#81 - Nathan Wood: The Ventilation Crisis Nobody's Talking About And How We Fix It?

"The lungs of our buildings are failing us." These sobering words from ventilation expert Nathan Wood capture the essence of a critical conversation about the silent crisis happening behind our walls. 

After inspecting countless ventilation systems across the UK, Nathan reveals the disturbing reality that approximately 75% of residential ventilation systems are fundamentally failing to perform as designed, not just minor issues, but catastrophic failures that compromise health and safety.

Unlike plumbing leaks that create visible puddles or electrical faults that trip breakers, ventilation failures operate invisibly, silently harming occupants over years or decades. While regulations and standards continue to evolve, the practical reality on the ground shows an industry plagued by poor installation practices, inadequate maintenance, and a profound lack of accountability. 

From flexible ducting crushed beyond functionality to fans venting into wall cavities rather than outside, these aren't isolated incidents but systemic failures documented daily.

The conversation explores why this crisis persists despite the solutions being relatively straightforward. A perfect storm of factors contributes: no established pathway to competency for installers, housing organisations without dedicated ventilation maintenance budgets, manufacturers focused on product sales rather than performance outcomes, and consumers who don't know what questions to ask. The experts propose practical solutions, including outcome-based specifications, proper training pathways, manufacturer accountability for installation quality, and reframing ventilation as a "safety critical aspect" of building performance.

Nathan Wood LinkedIn 

Farmwood 

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Ventilation Industry Issues
• 10:11 Examining Failed Ventilation Systems
• 21:54 Customer Engagement and Education Challenges
• 36:38 Design and Performance vs Product Focus
• 52:12 Competency and Training Requirements
• 1:05:55 Manufacturer Responsibility and Product Issues
• 1:19:43 Social Housing Ventilation Challenges
• 1:33:11 Closing Thoughts on Industry Solutions

Transcript

Simon: 0:00

Welcome back to Air Quality Matters. We already have the tools and knowledge we need to make a difference to the quality of the air we breathe in our built environment. The conversations we have and how we share what we know is the key to our success. Coming up a conversation with Nathan Wood, managing Director of Farmwood, chair of the EIA Air Quality Working Group and BISA London and South East chair, we were counting. It was about 75 episodes ago that I last had Nathan on the podcast, a fellow campaigner of better outcomes with ventilation. Nathan and I have spent most of the intervening time, about a year and a half or so, not seeing a whole lot of change. To be honest, it just so happened we were both in Manchester for the housing conference and indeed ended up being flatmates for the week, so what better opportunity to sit down and have a good old chinwag about what's changed and, quite frankly, what hasn't? Nathan is always full of valuable insights from the sector, walking the walk on the ground and delivering decent outcomes for people and, while he's at it, recording the shambles he and his team sees day to day. We tried our best to keep the conversation solution orientated and I hope to a large part we managed it, but there might have been the odd moan creeping in here and there, so I apologize in advance. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Please don't forget to check out the sponsors in the show notes and at airqualitymattersnet.

Simon: 1:32

This is a conversation with nathan wood, believe it or not. I was looking back and I must have rung you it would have been November a year and a half ago with this mad idea of doing the podcast, and I can't remember. You were like guest number three or four or something. He was yeah, yeah. So like we're now on what?

Simon: 2:08

77, 78 episodes, so over 70 episodes ago you came on and chatted to me, which I think is amazing, and now you're a partner in the podcast and helping us kick on and do even more. So that's absolutely brilliant. Um, and one of the themes of our conversation a year and a half ago was anybody that follows you on linkedin knows your horror show pictures of ventilation systems. Um, and I was thinking it must be so nice for you a year and a half on that that sent such shockwaves through the industry that everybody gave themselves a good talking to and you no longer have to post videos and photos of dodgy sisters. And we can hire an Airbnb, nathan, for the week to do a podcast and walk in and know before we even come in here that everybody's got ventilation, absolutely right.

Nathan: 3:11

Unfortunately, not, unfortunately, not.

Simon: 3:14

And for context, folks me and Nathan have got an Airbnb to do this podcast this week for the Manchester housing and of course the poor Airbnb hostess doesn't know to the UK's preeminent ventilation inspectors are turning up and what do we find?

Nathan: 3:36

We may have found an inaccessible MVHR turned off somewhere. Blocked filter can't even get to the other filter. It has worked at some stage because the filter's dirty and there's dirty rings around the air valves but no ventilation at all and you can't open the windows.

Simon: 3:53

So if we look a little bit perspiry, it's not the studio lights, it's the fact that actually there's not a lot of air in here. Actually it's a big old space we're talking in.

Nathan: 4:04

Yeah, and we've both brought CO2 monitors along yeah as we do, sorry, yeah. And they are elevated considering the size of the space.

Simon: 4:11

Yeah, yeah, so this place could sleep six people. God forbid what that would be like with six people in it. So yeah, kind of going back to the original question, like not a lot has changed.

Nathan: 4:25

No.

Simon: 4:25

This is it no.

Nathan: 4:26

And regulations and PAS standards and everything that's moving. You would think that we would have seen an improvement in that time and I can't say it's got worse, but it's pretty maintained at a level and I think that's because of the decade and a bit of poor install that we're still being asked to go out investigate and look at. But it's so easy to get right the first time. This isn't rocket science.

Simon: 4:57

Yeah, now, I suppose for context, and particularly people that don't know you or are listening on the podcast and haven't seen the posts that you do on LinkedIn, you post almost on a daily basis because you have a whole team of people out there in the field, horror shows and you can use your imagination of poorly installed, ducting and flexible. You know the usual stuff, stuff. Um, but for context is that because of what you do as an organization, you'll be you'll. A lot of what you do is troubleshooting therefore, you're seeing, not not really, no, it's.

Nathan: 5:37

It's normally for a maintenance route. Um, we've been in business 23 years. Back in the early days we were doing nice installations, full design work, installation, commissioning, handover, pick up the maintenance from individuals through to sort of not big blocks of flats but sort of 30, 40 dwellings, but predominantly it was commercial that was. It was probably 80% commercial and over the years that swing has slowly been going over to the resi market. I think that was probably 80% commercial and over the years that swing has slowly been going over to the resi market. I think that was probably with the introduction of more of the HR, the systems that were coming through and with the associations and individuals that we work with. It's normally an introduction for maintenance where we then go in and we go.

Nathan: 6:23

That's not right. This isn't right. But I think from the experience that we've got, it's not just filter out, filter in, give something a little brush, check the flow rate of a bit of tissue paper, which is where I think the failings of previous contractors may have been. I'm not telling everybody with the same brush, but certainly they're not used to the spend that we suddenly put to them where we say this doesn't meet part F. You know, we've got a power diff anemometer. It's not doing what it says on the commission insert from four years ago and it's not going to do the duty because the installation's never been right from day one. But then we get there with you, but we comply. Well, whatever it says on that cert at that time, whoever completed it, we can't question that it may have worked. But then ceilings come down, cupboards need to be opened up and it's clear that there was a lot of misrepresentation of the truth in terms of commissioning certificates and installations.

Simon: 7:22

Yeah, and we're not over-egging this. Like this and again, for those that follow Nathan would know these are horror shows. Like these aren't small, minor infringements of compliance and being 20% under a general ventilation rate, I mean there's just fundamentally poor outcomes and lack of workmanship and professionalism and design intent. I mean it's real basic stuff that's being done poorly, isn't it?

Nathan: 8:02

Yeah, and there's no reason for it to be no. You look at the competence route with electrics, with gas being a controlled service, ventilation almost is. It's making a humming noise. It can hold two ply tissue paper. That's fine, you know, there's no issue.

Nathan: 8:19

But I think now people are looking more into their environment, the same way they might do their food or their drink, and there's a lot of publicity going around that we are seeing a slight shift in the way people behave within their homes, or their expectation of how the home should perform, and that's when they're starting to actually criticize the existing systems, to actually criticise the existing systems. But again, when we go in, we're the good guy because we are going to make sure that the outcome is suitable for the people living within the home and that the environment is the best it can be. But there's a bill at the end of that and people aren't prepared for that spend for that bill. So once we're going in, we can do air quality monitoring, we can look at the data, we can take other people's data, but the crux of it is when you look at the lungs of the building, be that a commercial system or an individual system DMEV, mvhr most of the time and it is most of the time there's major issues. It's as simple as that.

Simon: 9:22

Yeah, and there's a lot of numbers floating around. But my general premise to large organisations that would hold a lot of stock is that their assumptions should be the starting point is in the region of about 75% failure. Yeah, would you consider that reason? From what you see and what your guys and girls see out on the road, that's not a and it's not just on your resi side either.

