straightening up, if you will, of poor import navigation, but we've still got some significant challenges and the rising cost of fuel, which you and I talked about before we came on, the cost of fuel is rising, not only for truckers, but it's happening for other industries. The cost of energy is rising. Those are all going to be significant impacts on anybody who operates a factory or has to ship in products or ship out products frankly. The fun part is, PMI has a quarterly market outlook report that we share with our members. And this year we've added a whole slew of new indexes to look at transportation in particular as an example, because we know that that is going to reflect significant increases and it comes from weird places. And I'll give you just one example before we jump off here. I just was reviewing some things today and I noticed that Russia has prohibited the United Kingdom from overflying their country as a result of the UK's support and opposition to the Russian war on Ukraine. That changes the dynamic dramatically for the ability for British airlines to make their way to other countries. So what do you expect to see there?

Well, airfare tickets are likely to rise. The fuel costs for the airlines are likely to go up. And so there's always that, because we are still very much a global community, there's all these impacts that we might not have anticipated or seen coming, but we're going to see some of those things.

And for those companies using air freight, my guess is you're going to expect to see some freight costs rise until these conflicts are resolved and overflights over other countries are perhaps open or allowed again. So, lots of interesting moving parts, Christoph. 

Christoph Lohr: Definitely. Well I'm glad you were able to take some time out of your very busy schedule to share some of those insights with us, and for our listeners if they want to get in touch with you or with PMI, what's the best way for them to do that? 

Kerry Stackpole: Yeah, the easiest way to find us is at our website, www.safeplumbing.org. And that's the easiest way to find us and read up on what we're up to and what's happening. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical, and IAPMO, thanks so much, Kerry, for joining us again on the podcast. 

Kerry Stackpole: Always a pleasure

Christoph Lohr: In our next segment. I talk with Pete DeMarco, IAPMO executive vice president of Advocacy and Research, where we discuss the Plumbing Efficiency Research Coalition and the drain line carry research project. Pete, welcome to the podcast. 

Pete DeMarco: Thanks, Christoph. Appreciate it. 

Christoph Lohr: Pete, for our listeners, can you give us a little bit of an introduction to yourself?

Yeah. I've been working in the plumbing industry for going on 47 years, Christoph. I started back in 1975 working at American Standard as their director of Compliance Engineering, and worked there 32 years before going over to IAPMO in 2007. Best thing I ever did. And at IAPMO, I was able to really kind of expand my horizons, opening up, Government Relations offices in Washington, DC, and working on research programs for IAPMO, including on the topic that we're going to be discussing today, which is sanitary sizing and drain line transport.

Excellent, Pete. And that actually leads me right to my next question. One of the things that kind of caught both of our eyes, or caught my eye in terms of what you were recently discussing about, was the Water Demand Calculator, and a lot of attention being focused on seeing if there's a way to apply the Water Demand Calculator in sanitary systems. And this question of, can it be used? Can the Water Demand Calculator be used for sanitary sizing? And during the course of our conversation, I think, one of the things that I came to realize is that there's a lot more than just flow rate that's a concern, and you brought this point and talked about the PERC study. For our listeners, can you provide some information in terms of what you think the applicability of the Water Demand Calculator is in terms of sanitary systems and the PERC study and how it all relates? 

Pete DeMarco: Yeah, let me back up and give you a little bit of a briefer on why we decided to do the PERC study on drain line transport. I probably should start to say that PERC was an organization of several plumbing industry associations that came together to do this research. And the reason is that if you ever, especially back in the mid- to late '90s, if you attended any code hearings back then, the issue of drain line transport was of great concern, especially to the engineering community because of the reductions in toilet volumes that was happening at the time, going from 3.5 gallons a flush down to 1.6 gallons a flush, which is a reduction of over 50%. So it was a big deal. And the engineers were rightly concerned about this. So we decided to investigate it because we were concerned that we were heading toward problems as reductions were continuing to be curtailed incrementally because of scarcity issues in some areas and needs to conserve water treatment capabilities and energy in others.

So we decided to make the drain line transport the first topic of research for the PERC group. And when it comes to the Water Demand Calculator, that was certainly another great research program that was led by Dan Cole at IAPMO and wound up yielding a great way to take a look at reducing pipe diameters and making sure that there's enough residual pressure to meet demands in a building.

