12 Trade Associations If not us, then who else?
So, what has your trade association ever done for you? Possibly a lot more than you realise, says British Refrigeration Association (BRA) President John Austin-Davies.
IT IS OFTEN easy to be critical of trade bodies and I do understand why people sometimes get frustrated; especially when business is very tough. It often looks as if very little progress is being made on key industry issues when, in fact, the opposite is usually true.
There is a touch of the iceberg about association work. So much is going on behind the scenes with only a tiny proportion visible. 2013 was a particularly intense year with hugely important political manoeuvres playing out against a tough economic backdrop. So what was the BRA doing to make life easier for members and the industry as a whole?
The BRA is an unusual body because it represents the whole supply chain – not many other trade bodies can make that boast. At the ‘front end’ we have the big corporations – the ultimate end users who avail themselves of the services of refrigeration specialists. This means we can quickly get a feel for how the wind is blowing and can start to prepare the whole supply chain from distributors/wholesalers to contractors and manufacturers.
Insight
The process also works in reverse because we keep the corporate users abreast of technical developments giving them an insight into what is and will be possible to help them with their future refrigeration strategies. This membership structure helps to put our individual specialisms into a wider context. For example, if changes to refrigerants means there might need to be a new design of compressor, that will have a knock-on effect for component suppliers and will also trigger a need for training. Our ability to exchange knowledge and market intelligence is hugely valuable as is our collaboration with other organisations – both at home and abroad. We also meet regularly with officials from government departments and NGOs, like the Carbon Trust, but to what end? Thanks to our intensive lobbying work over the F-Gas Regulation, we have stopped Europe introducing a ban on refrigerants which would have been hugely damaging. The newly announced compromise on some, frankly, unworkable proposals for the Regulation owes quite a bit to behind the scenes work by BRA members and our allies across Europe. A wholesale ban of HFCs implemented too quickly would have had dramatic economic implications. The change out of R22 is not yet complete and another step change on that scale could lead to a fatal instability in policy and funding that would not be good for anyone.
BRA members also put on their economists’ hats and went to speak to the country’s leading business experts at the CBI and the British Retail Consortium. They quickly saw the potential commercial implications of forcing too rapid a change and put their weight behind our efforts.
ACR News February 2014
British officials within DEFRA, BIS and DECC also needed the facts about the cost of a proposed ban on HFCs – so they came to us. We explained to civil servants and politicians that a sudden ban on HFCs could mean closing down operating theatres, retail premises, offices – you name it! This type of background briefing work takes years. You need to establish contacts and secure places on the appropriate committees. The short-term political cycle makes things very difficult, and sometimes you have to start all over again because some key official has been moved following a change of government.
But BRA members and staff put in this effort because it is so important for the future of our industry. And if wasn’t the BRA – who could do this work? We have also been seeking to improve the over-intrusive Energy Related Products Directive (ErP), which includes, for example, a proposal to award extra rating points to AC and R systems that include natural refrigerants – whether the overall efficiency is good or not.
Energy
While political work takes up a lot of our energy, there is the less glamorous, but no less crucial, job of training the industry to be done. Continuous professional development for professional engineers in our industry is vital, particularly in the area of changing refrigerant gases. Again our unique supply chain network allows us to tailor and predict training to reflect what end users require from their contractors.
The BRA is also a key sponsor of Skillfridge – the national skills competition – which we support both financially and practically. It provides a fantastic platform for our up and coming
engineers to display their skills and, ultimately, leads to participation in the ‘skills Olympics’ – Worldskills. This year one of our UK apprentices qualified for that global event in Leipzig.
BRA colleges provide facilities, members provide equipment and mentoring, along with the transportable kit and anything else needed by a young person to take part. This exercise is so important in raising the industry’s profile and showing young people that there is a worthwhile career to be had in refrigeration. It is also great PR for the whole of the country and demonstrates to our government that we have world beating skills in our sector tying in with the coalition’s wider vocational skills message.
I think most people take it for granted that the BRA constantly writes and rewrites guidance – but these things don’t happen by magic. Members and staff are constantly reviewing what is available in light of our fast changing industry. Collaboration is crucial to ensuring our technical publications remain current and valuable. We work closely with the IoR on technical publications and with the Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES) to produce our series of practical Fact Finders.
There are many other issues out there that will dictate how our industry operates for years to come and they all require a huge commitment in terms of time and expense given freely by volunteers committed to the cause of improving our industry. However, we recognise that this investment is one we simply have to make and the big question is – if it wasn’t us doing this work on your behalf, then who? For more information about the BRA email:
bra@feta.co.uk
Visit ACR News online at
www.acr-news.com
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