Nathan: 9:52

I mean, yes, resi is in individual units but also on a communal system, residentially. But then you bring into that fire compartmentation issues, modifications over the years. Some residents change over the air valve because they're not getting enough extract and they fit an electric fan over the top which then has a negative impact on the system. Through to like commercial ahus, people just change filters. They don't necessarily clean the ducting. There's a fit out on one floor. They change all of the configuration of the duct and suddenly the pressures are all thrown out. Then everybody else is complaining of noisy downstream of it.

Simon: 10:25

Yeah, doesn doesn't get it.

Nathan: 10:26

Yeah, doesn't get enough or they're getting too much, and it's just because it's intangible most of the time. But I think with the introduction the widespread introduction, as the costs are coming down, of air quality monitors and a lot of talk about IAQ, IEQ and the whole sort of well-being envelope of that, People are becoming more aware. So they have to look at making changes, they have to look at that investment. But it's never been a planned investment, Even though we've been in business over 20 years.

Simon: 11:01

I don't think anybody budgets for air quality. No, there's very few. I mean, you know, with the work I do with housing organisations, there are very few. If any would actually have a budget for cyclical maintenance of ventilation. They will have a budget for the replacement of ventilation, a certain percentage per year typically. So on their budget books and spreadsheets they will assume every 15 years or so, or five years or whatever it is, they have to replace a fan, but nobody's budgeting for the inspection and maintenance of ventilation systems. In the same way they look at water and boilers and various other things.

Simon: 11:40

It's interesting you say about the air quality sensors actually that's a premise I believe as well is that I think the proliferation of air quality sensors is changing the framing, the narrative, because all of a sudden people can see the outcome in ways that they've never been able to see it before. A bit like us walking into this place. You know, we're slightly more attuned to it. So we, we, we understand what dry traps smell like and stale air, and you know spaces that aren't used frequently. Um, we're picking that up.

Simon: 12:17

Um, but there's still the two of us of until we pull an air quality sensor out and are going yeah, look, I'm right. Why is it 850 parts per million in a space that should be far lower than that? We have that ability for a couple of hundred quid. That's not been a possibility before and you probably see it the same as I do. For the first time ever, consumers are going. I think there's something wrong with my home. I've got a sensor. It says this. They don't know whether it's accurate or what that number really means, but we're now having a conversation in the context of air quality data that we didn't have even five years ago.

Nathan: 13:02

It's interesting as well, because even a real, cheap sensor from an online store gives you an indication, even if it's out. It's it's out, but it's giving you something even if you base it on that. And I think the way in which people are looking at co2 as a proxy which probably in our circles we've used it for quite some time and although it's not a direct indication of ventilation efficiency, it is a number and I think, as long as you've got something to work from, something to improve on or better, and it almost gives people comfort. It's like when we came in and we're looking at the thermostat on the wall, first thing we do, it's warm in here. What's the thermostat on the wall? First thing we did, it's warming here. What's the thermostat? Say. I think people are getting into that way of thinking. Where they go, it's warming here. Where it's 19, 20 degrees, that should be okay, right? What else is going on? I can't hear that hum. What was that hum that we used to hear? Are the ventilation systems failed? What do we need?

Nathan: 13:58

But going back to the, the bigger associations, I think a lot of the problem is that they can be overwhelmed with this data. Sometimes we say to them we've been in this building and there's such and such a brand of a sensor on the wall. What data are you putting for that? Oh, that's a different team, that's the healthy homes or that's the damper mold team. Well, can we have an introduction to them and talk to them about the system and how the performance of the building is looking now, before we do our works? And then what's it looking like after?

Nathan: 14:25

And it's almost a bit difficult. Sometimes it's like, oh God, you've got to talk to somebody else now. Can't you just fix it? Or we get this huge spreadsheet of addresses and there's no asset listed against it. So then we have to go in blind, open it up, find out what the manufacturer is, what parts needed, and you can't go down to the local wholesaler and pick up pcbs, fans and spares, heat exchanges and the like.

Nathan: 14:50

So the time in which you're called out, you attend, you investigate, you say what's wrong, the report goes back. We've got a crm system, so we go back the instant the engineer presses finish. But then you need somebody to look at that report, work out what spares are needed, speak to the manufacturer. Oh no, that one's obsolete now. It's this one. It's bigger, or the cupboard's only this big, you can't fit the next one. Oh okay, that's all we've got available because of the rp regs. Oh okay, great, go back to the client. Right now we need somebody to rip out the cupboard. Oh, that's somebody else. We've got to get involved. Why can't you just fix that one? And I think we've our absolute.

Nathan: 15:24

We're doing a lot of sort of arm around the shoulder, whereas the way that the practice should or not, but they literally rely on us and our competence that we've built up over many, many years through having apprentices and a proper learner journey through the company. And yet we still get the sort of yeah, you're really expensive, but we wouldn't have been. If this would have been installed right in the first time, we would have just gone in, maintained it, as we do a lot of systems, a lot of systems, don't get me wrong. We go in, we maintain them, we check the air flows. Good bit of health on to the next.

Nathan: 16:08

We do lots of big projects like that. It's just in a way in which when we say to the customer, look, we've got this contract with you or you would like us to have this contract, it doesn't reflect the goalposts that have been set out for our abs law. You haven't required a 24-hour emergency call out. And just so you're aware, the ventilation manufacturers can't respond to the spares needed in 24 hours. Sometimes they could take up to five days to come back to you, unless you've got those direct routes in with the right people. And they're like what's our abs law? And we're like, okay, um, where should we start? You know, so.

Simon: 16:44

So I I think and it's an interesting segue on to my follow-on question to to how bad it is I think what we've painted and you painted really well is it is this picture of consistently poor outcomes and often lack of professionalism and due diligence on behalf of trades and manufacturers that allow this thing to occur. Um, but what you've started speaking to there is also the customers, and when we say customers, it might be a housing organization, it might be an end user lack of knowledge and awareness of how all this stuff works. So you're speaking, in a way and I think it's really interesting to a supply chain problem from start to finish. And I said to you before we start, but hit record, I didn't want I don't want this to turn into an hour and a half of you and me bitching about the industry, because we'll do that over pints later anyway. I think what's interesting is for us to break this down a little bit and kind of have a look at that supply chain and say, right, what could good look like? How would we if we were sitting down trying to build these pathways and these structures for the sector, knowing what we know about how we end up with these bad outcomes.

Simon: 18:11

What fixes this? Because, if people accept there's a problem, what they need is a roadmap, a pathway to getting ourselves out of this. And this is a systemic, deep-rooted, long-term problem, and we recognize that. So let's start at the beginning, right? You and I have had this conversation plenty of times about customers putting themselves into a position where they can hold the supply chain accountable, because, ultimately, as customers, as housing organizations, as end users, as developers, you're coming along to these failures six months, two years, five years, 10 years after the problem. But that didn't start two weeks before you turned up.

Simon: 19:06

This is fundamentally a problem of a customer not getting what they've paid good money for. So let's start there, right for. So let's start there. Yeah, right, um, we've got a, an uneducated customer base that assumes, wrongly, that if I ask for a fan to be installed in a bathroom because one's rattling and needs replacing, that the supply chain is going to deliver an outcome for me. And it isn't. How do we get customers? Do you think, from your engagement with them and the conversations that you have and we'll break it into two camps, the kind of the big customers and the individuals how do we get them into a position where they can ask the right questions or set up a procurement framework or a tender or whatever it ends up being, where they can actually start to actually get what they paid for, because they're never going to be ventilation experts right. So how do they get into a position, or put themselves in the best possible position to get the outcomes that they frankly deserve?

Nathan: 20:22

Let's take the individual to start with, with the individual customs that we have. It's normally aesthetics or noise. Something's dirty I can see dirt marks around the valve or if it's a standalone fan, I want one that looks like that. It's very much that, uh, sensory. It's very rare that we would have an individual talk about how they feel within a building. It does happen, but it's normally.

Nathan: 20:54

I know that's not working because it normally opens up or he's not making the noise or it's not ventilating properly and my mirror's condensating up. When we go in and we say well, the fan that you've currently got is 160 pounds, so that's no longer made. But when we've taken it off, it's never been installed correctly. You've got a double flexible duct off the back of it and it's within 300 mil of your boiler flue vent. That should never have been the case anyway. I said, well, I can pick one up from the local wholesaler for £30. Pop that in. What's the difference? And then you have to go down this whole technical route where you're showing them performance graphs and you're drawing where we think the resistance is and what the flow rates have been. They said, yeah, but it makes a noise. It's always worked.

Nathan: 21:43

So there's a real disconnect there and I think if it's electrics, you know that socket doesn't work. You go in, you fix it. The socket works with ventilation. It's either an annoying hum or the hum's gone and you know there's a problem.

