‘This means that each day out of the trades is a day that you become out of touch with the changes that happen,’ Rahmanovich explains, ‘and that statement focused me and helped me to take continuous training very seriously. It is my mantra for this company.

‘Continuous training is the only way to stay in touch with changes in the industry from a technical and service standpoint.

‘Murph believes in continuous training as well. As our service and installation manager, he looks for every opportunity to train and help our field service and installation teams,’ says Rahmanovich.

‘We use pictures and notations on service and install jobs. Murph uses what he sees in those photos or notes to go over project challenges with the crews the next morning to show them how to do things better.’

Furthermore, Geigerich double checks all equipment sales to be sure that equipment is best matched for the application, that it is installed right, and later serviced. This is just part of the daily work process.

Rahmanovich says every time there is a slowdown or an opportunity to sit down, he pays his guys to train. Indoor Comfort Team will conduct an hour-long class on a topic.

‘We have a small training room that we use all the time,’ Rahmanovich says. ‘It is almost like a small lab. There we work with our team to learn more about the products and equipment we sell, install, and service.’

The NCI Connection to ICT

Rahmanovich says he discovered NCI when he took one of the classes and certification options they offered.

‘We just fell in love with NCI’s classes,’ he says. Rahmanovich adds that he sends people to such classes as often as possible. Once they have the core training, it’s then just a matter of continuing what Rahmanovich calls maintenance training.

‘For us, the good news is we have very little technician turnover and most of the team have already gone through NCI’s training, he says. ‘We send people for re-certification training and work to keep our local licenses up-to-date. Plus, it is very important we obtain and keep our PEUs up to date and attend any new product training that our vendors offer.’

Most of his guys have been through and continue to go through training with many HVAC Industry organizations including NCI, Building Performance Institute, Mitsubishi, Trane, Carrier and so on.

ICT’s Approach to System Renovations and Air Upgrades

Rahmanovich says, ‘We have always done duct installations and renovation work, but up to the point of getting trained and certified by NCI, we didn’t completely understand how critical a good or well-done air distribution system is. We didn’t understand the importance of duct sizing, and not just sizing using a Duct-o-lator, but sizing by actually measuring and calculating.

Today his techs do static pressure tests on nearly every call. ‘The fact is, we still don’t do enough duct renovations or duct replacement work. We should do more. But we live in an extremely competitive market and it is sometimes very difficult to convince a homeowner why we charge so much more than our competitors.

‘Homeowners think ductwork is ductwork. It is all the same. This does hold us back from doing as many renovations as we’d like and that needs to be done. But on those projects that we DO get done, we have perfectly happy customers.’

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