TechniSolve Software

Software for the air conditioning, ventilation and refrigeration industry

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Directors, Customers and Acknowledgements

TechniSolve is a software development company with many years of experience in program development for the air conditioning, refrigeration and ventilation industry.

The company was registered in 1993 but the spade work really started in 1983 on a 64K Commodore PET personal computer where I started developing a program to simulate the performance of a heat pump in a domestic roof-void.

See the map to for our location in the world.

Our Directors...

Bruce Wernick PrEng., BScEng.

Bruce has been involved in all aspects of the airconditioning industry. This includes research, manufacturing, contracting, design and consulting.

After graduating at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1982, he was engaged in post graduate research on the long term performance of heat pumps. During this time, he submitted a paper to the Solar World Congress and attended the 1983 conference in Perth. He was also given a research grant by CSIR to produce a status report on the potential for thermal energy storage (TES) on site for first and third world applications. This involved a visit to many of the TES power stations and research facilities in Europe.

He was then employed as a research engineer at the Chamber of Mines Environmental Engineering (1985 to 1989). Here he was involved in many practical research topics relating to underground environmental control. This included software development, dust suppression systems, chilled water pipe insulation, controlled re-circulation, stope cooler design and underground ventilation. His primary interest was the development of an underground ventilation and heat flow network computer program.

In 1990, he joined HC Airconditioning Equipment Manufacturers (1990 - 1993) as Engineering Manager where he was involved in the development and manufacturing of airconditioning equipment. This included sheet metal planning, fan selection, heat exchanger design, electrics and controls. He was promoted to director with control over the medium equipment range (typically 10 to 100 kW). While at HC Airconditioning, he wrote many programs that are currently being used to select equipment for customer requirements.

With extensive knowledge in the design and manufacture of equipment, he then joined a leading airconditioning contracting company, Airgro, as Engineering Project Engineer (1994 - 2000). Here, he was involved mainly in design & supply projects where he gained invaluable experience in the whole process from design to installation and commissioning. While continuing to develop software, the emphasis of the program design shifted to the practical system installations and pricing.

Currently, he is the Managing Director of TechniSolve Software where he is involved in consulting and software development for the airconditioning industry. Projects include detailed design simulations for non-standard applications, site investigation and tender evaluation.

In February 2003, Bruce was invited by IDC Australia to teach an air-conditioning and refrigeration course in Canada. He has subsequently lectured to the post-graduate air-conditioning course at the University of the Witwatersrand and taught several HVAC workshops around the world.

In September 2003, Bruce joined the SAIRAC Johannesburg committee and has was elected as vice-chairman. In August 2004, he was elected as chairman of the Johannesburg region. He served on the education sub-committee and has developed a technical data manual CD for distribution to members of the South African airconditioning industry. At the 2006 AGM, Bruce was presented with the SAIRAC Meritorious Service award.

Cathy Wernick BSc. Computer Science cum laude, BA Social Work

Cathy became involved in software development in 1984 where she contributed to a post graduate simulation and monitoring program.

In 1985 she joined Barclays Industrial where she was involved in program development of computerized banking systems. During this time she achieved the highest annual marks for the national Cobol exam. She was appointed as senior programmer and was responsible for maintenance of on site software installations.

She then registered for a degree in computer science at the University of South Africa and graduated summa cum laude in 1992. On graduation, she received the Gold Medal award for the highest BSc mark at the university.

She is currently a director of TechniSolve Software where she is in charge of software design and interface planning. She writes programs using the Borland Delphi environment. Future planning includes development of Internet applications.

Our Customers...

We have developed various design and selection programs for the air conditioning market. Our customers include the following companies...

HC Airconditioning, Metek, Africold Components, Guntner, Airgro, HC Cape, Richard Pearce & Partners, Peter von Willich, Pretoria University, CA du Toit & Partners, Industrelek, BFBA, BryAir India, Iscor, Aerocon, Windhoek Consulting Engineers, Danfoss Industries, MTN, AirVent, HVAC Installations, Insulated Structures, FreezeTech, Kuruman Cooling, Jordaan & Hayward, Frigecare, Catering Equipment & Refrigeration, Agrelek, Reineke & sons, Spoormaker & Partners, Namibia Industries, Emmie’s Verkoeling, JB Refrigeration, TARES, Cooltemp Technologies, Freon Refrigeration, York International, Emergency Refrigeration, Refrigeration Technical Services, Kool-Kare, Botswana Meat Commission, De Vries and Havel, Charles Pein and Partners, PPECB, AC & R Components, Celcius Refrigeration, Smart Refrigeration, Ref Air, Grenco Refrigeration, Vic’s Refrigeration, Matador Refrigeration, Impala Platinumm, Industrial Cooling, MBB Consulting Engineers, HCM, Aster International, Enviroware Construction, Winston Airconditioning and Engineering, AirMaster China, Total Air Control, Ziehl ebm SA, ACDD, Bluhm Burton Engineering, CSIR Mining Technologies, FNS Engineering, Valentino Engineering, AirClear Engineering, Airley Cooling, Sinko, Peter Groves, HC-HeatExchangers, AirTech, Reco, CJ Bourquin & Co, TDS, Ove Arup & Partners Ireland, Evapco, Viking, Recoil, Trox, Richard Pearce, WSP Consulting, Commercial Refrigeration, RPM, Metraclark, Purairtech, Cape Cooling, VMG, IngPlan, Climatic Control, Wits University, Durban Technikon, Cape Technikon, MRE Cape Town, Tech-Know, NuLectric, ISS, Joules Technologies, Brian Flynn, Evapco, Worthington Smith and Brauer, Bosbok Engineering, Shamus Rennie, Helderburg Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning, Frigoscandia Equipment, PPM, Airtech, Best Direction System Limited, Cell C, Universal Refrigeration, CFW Industries, Savannah Engineering Natal, RTS Designs, MTN, Industrial Cooling, RACAS, Air Conditioning Advisory Services, IH Systems, Meprotech, Dynamic Cables, Aster International, Real Cold New Zealand, V&M Cooling...

