It has been my pleasure to write an occasional column for The NEWS for the last seven years. With upcoming changes to our staff responsibilities, those musings will be less frequent. Oh, you will still see a few errant missives from my keyboard, but I’ll mostly be tending to the type of duties admirably handled by Publisher John Conrad during the last 10 years.

In a rare occurrence, the NEWSmaker honor is bestowed upon a group of people who worked as part of the MCAA/Construction Industry FASB Coalition (CIFC) on Multiemployer Plan Transparency and Disclosure. 

Three contractors representing a spectrum of business styles and opinions on the use of technology spoke to a standing room only crowd of HVACR contractors during the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) Contracting Week™.

As the holiday season and New Year approach, The NEWS wishes you good times. Really, we do. So, for the next couple of weeks, please have a few donuts and don’t worry about payroll, paying the bills, paying the piper, or even paying attention. 2012 promises to be a good year in the HVACR industry.

“Work hard. Play hard. That is the kind of schedule we have provided for you this year,” said Talbot Gee, executive vice president and COO of Heating, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) as he opened the 2011 Annual Conference at the Grand Wailea Resort.

In a somewhat slightly obscure location along the shores of Little Bay De Noc, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.), this town of approximately 12,000 hardy people like their hockey. According to Charlie Elliott, these people who call themselves Yoopers, also like air conditioning and heating too.

I wonder why ... I can never find the matches when I want to light the propane grill.

MechanicalXchange is an exclusive, invitation-only executive summit co-sponsored by The NEWS. The 2011 event was attended by more than 100 hand-selected people representing 23 mechanical contracting firms and 24 vendors. The purpose of the event is to bring buyers and sellers together.

Home performance contracting is taking the country by storm. Well, maybe not yet a thunderstorm, but in every meeting of HVAC contractors that I have attended in the last 18 months, at least some mention of measuring systems — testing in and testing out — has been on the agenda.

...the biggest job is always the one you never knew about?