Maintenance of thermal installations in full swing
Just as our thermal and air technology installations are constantly evolving, our service department is riding the waves of technological change. They do this with a robust service team trained by the best in the field.
A robust service team
With nearly 60 people, the service team quickly makes up a quarter of the entire workforce. "The team consists of maintenance technicians, burner technicians, and welders," explains Ann Verhue, Sales Service Manager. "They are responsible for both scheduled maintenance and urgent interventions and repairs at our customers' sites. Additionally, they also maintain our rental installations."
Furthermore, the service department coordinates the mandatory revision of safety valves and handles refractory concrete repairs, mechanical and chemical cleaning of heavily contaminated boilers, inspection and replacement of steam traps, and more. Essentially, all work around the boiler.
"Our wide range of installations and services, and the 24/7 availability we offer, require great flexibility. It is both an asset and a challenge. And with that challenge come technological hurdles due to the decarbonization efforts that Callens is focusing on," says Ann Verhue.
Decarbonization requires new service knowledge
Callens helps customers decarbonize with smart integrations of new technologies. "Hydrogen boilers and e-boilers are now indispensable," adds Kris Stappers, Sales Director. "These boilers are now undergoing maintenance for the first time. To ensure everything runs smoothly, we continuously equip the service team with new knowledge and insights."
"Fortunately, at Callens, we have always had an excellent training culture," Ann Verhue adds. "Every new technician follows a fixed training path, and in collaboration with manufacturers, we train our people with technically specific knowledge."
From reactive to proactive
To keep the many installations running smoothly in the future, a smart geographical distribution alone will not suffice, Stappers believes. "We are making significant strides from a reactive to a proactive approach, where we monitor our installations remotely. This allows us to intervene more quickly in case of problems and deploy our people more efficiently."
The rental installations are already being monitored remotely, as are about ten fixed installations at customers' sites. "Now we really want to scale up," says Simon Vandemoortele, who, as an IoT Engineer, is helping to steer the transition smoothly.
"Technically, we are fully prepared. Almost all installations are equipped with PLC control systems that allow us to collect data. Now we want to expand the pilot projects to further relieve our customers."
Initially, the focus is mainly on responding to alarms, but variables such as pressure, temperature, fuel consumption, combustion, and boiler house efficiency are already being logged. "Ultimately, we want to not only monitor malfunctions but also detect and signal inefficient flows to the customer. Currently, it sometimes takes months—until a maintenance visit—before it is noticed that efficiency is too low. This is very unfortunate both financially and ecologically."
Geographical distribution of installations and personnel
The Callens service department monitors over 1,000 installations in total, spread across Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Northern France. We want to guarantee our customers the same fast service everywhere. We currently achieve this through branches in Geel, Liège, and Arnhem (NL), in addition to the headquarters in Waregem.
"Since 2023, we have also been working with service level agreements," adds Sales Director Kris Stappers. "These agreements specify, among other things, how critical an installation is and how quickly an intervention must take place."