As a facility maintenance manager or property manager, you should know the right time to hire another commercial HVAC maintenance company. Dealing with minor repairs, complaints, and other preventative maintenance can be a daunting task if you don’t implement a viable maintenance schedule.
However, even with a good maintenance schedule some maintenance practices are random and can find you off-guard. Therefore, it is prudent to be on the lookout for telltale signs that your current commercial HVAC company needs to be replaced or you should hire another HVAC maintenance company. Here are some signs that you need to hire another commercial HVAC maintenance.
Increased Utility Costs
It is your duty as a property manager to keep monitoring your utility costs, instead of assuming your HVAC commercial company is watching it out for you. However, you can also develop a plan that is designed to reduce your building’s utility costs with a company that offers such plans as a by-product of providing HVAC maintenance tasks. If that is the case, you shouldn’t experience high utility costs. Therefore, if you see increased utility costs, it is time to consider hiring another HVAC commercial maintenance company.
Too Much Finger Pointing
Building automation controls, lighting systems, and air conditioning interfaces with one another. Typically, you may need to hire different contractors to service these systems separately. At some point, these contractors may develop a habit of finger pointing or blaming each other, instead of providing you with a holistic approach on how to implement controls upgrades or equipment replacement in your building.
If this happens a lot, it is time to hire an established commercial HVAC maintenance company that can service all the systems in your building. In order to get it right the first time, you should hire a versatile, credible company that has HVAC and controls techs with expertise in different areas to fix your building.
Regular Service Repair Issues
If you are paying for HVAC maintenance services, you shouldn’t keep getting complaints from tenants about service repair issues almost on a daily basis. The experts from the company should make necessary repairs and inform you with practicable recommendations from time to time. But, if the company is not thorough, then you need to hire another commercial HVAC maintenance company.
A credible HVAC commercial company is proactive and will help you come up with an actionable plan so you can have peace of mind. Once you have hired the right company, you won’t have to worry about the next emergency or outage.
Site Visits Are Withheld Before quoting
If your company always make site visits to conduct HVAC inspections before quoting new upgrades, but the visits are suspended suddenly, then it may be time you consider hiring another commercial HVAC maintenance company. How will the company update your design with the latest technologies to meet your goals without conducting inspections?
Normally, a project engineer expert from your HVAC commercial maintenance company should conduct inspections before every quotation and estimates for HVAC system upgrades. Meaning, you pay the company to inspect and evaluate your building before making any recommendations. In fact, project sales should work with a technician to understand your specific HVAC needs.
High Technician Turnover
If you notice that the HAVC commercial maintenance company keeps changing the service management people or technicians, it may be a sign that something is wrong with your company. Credible HVAC companies take time to screen and hire the best technicians and thus can go out of their way to retain them.
In addition, they’re very methodical in managing the transition of a client’s account when the current expert technicians are promoted, or when multiple experts are needed to upgrade equipment. You should at least ask for an explanation when you notice that ongoing services seem disjointed or good employees start leaving your HVAC maintenance company. The best approach in such a situation is to hire a new commercial HVAC maintenance company, especially if the response you get is not satisfactory.
Bottom Line?
While it is possible for one or two parts of equipment to be tough to come by, having supply issues for relatively minor parts of equipment is worrying. If your HVAC maintenance company keeps experiencing these inadequacies, it may be as a result of soured supplier relationships, and it is not good for your building. When your company starts missing appointments and you begin experiencing building controls crisis, it is time to hire another HVAC maintenance company. Also, if your HVAC maintenance company is not current with all the regulatory requirements, certifications, and permits necessary for operating an HVAC company, you need to hire a new company.