The Coronavirus impacted the world with a force and suddenness that touched almost everything we know. No one really knows how profound or long the impact will be, but there is consensus that many of the ways we have operated and acted in the past will have to change moving forward. This will, of course, include the world of Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC). Given our many years of experience in this space, we tried to offer preliminary thoughts on what and how things may change for those of us who work in HVAC.

Social Distancing and Indoor Climate Awareness

Since most of the world’s population is under a “social distancing” regime and will likely remain so for quite some time, people are spending more time at home and will likely invest in optimizing their home comfort. This will include assuring that HVAC systems provide the expected comfort level, i.e., temperature, humidity, and growing demand for fresh air circulation.

This will likely be achieved by taking basic actions, such as opening windows (where possible), as well as by increasing awareness and demand for systems and technologies that automate it and ensure air quality standards are met. Once “social distancing” regimes are relaxed, people will carry this awareness and demand it in their office environment as well.

The Impact of Dynamic Occupancy Levels on Facility Operations

This, in turn, will fuel adjustments in HVAC operations in commercial facilities. The coming months, and possibly years, may include cycles of regular business operations and periods of partial work-from-home or government-triggered shutdowns to control infection rates.

This means office buildings will cycle through quick periods of near 100% occupancy to almost 0% occupancy. Keeping building systems and office spaces ready for radically varying occupancy levels and optimized to ensure comfort at all times while maintaining energy efficiency is a challenge for any facility manager.

Doing so in a dynamically changing occupancy environment will make it much more complex. Building systems are designed to work at high occupancy rates. Operating it at low occupancy rates for long periods, while able to ramp up very quickly, requires good planning and tools to easily move between operating regimes. Accordingly, remote control, monitoring, and management tools will become mandatory for HVAC facility management.

HVAC Service and Monitoring During Times of Travel Restrictions

HVAC technical service organizations and HVAC contractors will also have to make some changes in how technical service is provided. The model of sending a technician on-site to address every service call, from minor to major, will be challenging in an environment of ever-changing travel restrictions.

Firstly, this service mode requires granting a technician access to the serviced building/residence. With social distancing, this is no longer a given.

Secondly, and of more importantly, servicing a vacant building (unfortunately HVAC problems can occur even if nobody is at the office,) requires special coordination from facility managers – someone has to be on-site, grant building access to the technician, wait for them to complete the work, and maybe come back to see everything works properly and test the system under different loads.

Thirdly, a vacant building’s systems may still be functioning at times and will require ongoing monitoring to assess their health. Tenants will inform if temperatures are too high/low or if their comfort has deteriorated, indicating something is wrong with the system. But if the building is empty, these issues may only be noticed when occupants arrive and can render the environment unhabitable (consider a glass office building in New York in August without AC for a week).

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Remote Access for HVAC Service Teams

These considerations emphasize the importance of tools that enable service teams to perform remote, automated diagnostics and control, and plan how to address service calls more effectively.

For Example, when a service call is opened, they can easily connect to the alerted system, view all relevant parameters, and perform an initial HVAC diagnostic of the situation with an app. Some cases may even be resolved remotely with proper configuration changes, some may allow the service technician to guide a local team to perform mechanical work to fix the issue, and some will still require a technician to travel to the site.

But even if an on-site visit is required, the technician will have more info before going on-site, so he can take the right tools/parts and expertise (the right person for the job) and avoid having to travel again.

HVAC Meets the Internet of Things

The Corona crisis is one of the defining challenges of our times. For the HVAC world, as for every other aspect of our lives, this will mean making critical adjustments in how we live, work, and travel.

The good news in the HVAC world is that technological innovations over the last decade, especially in big data, the cloud, and IoT, enable these necessary adjustments to be made quickly and efficiently.

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