We have been in business for 35 years. The huge growth of Howell county during the last 2 decades, has resulted in an increasing need for a HVAC-R technical services company. In 1990 we started changing our business to supply this need. Due to the continued decrease of qualified HVAC-R technicians in the county, we have instituted a different approach to developing service technicians. We start training with the most basic levels, and advance our technicians as quickly as they learn. Every service call is an used as an opportunity to review training, theory, and results. Every service call requires the technician to submit a symptom report, a list of possible causes, and the reasoning behind the corrective action taken. Cell phones allow any uncertainties to be corrected immediately.
Service technicians are mechanics. The good ones do hard, tiring work, and they get dirty. They may shovel junk out of a boiler for most of a day, clean the tubes, and at the end spend 30 minutes setting the burner combustion. They look like chimney sweeps at the end of the day. Most service technicians entered the profession because they don't want any of that. They leave the dirty work to a minimum wage helper and go for coffee. The helper doesn't like the dirty work, he doesn't understand why, so he does a half way job. The service tech returns, pushes the 'RESET" button, and declares it fixed. The boiler tuber aren't really clean, so the boiler runs, but it burns dirty and fails again. The service techs really like pushing the 'RESET" button, and then going for coffee. Don't worry about why the reset button tripped, if it does it again, they will be happy to come back and push it again. After all, cleaning the boiler didn't help, so you probably need a new boiler. Most service companies are compromised by the motivation to scrap the old equipment and install new. Their service personnel have an easy out. If they encounter a large repair project requiring hard work. They declare the equipment "Junk", and announce that the only solution is to replace it with new. They think this will keep them out of the hard dirty work of actually changing compressor and fan motors, cleaning coils, drain pans, and drain lines, etc. Since they almost never actually do these jobs, they aren't very good at them, and are unsure if they can even successfully complete a complicated repair.
The common justification is "It will cost more to repair the equipment than replace it with new". They then return to the shop, tell the boss they have made a sale, claim their sales bonus. They never think about the fact that replacement requires them to disconnect and remove a ton of old equipment, bring in a ton of new equipment, reconnect it, and make it work, instead of removing a 50 -100 lb. part and fixing or replacing it. They leave most of the heavy labor to the minimum wage helper. The worst problem is that the new installation will usually be poorly engineered and carelessly installed. The technician who was too lazy to fix a single failed part, will not spend an entire week or more diligently installing the new equipment. He often creates more problems due to sloppy or improper installation. The owner's long term cost for this "Scrap and Replace" system of mechanical repair is usually considered about 3 times the cost of true repair and maintenance by qualified personnel. Worse is mechanical system reliability, using the 'Scrap and Replace' system. The system manager only replaces equipment when the number and frequency of problems with a given piece of equipment become unacceptable to the occupants of the building. Drain pans leaking water, poor cooling, occasionally shutting down, not enough heat in cold weather, etc., all pass with changing weather conditions. They are guaranteed to return with bad weather and meanwhile cause other damage to the mechanical equipment and the building itself, (failed compressors, electrical shorts and fires, failed blower drives, increased corrosion, water soaked ceiling, and rotted or rusted structural parts of the building).
Ozark's hillbilly maintenance management, whether in house or from an independent service company, is the main reason for this mode of operation. First and foremost you cannot pay an employee a few bucks more an hour than minimum wage, and expect him to do harder, dirtier work than the guy who mows the lawn. Work that requires attention to detail and usually some study to understand what he should be doing. He also needs to be smart enough to know that his future depends on producing good work under difficult conditions and have enough self discipline to do so! This sort of person will not be working in your maintenance department. When he graduated from high school, his SAT scores were high enough that he went to college. He is now a college graduate earning decent pay. Managers who expect this from an employee, who don't know enough to inspect every aspect of their work, and be able to show them how to do the job correctly are simply incompetent. Our decreased pool of intelligent self motivated manual labors, requires more supervision, inspection, and micro-training from their managers. The same principle applies to trade schools. Certain amounts of basic education are required before you can be a decent carpenter, plumber, mason, etc. Accepting a student into a trade school without appropriate prerequisite education if a waste of the student's time and money and constitutes fraud on the part of the trade school.
Maintenance management must:
Ultimately you can access the performance of your maintenance management quickly by looking at their results. I have walked across rooftops with the new owner's engineers accessing the HVAC-R equipment condition. Sometimes the engineer goes downstairs, talks to the owner and then they fire the old maintenance manager. It is easy for knowledgeable people to look at mechanical systems and determine the worth of the maintenance personnel. It isn't necessary to wait 20 years and access maintenance costs in comparison to other buildings. It's what the Navy calls looking "Ship Shape". A sure sign of hillbilly maintenance is when maintenance start lobbying for outside contractors to install a new (roof, Air Conditioner, boiler, etc), because these items are not working. A roof that always leaks in the same spot when it rains means you need to fire your maintenance manager. Most roof are replaced because maintenance should have been running water on the roof with a garden hose, when it wasn't raining, finding exactly where the roof is leaking. Usually a putty knife full of roof sealer will cure the problem.
When maintenance goes to upper management and says "I'm spending 500 man hours and $5,000.00 in materials a year to keep up with new roof leaks, you can start thinking about a new roof.
We have gathered some of the most egregious examples in our Rouge's Gallery.
With the boss having and engineering degree and 35 years of experience in the HVAC-R business our technicians have an unequaled opportunity for education. As of this time we have 35 year old equipment still in operation and performing well. We also have the experience to know when there are several different way to solve a problem and which way is best for the given situation. Cell phones make this knowledge instantly available to our technicians.
"Thunder Puppy" or "Cafe Racer"? We use 1 ton vans for service trucks. The insides are entirely fitted with organized drawer and bin storage that our technician can walk, not crawl, into for parts and tool. We carry 5 times the parts and tools of smaller trucks. These trucks are slower and use a little more fuel, but are invaluable when they arrive on the job. We have nicknamed them "Thunder Puppies" Our competitors utilize 1/2 ton trucks and vans. If they have the tool or part they need and can find them, they have to crawl inside to retrieve it. Often times the technician don't bother, and drive back to town for parts. The biggest advantage of these little trucks is that they look good driving down the road going for parts/coffee. Hence the term "Cafe Racer"
Located at Hwy 17 and Hwy 63 Bypass, our new shop features fully integrated material storage. We purchase parts and materials in bulk, for our own use and keep more HVAC-R supplies than anyone else in West Plains. We try to avoid the endless "West Plains Runaround" spending half a day looking for parts and materials, to do a 2 hour job. Our technicians can easily access these supplies to replenish their truck stock. Our air conditioned shop is also designed for equipment rehabilitation. It often pays to take equipment into the shop for repairs. Our shop features a sunken internal dock/wash area, overhead crane, welding, sandblasting, painting area, plus our Sheet Metal Shop.
Piping Systems (threaded, welded, or fused)
Hydronic Systems
Steam Systems
Refrigeration
Ice Machines
Elevated work, Boom lifts and scissors lifts
Sprayed Foam Insulation
Hoisting and Lifting