Keeping Harmony

Stephen Yurek, president and CEO of AHRI.

MEP Middle East talks to Stephen Yurek, president and CEO of AHRI, about how the GCC can create a unified HVAC standard

What is the main issue preventing the formation of a unified HVAC standard in the GCC?
It’s the structure of the GCC itself. They’re individual countries, and I think as we’ve seen in Europe and other places, when individual countries have the ability to make their own decisions, sometimes you find that rather than coming together, they say, “Well, if Country A is at this level, we’re going to be better than them.”

It turns into an internal competition to see who has the highest standards. What I think they need to do in this area is to come together, to adapt and harmonise performance standards for HVAC equipment, otherwise, you’re going to fragment the market and cause the cost to consumers in the region to increase.

What is AHRI doing to ensure a consistent level of service quality, despite no unified standard?
We at AHRI, in conjunction with our current partners around the world have been working very hard to develop programmes and make available educational materials on the latest technologies to the global contracting and installation associations and communities.

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We’ve developed standards and performance requirements and tests that ensure the minimum competencies that an individual should have in order to be able to properly handle the equipment. As well as all this, we have our members and manufacturers working with them and establishing programmes in municipalities, countries and locales, to train individuals on their equipment.

We have been more engaged in participating in the Gulf region, we’ve been speaking at multiple conferences, we’ve been discussing with the governments and the standards groups, as well as the manufacturers and the engineers about where we can provide more guidance to them.

What needs to be done to ensure that a unified HVAC standard is successful?
What you want to do is make sure that whatever standards you put in place, firstly, they have to be technically feasible, and also economically justified for the region in which they are being implemented.

The GCC needs to really evaluate and come up with minimum efficiency standards for the equipment. I think a difficulty whenever you have multinational organisations, is getting everybody to agree to move together in a harmonised fashion.

The other aspects are that you need transparency in the development of these standards.

I’d say what they really need to do is rely on a globally recognised verification/certification system or programme such as AHRI’s, in order to help with standards enforcement and then use that where they have the ability to specifically request testing of equipment, rather than developing their own systems or labs.

Because otherwise, it would be very difficult to make those labs economically sustainable.

What new HVAC technologies are being developed for use in the GCC region?
It depends on what you’re looking at. Residential construction, there are all sorts of new types of equipment coming out, relating to different types of controls and in efficiency.

Then there’s the variable frequency drives and other things that will help reduce energy, while maintaining the comfort that individuals want in the air conditioned space.

On the commercial side, we’re seeing a lot of development in new technologies in chillers, along with coil technologies, to deliver more efficient equipment, but to also deliver the comfort that individuals are used to inside. I think a lot of it is based upon seeking new control and electronic capabilities and applying the technologies out there to deliver refrigeration cooling.

How do you see the market progressing in the coming year?
I think over all, manufacturers, not just in the GCC, but globally, those in Asia, in Europe and in North America, I think everybody is cautiously optimistic. However, there are strong concerns about what’s going on in Europe and what impact it will have if they don’t get that financial banking system and sovereign debt issue in order.

Because if their economy goes into recession, or has problems, that’s going to reduce the demand on energy, which has a significant impact on the GCC region.

If everything goes as everybody thinks it will right now, I think it could be positive for the GCC.