NEWS
SPECIAL FOCUS
insideindustry A
shortage of skilled technicians will make it increasingly diffi cult for the
refrigeration and air conditioning sector to adopt new ‘alternative’ refrigerants, which are critical to achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets, according to the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
The Association’s head of technical Graeme Fox told this week’s F-Gas Question Time hosted by RAC magazine that too many operatives had out-of-date practical skills and were unfamiliar with renewable technologies and the fl ammable refrigerants that were quickly taking over from global warming gases. He confi rmed that DEFRA was
looking urgently at the situation and considering how it might legislate to improve the certifi cation arrangements for the sector. He also urged employers to upskill their engineers to equip them for a rapidly changing marketplace. The UK has agreed to continue ‘mirroring’ European F-Gas legislation and phasing down the use of HFC gases in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. This will lead to rapid deployment of alternative refrigerants in their place – many of which are fl ammable. “A shortage of skilled technicians is a barrier to the uptake of alternatives,” Mr Fox told the online event. “We also need to raise awareness of the dangers posed by
untrained contractors working with fl ammable gases. “All A2Ls [the classifi cation designating a fl ammable gas] are safe to handle if you know what you are doing, but too many don’t recognise the diff erence between working with a mildly fl ammable gas like R32 and R290 (propane) which is more explosive.”
He said all engineers should be required to regularly refresh their practical skills to keep pace with changing technologies and refrigerants and criticised the complacency that allowed “evergreen” certifi cation like City & Guilds 2079 to remain valid without a regular re-registration process to keep skills up to date.
Peter Wood of the wholesaler Wolseley added that A2Ls were coming fast, but too many people working in the sector were “ignorant” about how to use them safely. “The contractor base needs a lot more training because a juggernaut is coming, and you will get run over.” The expert panel at the Question Time session also expressed concern about the number of heating engineers transitioning into refrigerant work because of the growth in heat pump installations. Many are attending short courses and then calling themselves heat pump installers when the panel stressed they should have a NVQ Level 2 or equivalent qualifi cation and two years’ experience to be able
to carry out heat pump installations competently.
Mr Fox told the session that BESA’s online training Academy would soon be relaunching its F-Gas renewal process with the ACRIB Flammables course embedded within it to ensure everyone renewing their qualifi cation was automatically subjected to testing that covered the new alternative gases.
“This is all part of the ‘golden thread’ of competence that will be expected to run throughout the whole industry following the Hackitt Review and the appointment of the new building safety regulator,” said Mr Fox. “The RAC sector will have to catch up with this because we expect policing of safety issues to be much stricter from now on.”
In other news from BESA, the organisation has praised the British Standards Institute (BSI) for deciding to speed up the development of a new standard for measuring indoor environment quality (IEQ). Publicly Available Specifi cation (PAS) 3003 was championed by engineering fi rm EFT Consult, which has been working on it for six years. The BSI has now decided to accelerate that work into a full British Standard (BS 40101 Building Performance Evaluation) to be published later this year.
The new standard will closely follow the work already completed by EFT Consult and its partners, including BESA’s Health & Wellbeing
in Buildings group, providing guidance on effi cient and suitable lighting, heating, ventilation, and minimising the unwanted and harmful eff ects of air and noise pollution to improve the health and wellbeing of occupants. The new standard may also provide benchmarks for a Wellbeing Performance Rating that could be applied to any building. Chris Jenkins, director at EFT Consult and lead author of the PAS, said the BSI’s decision was “good news for anyone who works in an offi ce or regularly visits a building – and that’s just about everyone”. “Rather than simply being a recommended code of best practice… all of the important recommendations our combined work has highlighted will now be given the full weight of a British Standard,” he added. BESA chief executive David Frise said that by fast-tracking the PAS work into a full standard the BSI was responding to growing public understanding of the impact indoor environments had on health and wellbeing. He urged the team putting the standard together to be ambitious in the measures they set to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) in particular. “This is an important piece of work because whatever standards we agree now will be applied for many years to come and could have an enormous impact on the health and wellbeing of future generations of building occupants,” said Mr Frise.
10 July 2021 •
www.acr-news.com
Download the ACR News app today
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
