A group of installers has joined together to write an open letter to the industry, encouraging Gas Engineers to unite and get their voices heard.

READ IT HERE IN FULL:

Well there’s been a few facts revealed by Capita Plc, many assumptions and a lot of concerned, angry voices on social media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. There’s also been some superbly written blogs and articles from industry professionals so here’s your Uniters’ second Blog.

We’re not writers, we’re not suits, we’re front-line GSRs. Concerned, unsure and wanting a say in our industry. “We” is the key word many have and continue to miss out on so far. We is two simple letters, easy to spell, easy to read. So why then, are W and E so far apart? Why are WE ignored? Why are WE not listened to? Why can WE not unite together and make a voice heard? WE can if WE want to. Simple letters, yet they mean so much when joined together, and as GSRs we joined together will mean so much. Big, small, large, singular all different companies who love our industry. Let’s face it, it’s the best of all the trades.

Let’s look at what we know for sure:

• Capita Plc has launched a safety scheme that loosely uses the word benchmark. “The only independently verified gas safety certification scheme which protects your organisations people, property and reputation”. Hold fire the only independent gas safe certification?
• Helps you win new business as it has UKAS accredited certification which is recognised by public and private sector organisations. Recognised by public? Who’s been asked for a gas safe card? How many times really? Do they public know who Gas Safe is eight years on? No.
• Accredited certification in the provision of safe gas work, helps you control the risks involved with gas safety. Thought being Gas Safe controlled the risks?
• If you ensure the businesses that you use is certified by th CGCS, that de-risks your procurement process as our service is independently assessed by the only accreditation body in the UK. De-risks is a small word, and a huge claim
• The certification is an independent evaluation allowing you to demonstrate due diligence in the event of legal action. So no certification you were acting negligently? Nice thanks incompetent and negligent now.
• Achieving certification means organisations can use the UKAS product certification logo (‘crown and tick’). Result, another sticker for my van and let’s find space on my letter heads.

Hold on, we really get good in the next bit

Being part of the Gas Safe Register is mandatory for all organisations and individuals who work with gas. The CGCS Certification Scheme enables you to show you meet and exceed the legal standards to demonstrate your work processes and procedures deliver gas work safely.

Conflict of interest here surely? Being Gas Safe Registered enables us to show we meet and exceed the legal standards to demonstrate our work process and procedures deliver Gas related work safely? Or is our ACS and the certificates we raise and issue to prove and provide safety a waste of time? Let’s tell the public that shall we?

The benefits of being certified:

• Improves gas safety which benefits consumers. How? We are proven Gas Safe and will you use Gas Safe Inspectors to assess us our work etc if so you are taking on the mantle of Gas Safe but better?
• Demonstrates your organisation is committed to quality and its customers, and has gone through a rigorous, impartial third party assessment to prove it (including assessment of gas work itself). Of course we are. We are the only industry vetted, tested, charged and assessed every 5 years already.
• It gives a competitive edge to your marketing and business opportunities including the ability to use the UKAS ‘crown and tick’ artwork. Really, a crown and tick? The public barely know who Gas Safe are let alone that logo. They still ask ‘are you Corgi registered’ will a crown and tick change that?
• Manage and control your risks in relation to the delivery of safe gas work. Again, a contradiction-in-terms already. We (we whom pay your wages by the way) deliver gas work safely by being GAS SAFE REGISTERED.
• Improves the Gas Safe Register risk rating of your business which influences the frequency and scope of inspection(s) your business faces. Gas safe risk rating influences our frequency and scope of inspections? You who states will assess us every year? Who are you to assess us? I’d rather a Gas Safe inspector who’s qualified pops along once a year to assess our work. At least they’re deemed capable of discussing gas safe regulations, practices and usages. Or will our now over stretched gas safe inspectors do this for you as well as their full time work?
• Use of certification can lead to cost savings as the external assessment process encourages smarter, risk-based quality control which can lead to achieving the same or improved safety standards with less resource. Which nut in a suit devised an algorithm for that? And really, are people in this industry operating so poorly you think we are already unorganised and a few extra computer programmes, a PA, a few administrators and the Crown and Tick assessment?
• Certificated status provides proof of quality if you are tendering for gas work and mitigates the risk for your clients. No, hold on, unless you’re deemed capable of testing our Gas Safe practices which you Capita are not. We are Gas Safe Registered, and this alone states we have already been deemed competent, compliant and SAFE TO WORK ON GAS FOR OUR CLIENTS
• The CGCS certification Gas Scheme is complementary to other quality schemes you may already have e.g. ISO 9001, Charter Mark, European Foundation of Quality Management and Investors in People. It’s another cost, and another scheme that could be forced onto the industry.

Capita Plc run (for the time being) the Gas Safe Register as a company. All you have stated seems to breach Section 8d of Gas Safe rules and regulations many times over. You clearly have a massive conflict of interest. Now call me, us, or better still WE (i.e. those whom are deemed competent to work within the confines of the Gas industry) cynical but, you release a new gas safety scheme which you claim that by assessing us, suddenly we will be: More competent, less of a gas risk, safer for our customer, more diligent, trusted.

Surely, and again call me cynical, you Capita Plc are not deemed adequately trained to state who is Gas Safe competent, who is gas ‘Safer’, and you have contradicted and caused confusion to the industry.

Now fancy this, you were appointed in 2009 to overhaul this industry, with the launch of Gas Safe. We’ve all been here long enough to know about Gas Safe, there’s two years left and you may lose the Gas Safe Register from your portfolio of interests. So you created this new scheme. Let’s suggest it is recognised by Local Authorities, NHBC house builders, NHS, MOD and Government organisations, who love policies, red tape and more administration than really we can deal with.

Great, not a problem to a lot of the Gas Safe Registered small businesses really. However, you could say “what a success, let’s enforce this across the board”. Now it affects us all as it could become compulsory. Whether you keep The Gas Safe Register or lose it, you now have a hold on the industry indefinitely.

That’s what we, the front line GSRs, see and are concerned about. How can we face another cost implication yet again, in a penalised industry already? But hey, to be at the top of our game, we must join this extra scheme as well. Give it a rest!

Why not improve gas safe? Improve training, improve and overhaul the scheme and the ACS accreditation, improve public awareness, run a TV campaign, radios and press. Instead of Gas Safety Week where you invite a few suits from the industry to have a afternoon of nibbles and drinkies, and listen to us preach how great Gas Safe is. Spend money where it’s needed. Leave a legacy, we all see Gas Safe’s failings, the ACS failings, and we live it every damn day. Are we perceived as so unintelligent we wouldn’t notice?

So please do enlighten us why create a gas specific scheme that will clearly cost the majority of the fee-paying industry-members further. Please do enlighten us, how you believe you have not contradicted Gas Safe, how you have not broken Section 8d of the rules of Gas Safe, a organisation oddly run by you. Which you have now seen fit to supersede.

So to our friends, I apologise this is not short but this is heart. The hearts of many who have been in touch since doomsday Friday 3rd February,the day the industry took a major kick in the cajones.

We have asked for those interested in answers to join us and send us your support, your email addresses, we will find a way to be heard. We will find a way to talk to those at the top (how they got there is beyond us). We have tremendous support already with well over 250 email addresses wanting GSRs to unite to become WE to speak and be heard.

United we stand together. This is our damn industry and WE want it run properly. No more taking from us without talking to us first.

Thanks for reading, get in touch with us here:

Craig: @AlphaTec_

Pete: @pbplumber

GMG: @GasManGod