Thirty years following equipment into the field

Mandate

Set the residential product portfolio for the shift from gas heating to heat pumps, take the company through the refrigerant transition, and bring product safety, controls and service information under one accountable leader.

Outcomes

• Moved heat pumps from 36% of residential outdoor units in 2020 to 57% in 2025, after stopping a US$34m furnace platform.
• Shipped 610,000 systems with the new refrigerant in 2025, each ducted indoor unit fitted with a leak sensor; no ignition reports.
• Led the 2023 recall of 52,000 electric heat kits; 78% inspected or replaced within eighteen months.
• Opened service tools, manuals and parts to licensed technicians; first-visit repairs rose from 71% to 84%.
• Rebuilt connected-data access around the household; about 640,000 systems connected by mid-2026.

Decisions in context

I became chief product officer when Ambersley combined product management, systems engineering, the controls studio and product safety under one executive for the first time. Before then, product safety reported to manufacturing and controls to the chief technology officer, so decisions about a heat kit's limit switch or a control's service menu had no single owner. My first decision was the recommendation to stop a new furnace platform, which the board approved in June 2021. Since then the work has been the cold-climate heat pump, the refrigerant transition and its safety design, the heat-kit recall and the reversal of the service-tool restriction I had introduced in 2018. I present to the board's product safety and quality committee every quarter and provide the failure-rate data behind our warranty reserves to the audit committee. I am not a director of Ambersley.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; completing the refrigerant transition and the 2027 product plan for a market without the federal homeowner credit.

Mandate

Bring order to an overgrown residential line, give Ambersley a communicating control and a variable-speed heat pump, and prepare for new federal efficiency test procedures.

Outcomes

• Reduced residential models from 1,140 to 690 while holding revenue.
• Launched the communicating control platform in 2018 and a variable-speed heat pump in 2019.
• Prepared the line for re-rating under the SEER2 and HSPF2 procedures that took effect in 2023.
• Built the climate-by-climate demand analysis that informed the 2021 furnace decision.

Decisions in context

Ambersley hired me to run residential product management after a decade in controls, and the first year was mostly subtraction. The residential line had 1,140 models, many differing only in a cabinet colour or a coil a single distributor had once requested, and the parts counters could not keep them straight. We cut it to 690 while holding revenue. I then led the launch of our communicating control in 2018 and our first variable-speed heat pump in 2019. The control was a good product with one bad rule: I restricted its service app to certified dealers, a decision I reversed as chief product officer. I also commissioned an analysis of heat pump adoption by climate zone and housing type, which showed that our heating line was built for a market that was moving away from it, and that analysis became the basis of the furnace decision in 2021.

Reason for the move

Promoted to the new chief product officer role when product management, engineering, controls and product safety were combined.

Mandate

Build Quenby's first connected thermostat platform and a contractor portal, and decide how the company would treat the data they produced.

Outcomes

• Launched a Wi-Fi thermostat platform that reached 480,000 homes by 2016.
• Built a contractor portal giving remote diagnostics with homeowner permission.
• Set up demand-response programmes with 38 utilities, all based on homeowner enrolment.
• Declined to supply territory-wide runtime data to a utility customer in 2014, losing part of a contract.

Decisions in context

I took over a small connected-products team in 2011, when most thermostats still had no network connection and our contractors were unsure whether they wanted them to. Over five years we built a Wi-Fi thermostat platform, a contractor portal and the commercial arrangements for utility demand-response programmes. The platform reached 480,000 homes. The decision I remember best came in 2014, when a large utility customer asked for runtime data from every Quenby thermostat in its territory. I argued that we should share data only for homeowners who enrolled in its programme. Our private equity owners questioned the lost revenue, and we did lose part of the contract. When Quenby was sold in 2016 to a larger controls group that intended to absorb the platform into its own, I chose to move to an equipment manufacturer, where I could work on the whole system rather than its thermostat.

Reason for the move

Quenby was sold to a larger controls group in 2016 that planned to fold the platform into its own; Ambersley recruited me to lead residential product management.

Mandate

Manage the programmable thermostat line sold through distributors to contractors, and simplify it for installers.

Outcomes

• Reduced thermostat models from 64 to 22, with one wiring diagram format across the line.
• Cut installation-related returns by 41% by redesigning terminal labelling and quick-start cards.
• Launched Quenby's first contractor-installed Wi-Fi thermostat in 2010.
• Completed a part-time MBA at Calderbrook University in 2009.

Decisions in context

I joined Quenby as a product manager knowing a great deal about why equipment failed in the field and very little about product management. I learnt pricing, roadmaps and launch planning by making mistakes in all three, and I studied for an MBA in the evenings. The work I was best prepared for was installation. On the warranty desk I had seen how many returned thermostats had been connected to the wrong terminals, so I redesigned our terminal labelling, reduced the line from 64 models to 22 and put a single wiring format across all of them. Installation-related returns fell by 41%. In 2010 we launched Quenby's first Wi-Fi thermostat for contractors to install, which led to my move into connected products. Those years taught me that the person who installs a product is one of its most important users, even though they never buy it.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead the new connected-products group.

Mandate

Run the warranty desk, the technical telephone line and contractor training across all branches.

Outcomes

• Reduced no-fault-found warranty returns from 38% to 17% with a teardown triage before claims were filed.
• Trained contractors across 41 branches for the January 2006 move to 13 SEER minimum efficiency.
• Set up a technical telephone line that answered about 2,400 calls a month from technicians on site.
• Built a parts cross-reference that cut wrong-part shipments by about a third.

Decisions in context

I left the laboratory because I wanted to see equipment where it actually lived. Dunsmore was a family-owned distributor with forty-one branches, and as technical services manager I ran its warranty desk, its training programme and a telephone line for technicians stuck on a job. Dale Wintersgill, the owner, judged the desk by whether contractors called us back. I introduced a teardown triage before warranty claims were filed, which cut no-fault-found returns from 38% to 17% and saved our contractors and manufacturers a great deal of money. I also ran the training for the federal move to 13 SEER minimum efficiency in January 2006. The job taught me how a contractor decides whom to trust, how much of a product's reputation sits in its documentation and how often a good piece of equipment is condemned for a bad wiring diagram.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Quenby Controls into product management.

Mandate

Test compressors under field conditions and help equipment makers apply them correctly.

Outcomes

• Tore down and classified more than 1,100 compressors returned under warranty.
• Wrote a heat pump defrost-cycle application guideline adopted by nine equipment-maker customers.
• Ran liquid floodback test programmes that changed accumulator sizing recommendations for two customers.

Decisions in context

I joined Pellmont's applications laboratory two months after graduating. Abner Fitch, who ran it, set every new engineer the same task: tear down a hundred compressors returned under warranty and record why each failed. I eventually classified more than 1,100. Fewer than a fifth had failed because of anything Pellmont made; the rest had been flooded, starved of oil, contaminated during installation or cycled too often by their controls. From 1998 I worked as an applications engineer for fourteen equipment makers, writing guidance on heat pump defrost cycles and accumulator sizing. The work gave me a respect for test data that I still rely on, and a conviction that a reliable component can be ruined by the system and the installation around it. That conviction is why I moved next to a distributor, closer to where systems are installed.

Reason for the move

Moved to a distributor to work closer to installed equipment and the contractors who serviced it.