The mind goes back to the Summer of 2006, when we launched Chill, the bi-annual supplement for the district cooling sector. Little did we anticipate at the time that the supplement would come to enjoy the goodwill and faith of the HVAC sector, in particular. And for that we are grateful.

With this issue, we are launching another supplement, called Retrofit News and Chronicle. A monthly, the supplement will track the retrofit activities in the region, including in its scope the HVACR, power and water industries.

As the name suggests, the supplement will contain news relating to ongoing retrofit projects in the region, the people involved and the products and services infrastructure available. In addition, it will feature case studies of marquee projects in the region and elsewhere and chronicle the evolutionary stages of ongoing projects. This may be a case of stating the obvious, but the aim of chronicling the projects is to get a feel for the progress being made, the challenges encountered along the way and the expertise and solutions that are put to work to surmount the obstacles.

While the focus will largely be on the building sector, be it from an energy efficiency, water efficiency or IAQ point of view, Retrofit News and Chronicle will also concern itself with industrial facilities and water and power plants. For example, a turbine inlet air chilling (TIAC) retrofit is certainly within the scope of the supplement.

This issue also is a curtain-raiser to The Climate Control Conference (C3), in Saudi Arabia. This will be our first ever conference initiative in the Kingdom. Besides the new location – so far, we have held the event in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – another reason for being excited is the mix of topics, which took a while to arrive at. While the district cooling track will feature sub topics to provoke discussion and birth ideas and solutions, the topic that has us licking our lips in anticipation is ‘Large central chilled water plants and an integrated approach to district cooling, TIAC and industrial applications’. To our knowledge, this has never been discussed, and we are eager to know the outcome.

Coming back to Retrofit News and Chronicle, I hope you enjoy reading the articles. Please do send in your comments to surendar@cpi-industry.com; the feedback will help us evolve the supplement into better shape.

B Surendar