John Garofolo Implementation Excellence Award:

The award honors the late John Garofalo, an HVAC industry icon and business coach for NCI. He was renowned for his ability to demonstrate what it means to be a servant leader. Garofalo was all about having sincere care for people, a “get ‘er done” attitude, and living with integrity. He preached High-Performance HVAC leadership, accountability, and implementation. John lost his battle with cancer in 2016.

The criteria for an HVAC company to win the NCI John Garofalo Implementation Award are as follows. The recipient:

• Regularly delivers measured performance in every aspect of the business
• Uses visible benchmarking/scoreboards with up-to-date performance results
• Provides strong company leadership
• Sets and practices ethical standards with humility
• Constantly looking for ways to improve
• The company’s personnel is willing to embrace change.

Hearn Plumbing, Heating, and Air, Madison, OH is the latest High-Performance HVAC company to join the ranks of receiving this prestigious award.

This award recognizes a HVAC company’s dedication to High-Performance HVAC™ Contracting, which, when put into practice, leads to helping them exceed customer expectations. The award, presented to Tom and Dennielle Hearn and their team by Dominick Guarino is what he calls “an old New company.”

“It started as a one man shop in 1946,” Guarino told attendees, “and operated that way through two generations for more than 50 years. Then, the founder’s grandson joined the company in 2000 and within six years started to make big changes. They continued to add employees over the next 10 years, and today they employ nearly two dozen and continue to expand every year.

“Several years ago, they began to implement the NCI approach starting with Combustion and CO Safety and gradually adding Air-side diagnostics, Air Upgrades and more.”

Guarino also says Hearn continues its tradition of implementing ongoing training and “solidifying new processes to ensure they provide their customers with the maximum value, safety, comfort, and efficiency for their HVAC investment.”

Jim Davis Technical Excellence Award

Mitch Bailey of Air Heroes, Modesto, CA is the recipient of the 2025 Jim Davis Technical Excellence Award. This award is honors Jim Davis – an HVAC instructor famed for his pioneering work in combustion and carbon monoxide safety training.

During the presentation ceremony, NCI Vice President of Training David Richardson said, “Jim has saved more lives than we’ll ever know. He is THE pioneer and ‘daddy’ of modern carbon monoxide and combustion safety testing.”

This award is for an HVAC professional with strong technical skills, particularly in air and combustion testing. The other characteristics are as follows:

• The individual has strong technical skills.
• The winner performs diagnostic testing on service and installation projects.
• They teach others in their company to test and measure performance.
• They always seek to improve their knowledge.

David Richardson presented this award and said of Mitch Bailey, “When I first met this year’s winner, I could tell he was genuine and understood the vision of High-Performance HVAC. He simply lived it! Mitch grew up in the HVAC business cutting his teeth in new construction and had to work his way up. Nothing was handed to him. 

“He has a heart to serve and frequently shares his knowledge and experience – airflow, combustion, system performance, and building performance,” Richardson continues.  “Furthermore, he expects his team to demand the best from themselves.”

Richardson adds that Mitch will always talk about the importance of ductwork and why he and his team measure all the system they work on so they can prove performance.

“He is on a mission to end box-swapping and focus on doing HVAC the way it should be done,” Richardson concludes.

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