Behind The Built Environment Episode 22

David: Hello, I'm David Frise, Chief Executive of BESA. Welcome to Behind The Built Environment and our guest today is Stephen Gill. Welcome Stephen.

Stephen: Morning.

David: Stephen is a leading voice in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps with a career spanning hands on engineering, contracting, design consultancy, policy and international advisory work. He is a past president of the Institute of Refrigeration, founder of World Refrigeration Day and an active mentor and advocate for skills, inclusion and technical excellence across the sector.

In his new role as technical advisor to REFCOM, Stephen brings a rare mix of practical engineering knowledge, governance experience and global perspective. His focus is on helping the industry move beyond basic compliance towards best practice, while preparing contractors and clients for the major technical, regulatory and competence challenges that lie ahead.

Should we start with the first question? We always do, and we get onto the quickfire in a minute, but the first question is, did you choose the career or did the career choose you?

Stephen: That's a good question. I think the career chose me. I think it was a case of I'm naturally curious. I like learning. I always learn, there is always something new to learn, and being adaptive and being willing to change.

I was not good at reading and writing within school, so I finished with, you could say, no qualifications. My father was an engineer and for somebody without written qualifications, engineering was one of the options open to me. So I went into what would be termed an old fashioned heavy engineering company.

It had a foundry, big workshops, milling machines, fantastic. But it was at the time of change. There was something called the TOPS scheme, a government training scheme at the time where you could be retrained to turn in your career.

Computers were coming in. My mum told me computers are going to be the future, you cannot go wrong. So I went along and signed up for a computer course. I went along on the Monday morning to start the course. My name was not on the list.

They said you can come back in another two months or something. Is there anything else? Well, funny enough, there is a course on refrigeration this afternoon. Would you be willing to go along to that? I did not know anything about refrigeration.

So I went along for the interview and the rest is history. The person interviewed me told me I would have a job for life. People always need to eat, people always need to keep cool and it is ever evolving. So I said, that sounds great. So did it choose me or was it by accident? But it suits me very, very well because I like it.

David: Yes, serendipity, that's for sure. We'll talk about the dyslexia a bit hopefully later on in this discussion, but the quickfire bits, which I know you're really looking forward to. Yes, no answers.

Stephen: I can give very long yes, no answers.

David: Yes or no, please. So does the UK still underestimate how strategically important refrigeration and cooling is?

Stephen: Yes.

David: Is the RACHP sector telling a strong enough story to attract the next generation of engineers?

Stephen: No.

David: Are policymakers treating cooling as a critical national infrastructure project yet?

Stephen: No.

David: Is the industry making enough space for neurodiverse talent and different ways of thinking?

Stephen: I'd like to say yes, but I'm going to have to say no.

David: Will the refrigeration transition force contractors to become more professional, not just more compliant?

Stephen: No, it should. No, I'll leave that. No, it will not force them.

David: We discussed in the intro that you've worked across engineering, contracting, policy, standards, international advocacy, pretty much everywhere. When you look at the sector today, what do you think it understands about its own importance? I've always felt it undersold itself, shall we say? What is still underestimated?

Stephen: It totally underestimates. First of all, most of us introduce ourselves by saying, I'm just a refrigeration engineer, I'm just a building services person. That always enters the conversation. We play ourselves down all the time as a sector. We play down the level of skills that we have and the systems thinking that goes into that.

I was at an engineering meeting and I spoke to somebody who described themselves as a rocket scientist. Wow. Another one was from aeronautics. Okay, you design aeroplanes? No, I design the latches that go on the back of the chairs.

A lot of what we consider the high level, big glamorous engineering sectors are often very narrow in scope. Our sector requires a whole range of skills and in depth as well. I think we really play that down. We underestimate the systems thinking, the design, the hands on skills. We do not appreciate ourselves enough.

David: It touches so many areas. It is central to things like net zero, health, food security, data, comfort, resilience, a whole host of areas, but people just kind of neglect it. So how do you think policymakers see beyond the technical niche? And how do we get people to value it more than they do now?

Stephen: It starts with awareness. If people have got a blind spot to it, and policymakers do not see it as a vote winner, then it is hard. We are a hidden industry, hidden in plain sight. Most people have a fridge in their house now. We are in an air conditioned space. It is all around us.

There is nobody knocking on policymakers' doors saying that if this stops, or if this changes, these are ways to reach your goals and get votes as well. We are integral to so many things.

Through the pandemic, our industry kept working. The supermarkets stayed open. Deliveries were still happening. Everybody was talking about nurses, rightly so, but we were hidden. It is difficult to get attention if people are unaware, so we have to start with awareness.

David: It is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, I think, is it not?

Stephen: It is. Air conditioning, I cannot remember the number now, so I'll get this wrong, but it is something like there is one installed every 10 seconds in the world. It is a phenomenal rate.

David: It is everything from maintaining drugs in Africa so they can be effectively used, to modern communication.

Stephen: Modern communication. We would not be able to speak, no phones without data centres. Data centres, which are cold.

David: You are involved a lot in mentoring and supporting emerging voices within the industry. What do you see as the cultural changes that are needed to make the sector more inclusive, confident and open to new talent?

Stephen: It is a good question, but it is challenging because we have to challenge ourselves with that. Certainly in this country, it is fair to say it is predominantly male, white and not young.

Most would describe themselves as being inclusive. We welcome anybody, but we do not realise there is an arrogance to the way we occupy seats. At judging events, I see the same faces and the same judging panels. They are very competent, very good people doing the right thing, but they are occupying the seat for somebody else.

We have to have awareness, almost conscious inclusion. We have to think about who we are excluding by being there. Who is not in the room because of what we are doing? Even though we say anybody can come to our meeting, can they? Will they feel welcome?

