ACCA 2012 - Joe Nichter Opening Remarks

I was kind of nervous sitting in the front row down there. I offered to bring my hula hoop and Kevin said no, so... Good morning and welcome to Las Vegas! We made a promise to you this year: we promise to raise the stakes, and we intend to keep that promise. There's too much on the line for the HVACR industry for us to play it safe. Playing it safe means making small changes, but our customers are demanding big changes. Our competitors are making big changes, and as always, we intend to stay ahead of the competition and exceed your expectations. If we play it safe, we lose big. As a result, this is not an option. We will continue to move ahead aggressively. Over the next three days, you'll spend time with leading experts from inside the industry and from outside, all focused on helping you think big in your own company. We expect you to leave Las Vegas armed with an arsenal of ideas that will prepare you to succeed in a radically different environment. This is our promise to you. But to make that happen, you need to make a promise to us: to get engaged, to introduce yourself, to ask probing questions, to share your own ideas. The ACCA conference is not just an association meeting, it's not just a trade show, it's not just an educational conference. The ACCA conference is an interactive experience that brings our entire broad industry together in one place, and it demands your participation and your attention. To give it both, you will leave with a map to a brighter future, which will provide the changes needed to delight your customers and improve your organizations. You will truly be able to raise the stakes and win big. ACCA has raised its own stakes this year. Our board adopted a new mission and vision to guide our organization. These may be just words, but they are words with a powerful meaning. As you know, a mission statement is a brief description of the organization's fundamental purpose. It answers the question: why do we exist? Our new mission is: to lead America's indoor environment and energy professionals to business success. It's simple, and it provides ACCA with a clear mission, one that drives your board in developing the strategic plan, and one that drives your staff in putting that plan into action. The vision captures our passion and is the overriding principle that drives ACCA. It provides and creates the roadmap to make our mission a reality. Our new vision is: ACCA will proactively represent the professional indoor environment and energy community, with an emphasis on legislative, technical, and regulatory issues. We will provide comprehensive training and the certifications needed to be successful at creating innovative, comfortable, safe, and energy-efficient systems. This is the outline for continuous improvement. It's what we are becoming. It's what our industry needs its leading organization to do. What's missing from the mission and vision statements? You'll notice neither of them mentioned heating, ventilating, air conditioning, and refrigeration. That's because we recognize that the HVAC industry is no longer just the HVACR industry. The most successful contractors are thinking bigger about the systems they service. They are looking at whole homes and whole buildings. They recognize they need to be masters of the system, not installers of boxes. For our industry as a whole to succeed, we need ACCA to help lead us into the future, towards a bigger industry that is developing and evolving as we speak. We are not HVAC contractors. We are indoor environment and energy professionals. Just a few months ago, ACCA expanded into the hydronics field of our industry by introducing the Radiant and Hydronics Council. And today, ACCA is ready to become the largest hydronics contractor organization in the world. A few weeks ago, the American National Standards Institute approved the first and only national standard for home performance, outlining all the steps necessary to determine a home's performance and recommend measures to improve it. And who wrote and published that standard? You did. ACCA. Not the weatherization people, not the insulation industry, not the window industry. ACCA. One year ago, ACCA introduced its first accreditation program for contractors: QA for new homes. And in one year, we enrolled nearly 500 companies in this new program, far outpacing our expectations. This was our first accreditation program, but will not be our last. QA for existing homes is almost ready to roll out. There will be workshops talking about this program at this very meeting. These accreditation programs are enabling quality contractors to differentiate themselves from the low-balling box installers. And now that we have a home performance standard, plans are already underway for a real home performance accreditation designed to get real results from ACCA. And today, we are launching the ACCA Building Performance Council, an organization of member contractors who provide performance contracting services to oversee this effort. And ACCA is continuing to stay on the forefront of new technologies to help contractors do the same. We will soon be launching our first online certificate programs in residential and commercial system design. Our new magazine, IE3: Indoor Environment and Energy Efficiency, is actually much more than a magazine. It's an internet company providing knowledge solutions and real-world intelligence for the indoor environment industry. IE3's vision is mobile first, because that's where contractors are. IE3 Connect is a new social network for indoor environment professionals. Currently it's an open beta. If you haven't already, we urge you to sign up at www.ie3connect.com. IE3 Connect offers the Facebook generation a place to connect with other innovative professionals and build lasting business relationships. And later this year, IE3 will unveil IE3 Go, a completely new product that will make life easier for contractors and technicians in the field. What is IE3 Go? Well, to be the first to find out, sign up at www.ie3go.com. These are just a few of the ways ACCA has been raising the stakes over the past year with a strategic plan in place. And when we revisit and revise constantly, ACCA will stay focused on its mission of leading us all to continued business success. Now let's focus on what's important: each of you and your dreams for personal and business growth. Let's spend the next three days breaking bread, shaking hands, and sharing ideas. Together, we can raise the stakes in our own businesses, in our local communities, and nationwide. Thank you for being part of ACCA. You are what makes this organization work, and what it works for is you. And I especially want you all to have a great conference. Thank you.