Featured Associates

ACCO Engineered Systems

Amber Ryman

Jack Holke

ACCO Engineered Systems

1133 Aladdin Avenue
San Leandro, CA 94577
www.accoes.com
510.346.4300 Office
510.347.1347 Amber’s Fax
510.347.1318 Jack’s Fax
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Certification #: 32981

San Leandro Office

ACCO Engineered Systems is the largest Design/Build mechanical engineering firm in the Western United States, and is entirely employee-owned. It specializes in heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, plumbing, process piping, industrial construction, building automation, electrical contracting and building services. ACCO currently employs around 2,900 employees located throughout the Western United States, with 280 employees located in its San Leandro office.

ACCO Engineered Systems was founded in 1934 as Air Conditioning Company (ACCO), located in Los Angeles. This former name was chosen because so few people knew what air conditioning was at the time. In 1949, the firm moved to Glendale, its current corporate address. In 2002, ACCO changed its name to ACCO Engineered Systems to better reflect the many aspects of its business. ACCO currently has thirty offices mostly located in California with other states being Washington, Idaho, Texas and Nevada.

Currently ACCO (San Leandro Office) has two NEBB Certified Professionals on staff, Amber Ryman and Jack Holke and eight NEBB Certified Technicians. Technicians are Michael De Los Reyes, Bryan Tate, Geoff Asbell, Joe Wion, Robert Cortez, Brian Leval, Alex Lemus and Andy Bruns.

Amber has been with ACCO for 16 years. She started in the System Operations Group doing Start, Test and Balance at ACCO as an apprentice with the Pipefitters Union. Prior to joining ACCO, Amber had limited experience in the trades. Her construction experience began in the office helping the project managers and estimators as a Bid Coordinator and Project Assistant. She decided that if she wanted to pursue this field she would need field experience, so she went to the pipefitters union hall and signed up for the apprenticeship program. In her second year of the apprenticeship program she went to work for ACCO, and was able to complete her 5-year apprenticeship program while she learned the ropes of the Start, Test and Balance Department. Once she became a journey-man, she was running projects and seeing jobs through to the end of the project, her responsibilities grew and she was approached to take the NEBB Certified Professional exam. Since she passed the NEBB test in 2010 and received her NEBB Certification in Testing, Adjusting and Balancing, she has taken on the opportunity of supervising the TAB portion of the department. ACCO’s TAB group started with two technicians and before long grew to twelve full time balancers.

Amber holds the following certifications with NEBB: Testing, Adjusting & Balancing, Whole Building Systems Technical Commissioning, Technical Retro-Commissioning of Existing Buildings, Sound, and Vibration Measurement. She is currently the only commissioner in Northern California for ACCO.

Jack Holke has been a Project Manager with ACCO’s service group since 2005 and has been a NEBB Certified Professional since 1996. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Jack’s career plans were to get his political science degree and then attend Law School. Tiring of school, Jack’s fraternity brother convinced him to interview with an air balancing firm that his father was associated with. One week after graduation, Jack started his career as a TAB Technician in 1984 for NABCO. One month after starting work at NABCO, Jack attended the Sheet Metal Union apprenticeship program for 3 years. After 16 years as a TAB Technician where he worked for several different firms, he made a career change. In 2000 he went to work for ACCO as a Project Engineer and then in 2005 he took on his current role as Project Manager. Although ACCO is a Design/Build firm that tests and balances its own jobs, Jack is starting to bid more plan and spec work. Jack’s NEBB Certification is for Testing, Adjusting and Balancing, and even though he is not specifically using his certification in his present position he maintains his certification for future possibilities. He finds that his NEBB certification helps him to generate more work for ACCO. He is proud of his NEBB certification and feels that the NEBB certification sets a person a notch above, letting everyone know that he has attained a certain level of knowledge and experience.

“Our NEBB Certification has been beneficial because it gives our customers the sense of security knowing the strict procedural standards are being met and that they can count on the quality of work being performed. When they ask us what our qualifications are and we respond that we are NEBB certified, there seems to be an end to the questions and usually an approval of the project. Our customers understand the importance and value of our NEBB certification.”

ACCO has worked on many projects, and with countless companies and institutions over the years such as Google, Adobe, Pixar, Cisco, Netflix, Stanford, Apple, Facebook, Genentech and Yahoo, to name a few.