License to Chill - October 2018

The ICE Group’s Mission Statements and Objectives, which appear below, are taken directly from their materials:

THE INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS EXCHANGE GROUP

The Independent Contractors Exchange Group is a group of contractors specialising in installation, operation, repair and maintenance of large commercial and industrial cooling systems and building and process control systems. ICE Group’s mission is to improve our people, our companies and the industry through technical support and training, sharing of best practices and maintaining positive relationships with strategic partners in the industry.

ICE GROUP’S OBJECTIVES

1. Improve our people through education and training, technical support and sound leadership.
2. Improve our companies through education, sharing of best practices and best management practices.
3. Improve the industry through positive engagement with stakeholders and partners.
4. Assemble a group of the best companies with the highest quality people, doing the highest quality work and with the highest ethical standards in the industry.

The power of this group is unprecedented. The group consists of members from the 50 most proficient independent chiller services companies in the United States, who come together annually to share technical and business best practices, so that the group members’ customers receive the finest solutions and services available in the industry. The last meeting was the most technically encompassing meeting I have attended in many years. The sharing of information in this group is something I have never seen in the HVAC industry. It is also something, unfortunately, that I have never seen in the Gulf region. It seems to me chiller services companies, whether OEM or independent, rarely if ever, want to come together and collaborate on technical and business best practices. In my opinion, this is what will thwart us in the Gulf region to reach our full potential, to be the very best that we can be. It is a disservice to the entire region, and we should all try and put aside our commercial and competitive issues and try to make the Gulf region’s District Cooling and chilled water industry, number one in the world, because we can. Most readers of this are all members of or are familiar with, IDEA (International District Energy Association), which is a great organisation ; however, the ICE group brings additional, in-depth, technical and chiller knowledge and experience of service, repairs and O&M of chillers and chilled water systems that complement and bring value above and beyond what other groups do. The ICE group specialises in chillers, something no other organised group does. I would like to outline what the ICE group covered in the intensive three-day conference that I attended, highlighting just some of the topics covered, so readers have an idea of the power of this group and how it would benefit us in the industry to develop a similar group in the Gulf region.

The topics covered in the meeting were:

1. Safety and rigging
2. EPA rules and refrigerant conversions
3. Oil-less magnetic centrifugal compressors
4. York YT upgrades with non-York microprocessor control systems for better performance
5. Smart oil-less magnetic chiller retrofits for best efficiencies in the industry
6. Alternatives for chemical water treatment
7. Inductive absorbers to prevent bearing failures with VFD technology
8. Service management and accounting management
9. Internet
10. Bitzer screw compressor retrofits with VFD technology and microprocessor upgrades
11. Financial risk management
12. Refrigerant recovery/recycling to ARI 700 Standard
13. Clean up of refrigerants to ARI 700 standard in the field
14. Heat recovery chillers vs boilers 1.1 kw per tonne vs 3.7 kw per tonne for boiler heating.

What was also very interesting in this conference is that every major OEM of chillers participates in the conference and introduces their latest technologies and training to the group. In fact, the group receives preferential training and retrofit packages from all the major OEMs that no other service organisations have access to. The group also supports each member with sharing of resources, such as human resources, parts, service bulletins, manuals and technical solutions that no single organisation could amass, on each and every major chiller manufacturer’s equipment. The group also has a ‘Technical Questions’ service, whereby any situation regarding chiller service, repair or troubleshooting, can be sent via email and someone who specialises in the subject, within the group’s over 1,000 individual members, will respond with the answer to support the other group members. This is the power of having the ability to reach out to over 1,000 of the most highly skilled and trained engineers and technicians, worldwide.

This is the power of independent chiller specialist companies as a group organisation. No single company, whether an OEM or engineering firm or chiller specialist company, can amass the collective knowledge that this group has on all OEM chillers and can react as quickly to support group member companies. The group collectively is by far the most technically competent group of talent in the industry and can solve any chiller issues quickly and professionally.

Having pointed out the massive value of a group such as ICE, I feel we should come together in the United Arab Emirates and Gulf region and form some regional group made up of DC companies, service companies, FM companies and OEM companies, to work together and collaborate for the greater good of the DC, chilled water plant and chiller industry in our region.

My whole purpose with this article is to impress upon the readers the importance of a ‘master mind/master community’ that could dramatically assist us all in working together to make the United Arab Emirates, and the greater Gulf region, leaders in the chiller and chilled water plant industry. If anyone would like to form a group that addresses chillers and chilled water systems on a higher level, I, for one, am willing to participate in any way that I can.