Nathan: 21:49

Or your mirror's steaming up and you want one that looks the same, or there's a certain cutout space that it has to fit in and the new one doesn't quite fit right and it doesn't seal on the wall, or the previous people have put a ton of court decorators cork around it, you know, and you've got to try and make that look pretty. So there's a lot of education where we say this is what the, the one looks like that you've got, and we actually send them pictures to say this is the modern equivalent and you might have a new brand name on it in blue. Well, the last brand name was silver. That's the sort of worries that they get. It's not about performance. When we say it's quieter and more energy efficient, that ticks some boxes. But they're not comparing apples for apples, because most people will go on the internet now and search these up.

Simon: 22:31

Yeah, well, the last one was quiet because it wasn't working. And then you go and put one and you say it's quiet for the flow rate that it's going to move, and you put it on the wall and they go. Well, that's noisier than the last one.

Nathan: 22:41

And then it becomes a problem. I mean, we've even had customers come back and say it doesn't look how I thought it would look, so I'm not prepared to pay you and we're like, but what about the performance of it? What about the sound? What about the energy usage?

Simon: 22:59

Is it performing as it should, as it was originally designed, and if that were not there, it just doesn't look right. So the easy opt-out here is to say there are certain people that we can't please and they're just never going to be our customers. Right, and I understand that. But that's not the question. The question here today is how do we move the needle for those people here today is how do we move the needle for those people? Because it's easy for you as a specialist high quality niche ventilation guy. You could be busy for the rest of your life not having to deal with those people, right, quite frankly? Um, and why would you want to? But that's kind of not the question we're posing.

Simon: 23:35

The question we're posing is those people are the ones that are ending up with bad outcomes and paying money hand over fist, year after year, replacing bathroom fans with one that didn't work with one that didn't work. How do we shift that perception? I mean, maybe we never will for some of them, but I think we've got to find a way of speaking their language somehow. You touched on it. Aesthetics and acoustics is key. I think Energy efficiency is key. Thermal comfort is a language they recognise. So I think comfort, stuffiness, stale air odours those kind of things. Stress, stale air odors those kind of things, and it's whether we can move the needle to the health well-being, air quality.

Nathan: 24:26

There are some people that care there. Yeah, there's a lot of people that care and they talk about you know, my son's got asthma or we've had skin complaints recently and stuff like that as well. So I think I think if your normal life is impacted by somebody with respiratory issues, you would be more in tune to your environment. That's like a natural thing. If you've got a nut allergy, you'd be more in tune to the food that you eat or come close to. So the way in which I think we're up against it is because it wasn't done right the first time.

Nathan: 24:58

If it was done right the first time, if it was done right the first time, it would be quite a slick transition. But for somebody to come in and suddenly go, oh that's wrong, this is wrong, that's never been right. You need to record. Drill outside because you've got 100 mil ducts that should be 125 or 150 or bigger. Um, your air valves are in the wrong place, they're short circuiting, you haven't got the undercuts on your door correct and you suddenly list all of these problems and they go on a minute.

Simon: 25:21

I only asked you to replace a bathroom fan. In my head I thought 40 quid bathroom fan and maybe 150 quid for a guy for an hour or two to wire up a new one. Now you're telling me I'm going to do what you.

Nathan: 25:32

Take five of the doors off the hinges or you go into these, uh, in more of the newer issues that we come across and I'm a huge fan of off-site construction, I think it is the the be all but they're getting that wrong whereby they're not taking into consideration, once the the door frames put on and everything else, suddenly you can't remove a heat exchanger from an mvhr, and if you can't remove the heat exchanger, you might be able to get the filters out if you bend them. And then you're suddenly saying somebody yeah, all of this door frame's going to come off and they're like I haven't got the money for that.

Simon: 26:04

I mean maybe the, maybe the. The reality is is, the answer doesn't lie at the point of that engagement. It's not driven, there's nothing you're going to. There's not a magic sales speech that's going to convince somebody who's in their head, thought they were spending 40 quid and a couple of hours with an electrician to swap a fan out, right, and now all of a sudden they've got a cool driller hole and blah, blah, blah, right, um, so maybe this, the solution maybe has to happen before that process where people are asking you the right questions as you turn up going look, bathroom fan needs replacing. We know air quality is really important. Like we want to just understand what the right solution looks like for this property.

Nathan: 26:49

I do think manufacturers have a part to play in this and I work with most of them directly and indirectly, whereby I feel that if we're looking to address this properly at the time of them, directly and indirectly, whereby I feel that if we're looking to address this properly at the time of installation, there should be a way in which they can release the warranty of that system. So let's just say this place has been massively overhauled, renovated, retrofitted, massively changed in terms of the windows, the air tightness, everything else. Yet we've got erectable manufacturers. Mvhr that's been installed in a completely inaccessible location should never have been designed in that space if it was designed in the first place. So, knowing that that could never be maintained, the warranty is invalid.

Nathan: 27:35

But at some stage somebody has commissioned this system, handed a commissioning certificate over to building control and building control have accepted it. So there's various steps of existing compliance that have failed. But if the manufacturer, at day one even in today's world of AI, they wouldn't even need somebody to look at it Take a picture of the unit and then AI could go, is that accessible? I mean, yes, you could still fortunately do it. But take a picture of the unit, take a picture of the serial number. Take a picture of the commission certificate with the competent person's scheme's registration number, because they should all have that officially. Send that to the manufacturer. The manufacturer releases the warranty, then that goes through to building control. So easy, my brain.

Simon: 28:20

We're jumping around a bit, which I knew we'd do, and again, we'll try and keep the focus on the solutions here, and I think that's a really interesting one, and it touches on some of the strategy work that I do with housing and that is around. Well, okay, how do we set a frame? That isn't about the product, is about the outcome, right. So another customer is the housing organizations right, and so the big problem they have as a customer is less about the perception of energy and so on, although that impacts how their customer behaves with their product. But at the moment, most of those customers operate under the mandate of if a fan is broken or making a noise, replace it with another one, and so it's a check boxing exercise, it's based on product, it's it's success by specification. You know that their measurements of success is that a fan has been replaced and an electrician has wired it up, and that's the benchmark. And where I'm trying to move the needle with those folks is to say that's the wrong frame to be, looking at what a measurement of success is, and one of the starting points for that is design, and my argument is, and has been for a while if you make a decision to change something or do something with regards to ventilation. That's a design decision at that point. So congratulations. You're now the designer and with that comes some responsibility. You choose to swap a fan out. You need to be able to understand what that room, in conjunction with that building and the way it's used, needs, and is the thing that I'm going to recommend to be putting in capable of delivering that outcome for the people? And how do I document that? And now you change the narrative from. Well, we, we just use this manufacturer, all that you know. How often do the conversations start with housing? Or what do you think of s&p? What do you think of enviroven? What do you think of ventaxia? What do you think of? What do you think of this model? Do you like that fan?

Simon: 30:37

And my response is always you're asking the wrong question totally, because that fan may be fine in some circumstances, not in others. Your question should be what does this building need? And if we start from there, both from a customer's perspective the end user and also the housing organizations we now frame the expectation in a slightly different way. So good, looks like what was put in met that design right, and you and I know you and I do back of the fact, packet calculations for design in five minutes of wandering around the property. This isn't hard, like we're not doing cfd, load-bearing calculations or anything else. That sounds complicated. They're really rudimentary calculations to figure out what's a good baseline for a property and having some good redundancy and bandwidth within those solutions so that you can adjust accordingly. Not hard, and you can do it within five minutes of being in a property.

Simon: 31:41

If we can note that down and that has a signature at the bottom of it and say, well, this is the right solution. I'm replacing a fan. This room needs X, but actually it's part of a house that needs Y, so it's contributing Z to that total value. So I need a fan that can meet Z and I want it to have the capacity to do this and be turned down to that if I want to. Okay, what product meets that? Well, I've got these three choices and now I can present some solutions to people. But I'm now presenting some solutions to people that's based on an outcome of performance, not on product. I think that's a on an outcome of performance, not on product. I think that's a really interesting freight change of the narrative, totally, but that that's where our experience piece comes in.

Nathan: 32:27

So, in terms of competence, people talk about skeb. So your skills, your knowledge, your experience and your behavior and I think a lot of this is framed around behaviors and whether people care or not but you and I can walk into a building and instantly before we've even walked in the place, we'd have checked out the external facade looking for vents. God, there's only brick vents, there's only the old London clays. How are they ventilating this through outside? Is it a listed building or is it on the other side, or is it through the roof? And then you walk in and you see a fan in the middle of a kitchen, in the middle of a kitchen, in the middle of the building, and you're thinking well, that's at least got six meters of ducting somewhere and the chances are it's got a clay brick that ain't working, sounds like it's working, but it's probably short circuit turbulence and everything else.

Nathan: 33:09

So, in-house. That's when we explain to the apprentices before they move into junior techs and the sort of journey that they've got is that we just stand there and then we look at them and go what have you got and what do you mean? They're not expecting it. And we say well, what was outside? Well, the car park and the van. Why? And it's that whole what?

Simon: 33:29

to leave the phone in the van. Yeah, do you know what I mean?

