The Air Conditioning Contractors of America announced Steve Schmidt as the 2026 Distinguished Service Award recipient, one of the association's highest honors for individual contributions to the contracting community. Schmidt's recognition comes after years of direct involvement in shaping policy, building training infrastructure, and representing contractor interests at both state and national levels.

Schmidt has held leadership roles across multiple industry organizations, including terms on ACCA's board of directors and participation in workforce development committees that created standardized training curricula now used by technical schools nationwide. His work helped establish apprenticeship frameworks that blend classroom instruction with field hours, addressing the technician shortage that has affected capacity planning for contractors since 2018. He also contributed to regulatory comment periods on refrigerant transitions and efficiency standards, ensuring contractor operational concerns reached federal agencies during rulemaking.

The Distinguished Service Award specifically recognizes individuals who advance the business interests of HVAC contractors beyond their own companies. Past recipients have included figures who shaped NATE certification standards, lobbied for licensing reciprocity across state lines, and developed the financial benchmarking tools many contractors now use for margin analysis. Schmidt's contributions follow that pattern—his advocacy work has focused on reducing compliance costs, improving access to manufacturer training, and building relationships between contractors and utility rebate administrators.

For contractors running businesses today, Schmidt's career path illustrates the value of trade association involvement beyond networking. His committee work directly influenced how manufacturers structure warranty programs, how distributors handle emergency parts availability, and how insurance carriers assess risk for service agreement programs. Those operational improvements affect daily business whether or not individual contractors participate in association activities.

The award will be presented at ACCA's 2026 Conference and IE3 Expo in March. Schmidt joins a roster of fewer than 50 recipients since the award's creation in 1978, making it one of the industry's most selective honors for non-technical contributions to the trade.