And the question is, will that transfer over to the sanitary side? Unfortunately, the answer is no, there's a big difference between a full-pipe pressurized system like you have in water supply and the partial-filled pipe within trained solids, such as exists in the sanitary side, and because of those very profound differences, the formulas that are in the Water Demand Calculator would not at all apply to the sanitary side. 

Christoph Lohr: What are some of the differences? Can you expand on, like, what are some of the differences in terms of the two? I'm assuming there's some kind of difference in complexity or something like that, Pete? 

Pete DeMarco: The sanitary side issue is a lot more complicated. Again, you're dealing with partially filled pipes that rely on air that's always in the system through venting of the sanitary system. And if you ever get to a full-pipe condition in a sanitary drain, the system stops moving and you have situations that can result in chronic blockages in the building.

So this doesn't happen on the water supply side, where it's just plain, clear water pressurized delivered to various outlets in the building. The sanitary side, the situations are much more variable and highly complex. 

Christoph Lohr: From the PERC study itself, I think there was a lot of surprising results that occurred. Can you expand on some of those? 

Pete DeMarco: Yeah. The interesting part of designing the design experiment that we used for PERC was to first take inventory of all the variables that we wanted to take into account for trying to determine which were the variables that were most significant in making drain lines function properly.

So of course you have slope and you have the volume of water from various toilets, whether it be 3.5 gallons of water or a much smaller number, and you have pipe diameter, of course. And you have differences in toilet design and differences in toilet paper. And all those variables needed to be taken into account when we designed our experiment. And the idea was to determine which of those variables are actually the most significant in drain line performance. So an apparatus was set up, it was a 135-foot-long apparatus that was set up at American Standard's product development center here in New Jersey, and we worked on numerous flush experiments that went the course of almost four years, ranging from 2012 to 2016.

The work is very labor intensive and time consuming. But what we found out was that some surprising results. We had thought that going from a 4-inch pipe diameter to a 3-inch pipe diameter would improve performance, but that didn't happen. And the reason we didn't see those improvements, certainly hydraulically you're going to get deeper flood levels and a smaller diameter pipe and higher velocities, and all that is true.

But once you start mixing the solids into the equation and especially toilet paper, the potential for mechanical blockages to occur in that smaller diameter pipe really convolute the performance. And once there's enough solids in the pipe and it bunches up, you block the flow of air, and again, that system is prone to chronic blockages after that point.

So pipe diameter was found to be non significant, which was a great surprise. We kind of knew that toilet paper was going to be significant based on prior research that was done. However, we were surprised to the extent to which that was true. Our ranking of the variables showed that toilet paper, at the very end of the program after we calculated all the data after four years of studies, showed that toilet paper was right up there with slope and flush volume as the most important variables in terms of drain line transport. And that was a bit of a surprise as well. Toilet paper varies a great deal in terms of what tensile strength. So the lower, thinner papers that break up easily provided much better drain line transport than the tougher papers that are marketed as being tougher, extra absorbant; those really diminished the drain line performance very significantly. 

Christoph Lohr: So, for our listeners to summarize the points you made, it's that sanitary systems are much more complex, and the testing to determine sanitary systems is much more complex than maybe what people imagine at first blush. Diameter needs further study, but some of the base knowledge in terms of believing velocity increasing with smaller pipe diameters may break down in terms of scouring action at smaller pipe sizes, and that toilet paper has a pretty significant impact on how far drain line carry can occur. Is that fair? 

Pete DeMarco: Yeah, that is fair. And the mechanical blockages that we saw increase when we went from 4 inch to 3 inch may not manifest themselves at larger pipe diameters. So there indeed maybe great opportunity to go to incrementally smaller pipe diameters in larger buildings, where instead of going from 3 to 4 inch, you're looking at larger diameters and maybe going from 10 inch to 6 inch for example or whatever.

So there may be opportunity there and I hope further research kind of takes a look at those problems, but one thing I would recommend is that you have to have actual empirical studies done for this because of the complexities with drain line transport. And that makes the research proposition, as I said earlier, expensive and time consuming. So I hope that work gets done. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, the next time you come on the podcast, what do you think we're going to be talking about in terms of PERCE study or drain line carry or sanitary sizing? 