Nathan: 33:31

Before they've even walked in the building, you making that natural assessment. And I think that's where that skill set comes in. Anybody can do ventilation. It is easy. As long as you understand the basics, it is easy.

Simon: 33:44

The commercial stuff- a little bit more and with time you can get competent on the details of how to tape ducting, fix it. All that stuff comes with with experience. But, like you say, this isn't competent. It's nowhere near boiler maintenance and servicing. It really is very rudimentary stuff.

Nathan: 33:59

The problem is the current route to competence, or awareness as I would call it, is a two-day course. That doesn't cover that. It doesn't cover that before you even walk into a place, you should be assessing the building. How old is it?

Simon: 34:14

Stop context. What am I looking at? Is it well-maintained, maintained? Is it poorly maintained? Is there leaking gutters? Could the damp I'm seeing inside be penetrating damp rather than condensation? You know? Is this place a place that's being well looked after? Is it sheltered? Is it exposed? Where is it exposed? Where is it sheltered? Is that going to have an impact on what's happening or what my design choices might be?

Simon: 34:36

If I am going to come out, am I going to be able to come out the front of this building? Would I want to? Is it a busy road? They're all these things like you just and then I say this in the training courses that I developed that the first thing you do before you go into a property is not go into the property, you stop and actually take a breath and a minute to have a look at how this building sits in its environment, because that can have such a huge impact on the design. So I think that framing of performance is a really interesting concept.

Simon: 35:11

The challenge we have is, let's just say we can get the customers to a point where they start to understand that ventilation isn't about whether it's a square or round fan that got replaced, and it's about is this product actually delivering what I need for my home, for my family, for our health, that there's something associated with ventilation that's more than the product. It's about performance. We now then have a very important front line that has to deliver that product, which is the trades, the immediate supply chain, and we have a problem, there't we, with accountability, professionalism? I mean fundamentally, at the end of the day, what your peak pictures screen is lack of care and professionalism. That doesn't have to be taught. That's, that's allowed, that's cultural. You know that. That is somebody you know. I always say somebody walked away from that on a friday afternoon and thought that was acceptable. I don't know how you, how you change that. That person does not belong in ventilation because they and he should, because they walk away. Yeah, but I think the unique thing about ventilation is its potential to sit there and cause harm without anybody knowing about it.

Simon: 36:53

Pavel Rogotki puts this really well. If it was plumbing and your tap, when you turned it on, was just dripping instead of giving you the flow you'd wanted, you'd be pissed and you'd get something done about it because you can see that you're not getting was in there. You'd be pissed because you're not removing that pollutant from that space effectively. So something would be done about it. If the light switch doesn't come on in the utility, or you press the switch and the kitchen cupboard light comes on instead, or it flickers and buzzes or whatever. Like all these scenarios that are so visceral and visible, we wouldn't and do not accept.

Simon: 37:41

And also with some of the other problems with electricity, there's a fire risk. There's a unique opportunity to die if it's done poorly. See that sketch where the electrician's looking at a circuit board and it's a disaster area and he goes who did this worry? She said, oh, that was my son-in-law. And he goes oh, when did his house burn down? Oh, that was last year. Oh, how did you know that? Oh, no, no reason.

Simon: 38:09

Like you know and with gas, you know you, like you can make some mistake. With gas, you smell it, like you know that's a pretty clear one. I mean you very rarely get to the point where houses blow up. But, like you know, if the gas has been done poorly, heating systems don't heat like all this stuff, and you know we're in this period of grenfell and netflix at the moment the outcomes can be catastrophic and acute when they accumulate and people make bad decisions. Ventilation is killing people in 15, 20, 30, 40 years time or exacerbating asthma over two or three years and causing issues like we've seen. So we're in this unique position with ventilation where and I excuse the language arseholes can get away with not caring and move on to the next job. And you've posted pictures, literally, of somebody in a trade has cut a hole in a bit of plasterboard, stuck a fan on and it's been blowing air into the void behind the bathroom against a brick wall.

Nathan: 39:12

Not held accountable.

Simon: 39:13

Not held accountable. So starting there, those people do not belong in this industry. Is there any mechanism, as far as you can see, to root those out and get rid of them? As it stands at the moment, how do we police that?

Nathan: 39:31

If we're talking about social housing in line with our ABS law coming through, a lot of the basic through the wall fan works are normally carried out by the electrician or the multi-trade, the local guy. I'm not saying all local guys are bad in any way, shape or form, but they're probably ill-advised, not competent to do it. But it's just a fan and it's got an electrical power supply, so they get that guy to do it and that is when the fan off, fan on it's running, it goes yeah.

Simon: 40:03

So that aside, because that's understandable, that's a guy whose job it is not to be an electrician. He's been asked to swap a fan out. He's been given a box practically and said, right, swap that out, job done, his. His measure of success is how quickly you can get that wired up now and onto the next one. Yeah, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those pictures that you post all the time where somebody's walked away from that and gone. Job done, yeah, and it's criminal. What they're considering like those are people that have you wouldn't want to clear in your plates in the restaurant. Like that's the level of professionalism you're at. I'll have you back to the podcast in just a minute. I just wanted to briefly tell you about your event certified performance from your event certification, a partner of the podcast.

Simon: 40:52

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Simon: 41:53

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Nathan: 42:43

So you're reading in the trades magazines about similar horror stories in different trades. Let's use electrics and it shows. There's always a page at the back of that book that shows the horror stories that people send in. Those people get struck off because there is a compliance route for that sign-off and that's normally documented on the back of the consumer unit. There'll be a date, there'll be a company and companies get invigilated so that electrician will go through a competent person scheme and on a certain anniversary the inspector would come out and grill them. Right, you don't ZE test on this. Right, let's do a ZE test. Get your meter out, let's run through it. They'll ask the latest technical guidance and updates and it's not about if they necessarily know it, but they've got a way in which they could find out that information. Well, I've got the book in the van, we'll go and get it and we'll work for it. And we'll work for him, we'll do this. Or I've got this number of the person that, whatever board or association, they're part of their electrical competence with ventilation and we've experienced this firsthand.

Nathan: 43:44

It is still not seen as a compliance issue. Even though we pay for enhanced cps where they come out and they invigilate us. The invigilation is woeful and you never hear of anyone being struck off, and yet there's names and registration numbers of these individuals that work for companies on certs and it's never referred back to, it's always seen. And this is the difficulty with us, as a company that does care, is that we go in and we go. That's just not right.

Nathan: 44:11

Yes, we could turn it on and it would sound like it's working, and we could put eight liters per second rather than four and get away with it for six months before the mould comes back, but then we could say that the mould remediation wasn't carried out successfully. We genuinely care, but by having that detail, the attention and detail and that behaviour, that moral behaviour, these systems I think it's Joseph Allen said you have more of an impact on people's health than their own doctor. That's us. We're seen as a problem because it's not just fixed. Why haven't you fixed it? So when you're looking at a way in which we can enforce and change that behavior going forward, the industry needs to have more of a backbone, because I would love somebody to come out and go you've done that wrong and I go. Have we, let's go and have a look then.

Simon: 44:59

Yeah, and I think what's interesting about ventilation is it's nearly always tied to a product. So, like a lot of the stuff that you're seeing, I mean at the end of the day a lot of ventilation is just a fan in a box with some controls, right, and they will all do a job in the right circumstance. It's not the product's fault. But my sense is the manufacturers have used that as an excuse not to be accountable for what's happening with their product. You know it's a competency issue, it's a training issue. Our product works fine on the test. Look, it's got a fabulous result on the PCD database. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever the excuses are, fabulous result on the PCD database, blah, blah, blah.

Simon: 45:38

Right, whatever the excuses are, but invariably a lot of the horror shows that I see from your pictures happened at the point that that product was installed, like that elephant Trump ducting that you know is sagging across and almost completely occluding the outlet from a MEV system. Happened at the point where that product was installed. If manufacturers insisted that any product that was installed, that serial number is associated with a company that installed it, so that at a later stage when you come along and you find an installation that that poor associated with that product that can be reported and investigated. And now that company, if that's repeated and can't justify it, because I can count almost no circumstance where those poor installations occurred with a different contractor than the person that hung the fan. Like you may get first and second fixes and different teams, but like invariably a product with a serial number that was bought by somebody and somebody made a profit of installing is associated with that shit show that you end up photographing um, and we don't.

Simon: 47:04

We can't share everything either no, no, I know, and I've seen the unshareable stuff as well like it's, like it's truly horrifying. Yeah, um, and this stuff is genuinely killing people and seriously having an impact on their long-term health and well-being, because you're uncovering this not just two months and six months and three years down the road, but five years, ten years, you know, and it's not just social housing.

Nathan: 47:30

No, no, no. This is across the board. This is like super high-end luxury apartments as well, where we're going and there's never been a design. And yet how are we at this stage in today's world?

