Whether you are a union contractor dealing with union leadership or a non-union company that deals directly with its employees, a true labor–management partnership will be the best way to move your business forward in the future.

We are only hurting ourselves if we sit back and complain that business is bad for any number of reasons. Sure it has been cool and sure the economy is an issue, but look around and you will find contractors who are surviving quite well and, in many cases, even prospering in these times.

One of the advantages of being in the business for a number of years is learning from your mistakes. Hopefully, this self-evaluation of a contractor will help encourage others of you to not make the same mistake repeatedly as I seem to have done.

One of the advantages of being in the business for a number of years is learning from your mistakes. Hopefully, this self-evaluation of a contractor will help encourage others of you to not make the same mistake repeatedly as I seem to have done.

Those air conditioners in your warehouse are about to become pumpkins. Well, maybe not pumpkins, but about as worthwhile. Not long after Halloween this year, those R-22 air conditioners will no longer be made. I certainly hope you have taken steps in your company to prepare for the conversion to R-410A.

If you read this column frequently, you know that I seem to attract bad service. I’ve written several times about some of the terrible service, which seems to permeate our society today. Well, I am happy to be able to write today about two instances of excellent service I recently received.

We’ve all had our opportunity to cry through the winter about how bad everything is in the economy and the effects on our businesses. Now spring is here and it’s time to quit crying and get out there and turn our businesses successful again. I know it’s not going to be easy, but we have an awful lot going for us - despite all of the negatives.

This year, we have had to take a long look at everything in our budget. It was necessary for us to make some of the most difficult decisions we have ever had to make in my career in the business.

I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago that speaks to the issue of integrity. As I thought about it, there are a number of ways integrity is important to us in our business. As such, I think the experience definitely relates to all of us and the way we operate our businesses.

If we are going to attract the best and brightest into our industry, we have to improve the image of our workers. I believe that we have greatly improved the image of the HVAC contractor. But while we have improved the image of the contractor, I’m not sure that we have sufficiently improved the image of those actually performing the work.