VENTILATION
Top left: AirisQ ventilation verification technicians carrying out verification checks on an AHU. Left: An air flow reading being taken using a hand-held manometer from an extract grille in an operating theatre. Above: An AirisQ ventilation verification technician taking an air flow reading in a UCV operating theatre. Above right: Taking an air flow reading using a balometer in a theatre.
the report style and layout, which again means cost saving for the NHS. The quality of the annual verification process is essential to enable the NHS estate to keep its mechanical ventilation systems working efficiently and effectively. Many Trusts are struggling with recruitment of technical staff to carry out planned preventative maintenance (PPM). If the in-house CP(V) were diverted from their PPM tasks to start carrying out ventilation verifications, there would be a knock-on effect on the amount of PPMs that could be completed. This could have a deleterious effect on the overall quality of operation of the air-handling units, as regular tasks would be neglected in favour of carrying out verifications. AirisQ has responded to many commercial tenders
from the NHS for ventilation verification, and all its NHS clients have specified that staff carrying out verifications should be at least AP(V) qualified. This contrasts with the belief that CP(V) staff are suitable to carry out ventilation verifications. In addition to taking air flow measurements, further work is required using engineering mathematics to calculate air change rates.
Quality of service’s many elements In any system, the quality of the service provided is a combination of initial education, experience, and Continuing Professional Development. Verification companies are specialists in their field, and it has taken AirisQ over 15 years of improvement and innovation to develop its reports to where they are today. As Gareth Twynam says: “There is more that goes into these compliance reports than the two technical appendices in HTM 03-01: Part B containing templates for air flow measurements.” If Competent Persons – Ventilation (CP(V)) are asked
to carry out the annual ventilation verifications they are effectively being asked to ‘mark their own homework’, and give themselves a ‘to do’ list to rectify the issues they have found. Although there is no requirement in HTM 03-01 for independent verification of critical air-handling units, having an independent verification report gives the Board a level of confidence that what is being reported
is accurate. Gareth sums this up: “I feel that if they’re scoring their own maintenance, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. As an independent service-provider with no links to construction or maintenance, we can objectively assess and verify a system, and create a list of actions that help to raise the level of compliance. In my opinion, there may be resistance to doing this internally, as this would effectively be creating work, and therefore cost, for the department.” The organisational issues involved in asking employees to
carry out compliance checks for their managers are many and varied. Let’s look at the situation where the Competent
An air-handling unit situated in the open air with a glass trap with black sludge, indicating the potential presence of Aspergillus contamination (ref HTM 03-01:Part B: Table 3: ‘Colour of water in glass trap’).
Gareth Twynam
Gareth Twynam MIHEEM is the managing director of AirisQ – an independent ventilation consultancy specialising in healthcare compliance. Since joining the sector in 2011, he has striven for AirisQ to become the market-leader in providing the NHS with HTM 03-01 validations and verifications. In recent months he says that his focus has ‘shifted away from the nuts and bolts side of healthcare ventilation, to the bigger picture of not only changing and educating the industry, but also moving AirisQ forward to be the ultimate solution to healthcare ventilation, and the company every engineer wants to work for’.
March 2025 Health Estate Journal 23
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