The key is measurement. There is no way around it. You have to measure to verify performance. This is why nearly 20 years ago NCI’s motto became ‘If You Don’t Measure, You’re Just Guessing?.’

In 1999 we expanded beyond airside training to teaching combustion and carbon monoxide safety with the help of Jim Davis, one of the world’s top experts in this area.

In 2000, We launched a membership organization of like-minded contractors and continued to add new classes as we improved our existing training year after year.

In its first 10 years, NCI nearly doubled in size almost every year. It has since grown into an organization with training centers in Northeast Ohio and Southern California with 30 employees. We also regularly work with more than 50 HVAC distributor locations around the country that host our classes.

Over the past 26 years, NCI has trained more than 30,000 industry professionals in 7,000 plus companies across North America and around the world. We continue to train around 2,000 professionals a year from HVAC contractors to government groups, facilities management companies, college campuses, and military bases. We also conduct 40-50 classes a year on behalf of several of the country’s largest utilities.

A New Chapter

This past spring NCI entered a new phase of its journey, not exactly by choice, but because the COVID-19 Pandemic virtually shut down in-person training. While we’ve had a robust Online University with self-directed classes for many years, in April 2020 we made the leap to live, online training.

Since then we’ve created eight new Online Live classes and broadcasted 60+ virtual events for more than 1500 students! This September we broke another barrier and launched two new online NCI Certification classes with proctored online exams.
It all happened so fast it’s hard to remember how we pulled it off. And we are adding two to three new certification classes by the end of 2020!

This past October, in less than 60 days, we designed and launched our first virtual High-Performance HVAC Summit. Early feedback indicates the event was very successful for all involved, including attendees and our partners, who had booths in our first-ever virtual tradeshow.

What’s Next?

We will be premiering some amazing new programs and products this fall and winter ‘ some of which have been two years or more in the making. While virtual training has been pretty successful, nothing beats face-to-face training and hands-on learning. We plan to restart in-person training at our centers and distributor/partner locations across the country as soon as it’s safe to re-open.

As things get back to normal, National Comfort Institute will continue to offer both in-person and live online High-Performance training to HVAC professionals. Barring any unforeseen events, we plan to hold Summit 2021 in person in early September ‘ stay tuned!

We are so grateful and humbled that thousands of contractors and HVAC professionals continue to come to NCI for knowledge and training. Both Rob and I have seen our wildest hopes and dreams materialize and continue to evolve as we serve this wonderful industry which has given so much back to us. Thank you. The best is still yet to come!