How Electrifying Put More Money Into STEM Education
Published on January 10, 2025
As he sat down to review contractor bids for a new heating and cooling system in early 2024, Mike Venturini, Chief Administrative Officer of CAMPOS didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. But he knew he wanted something different for his company, an engineering and construction services company that works with utilities, renewable energy, and natural gas companies.
Before March 2024, CAMPOS’ previous HVAC contractor had done a good job at helping its 20-year-old HVAC system limp along. Nevertheless, Venturini was interested in a fresh perspective.
“That's really how we started the process,” remembers Venturini. “It was just thinking to ourselves, ‘Hey, why not look at doing the whole thing over [instead of] constantly fixing the 20-year-old units?”
CAMPOS is not your average services company. It has a history of thinking about and doing things differently. Case and point: In addition to building utility projects, the company financially supports Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education. The CAMPOS Foundation specifically supports minority and female STEM students through scholarships, internships, and summer bridge programs. Their programs reach over 5,000 students annually with current donations standing at over $6 million.
For its Lodo headquarters, there wasn’t a long list of contractor bids to review. CAMPOS falls into a small niche of the HVAC contractor landscape that can be described as commercial mechanical. Just a handful of companies install equipment in commercial buildings that aren’t towering Denver high rises. In the case of CAMPOS, it was looking to replace rooftop units.
What made Heart Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric rise to the top of Venturini’s list wasn’t solely cost. It was a desire to listen, and an interest in designing individual solutions for each customer.
Within weeks, things were off and running. Heart Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric ordered newer more efficient electric units to handle air conditioning and natural gas units for space heating. But it was a follow up email from Heart founder and owner Mike Townsend that really cemented the relationship with CAMPOS.
Heart wanted to change course and cancel the equipment orders. Instead, the HVAC company wanted Venturini and CAMPOS to consider all-electric heat pumps that would qualify the company for sizable new rebates from Denver's Office of Climate Action.
“I was figuring [a] 10%, 20% reduction,” said Venturini. “When he told me about the rebate, it was dramatic.”
There was a learning curve for Heart to install heat pumps in the CAMPOS building. But it was one Heart Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric was up for. The Denver rebate program required an additional level of engineering design and support for the heat pump systems that took time and coordination.
“The HVAC industry isn’t always very technology forward thinking—although you have manufacturers and governments who are pushing forward on new technology,” said Townsend. “In some cases, they've been burned in the past with adopting new technology that didn't quite work out. And so I understand that. But in this case, heat pump technology has been around for a very long time.”
The first heat pump was designed and built all the way back in the 1850s in Britain. But they didn’t find their ways into homes with larger scale adoption until the 1960s.
Fortunately for Heart, it had a strong partner in CAMPOS, too. Since it supports STEM education, CAMPOS understands that newer technologies can require patience. So, when the March HVAC installation deadline got shifted into the summer, and then the fall of 2024, the timeline shift was a discussion point. But it didn’t signal alarm bells.
“We're a very action-oriented company. But there's also a time to say, ‘Okay, let's take a step back and let's realize why there's little activity going right now,’” said Venturini.
…and the reason why, notes Venturini was that a learning curve was underway.
Ultimately one of the best outcomes of the overhaul is that CAMPOS workers remain comfortable. An overhaul of the 1800s-era building rooftop means less real estate used by equipment, and more space that could one day become a rooftop patio for workers. Finally, $182,000 saved on the HVAC project will go directly back into the CAMPOS Foundation and STEM education for women and minorities.
For its part, the learning process of the CAMPOS Headquarters heat pump project was fully absorbed by Heart Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electric. Mike Townsend and Heart started out in early 2024 as electrification newbie. Today, Heart is a highly active contractor in the heat pump space.
“It's kind of mind boggling that every church, every community center, every building like CAMPOS for example is not taking advantage of this,” said Townsend.
Townsend says he has workers “beating the streets” to let companies know about electrification in Denver. It’s an optimum learning outcome from the CAMPOS project—one that would make any science teacher proud.