Six reasons to choose Gas Heat Pumps for your next HVAC project

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 1st October 2019

Increased market awareness in the technology of Gas Heat Pumps (GHP) has meant we’re now seeing more and more of our clients choose Gas Heat Pumps (GHP) over Electric Heat Pumps, for their HVAC projects. Here are 6 compelling reasons why:

1. Lower running costs with up to 70% reductions
2. Higher efficiency with waste heat recovery able to provide an additional heat source, which can be used to heat the water supply, for instance
3. Massive reduction in peak demand energy requirements for more stabilised levels over any period
4. No electricity upgrades required, providing significant cost and time savings for your project
5. Smaller footprint and quieter operation means GHPs can be installed in a wider variety of locations
6. Environmentally friendly with reduced NOx, SOx and CO2 emissions

ATS is a UK distributor, installer and maintainer of Yanmar’s specialist Gas Heat Pumps, which we can seamlessly integrate into our HVAC systems, when they are the best option.

Yanmar Gas Heat Pumps are ideal solutions for pharmaceutical warehousing, restaurants, hotels, shops, showrooms, hotels, schools, hospitals, care centres, sports clubs, recreational facilities, office buildings, factories and a multitude of other applications.

For more information about the benefits of Gas Heat Pumps or to talk to one of our experts about your forthcoming project, please call Kevin Gillen or Ryan Walsh on 01527 833383 or email kevin.gillen@atsclimate.com or ryan.walsh@atsclimate.com

First Class degrees for Jon Holtom and Craig Shaw!

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 19th July 2019

We are incredibly pleased to announce that Jon Holtom and Craig Shaw have achieved First Class Honours Degrees. We spoke to both about their excellent results. Jon Holtom

Jon’s BEng Professional Engineering degree was a 2-year, part time course of distance learning that required a great deal of self-motivation. Happily, Jon had that in abundance, studying evenings and weekends.

The course modules were varied, but most consisted of an exam, a work-based project and a reflective logbook to keep track of learning. The work-based project module was essentially Jon’s dissertation.

While Jon has missed out on a few pints over the last couple of years, he enjoyed celebrating his success with family and friends. What next? Jon’s looking forward to his imminent holiday and is already considering starting a master’s degree!

Craig Shaw

Craig’s Building Services Engineering degree was a 3-year course, which included modules on fire engineering, refrigeration, thermodynamics and thermal modelling software to name just a few.

Craig particularly enjoyed the course laboratory work, checking theory against experiments to see how results vary and compare.

Craig would like to thank his friends and colleagues at ATS, who helped massively with his research by answering questionnaires and he would like to give a special mention to Amanda Jennings, who helped enormously by checking and proofreading his work.

With more free time on his hands now, Craig is looking forward to organising some holidays and taking up a few sports again, including badminton.

Well done both of you!

Congratulations Miles, you’ll go far!

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 18th July 2019

We’re delighted to report that Junior Project Engineer Miles Winwood has successfully completed his 2-year, level 4 Apprenticeship in Project Management. AN ATS FIRST!

This is the first project management-specific qualification within ATS and will be part of a wider review and improvement of our work in this area over the coming months and beyond.

CAREER CHOICES

After finishing his education at North Bromsgrove High School and Sixth Form, Miles decided against going to university, opting instead to kick-start his career, and join ATS.

When Miles joined the company he was able to consider a number of possible career specialisms to pursue. An electrical apprenticeship was a strong contender but seeing the work of our project management team helped Miles decide that an apprenticeship in project management mwas the path he wanted to follow.

TWO YEARS HARD WORK

Miles began his apprenticeship in January 2017 and within a few months he had passed the academic/theory foundation module. From there, it was all about building his portfolio of hands-on experience, while being continuously assessed by an outside panel and his in-house mentor, Jon Moore.

The final hurdle for Miles, which took place in our offices on 15th May, was a written exam followed by discussion panel of external assessors and Jon Moore.

MUTUAL APPRECIATION

Miles would like to thank Jon for all of his help, advice and guidance and he would also like to thank everyone else who has supported him in various ways over the last two years or so.

As his mentor, Jon is rightly proud of Miles’s achievement, telling us:

“Miles has worked extremely hard, balancing his ATS responsibilities of working on our live projects in the water industry, with his personal development responsibilities to produce the work and assignments required for his apprenticeship. I’m very pleased and proud of everything he’s learned and achieved, especially at a young age. I’m sure he’ll be celebrating in the usual way and so he should, it’s well deserved!”

Aloha Summer Party

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 16th July 2019

The invitations to this year’s summer party promised food, games, drinks and dancing…and a Hawaiian theme – and we had the lot and plenty more too!

The party began with people jumping on to a coach at ATS, which whisked us away to The Crown at Hallow, where we were greeted with a glass of Pimms and a Hawaiian lei (garland).

After a couple of drinks and with everyone settled in, Steve and Becky took centre stage to acknowledge the contribution members of staff make to the business and to tell us their plans for the continued evolvement of the business and how it will move forward and operate in the near future. It all sounded very exciting and we will all hear more details soon.

