Written by France Baggetto
During the REHVA Annual Meeting 2025 I had the pleasure to meet with David Black, representing FläktGroup in Milan. Livio Mazzarella, new REHVA president, handed him over the Supporters Award during the REHVA Gala Diner, to thank FläktGroup’s unwavering support throughout the years.
As for David, he started working at FläktGroup in 2011 as a sales manager and is now facing new challenges with his evolving role as Technical Training Manager for air handling units.
It’s fine, I got to the point in life where, doing exactly the same thing that I’ve been doing for the previous 30 years is getting a bit boring, so it was a time in life for a new chapter.
He explained playfully.
Not an expert myself, I asked David to be more elaborate on his new role:
My principal function is to try and upskill our sales people in a greater understanding of what the optimal energy efficiency solution is for any air handling unit application.
“And what is the most rewarding thing about your new role?”
I get a real buzz, a real joy from them absorbing that information and actually translating it to discussions with designers. So that we improve the energy efficiency of a building by offering the optimal solution, rather than the solution that was originally requested of us by our customers. And that just helps to save the planet, reduces carbon emission, reduces running costs, makes buildings much more effective for the clients.
On a more general aspect, I asked David to develop on the rewarding feeling he gets from working at FläktGroup:
The art of making a really good air handling unit is to understand what is the optimal solution for the problem that is presented to us by our customers, and trying to get our solutions as close to that optimal solution as possible. There is a degree of skill involved, to understand, what the implications are of not having an optimal view of recovery efficiency or not having optimal fan selections. We do a lot of analysis and that defines our solutions to market. And that work can only be done by people stepping one back from the day to day dealings with customers and trying to do some deep thinking about what is the best solution.
It’s quite rewarding when you can come up with an innovative solution, that satisfies the customer’s requirements that is more energy efficient than the one they first thought of.
As FläktGroup has been a loyal Supporter of REHVA for over 19 years, I asked David to describe the beneficial aspect of the relationship between REHVA and FläktGroup:
REHVA is the voice of the Designers, and if we don’t understand the designers and how the designers are thinking and how we could influence the designers to make it even better solutions, we will never progress. We are manufacturers and designers are designers, the more exchange of information that happens between the designers and the manufacturers, the better the solution is going to be. I see REHVA as the key avenue for us to access as many designers as possible.
“I just heard that FläktGroup was bought by Samsung. What can we expect from that change, and what can we expect from FläktGroup in the future in a more general way?”
Over recent years, FläktGroup has broadened its offering of innovative products, expanded into critical-application markets such as data centers and gigafactories and generally experienced significant growth. We are now excited about the opportunities for development, R&D and new markets that this partnership will bring. Our ambition is to lead in the HVAC market in all important market segments, offering solutions and future-proof products and services. We anticipate rapid growth and are looking forward to working with Samsung.
It was a blast to have the opportunity to discuss with David, and have the chance to hear about his journey and work experiences! REHVA is looking forward to working together with FläktGroup for many more years to come!
