Pumps, boilers, piping · MEP-heavy, multi-branch
Mechanical work is HVAC plus piping plus controls running as one operation — and most of it happens across branches, with subs in the loop. Thermal keeps the record at the job, not the ticket, so the crew and the back office read from the same file.
What it is
A mechanical contractor in Thermal runs the same equipment-first schema as a single-trade HVAC shop, extended for a business that carries HVAC, piping, and controls work as divisions of one operation rather than separate companies. Equipment, technicians, and work orders each carry a trade, so a multi-trade dispatch board and job-cost report can reason per division without the crews colliding.
The pain that shows up here is specific to MEP-heavy commercial and light-industrial work: jobs that run multiple visits and sometimes multiple subs, cost capture that has to hold up on a contract-level P&L, a renewal conversation grounded in agreement renewal rate instead of a gut call, and — on the roadmap — flags for prevailing-wage and certified-payroll jobs that need to hand off cleanly to whatever payroll system runs the certified side.
What a mechanical account carries in Thermal, by class. Pumps, boilers and piping systems don't fit a residential service record — each one is its own serialized asset that a multi-visit job moves around.
| Asset class | On the record | What it drives |
|---|---|---|
| PumpPMP | Nameplate, duty point, seal history, readings from each visit | PM frequency, wear-pattern history, billable vs. warranty |
| BoilerBOIL | Nameplate, burner setup, firing history, inspection dates | Compliance record, startup sequence, replacement quote |
| Piping systemPIP | Route, materials, last pressure test, insulation status | Which job the run serves, inspection schedule, repair scope |
| Controls / BAS-adjacentCTRL | Panel, points list, firmware, commissioning notes | Integration touchpoints, startup visit, sub handoff |
If your asset list is spread across binders, the estimator's laptop, and a few files on the service manager's desktop — that's the normal starting point. Migration covers how it gets in and who does the work.
Not a find-and-replace of the HVAC page. These are the operational problems that show up when one job spans trades, branches, and outside crews.
A phased job — rough-in, trim, startup, punch list — gets fragmented into a new ticket every time a different crew shows up, and the history and the billing go with it.
A phased mechanical job stays one work order across every visit and every crew, so the history and the billing don't fragment into separate tickets per trip. The dispatch board carries the whole job, not the day's slice of it.
The sub's crew is on site this week, and the office is chasing PDFs, texts, and a purchase order that 'went through' two Fridays ago.
Purchase orders, work assignments, and compliance documents for subs and vendors route through the subcontractors portal — not a side channel of emails and texts the office has to reconcile by hand.
A job is prevailing-wage, and the certified-payroll side has to come out clean — but nothing on the job record says so, so it rides on whoever remembers.
Flagging a job as prevailing-wage or certified-payroll, so it hands off cleanly to whatever system runs certified payroll, is on the roadmap. Thermal does not run certified or union payroll itself — that stays outside its scope by design.
What a mechanical contractor's controller actually needs to see.
"What did the Ashford mechanical contract make us?" — and the honest answer is spread across three job folders and a year of supplier invoices.
Labour, material, and sub costs capture against the job in real time. Full project-level margin rollup across a multi-visit mechanical job is early access — cost capture itself is live today. See job costing for what's finished and what isn't.
Cost capture live · project rollup early accessThe branch that's actually profitable is a guess, because margin rolls up to the whole company and every office sees every number.
Agreement and contract-level margin rolls up per branch as well as per account, so a multi-branch operation sees where the work is actually profitable — not just an aggregate top-line number. That lives on the service agreements page, and it's the same rollup behind maintenance contract margin and gross margin per job.
Three boundaries worth knowing before a demo. Two of them are deliberate.
Thermal runs service, maintenance and retrofit work. It is not a construction platform — no submittal logs, no schedule of values, no retainage. If the majority of your revenue is bid work, the construction side usually stays where it is today.
Thermal flags a prevailing-wage job for handoff; it does not run certified or union payroll itself. That stays with a dedicated payroll system by design, and the integrations page is the place to check what actually moves today.
There's no logo wall on this page because we don't have one worth showing yet. What we can do is run your own multi-branch account through the product on a call. The security page is written to be forwarded to whoever signs off.
Running service on top of a heavy construction book is a different mix than pure MEP service. The commercial HVAC page covers the equipment-heavy service side of that blend.
Every claim above is a page you can go read. Nothing on this page is a capability that only exists for mechanical contractors.
Answered at the level of detail they're actually asked at.
No — same schema, same platform. This page is written for a multi-trade mechanical contractor's specific pain: MEP job complexity, sub coordination, and contract-level cost visibility, not a find-and-replace of the HVAC page's copy.
No, and it never will run certified or union payroll itself — that stays with a dedicated payroll system by design. Flagging a job as prevailing-wage for a clean handoff to that system is on the roadmap.
Subs and vendors get a portal for purchase orders, work orders, and compliance documents, feeding the same compliance queue the office uses — not a separate channel that has to be reconciled by hand.
Cost capture — logging labor, material, and sub costs against a job as it happens — is live today. Full margin rollup across a multi-visit project, with the complete cost breakdown, is early access.
Yes — a multi-branch mechanical contractor's dispatch board and contract P&L scope to the branches a user has access to, so one system runs the whole operation without every office seeing every other branch's numbers by default.
The project that runs three trades, two subs, and a punch list nobody owns. We'll run it on the call and show you where the cost capture holds up.