Simon: 47:40

so again, you could even take it even further every brat, every serial number should have an accompanying design and a commissioning certificate, and if it doesn't have either, somebody is accountable for that right. Um, I think the problem in the UK largely is there isn't an organisation that has the authority to hold anybody to account for ventilation. I think you could argue, in certain circumstances Trustmark can under schemes, so they could remove somebody from a scheme that might have grants or something associated with it, which they have done with poor retrofit. Yeah.

Nathan: 48:19

And I was pleased to see you know that we need that sort of. Of course we might get co-ed. We better do it properly. But if I see one more retrofit picture normally of a guy in a loft with a roll of loft insulation because I think just last week the BBC put in line with Clean Air Day that UK is sleepwalking into a health disaster the way that we keep retrofitting and just being obsessed with energy conservation. We've got to keep these places warm but let's mandate solar on the roof. You know it's just like if anything is to have a positive impact on people's health, on the economy, on the NHS, it's to address the air quality first.

Simon: 49:01

So is there any organisation that you work with or through that has the power today in the UK to stop you installing ventilation if you do a poor job? Is there anybody that can come out and inspect and take you off some list or other or put you on some list or other? That would make it very difficult for you to ignore it and go on and do another job badly.

Nathan: 49:31

The HSE. Ultimately, there are ways in which you can whistleblow to the HSE about bad workmanship, but part of the competent person's scheme invigilation is that the company that gets invigilated chooses the site that you take the inspector to. That's with electrics as well, and I think it's the same for gas.

Simon: 49:54

Yeah, so here we're talking about NICAC there. So NICAC is unique in the fact that it has the potential to assess contractors on site. But I think with ventilation that isn't really happening with NICAC. It happens on the electrical side. But I think if you sign up to the NICAC is that it happens on the electrical side. But I think I think if you sign up to the NICAC scheme you may be invigilated or assessed, but you can do a NICAC competency course and never get an assessment so you can be registered as a competent person, even though that doesn't align with the building safety act, because it's a two day course that doesn't cover design.

Nathan: 50:40

You don't physically put two pieces of ducting together and you are then able to use your unique number on a commissioning certificate to hand over to building control. Beyond that, there's a cps scheme which is like a heightened. We invigilate these people. Um, the invigilation isn't the best and I'm trying to collaborate with them positively to say what their shortcomings are, but I've often said to them and other associations alike why haven't you ever struck anybody off? Because the amount of work that we're seeing and if you want examples, I can give you examples for days. I can also showcase the good people out there that are doing a good job.

Simon: 51:14

But you can do a BPPEP course, for example, as a competency. Yeah, bpep as well, but they don't do any assessments.

Nathan: 51:19

No, they don't do the assessments. But I think again, if you're looking at a way in which you can hold people accountable, the trouble is, by the time that this the majority of the time after we're in or another company goes in, that contractor's long gone, you know, and the 12 months defects is gone and they go. But at the time of testing and we've had this at a senior level with one of the major uk house builders where categorically we could state that the commissioning certificate was fraudulent because they put down that they used and they used a brand name then a rotating vein anemometer and a rotating vein anemometer with a matched hood would never fit over the grill in the first place. And I'm looking one of the senior directors in the face and he's going but we're compliant and I'm going. But that's fraudulent, prove to me it's fraudulent.

Nathan: 52:08

I was okay, this is a rotating vane anemometer with a matched hood. How is it commissioned? He turned to his design consultant. Then he said they made up a hood out of flooring protection. I said so how did you calculate the losses within that modified hood for each application? Yeah, I don't know, but the guy was deemed competent. There's his number and it's all signed off. Okay, but there's mold and damp and there's noise complaints.

Simon: 52:34

So. So the accountability thing aside, because I think that's a hard one, but we've learned right. We've learned painfully through Grenfell, We've learned painfully through almost every other construction catastrophe or major failure that without accountability and policing we don't end up in good places with construction and the outcome of that, arguably with ventilation, is that's why we are where we are. You know, the hard reality is we're seeing three quarters of the properties that we're going into having major failures with compliance, major issues. That's a manifestation of no accountability for that supply chain. So to some degree, my view is, unless that's fixed in some way, unless there's some central registry or some way of holding what is a very critical trade now within construction accountable, we can't root those people out.

Nathan: 53:46

There's a term we need to use there and I've been banging the drum over this one A safety critical aspect of a building. It's a key term, look it up and it's any key component or system within a building that may cause injury, sickness or death. That is a ventilation system. It's the same as a brick tire and that's where this report came from. I have an association where a side of a building collapsed. Fortunately, no one's injured.

Nathan: 54:14

But why does it always take a disaster for things to change? Now, I would never have expected, in the time between the last podcast and this one, to say that not a lot has really changed. There's a little bit, because we've got the Building Safety Act, we've got the Golden Thread, we've got the route to competence and compliance. But I think the crux of this is, if you break it down, there is a huge skill shortage, and this is like rewind the tape sort of thing. We haven't got these time-served mentors around anymore that are teaching the next generation coming through.

Nathan: 54:50

Nobody wants to get their hands dirty, but if they looked into the facts of the risk to jobs from AI, engineering or the trades, people that use their hands will probably be the safest people before AI takes over their jobs. In fact, ai is a massive tool. Our guys use AI on a daily basis. Rather than do the calculations, bink, bink, bink, bink. Chuck it in an AI. There's your results. That's what you need. Fact check it, yep great. Compare it to PIF, let's go. They can save 20 minutes a job using AI, but they've still physically got to think and do that job.

Simon: 55:22

Yeah, so competency is another big part of it and one of the things you've done well in Farnwood is that apprenticeship on the tools, training and skills. You know, I think the worst thing we ever did with competency courses was call them competency courses. It's an awareness course really, and that's led to people thinking that. And you know, I've sat on these competencies. You know the competencies, I did a BPEC one a few years back. It was done at a manufacturer's place. It wasn't too bad, but it was effectively a two-day manufacturer cbd for all intents purposes. Um, but four of the lads that were there were just on a two-day party off from the sites for a few days. You know, two of them are too stoned to remember anything from the two days, as far as I could figure out. Um, so nobody would you know those, those four lads were not leaving any more competent than when they turned up. And nobody would you know those, those four lads, were not leaving any more competent than when they turned up and they were.

Nathan: 56:24

You know, they're effectively nursed through to a pass but the problem with that, son sorry to jump across, is that the colleges and the training centers, if they have funding or wherever the funding comes about, are graded on the amount of passes that they get yeah it's not how many bottoms they get on seats and I'm completely against certain funding for certain age groups.

Nathan: 56:46

What difference does it mean if my backside's a college seat or a 17-year-old's is? I know they've got to look at funding but if anything, I've probably got more responsibilities as an adult than a 17 old is probably still living at home. So who's the pay more attention? Who's the try and learn more? So when we talk about retraining and upskilling, I mean, yes, we've got a fantastic apprenticeship route and I think that's only ingrained in me because I was an apprentice. I've been through that that system and it works and as a business model it works.

Nathan: 57:21

But we've retrained and upskilled butchers. We've had a publican that's come in and it's normally like the public can come in, because he realized that all of the pubs were shutting and his dad was an ac engineer with us, so he naturally came in, done the apprenticeship, absolutely smashed it, because he come in that little bit later in life. He had not quite a mortgage but he had a car, he's inside a young family and he's absolutely smashing out the park. And if I could duplicate him, or or the shane who was a butcher at the local farm shop you know he grew up a bit, thought about settling down, thought you know this isn't going to be the job for life, sort of thing. I need to look at things again. But he's got the communication skills you. You know he gets out of everybody. He probably gets the best feedback.

Simon: 58:03

So what does a good route to genuine competence look like? I mean, you know, forgetting the induction awareness courses that currently exist, two days of looking at, you know doing calculations, and what a bit of semi-rigid looks like compared to a bit of flexible, and I don't mean to do them down, they do a job but they're by no means competence. What would you? What does competent, what does competency or route to competency look like? Do you think, from your perspective, for someone coming into the trade who wants to come out the other side, competent in ventilation? What? What, realistically, would that?

Nathan: 58:40

have to be. You need the basics, you need the fundamentals, you need electrical competence, safe isolation. You need a basic level of mechanical systems, you need a basic understanding of plumbing and the ventilation comes forth. I think once you've got the fundamentals of, I know how to isolate something safely. I understand, um lighting circuits within a domestic property, because that's often how the ventilation system is boosted.

