The Guild of Master Heat Engineers has launched, looking to bring together the UK’s best installers, and raise standards in the industry.
Set up by Nathan Gambling, founder of BetaTeach and the BetaTalk podcast, the Guild of Master Heating Engineers is a peer-assessed network, allowing installers to recognise excellence in each other’s work, share knowledge and best practice, and help educate others.
Installer spoke to Nathan to find out more about the initiative:
Q: Why did you decide to launch the Guild of Master Heat Engineers alongside your training work and podcast?
Nathan: “The idea came from a very specific and real world problem. Since I started my podcast a few years back I have had people like the Lord Mayor of the City of London and former Energy Secretaries contacting me for recommendations. Even people working at Installer got in touch to ask for an engineer for their own heat pump install. It is a common problem regardless of who you are.
“When I picked someone for them, I was not looking at a government database or a list of certificates. I was using heuristics which are mental shortcuts based on my own tacit knowledge. I would ask myself: Who do I know in their area? Or who do the engineers I respect say is the best? I realised I was using peer assessment to protect these clients. The Guild is simply a way to scale that process up so it helps every consumer. It’s an evolution of how we recognise the results of training.
Q: How does the Guild of Master Heat Engineers work? Do installers have to pay a subscription to be recognised?
Nathan: “I was adamant that the Guild would not be another pay-to-play scheme. Engineers already pay enough for certifications. To make this work as a business. I have six Guild Patrons who support the mission because they believe in raising standards.
“These brands are Primary Pro which makes pipe insulation systems, two radiator specialists UK Radiators and Castrads, Wolseley the expert merchant, ESBE which produce valves for heat pump systems and Payaca which is a software platform helping engineers run their businesses. These patrons are essential and they were very carefully chosen.”
Q: How can you ensure that the installers in the Guild are top quality?
Nathan: “The idea is that if you put 100 world-class guitarists in a room for a week, they’ll reach an expert consensus on who the top ten players are. They can see the nuances of technique that a non-expert misses. Engineering is the same. If the best engineers in the country tell me someone is good, that is a far more reliable signal of quality than an annual fee paid to an accreditation body.”
Q: Why have you chosen to start a Guild rather than an association?
Nathan: “Guilds have been around for hundreds of years. In the original guilds, you became a master by producing a masterpiece judged by your peers. It signals to the consumer that you are exceptionally competent in your specific scope. I’m not a membership body, to be in the Guild simply means you have been featured on the BetaTeach website because the community knows you’re good.”
Q: Some engineers might feel slighted if they’re not in. How do you manage that?
Nathan: “I’m building this slowly. If someone is not in, it doesn’t mean they’re not good, it just means the organic process has not reached them yet.”
Q: You have always stressed the importance of Peer-to-Peer learning. Where did this idea come from?
Nathan: “I didn’t invent peer-to-peer as it has been happening naturally for decades in merchant branches, on site and now on social media. I was just the first person to explain its importance and give it a framework. A few years ago I did a podcast with Adam Chapman of Heat Geek. He explained how I helped them and others understand the importance of peer-to-peer which they were already doing.
When I started BetaTeach I used the principles from Inside the Black Box by Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black. Their research focuses on formative assessment which is the idea of activating people as learning resources for one another. I saw that the best engineers were already doing this online and I just put a name to it.
Q: Are traditional exams enough for the heating transition?
Nathan: “There’s a concept in modern education called Sustainable Assessment, and experts argue that traditional exams are dead ends. Exams can demonstrate what someone knew on a Tuesday morning in a test centre, but they don’t tell you if that person can maintain those standards three years later in a freezing plant room.
“Sustainable competence is about whether a professional can judge their own quality and the quality of their peers in the real world, day-in and day-out. In the Guild we are moving away from a training course and toward a lifelong process of peer-validated excellence. As a heat pump installer for example, defending your design logic to a group of other expert heat pump engineers is much harder than passing a multiple choice test. That is where real mastery is formed.”
Q: What is the ultimate goal?
Nathan: “I want the Guild to be a bridge between engineers and the boardroom. It provides a pool of verified experts for researchers and policy makers, but primarily it de-risks the energy transition for the public. By making excellence visible through Communities of Practice we ensure the industry is led by integrated competence rather than simple administrative compliance.”
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Contributors
Joe Dart (author)
As an Editor working across Installer, Joe utilises over a decade's worth of journalistic experience to deliver informative content for the trades.
