on physical well-being was well understood, but links to mental health had not been properly measured. He shared a range of research


results with BESA’s delegates that demonstrated how internal spaces affected productivity and creativity including a YouGov survey carried out by the Association last year, which showed that 70% of office workers were concerned about the impact of poor IAQ on their health.


“600 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 was demonstrated [in a study carried out by Harvard University] to have a damaging impact on human cognitive function,” said Professor Croome, who is air quality commissioner for Hammersmith and Fulham. “This is considerably below the minimum standard we work to in this country of 1,000ppm and suggests we need to look again at how we are designing spaces and ventilating them.” AECOM’s director of sustainability


Ant Wilson MBE told the BESA workshop that it had an opportunity to create guidance that could eventually be accepted as a mandatory standard. “Lots of the industry’s most established guidance, such as BREEAM, started out as advisory, but was gradually adopted as mandatory by people like local authority planning officers,” he said.


The health impacts of IAQ created an opportunity for building engineering specialists to become a new breed of “building doctors”, according to Adrien Lafond of Foobot – the IAQ measuring technology company. “You can use available technology to diagnose the air quality problem; prescribe a solution; and then tackle it,” he said. “The future challenge will be to use data to predict where IAQ problems might occur and take preventative measures.” Foobot and BESA are partnering on


an exercise to measure, monitor and analyse air quality data from a number of locations across London, establishing a link between outdoor pollution ‘events’ and corresponding impacts on building occupants.


Strategies


The Association’s senior mechanical engineer Mark Hughes demonstrated the use of the technology and explained how the data could inform IAQ strategies by giving building owners and managers a clear idea of where problems were occurring. This would also give facilities managers an opportunity to “keep the Citadel clean”, according to ventilation hygiene expert Craig Booth. He said existing best practice tools,


like BESA’s TR/19 guide to best practice for ventilation cleanliness and its comprehensive FM tool SFG20, could work well in tandem with the proposed IAQ standard to deliver better conditions for health and well-being. “The industry should not act like a


policeman telling people what they must do, but clearly explain the business benefits of keeping ventilation systems properly maintained,” said Mr Booth. However, ultimately the industry will have to address skills and competence problems to ensure it can deliver its IAQ promises, according to BESA vice president Giuseppe Borgese. He said the sector’s workforce did possess many of the necessary skills, but they were not “specifically targeted at improving IAQ”. Mr Borgese said the level of


understanding of the issue would also have to improve and “a fair amount of scaremongering” would be needed to get the message over to clients. www.theBESA.com/IAQ


HVR is helping the SAMARITANS to tackle mental health in the HVAC/construction industry with a series of awareness raising features this year. This month we look at how mental health is being tackled in Australia


Mental health down under


he Australian building industry cottoned on to the mental health and suicide issues facing building workers early in the noughties and set up Mates in Construction in 2008. This was a response to the high


T


rates of building workers taking their own lives. The charity runs workplace suicide prevention training and a helpline, and they also train construction workers to provide on the spot support if a colleague is struggling at work. Australia is similar to the UK in


that three times as many men as women take their own lives and men in blue collar or unskilled jobs are at the greatest risk. Suicide among construction


workers there – who are almost exclusively men aged 15 to 24 – is more than twice as high as other young males, according to the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention. They have also noticed people


who take their own lives have some things in common: relationship problems, bullying, workplace stress, alcohol and gambling issues and financial challenges. And the macho nature of the industry makes it hard for people to reach out for fear of rejection and ridicule. So far, so similar to the UK. In


Australia, however, they have made suicide prevention a higher profile presence on building sites. They run suicide awareness training, and package it as helping your mates. The prevailing culture that sees men jockeying for the top position rather than negotiating their way to solutions does them no favours. It’s part of the image of tough men doing hard physical work, who hold their feelings in. “To tackle the high rates of male suicide we need a radical rethink of the way we look at masculinity,” says leading academic and suicide


researcher Professor Rory O’Connor of Glasgow University. “Teaching emotional literacy and


resilience from an early age, promoting a variety of relevant role models from different backgrounds to young men, and involving them in developing support that they find easy to relate to, would be steps in the right direction. “Part of the solution is reframing what it is to be a man and successful; men are expected to fit into a narrow definition which doesn’t leave much room for manoeuvre, even in these supposedly more tolerant days. “Too many men still measure themselves against this: rich, powerful, competitive, in control and never vulnerable. The growth of social perfectionism has also caused problems. It is characterised by men trying to live up to the unrealistic expectations that they think others have of them – and feeling a failure if they fall short. “We need to be careful not to blame men for social perfectionism, and regarding therapy, we should not expect one model to fit all men. We might need to go to them to engage them, go to where men socialise rather than expecting them to go to clinical services. “We also need to understand better


– beyond the clichés – what the barriers are preventing men from reaching out before they reached crisis point. “Many men struggle with the move away from the traditional male role and, for too many, they feel that they are failing; they are often ashamed and feel trapped. “Being more proactive could make


a real difference to male suicide rates and we also need to better understand what support services men would like,” said Prof O’Connor.


You can call Samaritans free anytime from any phone, on 116 123 (this number will not appear on your phone bill) you can also contact us via email, jo@samaritans.org or go to www.samaritans.org for details of your nearest branch


www.heatingandventilating.net July 2017 13


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