Nathan: 59:05

The mechanical side of things, the hands-on, taking things apart, how things fit together torque wrench settings and the like, hand tools, basic hand tools and then the plumbing for condensate drain lines or how they connect into an SV soil vent pipe and stuff like that the ventilation side of things is really tricky because as a business, we expect all of our team to know the difference in performance for a va fan and the difference between the old model and the new model and when they need to look at dmev over an mev and all of these different systems one to four. And I do think we need more systems in play with in later years when we look at more retrofit and passive house standards. So we've we've developed an in-house uh competency scheme purely for in-house, because we actually invigilated our junior technicians and their skill set was lacking and we was like, oh christ, you know, this is, this is our guys and we've got a skills gap there. Yeah, so we bring them in and we just fire out random questions. If one of the guys comes up against something in office, he'll write it down because he found it difficult and then we'll share that knowledge on with the team and then we'll test them on it two weeks later. But we've actually got a system in play now that will document and evidence that part of our Sb system.

Nathan: 1:00:22

But for anybody coming into it, I'd say electrical competence first and foremost. You need to be able to safely isolate these systems. But you need to do pretty much every manufacturer's cpd. You need to understand that that manufacturer's bit of kit has got a compensator in it so it will look to run at a constant volume or a constant speed, or the dip switch settings on it means that it will be in a trickle mode and it will boost on humidity. There's so many different nuances in the technical aspects of individual manufacturers' products. I mean, quite often and this isn't being big-headed we go up against the sales reps whereby they've specified something. We go in and go. You can't fit there. You can't fit a dmev on top of a communal system. What's on the roof? Oh, we've insulated all of the roof. There's just these cow things up there. You go there, you take it off. There's an old communal system. Stop what you're doing, and then we'll be in a pain in the backside again. You know, don't get bloody farmwood in says in it.

Simon: 1:01:18

There's an interesting aspect to what you're saying. There there's a basic fundamentals for competency that currently isn't being taught at any kind of a national or structured level, which is and I think you're absolutely right actually tall competence and basic engineering competency and electrical competency and plumbing competency. Those are very specific areas of knowledge and competency that you would need as a ventilation engineer and you then move on to ventilation right. Um, there's the ducting side of it. So let's, let's put the fan side of it, because I think that's the more complex one, the manufacturering side of it. So let's put the fan side of it, because I think that's the more complex one, the manufacturer's part of it aside, but you've got the ducting part of it.

Simon: 1:02:10

A lot of the problems that we see, particularly from your images, are ducting problems, right, and that doesn't require innate knowledge of individual fan manufacturers.

Simon: 1:02:21

I mean, there may be some impacts of different fans needing certain pressure drops and things like that, but a lot of what you're seeing, a lot of the low hanging fruit, is just sheer misunderstanding of the impacts of poor ducting, poor routing, poor connections, fixing fire ratings, all of these real basic stuff.

Simon: 1:02:43

There's no, there is nowhere I know that I can go, or you can send somebody today to go for a two days, five days, 10 days, whatever it is and come away with ducting installation competency.

Simon: 1:03:00

And I've had this problem. I've been developing training courses for retrofit and and ventilation and even if we have two or three days to train people, there's no point training them on the ducting because I could spend four hours teaching them how to put together a brand's manufacturer's radial ducting system that has very specific clips, very specific o-rings, very specific plenums, and they could come away from that with a good fundamental understanding and immediately go out to the field and get given a different manufacturer's radial system, never mind a tm branch or spiral ducting or something else. So you've wasted that chance of competency training on that specific ducting. So we need to spend time teaching people roots, ducting, fixing, taping, jointing, cutting ducts so many different types, so much skills. So maybe I'm actually arguing against myself there. Maybe it's similar to fans as well that actually you need to build up some competency with individual brands.

Nathan: 1:04:12

But ducting is a huge problem as well, because all the systems we've come across systems that use 80mm ducts and that's not a radial system, that is just individual ducts. So when you look at upgrading a system, you can't just upgrade the system, you've got to upgrade sorry, upgrade the the unit, you've got to upgrade the whole system and that becomes a whole can of worms. Or one that we've come across recently is that the penetration through to outside and the external facade are designed by someone completely different and removed from the ventilation system.

Simon: 1:04:43

So let's get back to this fix right. So so this path to competency. I think you've laid out a really nice path for some fundamentals for everybody that has to do that. They have to understand how to isolate and control systems electrically. They need to understand how to connect and work with plumbing systems, get them to work, and they need to understand the good basic skill, because we're talking about people here that may have no skills in construction whatsoever, like you say. Talk settings, using equipment properly, actually drilling and fixing things all those basic skills that if you've not been taught it you won't know right. Anybody that's seen DIY will know or attempted it themselves. If you haven't got the right gear and you've never been taught, it's amazing what you can screw up, even trying to hang a set of shelves. So there's all of that like to to be a good, to have a good skill set, and that's fundamental to competency, and currently that doesn't exist. So even at that basic level.

Simon: 1:05:38

Then we move on to ventilation. How do we fix that problem with the array of ducting that people come across and the array of systems? Is there equivalence in other trades that have had to overcome that and done that successfully as well, like the gas industry, right, you can be a competent boiler servicing and installation engineer. You don't get. You don't get taught the differences between a bosch boiler and a this baxi boiler and so on. Maybe to some degree. They're all white boxes on walls with copper pipes hanging out the bottom and you just got to figure out which one's the flow and return and the cold water mains kind of thing. Maybe it's simple. You could argue it's the same with ventilation. At the end of the day, you've just got to figure out which one's the flow and return and so on. It's a similar thing. It can't be beyond the realms of possibility to have a core, but the reality is all of those are NVQ level or decent quality. They are trades and apprenticeships and currently there is no ventilation trade or apprenticeships.

Nathan: 1:06:52

Which is why we've had to develop our own in-house.

Nathan: 1:06:54

And that is the ultimate answer I would love to set up a new home for Farnwood and a training centre, because I spoke to you previously about NEETs not in education, employment or training, and the percentage where we're based is much higher than the national average and I'm thinking we've got this huge skill shortage and yet we've got a huge pool of 17 to 24 year olds, officially as a statistic, not doing very much and the threat to AI of the jobs that they might traditionally look to do and the way in which a career in engineering because that's what we're talking about, we are technicians and engineers it can take you around the world. One of our very first apprentices is now a really successful sales guy in South Africa, born and bred in London, so it's not a dead-end job by any stretch and they're transferable skills. I'm not a plumbing engineer, but at the weekend I had to change out the dishwasher and I just followed the manual. Rtfm read the flipping manual. There is another F word you could use, but even with that manual. So let's just talk about this deviant again.

Nathan: 1:08:05

On that manual, we had individual qr codes for each aspect of the installation, so you wasn't just following a black and white big bit of paper that you folded. I was like okay, here we go. You actually had micro videos explaining each step, step by step, to ensure that when that went in it was really good, and I was amazed by that manual maybe we're just and maybe we need to look back at the journey of other trades, because at some point there probably wasn't a plumbing course.

Simon: 1:08:33

Yeah, you know plumbing k, you know the word plumbing, you know greek for lead work. Really, really, it was a coalescence of working with lead, because most of our water systems were lead pipes, so it kind of was born out of that. But it was born out of an apprenticeship trade. You worked with a company, you started and you worked your way up through and at some point the educational sector took over and said well, well, look, we need some qualifications and some national qualifications around this and you started to develop electrical qualifications and plumbing qualifications and so on.

Simon: 1:09:12

Perhaps we're at that point with ventilation where we can't rely on companies bringing people through without qualifications that are transferable from company to company. Um, we need to start setting up out of college courses, out of school courses where people go and do their mvq1, mvq2 I'm talking for international listeners here uk training level qualifications, but you'll have equivalents in other countries for it. But it's that until we wrap a qualification and a trade around it. And this isn't a uniquely British problem, this is an Irish problem, a French problem, a German problem at the moment. People aren't coming out with a ventilation qualification fast track competence either.

Nathan: 1:10:00

A lot of what I'm seeing in the UK currently is we've got to fast-track apprenticeships mainly around construction. We need so many bricklayers because we're going to build 1.5 million homes, which we're not going to achieve at all, and it's the way in which I think if you shortcut that route to competence, you're going to end up with the same issues that I see in ventilation we've built. I mean the amount of snagging companies that you see online now with the spirit level and you know it's two pies out of ply of plum, you know, and all of the jokes that you see around it. There's a serious issue around that. But I have been lobbying really hard with the right people because I found that sometimes you can just be shouting into an echo chamber. So by engaging with different associations and speaking with the right people, I was able to lobby with Skills England to say, look, we need an apprenticeship in domestic ventilation. This was before our abslore. We need an apprenticeship for the deployment of indoor air quality monitors and we need to review the commercial side of things as well. And I remember I was actually driving to a ventilation manufacturer in Wales at the time and I had to pull over to the service station and I was getting really animated on the phone with with a few people on the call and they were right, get it. They done a demand statement which I think went around industry. Then they get funding secured and from that one I was actually initially driving the national occupational standards for the deployment of air quality monitors and part of that is you get an expert group of people that you bring together and I was very conscious not to have any manufacturer associated with that, not being disrespectful to the manufacturers, but they've all got a unique angle that they would like to play. So academic, academics, time served professionals, um boots on the ground as well. But I was very much setting it up. And then adam tay Taylor came in, who's more indoor air quality focused than I am now, and he led that through to completion. So that's all happened.

