ACR News Awards 2007 - Winners

OVER 400 guests gathered at the ICC, Birmingham, at the end of February for the air conditioning and refrigeration industry's 'Oscar' ceremony - the ACR News Awards.

Chris Barrie, star of Red Dwarf and the Brittas Empire, hosted a night of celebration and laughter as the air conditioning and refrigeration industry paid homage to its considerable achievements over the past year.

Consultant of the year

Sponsored by Toshiba Carrier

Winner : Faber Maunsell

Named in the Sunday Times Best 100 companies to work for, the international consultancy delivers building, transportation and environmental consulting services.

With a turnover in excess of £135m, the company employs over 2,800 people in 40 offices across the UK and Europe.

The company provides technical excellence across the full service spectrum, from strategic consultancy at the highest level to practical design, implementation and asset management.

Faber Maunsell boasts a wide portfolio of specialist capabilities from computational fluid dynamics, through advanced lighting, fire and acoustics consulting, to façade engineering, all of which feed into the design process. There is also a highly respected R&D function, and a sustainable development team that is continually breaking new ground in this increasingly important area.

Faber Maunsell is proud of the end-to-end service it provides for owners and developers, extending from initial planning, through detailed design, to construction and fit-out. With a whole life approach to building engineering, Faber Maunsell creates well-thought out buildings that meet rising sustainability standards.

Contractor of the Year 2007
(under £10m turnover)

Sponsored by LG Electronics

Winner : Ceilite Airconditioning

Formed in 1980, Ceilite has built an enviable reputation as a contractor fully competent in every aspect of the design, installation, servicing and maintenance of ac systems.
Since its foundation a high priority has been given to keeping all of the company's employees "in the loop" as far as the decision-making and business development processes are concerned. Every one of the company's 35-strong workforce has the opportunity to partake in the company's decision making, appreciate strategies and commit to company values as well as input into their continuous development.

This process is helped by the flat structure of the company, which results in a minimum of "filters" through which information has to flow.
This approach - whereby everyone in the team is provided with a voice and afforded some degree of influence - has, over the years, led to a number of important developments within the company.

Every one of the the company's installation engineers served their apprenticeship with Ceilite, and it continues to recruit and train to this day.
A policy of multi-skilling has resulted in all the installation engineers gaining competence in commissioning, thus improving employee job satisfaction, customer service and company productivity.

Contractor of the Year 2007
(over £10m turnover)

Sponsored by Space Airconditioning

Winner : Worthington Nichols

ESTABLISHED for over 30 years, Worthington Nicholls has undergone a major expansion of its business and was floated on the stock exchange in June last year.

The business was formed in 1973 by Peter Worthington and started as sub-contractors, designing, installing and maintaining air conditioning systems for the hotel, retail and leisure markets. A series of acquisitions and strong organic growth over the last 20 years have positioned Worthington Nicholls as one of the leading air conditioning specialists in the country.

And since Mark Worthington (Peter's son), currently CEO and heir to the Worthington business, took over in 2003, sales have grown by 63% and pre-tax profits have risen by 435%. Mark was responsible for changing the sub-contractor status to principal contractor, which impacted margins in a big way. There are currently three elements to the Worthington business - design and installation, maintenance, and ventilation and hygiene. Nearly 75% of the revenue comes from installation. However, analysts are forecasting that this proportion will decline over the next few years. In due course, the business should increase revenues from duct cleaning and maintenance from 15% to 30%. The business employs 109 staff and a further 85 contractors.

Although Worthington Nicholls caters predominantly to the UK and Irish markets, the group is looking to expand its operations across Europe.

Worthington Nicholls already looks after major names, including McDonalds, Arcadia, Boots and Debenhams and brokers believe that the group has potential orders worth £40m in the pipeline. For the full year to September 2005 the business generated sales of £12.9m with a normalised PBT of £0.3m. Interim results for the six months to March 2006 confirmed strong growth. Sales totalled £10.3m with profits more than trebled to £1.1m. Of the new money raised, Worthington Nicholls proposes to invest in acquisitions and to use the cash raised for working capital.

Training Initiative Winner:

Sponsored by ACR News


Such was the high standard of entries for this year's training initiative category, that for the first time ever two companies were judged to be joint winners.

They are Mitsubishi Electric and Adcock group.

Joint Winner : Mitsubishi Electric

Mitsubishi Electric were commended by the judges for its attempts to educate key decision makers in the development of energy efficient buildings with its series of renewable energy seminars.

Mitsubishi Electric 's training seminars highlight the benefits of renewable technologies. The new approach required examines the total cost of providing heating and cooling by looking at the amount of energy consumed, in addition to set-up and running costs, rather than being based solely on short-term capital costs.

The seminars are held at Mitsubishi Electric's purpose-built, 120-seater lecture theatre at its Hatfield headquarters. Seminars held in September, October and November 2006 had an average of more than 100 people attending the event on each occasion.

Mitsubishi Electric is also investigating the possibility of putting on special events specifically targeting politicians and large corporations to reach and 'train' key influences.

Joint Winner : Adcock Group

The group's in-house training academy in Cambridge includes state of the art facilities including real-life coldrooms.

Overseen by former college and now industry training providers, Adcock's own apprentices have been studying towards NVQ Levels 2 and 3, spanning a comprehensive range of skills including: refrigeration, air conditioning, mechanical, electrical, pipework and brazing in line with City & Guilds and CITB standards.
In the inaugural year, 19 engineers undertook NVQ Level 2 training. Fifteen have passed all three technical knowledge papers and nine have completed their portfolio of work-based evidence. Four of the younger students have returned for a second year to complete the NVQ.
In the last year the company trained 26 engineers in City & Guilds Refrigerant handling; 25 engineers in CITB Brazing; 13 engineers in CITB Essential Electrics; 23 administration staff in basic refrigeration for the non-technical. Eight staff from clients have attended a two-day refrigeration and ac appreciation course and 12 staff from Palmer & Harvey McLane Ltd attended a specialised refrigeration course.

