On Aug. 25, three Staten Island Luxaire dealers helped grant a wish to a child on Staten Island through a partnership with ABCO Refrigeration, the Make-A-Wish Foundation®, and the Staten Island Yankees, a Class A minor league baseball club.
When HVACR contractors get together, one of the goals is to network with peers and find better ways to run their businesses. When AirTime 500 members get together, as they recently did for their annual St. Louis meeting, they like to have some fun with idea sharing, making the results very rewarding.
“What do you sell?” Before you answer, here are some things you do not sell. You don’t sell furnaces or air conditioners. You don’t sell service. You don’t sell the company. You don’t sell peace of mind. You don’t sell comfort or security, and you don’t sell yourself. The answer is benefits.
In a few years, it may be common to see gardens growing on top of urban buildings across the United States, providing relatively unusual greenery in the typical sea of concrete and blacktop. Many of these scenes are common in Europe and have been coming over to North America. For building owners and managers, the benefits include energy savings that can add up to hundreds and thousands of dollars each year.
Cooling a building the size of 17 football fields (approximately 517,500 square feet) calls for a “flexible” solution, especially when it contains a warehouse, office space, a data center, and a 400-person capacity meeting room. This new facility in Garland, TX, is the hub for Fossil’s merchandise shipment and repairs. Fossil building staff reviewed the varying cooling needs of the different environments in their new distribution center. Lennox equipment was chosen.
International Service Leadership (ISL) Inc. members were introduced to a relatively new method of communicating ideas at their recent meeting in Las Vegas, NV. “Open Space Technology” was introduced and moderated by Bruce Withrow, president of Meeting Facilitators International.
Contractors, take note. The winners have been chosen in The News’ third annual HVACR Instructor of the Year contest. The award-winning instructors profiled in this issue can be your key to finding qualified, educated technicians. They are the industry’s backbone, providing talented technicians to the industry.
You’ll pardon Dick Lane if he brags about his family a little. This runner-up in The News’ Instructor of the Year contest has six sons, four of whom are actively involved in the HVACR industry. Lane, the HVACR instructor at the Fairfield Career Center of the Eastland Vocational School District, Carroll, OH, is proud of all of his sons’ careers and happy to contribute to the industry through his teaching.
Tom Wittman’s business card lists his occupation as “coach.” The senior business trainer at International Service Leadership (ISL) is comfortable with that title, as he takes his role very seriously. Wittman led some of the sessions at the group’s recent Las Vegas meeting.
Continuous improvement is something that Jim Kroll applies to himself, his HVACR program, and his students. An instructor at Virginia Highlands Community College (VHCC) in Abingdon, VA, Kroll is described by a former student as “relentless in his efforts to ensure the students have every advantage possible during their training.”