Are we really building more energy-efficient buildings? This question has plagued me for several years mostly because, on a day-to-day basis, as a mechanical contractor, I see the results of value engineering, low bids, little or no maintenance, minimal energy code enforcement, etc., in the built environment.
After a few weeks on the road with a variety of contractor groups, it happened again. I learned some things about this business that I had thought I already knew. Or, at least thought I had heard a hundred times before and had probably stopped listening.
It’s not the job of your customers to know industry lingo. How often do you rattle off terms like “AFUE” or “audit” without pausing to explain them? The real question is: After talking to you or your sales staff, do people feel confused and frightened, or educated and excited?
There are just a couple of weeks left for you to enter The NEWS’ Best Contractor to Work For contest. Some companies, those that rise like cream, go further than the norm. They offer a place where employees feel proud to work. Beyond the privilege of having a job, they feel downright lucky to work where they do.
There are quite a few crazy ideas in the HVACR industry’s history, but it’s the future that contractors, manufacturers, and distributors are trying to understand. For the HVACR industry, social and digital media aren’t the future though; they are the crazy ideas of today.
During the summer there was a flurry of press releases from an organization called BeyondHFCs. I pulled a number of them together into a story that appears in this issue. As I noted in the beginning of the story, this is a European-based organization that advocates the use of natural refrigerants rather than HFCs.
Politics is on the minds of a lot of the industry people that I speak to these days. In fact, I cannot remember when I have heard so much chatter for a mid-term election. I suppose that is the result of a still-struggling economy and the polarization of our political discourse.
As often happens, I learned something new while talking to a contractor a few weeks ago. An interesting thing about learning something new is that I also often discover almost everyone else already knows what I am just figuring out for the first time. But, just in case, I thought I’d share some words of perspective from Tim McGuire.
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Hi, Rod -- I asked the wonderful folks...
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Thank you!