Adcock has also offered pressure-testing training and this year, as well as the four returning NVQ students, the company is training eight NVQ Level 2 Year 1 and seven NVQ Level 3 Year 1 engineers.

Air Conditioning Product of the Year

Sponsored by Hawco Refrigeration Ltd

Winner : Trox AITCS / Star Refrigeration
Product : CO2 Mission critical cooling - the CO2Olrac

A research and development programme in conjunction with Star Refrigeration spanning two years resulted in a winning product for Trox AITCS.

The energy-saving CO2 Mission Critical Cooling marries the benefits of an old refrigerant, CO2 with a very modern and demanding application - data centre cooling.

The system is based on liquid CO2 being distributed to heat absorption equipment that is fitted to the rear of IT equipment cabinets. The server load is then rejected from the CO2 either via a chiller or directly into the building's existing CHW system.

The CO2Olrac terminal unit is fitted to the rear of the equipment cabinets that house the high capacity servers, known as the Blades.

The CO2Olrac unit is fan-powered to create a negative pressure within the rear of the equipment and to draw the rejected server heat across the unit's heat exchanger. The heat exchanger is supplied with liquid carbon dioxide to absorb the heat load, enabling the servers to have zero impact of the on the data space.

Product Distributor of the Year:

Sponsored by Heating and Ventilating Review

Winner : Space Airconditioning

As a specialist Daikin air conditioning distributor since 1980, Space Airconditioning has been setting standards in training and customer service for nearly 30 years and was once again judged the winner of the distributor category.

As the UK largest independent air conditioning distributor operating out of five offices - Guildford, Bristol, Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester, Space is also ranked by Daikin Europe as the largest and most successful of its network of independent distributors throughout Europe.

Much of Space Airconditioning's success can be attributed to the customer support services it provides. Space Airconditioning's applications engineers have full air conditioning system design capability and can offer a complete design support service. The company can also offer alternative system comparisons, operating cost and life cycle analysis.

It has a dedicated CAD drawing office where full system design schematics can be prepared or customers own drawing can be adapted to incorporate the required ac equipment.

At Space Airconditioning's Guildford manufacturing facility, the company can offer the design and manufacture of bespoke packaged units, accessories, electronic control panels and pre-fabricated assemblies as required, fully supported by engineering drawings and wiring diagrams if necessary.

The company also produces guide specification documentation for all Daikin products and systems.

Refrigeration Product of the Year:

Sponsored by Hitachi Europe

Winner : Arctic Circle with Simply C

Low-noise operation and compact design of Arctic Circle's Simply C condensing unit for the convenience store and forecourt market proved to be the winning formula features for the judges for the Refrigeration Product category.

Arctic's design engineers were given the task to create a condensing unit at a competitive cost, with a compact footprint for convenient location. Many of the technical concepts/benefits within the unit were already present within Arctic's Stealth range, but the challenge for this project was to re-design the condensing unit at a budget to create a unit with a compact footprint, without the frills which could be easily installed.

New technology: an air cooled compressor compartment stops overheating and nuisance tripping, a result of the innovative cool air flow design.

Simply C has reduced refrigerant requirements due to the free draining condenser and vertical liquid receiver with pressure relief valve, with the receiver and sight glass being located in a cool position.

With energy savings of up to 20% (compared with hermetic technologies); the use of Simply C means that from five years of installation Simply C has paid back the capital employed through energy savings.

Environmental Initiative of the Year

Sponsored by Vaillant

Winner : ThermaCom/ThermOzone

The judges decided that the joint submission by ThermaCom and ThermOzone was worthy of the winning award for its refurbishment and upgrading of otherwise redundant R22 chiller.

As a compressor and chiller refrubishment specialist, Thermacom is now offering its expertise to all users of medium to large tonnage chillers. The company's most prestigious project so far has saved a staggering 35% to 60% of input energy.

Not all chillers can be retrieved from the scrapyard, but more units out there can be successfully restored than cannot, and invariably can be restored at a financially rewarding price when compared with new.

At less than a third of the cost of new equipment, there is also no noticeable disruption to building users during works.

Marketing Initiative of the Year

Sponsored by Panasonic

Ebm-papst

Ebm-papst's promotion of whole-life costs of equipment rather than the bottom-line proved to be a winner with the judges of the marketing initiative award.

Designated, the Green Financial Model, the air movement company's campaign is a totally new approach to encourage end-users to adopt more efficient building technology. For years ebm-papst has been campaigning on the use of energy efficiency products within the RAC industry. The company's EC range of of fans won the AC product of the year at the 2005 ACR News Awards, but it was often found however, that it was difficult to justify to the end user why he should pay more for an energy efficient product versus standard inefficient kit.

Ebm-papst has specially developed the green financial model for end users. It takes the form of a financial model to help promote awareness of energy efficiency whole-life costs rather than the "bottom line" mentality employed by much of British business.

The model allows data to be input relating to capital cost, energy saving, and maintenance cycles. The model is designed to allow the user to input different scenarios to determine the best life cost comparison.

The campaign to date has proved extremely successful and has already been adopted by a number of major supermarkets.

The Alan Moor Award

Sponsored by ACR News

Space Airconditioning

Mike Nankivell of Space Airconditioning was presented with the Alan Moor award for his services to the ACR sector. Sponsored by ACR News, the award, presented in memory of the late Alan Moor of Bitzer UK, is designed to honour those whose tireless work has had a major impact on the industry.

Mike, who sits on a number of committees and advises on a diverse cross-section of topics, is a stalwart of the ACR industry.