Nathan: 1:11:48

I stepped across to see what was going on with the HVAC and refrigeration. That was pretty much sound and where it needed to be, because currently the MVQ is only covering ducting and heating components. So that was all addressed for a further competency update. Dropped across to look at the domestic ventilation and then run out of money and I was just like we should have started with that one first, you know, because the IAQ one originally was going to be the domestic vent.

Nathan: 1:12:16

But then we realised that we need to make sure that air quality monitors are put in the right places, and you know. And you know if you're trying to make something look bad, we know where to put the monitor, and if you want something to look good, you know where to put the monitor. So there needs to be a standardised assessment and a route for people to prove their competence, said why are we out of money? How much money do we need? I'll pull everybody together and I'll make it happen, and I'm just waiting for that information to come back. So there will be a national occupational standard for domestic ventilation, and NIC and BPEC are very welcome at the table and all of the ventilation manufacturers, because I currently see they're going to be the people delivering it and then eventually that will cascade out to the training centres, like the one that we use and others.

Simon: 1:13:02

But do we not ultimately solve? I mean, I know plumbing and electrics has its problems, right, and I'm not saying that they are perfect worlds but ultimately does this competency thing not get fixed until there is a qualification, a trade, a ventilation that's born out of doing a college course, that ultimately competence is born out of a two or three year grounding in education? That's what I was doing, and then walking into apprenticeships and getting the experience on the ground with that basics, Like you would do if you did your. You know I've lived that. I moved from a different industry as a paramedic to plumbing and heating on the ground with that basics, like you would do if you did your. You know I've lived that.

Simon: 1:13:41

I I moved from a different industry as a paramedic to plumbing and heating and I started and I did my part-time course, mbq1 basics of plumbing, where you learn how to bash out lead and you learn how to solder pipes and you learn how to do hot works and do risk assessment and all that really basic fundamental tool stuff.

Simon: 1:14:02

And you move to mvq2 we start to divide, design heating systems and you know, put systems together. And mvq3, we start to do boiler servicing and maintenance and move towards your corgi qualifications and so on. Like I've walked that path and it my that my pathway to be a plumbing and heating engineer was blocked unless I had those qualifications. Then you go and work with companies as a junior person with no experience and you either work as an apprentice or you work partner with a plumbing and heating engineer as a sidekick for a few years and you build up the skills and learn how to apply what you learned in college, because you're dreadful at soldering until you get a bit of practice and you're dreadful at gluing pipe together and leveling soil pipes and doing pressure tests and all the stuff that goes with being a plumber, and so that was the pathway and it was similar to being an electrician. But I can turn up to a site tomorrow and install ventilation and that pathway is not laid out and it needs to.

Simon: 1:15:10

It's really clear we don't fix that until that happens. The blockers, as you say, is that we're in this rush for skills and labour and put it up quick and this will be seen as a blocker to construction.

Nathan: 1:15:24

But look at it, the other scale and I'm speaking from experience with this. So my background was an apprentice engineer, steel foundry. So what about air quality now? I should never have walked in the place and I've still got particles of metal courting through my veins as we speak.

Nathan: 1:15:40

I worked with a? Um, a graduate university graduate that qualified as an engineer. Um, extremely clever guy. If I asked him to work out the applied forces of a hammer that needed to strike a six inch nail to drive it into a bit of four by two, he could calculate it all. Hand in the hammer and you might as well give him a wet salmon, you know. So as an apprentice, which was the right thing to do, we was. We was assigned to the graduate because we was just like, wow, you've been a unit, you've done like the other end of the scale from us. We've sort of come in from the bottom. You spent years at university as a senior guy that we would see and we would bounce off each other perfectly. You know, I really got on well with this guy.

Simon: 1:16:22

But you had a common language because you'd done the basics together and that's the difference. Everybody's going to come out the other side of education with different skills, different potential, but you're talking the same language. You've come from the same baseline. At the moment in ventilation we have electricians, plumbers, chippies, joiners, people that were driving buses three months previously, whatever and there's no common language. Nobody knows what goods look like. There isn't a textbook on ventilation that they can go. You know I've still got I was looking the other day on my bookshelf I've still got my original plumbing basics textbooks, but in there are the fundamentals. As far as I'm aware, nobody's written that down in a textbook. There's no textbook that exists, that I'm aware of, that covers domestic ventilation.

Nathan: 1:17:18

Maybe there's an angle there. Maybe there's an angle there.

Simon: 1:17:20

Maybe there's an angle there, but this is where we're at and I think that's a fairly international pattern.

Simon: 1:17:26

Yeah, it's an international pattern. I mean in the States and other parts of the world where it's more tied into HEVAC and refrigeration, there can be a little bit more competency built around it. But I think they suffer with many of the same problems and ultimately that that where it goes we'll run out of time because we'll get stuck. I knew we would. But but a critical part of this is the manufacturers as well. Right and um, you know to set the scene for listeners.

Simon: 1:17:56

I had a conversation with the manufacturer this week because we were trying to root out an approach for measuring their particular product, and I spoke to the technical team at this particular manufacturer as a an expert and I asked them what the standard procedure was for measuring that particular product in situ. And the response I got from the manufacturer was why would I want to do that? It would have been commissioned at the time. So it was doing, it's doing whatever it was commissioned. That and I think that speaks to the the interest in the ongoing performance that a lot of manufacturers would have over their products is that often the manufacturers, particularly in this part of the world, have come from a time where we were just chucking cheap bathroom fans into houses, right. So their supply chains have been built around distributors, through merchants and so on.

Simon: 1:19:01

So often they're very far removed from the end result. There's several lines of installer, distribution, merchants between them, so there's been a big gap and an excuse and an opportunity to say it's not my fault. Now a product was fine when it left the factory. Somebody didn't understand what one to buy, they put it in poorly, they were poorly skilled and so on. But even at a deeper root than that with many manufacturers is that they can hide behind the fact that their product has been tested in a lab, has a certain CE mark as a certain performance characteristic and was fine. I mean, you had the conversation with a technical sales rep from one of the manufacturers at the show today. You know, and it was quite clear from that conversation, that he he had his approach, he was right and that there was no interest in.

Nathan: 1:19:56

There was no interest in engaging at all right.

Simon: 1:19:59

So we've we've got a problem. And the manufacturers are important here, and I made a note of this when you were talking earlier. They might be right that their product is fine and they might be right that it performs well under SAP and it was poorly installed and was poorly conceived and designed and so on. And what can they do about that? We're just the poor manufacturer.

Simon: 1:20:27

But the reality is, in this supply chain of outcomes, the manufacturers are often the first manufacturers, professional piece of information that people have access to. It's the first. It's the website that the homeowner might find themselves looking at for advice. It's the place that a trade or a contractor is going for for evidence. It's the professionals that work in those organizations that are incentivized to sell those products into the housing authorities. They often are manufacturers, often are the first line of marketing material and technical information.

Simon: 1:21:07

And you know, we see it written all over the brochures that this is the new silver bullet for social housing. Right, we're laughing because we can just see it in the brochureware this is the new social housing fan. It laughing because we know, we can just see it in the brochure where this, this is the new social housing fan. It will solve all the problems that all the previous ones didn't kind of thing. So they do have a responsibility here, don't they? And you and I engage with them very regularly. You know these. They're good people, often they're coming from a good place and and often all of their products will be fine in the right circumstance. But we've got to find a way of that information being clearer somehow I think it needs laying in layman's terms as well.

Nathan: 1:21:46

I mean, we've just been changing our terms and conditions for residential customers because it was two terms and conditions, if you know what I mean. And it's got to be the same with manuals. You know, if you buy a product straight on the front, you know this must not be used with flexible ducting, first and foremost. You know this can only take a meter of ducting and a bend and the outside grill mustn't have a fly screen fitted to it. It's got to be laid out that clear, not a little picture with a little arrow saying external grill but marketing people don't want to put that front and center on their product.

Simon: 1:22:17

They want to talk about how amazing their product is one of the big challenges we have, particularly with products in housing, and I understand because I you know, I've been, I come from a communications and marketing background and I understand that you want to present the best of what you are in your material. That's how it works. But you work in an environment where some poor soul has been tasked with working out which product to put where or maybe even worse, competitively tendering, and has got to look at four or five different manufacturers to choose which one is the most competitive and can deliver the right performance. And woe betide anybody trying to look at the various different flow chart tables and acoustic tables really aren't power curves.

Nathan: 1:23:06

There's no standard that the data is no standard presentation.

