CAC Mechanical Services, Inc. is one of New England’s leading commercial, industrial and institutional mechanical contractors. Based in Salem, New Hampshire, CAC Mechanical Services does heating, cooling and ventilation installations as well as in-house sheet metal fabrication. They also have plumbing, controls and service departments.
CAC has been a Design Master HVAC customer since 2006. According to Robert DeCesare, designer/project manager and co-owner, Design Master HVAC allows his company to get significantly more design-build work with less effort and without adding staff.
“More and more towns are requiring drawings for permits, sometimes with an engineer’s stamp,” explains Mr. DeCesare. “With Design Master HVAC we can quickly create any drawings we need in-house.”
“This saves the cost of paying an engineer to do the drawings. Plus it saves us time because we have a drawing when we need it—not when the engineer has time to do it,” Mr. DeCesare adds.
“My biggest issue is that I have time constraints,” continues Mr. DeCesare. “I’m doing estimating and project management at the same time.”
“Design Master saves us so much time, compared with manual design methods that it speeds things up by a factor of four,” Mr. DeCesare asserts. “We’d probably need to have two or three more people in here if we were still doing everything by hand.”
This greater efficiency enables CAC to bring in more work. “Sometimes a general contractor will say ‘I need a design so I can bid on this job’,” remarks Mr. DeCesare. “I’ll usually say, ‘Of course’, because I can do a preliminary design so efficiently. And if we end up doing the job, we can give them the design for free.”
Though he isn’t an engineer, Mr. DeCesare has been in the mechanical contracting business for 38 years and does most of the drawings CAC needs himself. Design Master HVAC has proven to be so accurate that Mr. DeCesare sometimes uses it to check the work of engineers, in instances where his experience tells him that a design could be made more efficient.
“With Design Master HVAC, I can lay out a quick mockup in AutoCAD, click a button and let the software automatically do its thing,” states Mr. DeCesare. Design Master HVAC not only accelerates the process of laying out and connecting the duct system and diffusers, but also automatically inserts duct fittings, performs CFM and sizing calculations, and more.
“I’ll use Design Master HVAC to scrutinize the ductwork if I think they’re running it too long or it’s oversized,” Mr. DeCesare says. “A good percentage of the time we can reduce the ductwork that way.”
Mr. DeCesare recalls: “What I’ve loved about Design Master HVAC from the first time I used it is how it automates so many engineering tasks. You can setup your ducts and diffusers and the software will connect the whole thing up and size it automatically based on the parameters you give it. The service and support from Design Master is also terrific.”
“They’re doing a good job—they’re doing it right—and I’m not getting paid to say any of this,” Mr. DeCesare laughs.
