The company provides, configures, and maintains controls for HVAC systems, making buildings more energy efficient. This is a fairly line type of work that is expected to grow quickly. Craig started doing this work as a union employee for another company then decided to take the leap and open his own company. After interviewing a few people to find a business partner, the company was started in 2017 out of his house. The work is focused on commercial buildings, office buildings, schools, warehouses, and medical office buildings.

Craig attributes his success over the last nine years to a combination of being responsive to his customers and turning over jobs fully completed and on time. Customer communication is very important, and several of his team members are excellent communicators. Winning bids usually comes down to keeping it fair, no gouging the customer. Some contractors go in with a low bid just to get in the building, then they’re entrenched for ongoing support and upgrades. For Craig, he focuses on a fair price, and if his bid is a little high, works with the client to clarify or adjust to meet the need.

There have been some growing pains as they’ve taken on larger projects. There are often aspects of the work that push the teams’ boundaries which helps them and the company grow. There have been a few unique requests including the setup of an antenna on an outdoor practice facility that was designed to monitor the temperature of the field. Each sensor was buried in the turf with a GPS locator so batteries could be replaced in the units. Although he’s never seen this before, Craig heard it is pretty common in Europe to monitor the ground for planning and soil temperature.

A recent change was moving Sage 100 Contractor to Syscon’s Cloud Hosting. The experience is ‘100 times better than what we had before,’ according to Craig. He also really appreciated Darren’s extra help with some local computer issues as they were testing cloud access.

Craig is also watching to see how AI will impact these HVAC control systems. Nothing’s changed yet, but it’s coming. – CMW