Following Steve and Becky’s speech, the ‘Quiz Master’, Dave Castle put us into random teams for the quiz. With picture rounds, category rounds and general knowledge, it was great fun and very competitive! In the end, Team 2 (Laura Baker, Abbeygale Parkin, Rebecca Clissett, Sean Mayall and Simon Boon) & Team 3 (Steve Boon, Scott Bannister, David Nokes, Graham Cox, Ashton Greenwood and Josh Guinan) couldn’t be separated, coming in joint-first! Well done you guys!

The enjoyment continued for the rest of the day and night with food, drink and more games keeping the party buzzing at The Hallow. Another highlight was Louie Keen’s turn at the flamingo Piñata, which brought the house down – well the fairy lights in the tepee at least! It was hilarious and we’re delighted to report that the Piñata survived Louie’s assault, completely unscathed!

ATS mixed netball in aid of Dementia UK

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 23rd May 2019

Yesterday lunchtime, the ATS mixed netball team played out a thrilling 9-9 draw against our neighbours Johnson Fleming Limited.

While the two teams couldn’t be separated on the scoreboard, the match-winners were Dementia UK and Mental Health UK our chosen charities for the event.

Special mentions on the ATS team must go to Jon Higgins, the ‘ATS Player of the Match’ as voted for by the opposition and also to Tom Sutton, who was the ATS top scorer.

If you would like to donate to our cause, please do so here: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ats-50

ATS meets the standard!

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 10th May 2019

This month saw our re-certification to the BSI ISO9001 accreditation, which is the internationally recognised standard that demonstrates our ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements.

10 Reasons why the BSI ISO9001 accreditation is massively important to our business

It helps us:

1. Continually improve and streamline our operations
2. Improve our offering
3. To have a competitive edge in tenders
4. Satisfy more of our customers
5. Reduce the likelihood of mistakes
6. Be more resilient and build a sustainable business
7. Show we have strong corporate governance
8. Work more effectively with our stakeholders and our supply chain
9. Inspire trust from our customers
10. Win more business!

We were initially awarded our certification three years ago, and we have been working hard since then to maintain our high levels of quality control and customer service.

The re-certification audit was undertaken by a BSI auditor with Steve Boon, Becky Clissett, Emma Hopes, Amanda Jennings and Emily Cooper representing ATS. It was an intense day with the BSI auditor spending time with each member of the ATS team, scrutinising all our processes and record keeping, to assess whether we met the stringent standards required, which happily we did.

To uphold the certification is a notable achievement and something we should all be proud of, so we’d like to thank everyone who has contributed towards this extremely positive result!

ATS at TotalDECOM 2019

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 9th May 2019

David Castle and Jon Holtom exhibited at this year’s TotalDECOM 2019 – the annual flagship event for the Decommissioning Sector.

Held at Manchester’s Conference & Expo Centre, the event provided the perfect opportunity for the sharing of knowledge, innovation and skills, across all sectors faced with a decommissioning responsibility. It was a great couple of days which created some promising networking opportunities with companies in the Nuclear Sector.

If you have any #HVAC requirements, contact David Castle or call us on 01527 833 838

ATS and Yanmar at the ISH Show

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 11th April 2019

The leadership team at Yanmar, our Japanese partner and supplier of gas heat pumps, invited Steve Boon and Kevin Gillen MInstR to join them at the ISH Show – the leading trade fair for the HVAC industry.

For further information on our gas heat pump solutions, contact Kevin Gillen MInstR or call 01527 8333 383.

Laura dives into Southern Water training!

By: Adam Westbury

Date: 3rd April 2019

Earlier this month, ATS Design Engineer, Laura Baker delivered a training session to 15 Southern Water mechanical and electrical engineers.

It came about during a conversation with Tom Westwood of Southern Water that highlighted a knowledge-gap at their end and Laura used fantastic initiative by offering to help.

The purpose of the training session was to give the engineers more knowledge and insight into engineering design, to help them make better early design selections and to understand why we make the system selections and configurations we do.

Accompanying Laura on the day were David Castle and Mark Murphy, who were lending moral support, bag-carrying prowess, and using it as a great opportunity to spend quality time with customers.

The half day of training began with a two-hour session looking at and considering different scenarios and the mathematics behind making good choices, when it comes to system structures and component combinations.

After a short break, Laura then tested how much the engineers had taken on board by asking them to work-through and find solutions to several challenges, she set them through workbooks. It was clear from the answers they gave that Laura’s training session had been very well-received and very well understood.

“I really enjoy discussing thoughts and putting forward proposals to customers face-to-face but the idea of standing up and presenting in front of a large group of people was slightly daunting. The last time I did it was at university when my nerves got the better of me and I had a panic attack and was then sick! This time around though, I absolutely loved it. Everyone was very appreciative of the session.”

Laura hopes to run more sessions like this in the future, adding: “It was really worthwhile, it gives even greater value to our service for Southern Water and helps cement our relationship, and that can only be a good thing.”