Although most industrial and commercial facilities will schedule a “shutdown” of the facility for a HVAC system replacement, these replacements are one of the most challenging and stressful tasks any commercial or industrial facilities manager will face.
Often these commercial HVAC system retrofits involve much more work than just replacing a roof top unit or a chiller. In many cases the work will involve design work, coordination of various suppliers, permits, selective demolition, structural modifications, new walls, electrical work, welding, piping, the removal and re-installation of architectural elements such as windows and doors.
In many cases this work is outside of the scope of the mechanical contractor doing the actual replacement. The coordination of the various trades in many cases falls on the facilities manager, which is not an ideal situation, as they typically do not have the time to devote to the project due to their daily job responsibilities. A common occurrence in these types of projects is for the completion date to be missed as a result of other trades not performing as required, so the HVAC contractor can complete their work. Missed completion dates cost industrial and commercial businesses real money if they are not able to be operational as scheduled.
In some cases the HVAC contractor will be both experienced enough and have the resources available to coordinate the entire project from design to commissioning. Often these HVAC contractors will specialize in this type of work and have experienced staff to self perform a majority of the work and will only use proven subcontractors. In addition, they understand how critical it is for the facility to be operational on the day scheduled!
