Tag Archives: hvac

Building a dream team during COVID Crisis

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On field with Service Technicians

Getting started post lock down is no easy task , for all of us the challenge is to get restarted while the Pandemic is on. At Nova when we had the task of restarting as an essential service we were not prepared for most of the issues that came up .Putting a small team together to get started almost seemed like an impossible dream . However we quickly adapted and figured out the way forward .

Accepting The Reality

The biggest mistake everyone is making is to prepare to get back to office post lock down. The approach should be to get back to work with the Pandemic around . This Pandemic will remain with us for a few months and we have to get back to our work . The office is a physical place that you may not have access to

Technology

At Nova we were cloud enabled and that helped our team to restart all back end operations seamlessly . For most of us who have never given importance to technology for business , this will be a difficult task that needs a quick focus and has to be implemented with speed . Technology for your business is the new real estate . You need a tech enabled business and the cost for the same needs to be replaced with the cost of your real estate ( your office) . Adoption of technology during the pandemic seems like trying to change the tires of your car while its still running . Almost a crazy idea . Then a video like this Changing Tires While Driving , forces you to believe that, out of the box approach and adapting to the situation at a fast pace is the need of the hour. My earlier webinar Work From Home has all the details of the technology that can be adopted by HVACnR dealers .

Compassion

While you may adopt technology , its also important to understand the difficulties people go through these times . Everyone needs to be dealt with compassion , to help them overcome their fear . The other difficulties people will face is on working from home . We need to empathize with their situation and have a plan on handling the issues at being at home and handling work . In an Indian scenario the family needs to get used to the idea of whats the work discipline that need to be followed , where there is no separate study room and you need to be at work with the rest of the family .

Purpose

Before the pandemic the easiest way to get anyone to work is to have a standard carrot and stick method . If you get to work you get paid , if your work harder you get paid more and if you don’t work or under perform you are asked to leave . How does that work when its compared to risking your own personal life? What can be so compelling that your team is ready to risk their life and get back to work . Finding a purpose for the team that’s compelling enough is important to get back to work . At Nova we found our sole purpose to get to work was to save every job in our company . We now wanted to get to work for the larger interest of our community . Nova Heroes was a 2 minute video that summed up all our feelings and encouraged us to get to work .

Be Yourself

This is a time when you cannot be an owner , a head of department or a Manager . This is the time to introspect weather you have the leadership quality to put this dream team together . Its possible that you may figure out that you have the qualities of a great cricketer like Sachin Tendular , one who is an important member of the team but not good enough to captain the team . The task then is to find the Captain for your dream team and help him build the team .

Webinar on Building a Dream Team during COVID Crisis

Webinar for Ishrae Thane Chapter – Building a Dream Team during COVID Crisis

Preventive Service for your Air-conditioners

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Preventive services for air-conditioning equipment primarily mean that you clean the coils of the air-conditioners . The clear benefit for the same is energy efficiency . The power consumption of your air-conditioner goes down when the coils are kept clean . Lets understand how this works. The preventive services are done in various ways based on the specific requirement of the machines .

Dry Service

This preventive service is done on a regular basis to remove the dust from the indoor and outdoor unit . The dry blower is used on the coils which blows the dust out of the coils . This improves the heat exchange and post service reduces the electricitry consumption . However this service does not remove the hard dirt that may continue to remain stuck in the fins of the coil .

Wet Service using a Jacket

The wet service is done when the machines are extremely dirty with hard solidifed dirt , the jacket around the unit ensures that the machines does not have to be removed and the servicing can be carried out without dirtying the space around the machine .This is an ideal way to clean the machines and ensure that the air conditioner remains clean and the energy consumption does not increase .

Brought Down Service

Often the machines are installed in a place where the coils are extremely dirty and cannot be serviced at site . This is when the machines has to be uninstalled transported to a service center and the the coils are seperated from the machine and jet spray is used to clean the coils. post the clean up the units are assembled back again and the machine is reinstalled .

Inefficiency in Preventive Service

There is no way to understand when a machine needs servicing and every company plans a preventive service based on a time duration like once in every quarter . This is inefficient as sometimes the machines needs preventive service more than once a quarter and some of them don’t need service even once in a quarter . This leads to unnecessary opening of machines that do not require servicing and waste of energy because machines that require frequent servicing cannot be done until the scheduled date .

Manufacturers Proposition to Solve this issue

Most manufacturers are building a self cleaning feature which is robotic device in front of the indoor coil , it takes the water from the drain and sprays it back on the indoor unit filter to remove the dirt . However this system fails to remove the hard dirt within the fins of the air-conditioning coils . In India the dusty and humid environment always creates hard dirt on the indoor and outdoor units of air-conditioners and that creates energy inefficiency in air-conditioners .

How to solve this issue in the future

In the future IoT devices in the air-conditioners could sense the rise in electricity consumption and the airflow at the coil . If the airflow is decreasing at the indoor unit and the the energy consumption is increasing rapidly from the manufacturers prescribed rating or the certified BEE energy label, then the device could send out a preventive service signal to a platform like Pureblu that self generates a trouble ticket and allocates a technician to have the preventive service done . This will ensure max energy efficiency and optimum utilisation of the technical manpower , Its not too long before this will become a reality .