Aero Performance Group’s High-tech Approach

When Aero Performance Group Vice President Nick Muscolino walks through downtown Chicago, he sees more than iconic architecture. He sees projects his company left its mark on by improving energy efficiency, reducing carbon emissions and saving six-figure sums of money.

“I like the performance aspect of the job,” Nick says. “The fact that I’ve gotten to be a part of a lot of major projects throughout the city over the past 20 years—there’s definitely a sense of pride, where I can go downtown and be like, ‘oh, I worked on that building, that building, that building.’”

Aero Performance Group was founded as Aero Testing and Balancing in 1967 as an arm of the Chicagoland Sheet Metal contractor Climatemp. For more than 40 years, the company provided HVAC testing and balancing services to the greater Chicago area. After Climatemp sold Aero to the Hill Group in 2012, the company began expanding services.

“In around 2017 we saw there’s a whole other side to what we’re doing,” Nick explains. “Testing and balancing is all about quality assurance, system performance and building performance. So, we brought in energy components and a commissioning component to the group.”

This strategic pivot led to a mini rebrand as Aero Building Solutions. The company rebranded again last year to Aero Performance Group, reflecting the total building performance solutions it offers.

Aero Performance Group officially became a SMACNA member last year. Today, with 55 employees spread between field and office teams, Aero Performance Group is on a mission to deliver smart, dynamic solutions that elevate the efficiency of every facility they touch. What sets the company apart is their comprehensive, technology-enhanced approach to building optimization.

“We have hands-on field technicians, professional engineers and commissioning engineers, and we layer in technology and data analytics,” Nick notes. “So, we do like a three-prong approach for a customer.”

Aero’s monitor-based commissioning services (MBCx) represent the cutting edge of building performance optimization. Since 2015, Aero has been plugging into buildings’ automation systems, gathering 15-minute interval snapshots of entire facilities. They take that data, analyze it, identify inefficiencies and report back to customers.

“We get to view into every last valve, sensor, actuator — every parameter built into that building automation system,” Nick says. “We can provide customers with guidance on what to improve and when to improve it, suggest operational tweaks that will enhance their energy efficiency, and really help with predictive maintenance. We can tell customers, ‘go take a look at this because it’s on the edge,’ and they can fix it ahead time, before it becomes an issue.”

Aero’s data-driven approach yields impressive results, achieving remarkable energy savings for MBCx clients across Chicago. 110 N. Wacker Dr. saw an energy use reduction of 2,441,976 kilowatt-hours for a verified annual cost savings of $275,887 and an equivalent emissions reduction of 1,820 tons of CO2. 353 N. Clark St. achieved a reduction of 2,680,402 kilowatt-hours with $170,243 in annual savings and an equivalent emissions reduction of 1,900 tons of CO2. Chicago Hospital saw an energy use reduction of 3,067,507 kilowatt-hours for a verified annual cost savings of $539,785 and an equivalent emissions reduction of 5,239 tons of CO2. Those are big numbers with big impact.

The company’s scope is equally impressive, touching over 1,300 jobs annually across major healthcare facilities, large-scale data centers, K-12 schools, commercial high-rises, restaurants and more. This diversity requires a broad skill set.

“Working in a company like this, you do need to know a little bit about everything,” Nick says. “You need to know the service side of the business, you need to know construction, design and project management.”

The knowledge base at Aero has also recently expanded with the company’s acquisition of CEPro, a premier provider of critical environment solutions, specializing in healthcare, clean rooms, laboratories and pharmaceutical facilities.

“Clean rooms and other critical environments have a
lot of very stringent standards they need to adhere to,” Nick explains. “We’re able to help with design, build, compliance testing and repairing those systems.”

Obviously, Aero Performance Group’s work relies on compiling and analyzing massive amounts of data. Processing this huge amount of information efficiently requires leaning on advanced technology, including AI-driven data analytics. That tech is crucial, but Nick emphasizes that the human element remains central to Aero’s success.
“There’s no replacing the hands-on aspect of it,” he says. “You can do so much with data. Data is great, and AI is great — there’s an AI portion of the data we do, but in the end it’s all about the people and understanding how a building operates and understanding that when you make changes it will affect the occupants. You don’t just want to arbitrarily make changes based on what data tells you without having a conversation and understanding what the benefits will be.”

While Aero Performance Group excels at the technical aspects of building optimization, Nick takes pride in the broader impact of their work. The energy savings achieved through their monitor-based commissioning and optimization services translate directly into reduced carbon footprints and environmental benefits for the communities they serve.

“We fix things. We are very mechanical, and we get things done. But a byproduct of what we do — that energy savings — is lower carbon footprints,” he notes. “That really affects the community, and it affects the world around us.”

In an industry where building performance standards continue to rise and energy efficiency becomes increasingly critical, Aero Performance Group’s comprehensive approach offers a roadmap for success — one that honors traditional expertise while embracing the technologies
of tomorrow.