Industry insight
Jason Pendlebury, Vent-Axia’s new sales director
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Vent-Axia builds for the future – new sales director
Jason Pendlebury, Vent-Axia’s new sales director - commercial & industrial, discusses current trends in the HVAC industry and reveals his plans for the future
When did you join Vent-Axia and what is your background? I began my role at Vent-Axia at the beginning of July this year. I came from Johnson Controls, where I had spent the last two years as head of sales for HVAC covering UK and Ireland. I started my career as a technical support engineer for the ADT brand, which is owned by Johnson Controls. I then moved into sales where I progressed into sales leadership becoming an account director for the global accounts team and ultimately sales director for the oil, gas and marine business. Six years ago, I joined the HVAC division at Johnson Controls.
How familiar are you with commercial HVAC? In terms of familiarity, I have had six years running sales teams in the HVAC industry, with multiple routes to market. This included the supply and commission of large chillers and air handling units into the contractor space, which involved design and specification. I also looked after the retrofit sales team and the service sales parts of the business too. So, I have had good oversight of the opportunities and challenges within the HVAC sector.
What do you see as your strategy? Our plan is to increase momentum, celebrate successes and build a winning culture. It will
40 September 2024
take time, but we are already on the journey, the business has produced some innovative award- winning products providing us with a vehicle to take to market. We now need to increase our engagement with our customers in the HVAC sector. We have a breadth of products in Vent-Axia’s innovative range to meet the needs of varying projects, in both the new build and refurbishment sectors. Following extensive R&D our most recent product, the Sentinel Apex is the next generation of commercial heat recovery and has already proven its worth winning multiple awards at the HVR Awards, the ECN Awards and most recently the CIBSE Building Performance Awards 2024 where it won the ‘Product or Innovation of the Year – Air Quality’ category.
What opportunities do you see going forward? In the Construction Products Association’s recent report ‘Construction Industry Forecasts 2024-2026’ total construction output is forecast to fall by 2.9% in 2024 for FY25 there’s a bit of bounce back of 2%. But one exciting area that the report mentions is the refurbishment space. Firms working in commercial refurbishment and change of use in existing commercial developments are continuing to report strong activity. This looks set to continue since 80% of the buildings that are here today will still be here in 2050, so that presents us with a real opportunity to help consultants build Net-Zero buildings. We will need to work harder and smarter and be a little more creative than we would have to be in the new build space since retrofit space is typically more difficult and complex, but we can help consultants with this challenge. Facilities management (FM) companies are also going to have a part to play. Many large FMs now have contracting arms which are increasingly focusing on major decarbonisation refurbishment projects but they need help and support. We are firmly placed to offer this as we have the expertise, we have the knowledge, and we have the energy efficient product solutions. So, there is definitely an opportunity in the FM sector and we are expanding our team to reflect this.
How are you preparing for Net Zero? The race to Net Zero in 2050, is looming. All of our products fit into this journey. We have invested heavily in developing products and are supporting consultants and contractors on this journey since reaching Net Zero is a challenge in both retrofit and new build space. As well as developing highly efficient products, for our commercial products it means we are committed to providing CIBSE TM65 calculations to offer transparent embodied carbon data to help consultants design low carbon buildings.
What do you see as the benefits of UK manufacturing? We are really proud of our UK manufacturing at Vent- Axia. We have impressive UK manufacturing facilities that we can invite customers to rather than flying around the world. It is definitely a differentiator. In terms of hitting deadlines, we can manufacture and deliver products to site quickly, directly from our UK manufacturing sites, a significant advantage for our customers. We can react quickly as we have a shorter supply chain. We can take an order, build it, and send it to the client’s site. UK manufacturing also means our products have a lower embodied carbon and reflects Vent-Axia’s intention to be carbon neutral by 2040, ten years before the Government’s 2050 Net Zero target.
Vent-Axia is committed to Continuing Professional Development and has CIBSE-certified CPDs available for all our commercial brands.
https://www.cibse. org/training/cpd-directory. At Vent-Axia we also have a sustainability presentation available for all brands, please contact us directly for more details. For further information on all products and services offered by Vent-Axia telephone 0344 856 0590.
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