Refrigeration Career Spotlight: Controls Department Manager

In the refrigeration business, service technicians work with complex systems for cooling, storing, and transporting food, medicine, and other perishable items. Becoming an expert takes years of on-the-job training, as well as certification in manufacturers’ systems and ongoing education to stay current on new technologies.

All that expertise doesn’t have to end with being a refrigeration technician. In fact, the field offers a number of growth opportunities — and in this blog, we take a look at one of them: a career as a controls department manager.

What does a refrigeration controls department manager do?

Refrigeration technicians might work on equipment ranging from display cases and blast chillers to huge supermarket or industrial refrigeration systems. With different assignments every day, techs might do everything from installing wiring or replacing parts to testing and fixing entire systems.

Check out a typical day on the job as a refrigeration technician.

As head of the controls department at AAA Refrigeration Service, Inc., a New York metropolitan area company that has been in the business since 1937, Pete Savage has an even more specialized area of expertise: He runs the division responsible for installing, programming, commissioning, and troubleshooting the energy management computers that control HVAC, lighting, and refrigeration systems for AAA’s customers.

With commercial refrigeration equipment typically operating 24x7x365 and consuming 17,000 to 38,000 kilowatt-hours of power per year, managing the energy use of these systems is critically important to customers.

As a controls department manager, Pete meets this need through a diverse and challenging role that includes:

• Project management
• Estimating upcoming jobs
• Programming computer controls according to each customer’s system capacity and requirements
• Budgeting and forecasting, to achieve efficiency and good profit margins
• Maintaining staff levels
• Assigning work schedules
• Ordering equipment
• Implementing new technology
• Sales and customer service

What are some benefits of becoming a controls department manager?

Just like HVAC technicians, full-time refrigeration technicians sometimes have to be on call or work nights, weekends, and overtime. As with HVAC services, refrigeration service work often is physically demanding and requires the technician to travel.

While a controls department manager might do the occasional hands-on work in the field — say, when a refrigeration technician needs some help resolving an issue — for the most part the manager works behind the scenes. He or she also does not generally work overtime and weekends or travel the way a technician routinely does.

At the same time, a controls department manager enjoys many of the same job benefits as technicians, including steady work, competitive pay, insurance, paid time off, and other perks.

According to AAA Refrigeration Service’s Pete Savage, a controls manager also gets to see jobs through from beginning to end, rather than being limited to only certain tasks in a project. And that, Pete says, is a very fulfilling aspect of the job.

“I get to be involved in almost every aspect of a project, working with our technicians and other tradespeople, and making sure things stay on target,” he says.

What skills must a controls department manager have?

Becoming a controls department manager absolutely requires a detailed understanding of HVAC and refrigeration systems, and how the different components operate. As Pete will tell you, “You can’t control something if you don’t know how it is supposed to work!”

(Check out this video on How a Supermarket Refrigeration System Works.)

Therefore, previous experience as an HVACR technician is important to getting the job and succeeding at it.

For example, Pete started as a technician in 2000 and grew his technical skills over the years — eventually focusing on the computer controls part of the business, as well as taking on the roles of service manager, project management, and job estimator before becoming controls department manager in 2016.

In addition, the controls department manager position requires management and leadership qualities such as:

• Strong computer skills
• A passion for learning and for embracing new technology
• Organizational skills
• A strong work ethic
• The ability to multitask and to service numerous accounts
• Customer service/people skills
• A desire to continually make improvements and increase efficiency

How can you transition to a leadership role such as controls department manager?

There continues to be a need for more people to join the HVACR industry, both to meet the demand for service technicians and to fill roles such as controls department manager.

For anyone who is new to the industry, Pete Savage has some good advice that can help you succeed as a service technician and, if you wish, grow into a position such as controls department manager:

• Take pride in everything you do on the job, no matter how small the task.
• Show that you are willing to give 110% and deserve to be entrusted with more responsibility.
• Take advantage of refresher courses and ongoing educational opportunities.
• Ask questions and learn every day from the professionals around you.

To get started in a career in refrigeration or HVAC, read about the skills that a service technician needs — then take our assessment quiz to see how well you are suited for a career in HVAC and Refrigeration.