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• Your Customers Define Your Value; Customer Advisory Boards provide the framework to listen

  Truly understanding your customer’s needs and the value they place on your products and services is paramount to success in business. Defining and refining your value to the customer takes total organizational alignment. Alignment around the importance of the information and collaboration around collecting it, communicating it, and acting on it are vital. [caption id="attachment_199" align="alignnone" width="300"] value concept handwritten on blackboard[/caption] Customer Advisory Boards are a great way to engage the leadership in your own organization. They allow you to capture candid feedback on measuring existing corporate value statements against your messaging across the company. Are your value statements landing? Do they resonate with the people receiving them? What would your customers say is most important to them? Customer Advisory Boards provide three major benefits to an organization. 1. Deepening Relationships with Customers 2. Understanding Your Customer’s Value Language 3. Identifying Your Product/Service Gaps Deepening Relationships: People do business with people they like. Putting people together with one purpose, “How can we help one another achieve more together?” or better yet, “How can I help you over ...

• Why Dedicated HVAC Systems Are Better for Your Facility

  For the facility’s unique processes and requirements, your team has designed and optimized every aspect of your operation. This optimization has become a minimum requirement for continued operation. But utilities and your HVAC systems are often thought of as ancillary systems. They become outdated and even neglected, despite this optimization of processes. For facility leaders, minimizing or eliminating any process interruption is always top of mind. And you must ensure that regulatory and safety requirements are met at all times. As a result of these and other operational pressures, you probably undertake frequent routine maintenance if you have an aging facility system. For you, these aging systems with like-for-like replacement lead to increased labor investment, higher operational costs, and shorter total system lifecycle. Production processes and technologies have changed Many facilities’ current boiler-driven process systems barely resemble their original design. Increasing the size of these systems to handle the heating requirements as well as the process loads added massive complexity and simply doesn’t make sense today. Instead of investing incrementally in an antiquated system, it is far more ...
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  4 Reasons Why Your Employee Comfort Should Come First

  “Comfort” is an interesting word that we use a lot at Cambridge.  Since we are an HVAC company, it is usually in context with making sure the people in your industrial facility are breathing fresh, tempered air, or making sure that your employees in high-bay buildings aren’t freezing in the dead of winter. There’s also “comfort” in the realm of making sure your employees know that you’ve got their backs and have a genuine interest in their personal health and professional growth.  (see blogs on Dale Carnegie Leadership Training and Stretching Your Way to Workplace Safety to generate ideas of how to boost comfort both personally and professionally).   Still, most companies overlook the importance of physical employee comfort, and are losing real talent and real opportunity to grow with those employees when they leave to pursue a workplace that can meet and exceed their basic requirements of a healthy working environment.   Not convinced? Here are four reasons that we think will back us up.   Safety protocol alone is reason enough. According to OSHA – your workers have the right to working conditions that do not pose ...

• Is an HVAC Smoke Detector Required on a 100% Outside Air Unit?

  Have you ever received a request to include an HVAC smoke detector with Cambridge heaters? Typically, engineers or building inspectors will make this request, interpreting building codes to require an HVAC smoke detector be installed on any air handling system with a capacity greater than 2,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM). Why Cambridge Systems Do Not Require an HVAC Smoke Detector The requirements for needing an HVAC smoke detector are clearly addressed in Section 606 of the International Mechanical Code (IMC), This section covers the requirements for utilizing an HVAC smoke detector for air handling equipment, and states: 606.1 Controls required. Air distribution systems shall be equipped with smoke detectors listed and labeled for installation in air distribution systems 606.2 Where required. Smoke detectors shall be installed where indicated in Sections 606.2.1 through 606.2.3. Exception: Smoke detectors shall not be required where air distribution systems are incapable of spreading smoke beyond the enclosing walls, floors and ceilings of the room or space in which the smoke is generated. Cambridge units fall under this exception, as our systems use only 100% outdoor air to heat and ...

• Choosing the Right Heating System for your Facility

  Is the heating bill for your plant or warehouse too high? What about cold dock door areas and unbalanced temperatures? Is negative building pressure a problem? Do your employees complain about it being too cold making it harder for them to do their job? Do you have high maintenance costs from existing heating equipment? These are just a few common problems that result from selecting the wrong heating system, misplacing your heaters so they can’t reach their full potential or using obsolete technology. What factors determine the best space heating system? Everyone wants a heating & ventilating system that meets their unique requirements at the lowest total cost. Before selecting a heater, define the heating/ventilating requirements and understand all the cost factors that determine the true lowest total cost solution for a specific facility. BOILER SYSTEMS One of the oldest forms of heating, boilers have been in existence since about the 1800’s and are still a preferred system of heating in large industrial facilities where remote plants deliver steam and hot water to satellite locations to circulate through heat exchangers. These exchangers ...

• Building Owners Earn Big Tax Break for New HVAC

  We recently heard some great news from our tax advisors: Cambridge Engineering customers can immediately deduct 50 percent of the cost of our HVAC equipment when it is installed as a retrofit in a commercial building. The new rule applies to a variety of building improvements and renovations made in 2016 and 2017 – and HVAC equipment is included as an eligible deduction. This is a big win for building owners! If you’ve been considering replacing your facility’s old or inefficient space heating and ventilation equipment, now is the time to do it.  The 50 percent “bonus deduction” will taper down to lower percentages after 2017, and will go away completely in 2020. Accelerate Your Depreciation on Building Improvements This gift from the IRS marks a significant change from past deduction allowances. HVAC equipment has always been considered part of the physical structure of the building, so until now it could not be depreciated at an accelerated rate in the same way that capital equipment can be depreciated. In the past, building improvements have been depreciated over 39 years. That’s a pretty ...