Acknowledgements

If you think back through your career, you will probably find a small number of people (other that your parents) who have put up with your problems and have given freely of their time and information without expecting reward. The following people have made significant contributions to my career and deserve credit. I apologize in advance for any omissions, it's probably just long term memory failure on my part.

Dr Derek Wang: I met Derek in 1973 while he was busy with a PhD in quantum mechanics. For me, Derek represented unbridled knowledge. He would tackle any problem from fundamentals and was not only willing but enjoyed discussing problems and ideas without regard for time. After my unspectacular school history, Derek planted the seed. I became interested in further study and started by completing a technical diploma. This eventually led to me studying mechanical engineering at university.

Professor Alan Crump: While I was attending technical college, I shared a rented house with Alan. We spent many evenings drinking cheap wine and playing chess. Alan is dynamic, passionate about his work and highly articulate. It is not surprising that he later became head of fine arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. Any self doubts I had at the time were brushed aside by Alan's forward momentum.

Patrick Hing: Fresh out of school, I started working as a draughtsman for Ove Arup & Partners. At some point, I was fortunate to be assigned to assist Pat with drawings on an urgent project. Pat was a design engineer at Ove Arup in the mechanical services department, but I don't remember us ever discussing air-conditioning. What I do remember is an amazing sense of humor and the sincere belief that I could do anything that I wanted. By then, I was attending technical college but started to feel the need to study further and Pat was the right encouragement at the right time.

Professor Neville Tully: After completing a degree in mechanical engineering, Neville invited me to stay on and do post-graduate work under his supervision. My primary field was the long term performance of heat pumps but Neville is a free thinker with plenty ideas on finding shoestring budget solutions to problems. His do it yourself approach to experimentation led to the creation of many instruments and simulation programs. This really got me interested in simulating thermal problems. Today, Neville occasionally invites me to be external examiner for engineering student projects and I am always proud to accept.

Dr Steven Bluhm: I joined the Chamber of Mines Research Organization Environmental Engineering Laboratory in 1985 after an interview with Steve Bluhm. Steve is a business wise engineer and not surprisingly was appointed director of Environmental Engineering at COMRO. I say business wise because Steve can turn a theoretical project into a successful business venture. Steve is also highly technically proficient and has a thorough understanding of direct contact heat transfer. My relationship with Steve was primarily through a software program that we developed for the mining industry. When I started my own venture with TechniSolve, Steve was very quick to include TechniSolve as one of his suppliers.

Kim Kokkonen: Kim was the brains behind TurboPower Software and a driving force behind many programming language developments at Borland. In the early days of developing software for the South African mining industry, there was very little support in terms of menu, window and memory management. At the time, Kim placed some of his source code on the Bulletin Boards (the BBS were the pre-cursor to the Internet). Spelunking is the art of exploring caves and this is what it felt like at the time. I explored Kim's code and discovered many of the tricks that Microsoft omitted to tell us. Although I don't know Kim personally, we did communicate by fax a few times and the structure of my coding was undoubtedly influenced by his work.

Mike Schaefer: Mike employed me at HC Airconditioning in February 1990 and provided great opportunities for development. At that stage, I was new to commercial airconditioning and couldn't think of a better place to learn. Mike was always been interested in new ideas and was very generous in supplying equipment for student projects.

Peter Timm: While I was working for HC Airconditioning, Peter Timm was a shareholder with primary responsibility for coil manufacturing. Even today, there is surprisingly little fundamental data on coil design in the public domain and over the years, Peter has collected probably all there is out there. Peter has willingly shared this wealth of data with me and has always been available for discussion. My original coil calculations were loosely based on McQuay experimental correlations from Peter's extensive library. I have subsequently dropped these in favor of the much more powerful effectiveness concept.

Tom Meintjes: In 1995, Tom invited me to joined Airgro. Over a 6 year period at Airgro, I grew as an engineer thanks to Tom's guidance. I hope that I am able to have the same patience with people who work for me. Tom is the best airconditioning engineer I know. He understands the airconditioning problem completely, both technical and the practical implementation often overlooked by designers. When I registered as an engineer in training, I asked Tom to be my mentor and have benefited enormously from his experience. In preparing a design, no matter what size, Tom has a method of tabulating all the heat loads on a single A4 page. Tom is not a computer person so his calculations and summaries are all written meticulously by hand. As I formulated my heat load program, I have tried to incorporate the simplicity and essence of Tom's method.

Professor Wilbert Stoecker: In 1985, I bought two books on airconditioning and the design of thermal systems. Many of my original thermal calculations had their roots in these books. As my programs developed, I may have incorporated more sophisticated algorithms and more up to date correlations but the basis is still sound thanks to the information so well documented in these books. Wil has been kind enough to supply me with training materials for various airconditioning courses that I have been giving.

Hans Damhuis: I was persuaded by Denny Rademeyer to become involved in the development of training material for MERSETA. The outlines were complete and the task was to write the curriculum framework. To get things going, Hans Damhuis, Avril Adendorf, Willie Kuperus and Bruce Wernick worked for about 4 weeks in a room at the ACRICSA offices. I knew Hans Damhuis well from industry meetings but this time of such close cooperation gave me much more insight into the man. Hans was passionate about everything to do with air-conditioning, refrigeration and training. I have never spent so much time arguing about semantics. Actually, I think that I enjoyed it as much as Hans did. Hans, I value our time together and think about you often.