Simon: 1:23:09

No, so like even someone like me or you, can't actually realistically wade through that material and and compare apples with apples. It's impossible. Every manufacturer will present a fan curve in a different way. Some manufacturers won't even have the right fan curve for you. Every table will have the presentation of the flow rates and available pressure at, and litres per second, and everything's presented in a different way, and you've got no chance. So, I think, to get to this point where we get good outcomes, the manufacturers have got to recognise that they're in a position of influence here, and we're not saying that they have to be accountable for the quality of the here and we're not saying that they have to be accountable for the quality of the installation. But in this world of performance, they can have a very big impact on the right product within their range, being chosen for the right circumstance. And at the moment there's almost no chance of people, without spending an inordinate amount of time working through it, to be able to make the right decisions. And I'm not alone there.

Nathan: 1:24:30

No, you're right, and there's some really good people at these manufacturers they really are. But there's also some people that are moving into the industry where there is a skill shortage for people to look at doing the regional sales rep jobs and stuff like that. We come across them and normally they come in to introduce themselves and they're the new kid on the block and it's really exciting. And then we sort of scratch away at the surface a little bit. What were you doing before? I was selling solenoids, or I was just a sales guy. You know, I'm a sales guy. I'm a sales guy, but they've got targets to meet. They've got a certain target to meet. If they hit it, the next year's target's even bigger. So when you're looking at a potential product, it's not always based on an outcome. It's based on what will be specified in a tender or what will actually tick the box in terms of what someone's asking for. It's not based on an outcome. So I think we've got to change that whole narrative around it.

Simon: 1:25:22

Yeah, and again. Some of this, I think, comes back to the fact there isn't an umbrella organisation that's really holding them accountable. There are trade associations whose to be fair responsibility is looking after the members. So you'll have industry associations whose mandate is to look after the industry, not necessarily to pull them into line to, for example, produce a national accredited fan curve website that you can go and look at and figure out what fan curves that particular product is doing. Nothing like that exists.

Simon: 1:26:02

One of the things that you've done that's really been really interesting, probably since we last spoke, is you've found yourself much more in the residential sector and I know you've always done residential, but it's been more of the kind of the high rise, more technical, complex end of things. But you've found yourself really at the coalface. Haven't you, in the last year, starting to be pulled into what we'd consider the reactive maintenance of the social housing residential space? Social housing residential space, coming from the more complex commercial area and the more complex residential settings, what have you seen of that sector? How does it look, coming in with the skills set that you've had, coming into a sector that's so individual from a property perspective and much smaller scale Because we really are individual bathroom fan kind of level there's the array of products that have been used is phenomenal.

Nathan: 1:27:08

Sometimes we can't even work out whose system it is, and there's some extremely archaic systems. Now a lot of housing associations are deeply, deeply trying to do the right thing. This is before AWAB's law and everything that came about. They have been trying to do the right things. There has been a lack in funding. That's apparent across the board, but ventilation has been massively overlooked over the years. Are generating is that previous companies, previous contractors or the electrician or the plumber or whoever has been tasked with looking at the ventilation system, be that existing systems through to new systems. There is a huge difference in servicing a system and servicing a filter within a system, a filter within a system. And it's actually been a downfall of ours with our behavior, because we do things right and the downfalls come because the previous spend has just been X. We go out, they do this, they fix it. Then they realize that there's lots of issues and mold and damps come apparent and it's become a problem because they're looking at lots of retrofits, newer builds, mainly with NVHR. They're even suffering with mold and damps come apparent and it's become a problem because they're looking at lots of retrofits, newer builds, mainly with NVHR. They're even suffering with mould and damp complaints.

Nathan: 1:28:22

We're aligned with lots of the manufacturers, so I think the initial call goes to the manufacturer. They refer us as an independent specialist. We're on frameworks, we work with the big tier ones and we're on the right track with who we can work for. We get called in and we're like that's wrong, this is wrong. Like I said earlier, the ceilings have got to come down and suddenly the spin rockets to the point where they go right leave that there, we'll put this out to a tender. And it's almost like being negative. The race to the bottom starts all over again and it's like you've just opened the lid and now you're closing it again quickly because you don't like what you found. But yet we're going to do things properly. And we even say we do the whole sort of arm around the shoulder like, okay, our abs laws come in.

Nathan: 1:29:02

Are you prepared for this? Are you, team, are up to speed with what to look out for a ventilation system? Does somebody have a box with a with a, an, an, an, an, an, an anometer and a matched hood? How are you? Are you just doing a tissue test? You know what's the competence of the people going out and doing the assessment before you even pick up the phone to us. Let's come and do like an exploration with you. You know we're doing all free of charge because it we're trying to help them, because then it's going to help us.

Nathan: 1:29:26

You know that just educating one housing association's front of house calls team, customer complaints team, can you tell me the name of that's on the white box or on the white fan? Is there a serial number you can give me? I said, but just preparing us with that, we want to do a one visit fix. We don't want return work. We're a busy company but it's really upsetting and this is the correct word to use when we're the ones that are face to face with the customers. When you open the door, oh my god, you're here, please fix the fan. You know, and we get feedback from the guys to say I can't fix it, but there's a young family in that place and we can't leave them in there overnight, and then that that gets fed back to the office team. Then we have to try and find a route back to tell the social housing that there is an issue and we need to address it. Mold and damps, you know, horrific to the point where the engineer doesn't even want to work in the in the home and yet there's people living in it.

Nathan: 1:30:22

That's where we're at, and when it just comes back like, yeah, you're too expensive, this has now got to go out to a framework. Thanks for your time. And it's like, well, hang on a minute. You know benchmarkers. Oh no, we can't benchmark you because there's not many companies out there like you.

Nathan: 1:30:36

Well, I can tell you who I consider the good guys are. Go and speak to them. We're all much of a much of where we're at and, it's true, there is a handful of what I would consider good people out there and I'm happy to promote them. I almost directly tag them in stuff on LinkedIn anyway, and it's not just about Farnwood, farnwood, farnwood. This has got to be a collaboration with so many people, because the amount of systems out there that need that competence and that level of care, because you, simon, and I know that people are going to bed tonight in a home that they think is safe and it isn't, and it's having a detrimental effect on them, their health, their children's health and even if they're potentially unborn children, and the academics have actually said at the year event that we went to where you used chairing. We now have enough information on indoor air quality to drive this agenda, and ventilation and air quality is hand in glove literally.

Simon: 1:31:38

It just needs to get that level of attention and I think that's where strategies within those organizations are so important, because there's no such thing as zero risk and we also understand that nobody can fix everything all at once. So you would have much more competent, much more confidence, I would guess, if a housing organization was turning around to say look, thank you for your feedback. We are not in a position to put that level of fix in, but it will go into a framework where this now moves through a process where it will get fixed. But we have to take that on balance with the other risks that we're facing. What you see at your end is someone saying I'm not prepared to spend that money, and that might be fair. That might be fair enough for that circumstance. If you understood that it sat within a risk framework, that meant they were genuinely considering it against other risks. And how that? Because you will cross certain thresholds, I guess.

Nathan: 1:32:32

Yeah, yeah, totally, and I accept that.

Simon: 1:32:34

People haven't always got the money, but what you're hearing and seeing is that they're just going. No, actually I'll get the other contractor who's just going to chuck a bicycle fan in, but then I say why did you come to us?

Nathan: 1:32:43

How did you find us? Why did you end up at our doorstep? It's very rare that we go looking for the work. The work generally finds us, and I'm not being big-headed with that either. And what's going to be the prerequisite for people to apply for this if you can't find people to benchmark us against? Or are you just going to go back to the days of your tier one or your major housing FM coming in, buying up all of this work and then just churning it? You know, that's where I think we're going to end up.

Simon: 1:33:11

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Well, let's hope we'll get you back on the podcast.

Nathan: 1:33:16

This has been positive.

Simon: 1:33:17

Yeah, I think we were fairly positive. We tried. I mean, the reality is we're trying to be positive against a backdrop where you're going out every day and seeing what it looks like. But I think there's some interesting kind of ideas there for listeners to maybe go away and think about and maybe how to apply it within their own organisations. Let's just hope We'll get you in. For what will it be episode 140 in a year and a half's time and hopefully it'll be fixed.

Nathan: 1:33:45

Yeah, let's see.

Simon: 1:33:46

Yeah, brilliant, nathan. Thanks a million for spending the time talking to me it's brilliant as always. And thanks for supporting the show and being my partner here at the housing and walking around and causing trouble. So thanks, william. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening. Hold on a minute Before you go and shoot off or onto the next podcast. Can I just grab your attention for one minute? If you enjoyed this episode and know someone else you think might be interested in this subject or you think should hear the conversation, please do share it and let's keep building this amazing community. And this podcast would not be possible without the sponsors by accident. They care deeply about the subject too, and your support of them helps them support this show and keep it on the road. Please do check them out in the links under their quality matters dot net. Also check out the show on youtube with video versions of the podcast and more. See you next week.