How we work

How we work.

Six steps from first conversation to running your building. No quotes-by-email. No sales-then-disappear. A discovery process designed to tell you the truth about your building before either of us commits.

Most commercial HVAC sales look like this: a tech walks through your building for an hour and emails a quote. You compare three quotes. You pick one. Six months in, you find out what they didn't include.

We don't sell that way.

Partnership is a long-term commitment, and the process that gets to it is built so both sides know what they're signing into. Adapted from a discipline refined over forty years inside the LINC network — a continent-wide group of contractors running buildings under inclusive agreements — it's six steps, each with a specific deliverable, and no commitment until step five.

The process · steps 01–06

Six steps. One deliverable per step.

01
No commitment

Concept Meeting

45 minutes · no cost · no equipment looked at

Sit down with us. Tell us about the building, what's been frustrating, what's been quietly worrying you, what your current arrangement looks like. We tell you whether partnership is a fit for your building and your operation — and if it isn't, we say so. Plenty of buildings are fine on a transactional service relationship. The Concept Meeting is how we figure that out together, before either of us spends a Saturday on a site assessment.

Deliverable

A clear yes/no on whether to proceed, and a shared understanding of what you're trying to solve.

The artifact

Conversation. No paperwork on either side.

02
No commitment

Site Assessment

A senior technician · full building walkthrough · 2–4 hours of access

We send a senior tech to walk every piece of mechanical equipment in your building — rooftop units, make-up air, exhaust fans, boilers, water heaters, gas detection, controls, electrical, plumbing fixtures, refrigerant systems. They photograph what they find, document model and age and condition, and flag compliance items (refrigerant logs, backflow certs, OHS-required calibrations). This is the document that turns "your building" from an abstraction into a list.

Deliverable

Complete asset inventory with photos, condition notes, and a flagged-items list.

The artifact

A photographed, annotated equipment list. Yours, regardless of what you do next.

03
No commitment

Systems Analysis

ASHRAE-grounded · two-to-three weeks

Using the asset inventory from the site assessment, your energy bills, and ASHRAE methodology, we build a cost model of what your building actually costs to own and operate today — across eight categories: equipment replacement, energy, contracted services, parts and materials, in-house staff time, administration, lost productivity, and major repairs. Most building owners have never seen this number. It's almost always larger than expected. It's also what makes the monthly program fee a real apples-to-apples comparison rather than a salesy claim.

Deliverable

A line-by-line owning-and-operating cost picture of your building today.

The artifact

A multi-page document. Real numbers, modeled on your building, defensible to your CFO.

04
No commitment

Needs Analysis

Written, structured, presentation-ready

We pull the site assessment, the systems analysis, the conversations from the Concept Meeting, and any survey data into a written analysis of where your building actually is — its lifecycle phase, the active risks, the deferred items, the operational pattern that explains how it got there. Each finding is structured: what we found, what it means, what happens if it isn't addressed, what it would cost. You'll read your own quotes back to you. You'll see the equipment you didn't know was failing.

Deliverable

A professionally written Needs Analysis document that becomes the spine of the Verification Meeting.

The artifact

A bound document. Findings structured cause-and-effect. Yours, regardless of what you do next.

05
Decision happens here

Verification Meeting

You, your decision team, and the full picture · 60–90 minutes

We sit down with you and walk through everything — the assessment, the analysis, the cost model, three program options (transactional, planned, fully inclusive). You see exactly what each option includes, what each costs annually and monthly, and what each leaves on your plate. You ask hard questions. We answer them in the room. If partnership is the right fit, we sign. If it's not, you have a paid-for picture of your building you can use however you want.

Deliverable

A signed partnership — or a clear answer that it isn't the right fit, with no pressure to change it.

The artifact

Decision in the room. Three program options on the table. Buyer picks or walks.

06
Partnership begins

Ongoing partnership

The work begins · same team every visit

Your assigned service team starts. Every visit is logged in the portal. You get an annual Condition Report and an annual Report Card. Capital items are forecast on a rolling 5-year horizon so they're in your budget before they're in your hallway. Your monthly invoice doesn't change because we found something. That's the point of the program.

Deliverable

A building under one accountable team, with a complete documented history from day one forward.

The artifact

A portal. An annual Condition Report. An annual Report Card. A 5-year capital horizon.

The moat

Why the process is heavy on the front end.

// Show the work, don't sell.

Most quotes are produced in an afternoon. A Needs Analysis takes weeks. We don't apologize for that.

Partnership only works if both sides know exactly what we're agreeing to. A surprise on month three of a five-year program is a problem for everyone in the room. The site assessment, systems analysis, and needs analysis exist so that nothing is a surprise.

That's also why we don't use the process as a sales lead-in. The deliverables — your assessment, your systems analysis, your needs analysis — are yours regardless of whether you sign.

If you choose to stay with your current provider and use what we documented as a punch list, that's a legitimate outcome. We're selling the program. The process is honest work.

The documents

See the documents, not just the steps.

// real anonymized PDFs only · no mockups
Pending sanitized PDF
Systems Analysis ·
cover page

Systems Analysis · cover page

Eight cost categories. Real building. Numbers traceable.

Pending sanitized PDF
Needs Analysis ·
finding page

Needs Analysis · finding page

Cause-and-effect finding structure. What we found / what it means / what happens / what it would cost.

Your time

What it costs you in time.

Step 01
45 min
Concept Meeting · at your office or ours
Step 02
2–4 hr
Site Assessment · access for one senior tech
Step 03
0 hr
Systems Analysis · our work, not yours
Step 04
0 hr
Needs Analysis · our work, not yours
Step 05
60–90 min
Verification Meeting · with your decision team

Total buyer-side time: under 6 hours of access across 6–10 weeks. Removes the "what's this going to cost me in time" worry that kills serious processes.

Start with the conversation

Start with the conversation.

45 minutes. No cost. No equipment looked at yet — a conversation about what's been on your mind, what you're spending today, and where we'd look first.

Book a Concept Meeting →