Addressing Disciplinary Concerns in the HVAC Sector

Though, the HVAC sector is growing rapidly and the demand for HVAC equipment is skyrocketing. With the increasing demand for HVAC equipment and products, the need for craftsmen and technicians has also increased. And for this reason, many small and inexperienced contractors are eyeing on the business opportunities. The increasing number of such small and inexperienced contractors poses a threat to the HVAC industry in the Indian market.

Due to the entry of inefficient and unprofessional contractors into the market, the quality of work in the HVAC sector is being compromised. Be it the ducting work, piping work or maintenance work, everything is being done ignoring the standards.

To get more orders from the market, such contractors have started dropping prices. To gain more profits, they started hiring illiterate, uneducated, unskilled and mannerless manpower on a large scale, whom they designated as technical experts. Such illiterate and disobedient manpower lacking etiquettes, when deployed on site, demonstrate negligence in every activity that ultimately costs fortune to the customer. As a result of such despicable conduct, the HVAC sector has lost its charm. Due to this reason, customers are not willing to pay a reasonable amount to get the HVAC work done by any service contractor.

Inherently, all the HVAC contractors deploy their technicians mostly in the field. Those technicians are required to be properly dressed in proper attire and company uniform. In the absence of company uniform, such technicians do not have their own identity. The truth is that when technicians go to sites, they dress up in indecent looking clothes. Additionally, such technicians do not use safety gadgets at the sites while working and avoid following safety rules. The result is neither in favour of the technician nor the customer due to lapses in adherence to safety practices. If any kind of damage occurs, either of the two must suffer the loss. A less educated and irresponsible technician never realizes the consequences and continues the work carelessly. Unprofessional attire is one of the reasons why HVAC technicians are never respected.

Sadly, when rude technicians are deployed on the site, they naturally use malicious language, which no customer would like to hear. The nasty language used at the sites by the technicians irritates the customers and makes them feel regretful about appointing their employer for the job. Employers rarely make any efforts to discipline their bad conducting technicians. Due to such distorted mentality and rude behaviour of the technicians, the image of the HVAC sector is decreasing day by day.

Less educated technicians fail to explain the malfunction to the customer in technical language and instead use casual language that has led to the mentality among customers that HVAC is an intuitive technology. Moreover, most of the uneducated or less educated technicians have cultivated the habit of chewing tobacco and smoking at the customer’s place. When such conduct is repeated by technicians in the presence of the customer, it makes the customer feel awkward and loses respect for the HVAC Professional.

Another irony often seen at the sites is that when unskilled technicians are deployed by the contractor for work in the customer’s plant, they demand free food. Providing free food depends on the discretion of the customer, which is not the birthright of the technicians. The contractor who deputes technicians to the customer’s plant should pay allowances to the technicians. Such cheap behaviour displayed by unethical technicians has created a bad perception about the HVAC profession among all the customers.

All such undisciplined conduct and unethical behaviour displayed at the sites by the technicians has created a feeling of disregard towards the HVAC fraternity in the minds of the customers. For this reason, most of the clients stopped considering the HVAC field as a part of the engineering stream. The HVAC profession is often thought of as a layman’s job that does not require any qualifications or any skills. Unfortunately, in today’s scenario, all the HVAC contractors are pretending to be ignorant despite knowing the ground reality.

Just knowing what to do is not enough. Competency means knowing how to execute quality work and provide firm solutions to the end user. But the ground reality is that the HVAC sector is given less importance when it comes to installation, commissioning and service delivery of HVAC equipment. The reason is clear and obvious, appointment of incompetent and uneducated manpower, who lack etiquettes. Because of this, customers hesitate to pay good amounts as they have lost trust for getting quality work. Generally, all the customers are impressed by the behaviour of the technicians who listen to the complaints lodged timely and resolve the problems effectively.

The entire HVAC community of professionals must improve the quality of work and deployment of manpower, if they intend to raise the dignity of the HVAC industry. For this to happen, the deployment of illiterate and uneducated technicians to perform technical tasks must be stopped. Unskilled technicians should be trained to the extent that they can adopt standard engineering practices in their work. While technical skills are relevant for every HVAC technician, practical etiquette is also paramount. Every HVAC contractor should realize this and take necessary action in this regard. HVAC contractors should be open to hiring skilled technicians and investing money in grooming their technical staff. In this regard ISHRAE is the right platform, which can assist the contractors in taking necessary steps. ISHRAE or its affiliated members can help contractors provide training to their field staff – so they can prepare themselves for the environment. ISHRAE has a rich group of scholars and stalwarts to spread knowledge to immature professionals and help them groom them as future experts. All HVAC dealers and contractors located in the country should encourage the technical staff deployed in their area to connect with such a knowledge sharing platform.

After all, the HVAC industry has provided many people with the opportunity to make a living and helped them survive. Now is the time for the entire HVAC fraternity to stand up for the sustainability of our industry.

Now is the time to think differently and act wisely. Only when an HVAC technician learns, will the HVAC sector grow.

J. Jiwani has a Master’s degree in Thermal Engineering from IIT- Delhi. He is a Chartered Engineer and a HVAC Consultant in the Vidarbha region, well-known for his work in ventilation and evaporative cooling systems for the last 40 years. Later, he became the Founder President of the ISHRAE Nagpur Chapter followed by being honoured with the ISHRAE Lifetime Service Award and been titled as Chapter President Emeritus by ISHRAE.