A beginner’s guide to HVAC jobs

HVAC stands for heating, ventilating and air conditioning. Often known as climate control, HVAC is particularly important in the design of large commercial and office buildings, within which humidity and temperature need to be carefully regulated in order to ensure safe, healthy and comfortable living and working conditions.

Those in HVAC jobs face the seemingly daunting tasks of operating and maintaining heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems, their design and construction, manufacturing and sales, public education, and further research and development. Particularly in modern buildings, those in HVAC jobs specify, install and control a wide range of equipment and services that provide thermal comfort and satisfactory indoor air quality. They work with architects, mechanical and electrical engineers and building services providers to ensure that all heating, ventilating and air conditioning equipment and services perform to their specification.

In the past two decades, those in HVAC jobs have been hardworking at making their systems more energy-efficient. For example, zoned heating may be introduced in large buildings to meet the varied demands of different floors or areas, while heat recovery ventilation systems may be adopted to transfer heat from outgoing stale air to incoming fresh air. In the case of air conditioning, advanced rating standards such as the Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio (SEER) are used by those in HVAC jobs to measure the performance of cooling devices.

Each year, the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) acknowledges and rewards excellence, innovation and professionalism of those in HVAC jobs throughout the UK.