Pete DeMarco: Well, I hope again, they do evaluate those larger pipe diameters and see if there are opportunities to reduce building drains in larger buildings. I think that that is very possible. I also certainly would like to see some work done to take a look at different levels of abuse as opposed to use that would be commensurate with some larger buildings. I think on multifamily, the levels of abuse would be very similar to what we had in the PERC study. But once we get into the commercial side of large buildings, then abuse factors like folks using paper towels instead of toilet paper to cover the toilet seat and all that, and things that folks do in commercial bathrooms is another complicating factor that would have to be designed into those experiments. So I hope some thought is given to really take a look at all those issues. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, for our listeners, Pete, if people want to get in touch with you, whether it's social media or email or something else, what's the best way for our listeners to, to get ahold of you?

Pete DeMarco: Email works best. Feel free to email me at pete.demarco@iapmo.org. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Pete, on behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical, thanks so much for being our guest here. 

Pete DeMarco: Happy to do it, Christoph. 

Christoph Lohr: In our last segment, I speak with Nimish Shah, Ph.D., managing director of IAPMO India, about Woloo, a digital-driven startup that has the vision of transforming the lives of urban women in the developing world.

Welcome to the episode, Nimish. 

Nimish Shah: Hi, and a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Christoph. 

Christoph Lohr: We're excited to have you on. Do you want to give our listeners just a quick overview of who you are and the organization you work for? 

Nimish Shah: Sure. So I'm a microbiologist by training, holding a Ph.D. degree in microbiology, and I look upon myself as a sustainability thought leader and expert. I spent 25 years in Unilever R & D doing product development and leading program initiatives on water, sanitation, hygiene. I have also led the sustainable innovations program for Unilever Global. And before joining IAPMO, I was for a year and a half leading and setting up the Toilet Board Coalition's India office.

And I'm now at IAPMO India leading a team of very talented individuals committed to changing the world through standards testing, product development, support, and all of that stuff in the area of WASH, helping with SDG 6. So that's me. 

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. And can you tell our listeners a little bit about SDG 6?

Nimish Shah: Yeah, SDG 6 is about ensuring water and sanitation for all. In fact, out here in India, we believe that there is lot of talent that can help the world solve some of its Sustainable Development Goal-related challenges. India is, at the moment, also one of the fastest-growing startup economies of the world.

And therefore, rightly so, through our, IWSH program, as well as through IAPMO India's own programming, we are trying to make a very special provision and have launched in October 2021, a program called Startup Sahay, which essentially means helping, facilitating and supporting startups. And that's a very exciting program.

We have offered testing services, certification services, but more importantly for one organization, we have also made donations in the context of providing access to women's sanitation. And that's what this company Woloo is about. 

Christoph Lohr: That's amazing. So there's obviously all the normal plumbing standards and codes work that you all do, but you're also getting involved in some really important philanthropic work in India.

And you mentioned IWSH and Woloo — can you tell our listeners a little bit about that? 

Nimish Shah: Yeah. So Woloo is a digital-driven startup that has the vision of transforming the lives of urban women in the developing world context. One big challenge that women face is out-of-home access to clean, hygienic and safe sanitation.

Often this is an ignored topic; often planners, bosses of companies, and all these places, this aspect is often ignored. What Woloo is trying to do is through an app, onboarding several public toilets, or for that matter, it could be even a toilet in a restaurant, upgrading them, improving them and offering it as an access service for women to use those toilets at a very low cost — one rupee per day . And at that cost, women can access a clean, hygienic and safe toilet. In addition, it has e-commerce facility. And Manish Kelshikar, the CEO, has coined a term as "loo commerce." and through that loo commerce, when women make purchases for their hygiene needs, it could be a sanitary pad, it could be a simple sanitizer, then it accrues points and those points can be offset against the subscription fee. So you can virtually get free access to clean, hygienic and safe sanitation in a city like Mumbai. And with more than 12,000 subscribers already there, the movement is catching up. Let me first talk about IWSH. IWSH has donated 1,000 subscriptions to Mumbai police on the occasion of the newly inaugurated Woloo lounge room facility.

