The HVACR industry is building smarter than ever. But procurement and material management are still stuck in the past. Here's why.
Remarcable at AHR Expo 2026: Why We're All In on Mechanical
We attended AHR Expo 2026 in Las Vegas for the first time. We came to listen, and we left with a clear picture of where this industry is headed and where it's stuck.
The show floor told two very different stories.
On one side, the technology is moving fast. AI-powered takeoff platforms like Rebar and Beam AI were demoing full-scope HVAC takeoffs in under ten minutes. Siemens, Johnson Controls, and Delta showed AI-enabled building management systems that can monitor, diagnose, and optimize entire portfolios from a single platform. Honeywell won the AHR Innovation Award for Building Automation with a cloud-based suite covering remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, and energy optimization. Prefabrication is gaining serious traction as a way to fight labor shortages, with manufacturers like GF Building Flow Solutions showcasing prefabricated riser systems that reduce field connections by up to 75%. The message was clear: smarter equipment, smarter buildings, smarter installation methods.
On the other side for all the intelligence being built into the equipment and the systems, the way most mechanical contractors actually buy, track, and manage the materials going into those systems hasn't changed. We talked to contractors who are still purchasing material the same way they have for years. Phone calls to distributors and manufacturers. Emails back and forth for quotes. POs tracked in spreadsheets or not tracked at all. Invoices reconciled by hand. Tools floating between jobsites with no accountability. Inventory sitting in warehouses with no real-time visibility. And prefab shops running production schedules off whiteboards while the assemblies they're building contain components ordered through three different people's inboxes.
The industry is pouring intelligence into how they build more efficiently, but the back office and the supply chain are still running on manual processes and good memory.
That gap is exactly why Remarcable exists, and why AHR was our announcement into serving mechanical contractors.
If your team is still managing procurement through phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets, you're not alone. But you don't have to stay there. See how Remarcable helps mechanical and electrical contractors take control of their materials, tools, and prefab workflows. Schedule a demo.
What Remarcable Does
Remarcable is a material management platform built specifically for contractors. We started in electrical contracting, where we've spent years helping some of the largest electrical contractors in the country take control of their procurement, tools, inventory, and prefabrication workflows. The platform connects the office, the field, the warehouse, and the shop on a single system so nothing falls through the cracks.
Remarcables Procurement replaces the phone calls, emails, and spreadsheets with a digital workflow that connects contractors directly to their distributors. Field crews request materials from the jobsite. PMs approve and route orders. POs are tracked from request through delivery, and invoices are reconciled automatically against what was actually ordered and received. No more losing the first hour of every morning figuring out what showed up on the truck.
Remarcables Tool Management gives contractors complete visibility into where their tools and equipment are, who has them, and when they're due back. Instead of phone calls to the tool crib or walking the jobsite looking for a piece of equipment, everything is tracked through a centralized dashboard.
And Remarcables Prefabrication connects shop operations to the field. Production is tracked from start to completion. Field teams know exactly when assemblies are ready and when they'll be delivered. No more calling the shop to ask "is my assembly done yet?"
Every transaction across the workflow captures costs to the job automatically. That means real job costing, not estimates built on outdated numbers.
Why Mechanical, Why Now
Mechanical contractors who heard, and saw, first hand how we were impacting their business asked to build Remarcable for them. They were dealing with the same procurement chaos we'd been solving for electrical contractors, and they wanted to know if our platform could work for them. We’ve spent the last year working with a few of these contractors building our proprietary image based mechanical catalog.
AHR confirmed what those conversations had been telling us. The mechanical industry is facing the same pressures that pushed electrical contractors toward better systems: tighter margins, more complex projects, persistent labor shortages, and supply chain volatility that punishes anyone who can't forecast demand or track committed costs accurately. The 2025 refrigerant shortages exposed just how fragile the supply chain can be when forecasting breaks down. Tariff uncertainty is adding another layer of complexity heading into 2026.
And the trends on the AHR show floor only make the case stronger. As equipment gets more sophisticated and projects require tighter coordination between trades, contractors can't afford to run procurement and materials management the way they did five years ago. Prefabrication is scaling because it saves labor and improves quality, but it only works well when the material pipeline feeding the shop is reliable and visible. AI-driven diagnostics and building automation are creating new service opportunities, but they also mean contractors need better data discipline across their operations.
The contractors who win in this environment are the ones who treat their supply chain with the same seriousness they treat their technical capabilities. That's what Remarcable helps them do.
Whether you're an electrical contractor looking to tighten up your material management or a mechanical contractor ready to move past spreadsheets and phone calls, we'd love to show you what Remarcable can do. Schedule a demo with our team and see the platform in action.
