Arkansas HVACR NewsMagazine September 2024

News Magazine September 2024

FEATURE STORY

unwilling, overtaxed, and under incentivized workforce. • HVAC Designers/Sales: Stuck in the rut of the free quote, these roles often fall short in actualizing energy efficient designs. Simple box swaps, still thinking gas is the best or only option for heating, and not talking about long term energy use versus simple up front costs are leading to suboptimal energy use and diminished system performance. • HVAC Installers: Key players in actualizing designs, yet often trapped in a cycle of speed over substance, missing critical system optimization steps. • HVAC Service Technicians: Frontline problem-solvers, yet often caught in a loop of symptomatic fixes, more often than not overlooking root causes and compromising system longevity and efficiency. At the heart of it, the industry is missing the concerted focus on thorough system design, commissioning , and meticulous maintenance . This gap is more than a missed revenue opportunity – it’s a roadblock to enhancing efficiency, profitability, and electrification efforts. The 3 hardest elements of residential HVAC for technicians to get right are: design, airflow analysis, quality installation (including refrigerant charging). These intricate tasks are often overlooked by our workforce, burdened by an outdated incentive system and a reluctance to adopt new methods. The reality is stark: most technicians lack essential tools for even basic 2: Our Workforce Skills Problem

It’s Not A Crisis – It’s an Endemic

Many of us talk about the labor shortage and skills gap as a crisis , but that’s not the correct term we should be using. A crisis is “a time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger” – a temporary and severe disruption to business as usual. Our “crisis” has persisted for over a decade , and we haven’t found a solution yet. We are in an endemic. Our industry has a disease that we have learned to cope with, but not cure. Its clear to me that our current forms of treatment aren’t working, because we’re focused on the symptoms. We need to get to the root of our ailment to find the source of our pain.

The Source Of Our Labor Endemic

1: Our Workforce Structure Problem

The roles in HVAC haven’t changed much in the last few decades, but the demands put upon them have dramatically shifted, especially for front line workers. There is critical work that is impacting system efficiency and longevity to do which is never gettin g done, and it’s because we are forcing that responsibility onto an