So women who otherwise would not have been able to afford even 365 rupees or $4, $5 a year now can access for one full year and get used to clean, safe and hygienic toilets. So 1,000 Railway policewomen have been donated one year's Woloo subscription through IWSH. IAPMO, on the other hand, we believe that clean, hygienic and safe sanitation starts with certified products, be it plumbing pipes, be it sanitary ware, taps, faucets, washbasins, everything. We have partnered with Indian manufacturers who have certified products from us, tested and certified products from us. And these are now live showcases of how a standard product-based public toilet will be because we believe in terms of cleaning maintenance, operations, and maintenance repairs, the standard certified products go a long way in maintaining these toilets well. And during its life, most of the times, because the products are of poor quality, many of these public toilets become dirty, filthy, need repair. And that problem gets significantly addressed if we use certified products in these toilets, and that is what Woloo is committed to doing. And that's a nice showcase at Ghatkopar Metro Railway Station, where the Woloo lounge room is having certified products.

It's almost a showroom for the manufacturers, but at the same time goes a long way in addressing this issue for women's sanitation. 

Christoph Lohr: That's incredible. So my sense is that there's a huge need in India. And you mentioned you had 12,000 subscribers already. What are you projecting in the next couple years in terms of subscribers? Are you thinking you're going to see an increase of 10%, 20% more? What is your sense right now in terms of the need in terms of how quickly that program's growing? 

Nimish Shah: So right now the program is focused on Mumbai. Last month, Woloo expanded into Pune city, which is about 100 miles north of Mumbai, and slowly they will expand the footprint, possibly Bangalore as well. In terms of the market size, I can tell you that India has close to 150 million urban working women, working women only in cities, right? So you can imagine that there is a huge demand because almost every woman faces this dilemma while stepping out of the hub. Either they will not drink water so that they don't feel the urge to go to the loo or they will hold it.

And it leads to a lot of health problems, and IAPMO's foundation is based on serving public health. And therefore working with Woloo gives us that satisfaction that we are doing something for the society, empowering women in the real sense. When it comes to scale, as I said, 150 million people, 150 million women who go out to work and therefore there can be almost a few hundred thousand Woloos possible in India. It all depends on the ability of the team to scale investments that the company can get. But from our side, we are extending full support for Woloo to be successful. 

Christoph Lohr: That's amazing. And if I remember right, looking at the Emerging Water Technology Symposium, you're going to be speaking there as well, and I think you're touching on some of these topics there as well. Is that correct, Nimish? 

Nimish Shah: Absolutely. I'm really looking forward to bringing the insights from a developing country. How can you have asset-like business models that are successful on the economic front, but also successful on addressing the SDG challenges front? And this would be something that I would love to speak at the EWTS.

Christoph Lohr: Excellent. Well, for our listeners to wrap this up, if you had a one word summary of our conversation here today, something our listeners should take away, what is the one word you would use to summarize your talk? 

Nimish Shah: Well, International Women's Day is celebrated on 8 March so this podcast is very topical, and I would want to say one word, but with two hyphens, is that equity for women's sanitation. That's what I think we need to do because only then our world will progress. I hope that's fine. 

Christoph Lohr: We'll let it slide. We'll let it slide, Nimish. If our listeners want to get in touch with you or your organization, what's the best way for them to do that?

Nimish Shah: Look at me on LinkedIn, both my personal page as well as the IAPMO India page, and there are lots of information about Woloo and some of the other things that we are doing. I want to just touch upon one thing — on February 10th, IAPMO participated and inaugurated a Global Sanitation Center of Excellence. That information also you'll find out there on our LinkedIn page and I'll be happy to respond to any of your queries regarding any of the things that we spoke about today. 

Christoph Lohr: You know, I just went on IAPMO India, searched it on LinkedIn, it came right up and I just followed here while we were on; I definitely encourage our listeners to do the same. On behalf of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical, Nimish, thank you so much for joining us for this episode, and we look forward to having you on again at some point in the near future. 

Nimish Shah: Thank you, Christoph, and hello to all the listeners out there.

Christoph Lohr: Thanks for joining us on this week's app episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical. Love this episode of the podcast; head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate and leave a review. Please follow us on Twitter @AuthorityPM; on Instagram at theauthoritypodcast; or email us at iapmo@iapmo.org. Join us next time for another episode of The Authority Podcast: Plumbing & Mechanical.

In the meantime, let's work together to make our buildings more resilient and shape us for the better.