Southern Air Inc

At Southern Air, we are a 100% employee-owned mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractor serving Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina since 1946. Our work includes design-build construction, system upgrades, ongoing maintenance, and 24/7 emergency service. We serve customers in Lynchburg, Winchester, and Charlottesville. Because every Southern Air technician is also an owner, each of us is personally accountable for the quality of service we provide.

Our history began with founder George Coastan. In 1976, Bob Clarke assumed the presidency and expanded both our Board of Directors and our capabilities, helping establish a foundation for continued growth. Following his retirement in 1998, Ronnie Kidd—a former field electrician who rose to president—led us until 2015. Today, our fourth president, Paul Denham, guides Southern Air alongside a board whose members represent different areas of the mechanical and electrical construction and maintenance industries.

We bring design, coordination, prefabrication, installation, and maintenance experience to complex commercial projects. For one 151,000-square-foot residence hall, we delivered the full MEP package under tight deadlines. Our Prefabrication Division built custom risers, while our field teams installed a 200-ton chiller and 3,000-amp electrical service and worked through challenges that included 20-foot ceilings and complex vertical shafts. Serving as the full MEP design engineer from the beginning also allowed us to value-engineer the systems before construction started. At Longwood University’s Joan Perry Brock Center, we completed the full electrical scope while navigating significant supply-chain delays.

Our experience continues after construction is complete. We currently have 3,590 commercial businesses under active maintenance contracts and have proven experience completing system upgrades valued between $500,000 and $2 million in occupied buildings. Whether we are planning a design-build project, modernizing existing infrastructure, or supporting building systems, we approach the work with an owner’s sense of responsibility.