We do not see the people we are putting off. It needs a mindset, not just to say we are inclusive, but to be consciously inclusive and really think about who we are excluding by our actions and our positions.

David: I think you use the term arrogance. It is basically laziness on the most part. It is just easier to invite the usual people to do these things.

Stephen: There is that as well. We all take shortcuts. If I'm setting up a judging panel or an interview panel, I'll ring my friends. They are available, we can get them in quickly and they will all do a very good job. But by doing that, who have I missed out? Who am I excluding by taking that shortcut?

David: I attended something in the States a couple of years ago. Geena Davis, the actress, was talking about the need for role models. If people can see themselves in the picture, they can feel there is somebody else who has done it. They are far more likely to do that. I guess it is setting up more role models for young people to see.

Stephen: There is definitely the visibility thing. Role model is a term that is becoming a little abused in that people think to be a role model, you have to be really out there. You have to be glamorous. No, being a role model can just be quietly leading or making space.

It is bringing that visibility and awareness. If you are setting up a panel tomorrow and you want five people, include two more so that they can be seen.

We have just won one with AREA, the Women in Cooling video competition, which we do every year. The judges I put forward were two past winners, two young women who had won the award previously. Other associations had their usual senior people judging. Across Europe, there were only, I think, three women in the judging panels, and most of them were not young.

David: And you'll have to tell the audience what AREA is.

Stephen: AREA is the European association for refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps.

David: There is a lot of discussion, not just in refrigeration and air conditioning, but about innovation, digitisation, smart controls, low carbon cooling, heat pumps and new refrigerants. What do you think the industry most needs in terms of practical, unglamorous improvement?

Stephen: I think we need to play to our strengths with the smart stuff and the digital stuff. It is becoming very focused again. I have got a friend who has a smart fridge and it tells you what is in there and what recipes you can do with the contents. It is wonderful. His house is awful in terms of energy consumption.

We are doing smart things in isolation, whereas if we are designing systems, which we do, and installing systems, which we do all day, every day, we would think holistically. It is not smart doing isolated smart. We have to think holistically smart and we are capable of doing that.

Connecting the dots, which we naturally do, understanding that there is a system involved, then we are playing to our strengths again.

David: Some of the papers will tell you that smart fridge is spying on you.

Stephen: I'm sure, yes.

David: Let's move on to REFCOM briefly, which we should say is part of the BESA Group, owned by BESA. You are joining at a really pivotal moment. What do you think the role of REFCOM now needs to be? Is it a compliance body, technical guide, best practice movement, or all three of those things?

Stephen: All three and more, hopefully. The days of being a single thing are long gone. Compliance is obviously essential. Competence is essential to our industry, but not necessarily just to meet compliance.

There is connection, learning and sharing. It has to be a hub as well. It has to be the central point for connecting all these pieces together to meet the targets that it has and its role in the industry, the certification and so on. You are not just one thing and you should not be. You have to be much more.

David: We also look at it as how do you communicate with almost 10,000 businesses? That is never easy. Government is always asking, how can we get this message across? This is an excellent medium to do that because you have an open communication channel anyway.

Stephen: Yes, it is a great network. The days of any association or body being the gatekeeper to knowledge are long gone. In the distant past, I joined associations just so I could get the information they had. Information is widely available now, but it is not always the best information. A lot of it is inaccurate. Being a trusted advisor is an important role.

David: As we always say, it is the stuff you do not know you do not know that gets you. It can be extremely expensive.

Stephen: Yes, just type into AI and you get it. It agrees with me all the time, but it is not necessarily right.

David: Good enough, or close, is probably not the answer.

Stephen: Dangerous.

David: We are heading towards a much steeper HFC phase down in the UK, potentially moving from a 79 percent reduction by 2030 target to a much deeper longer term reduction by 2048. What are the biggest blind spots the industry needs to face before that becomes a reality?

Stephen: Understanding the numbers is really important because it is quite complex. F gas is not one thing. There is a whole range and the environmental impact differs from one to another. Those numbers are complex in themselves.

The blind spot is that we have to realise it is actually coming. There are people that do know and are giving good advice, but not everybody belongs to BESA or an association. There is a lot of bad information and disinformation out there. We have to be aware that this is happening.

We tend to go to conferences and speak to people who are generally in the know or want to know. But there is a huge area of people who do not know, or perhaps do not want to know. That is a real challenge to our industry as a whole.

David: Within BESA, we divide the industry into thirds. One third are completely compliant, they get ahead of regulation, they know what is coming down the line and they are always compliant. One third say, I have no idea why I am being asked this, but I run a compliant company, so I will do it. One third say, sorry, there is a regulation for this? The aim is to drive that third either into the middle, where they become compliant, or out of the industry altogether. Is that something you see within this sector as well?

Stephen: Very much so. I'm not sure about the percentages, but yes, it is very much there and it has been there for a long time. One of the challenges is that we often think we are speaking on behalf of the sector, which we are, but we have to recognise there is also part of the sector that is not listening. So we speak for who we can.

David: A very large proportion of equipment is still on old gases, in effect. How should contractors advise clients about what they should be doing?

Stephen: First of all, think of it as an asset. It could be a car. Treat it exactly the same. Stop getting too tied up in the technicality of it because often the client is not interested in what R number it is.

Explain how much it is going to cost to keep it, the risks involved, its criticality if it fails, replacement costs and availability. Break it down into simple language. You can say, you have this piece of equipment, you will not be able to maintain it anymore, but if it falls over, it is not the end of the world. Or, if it is mission critical, a data centre perhaps, if that falls over, you wipe out your whole company for three weeks.

Identify the risk, put costs to it and explain it in simple language. As with any asset register, from somebody's home to a complex facility, look at the estate, look at the assets, look at where they can be replaced, when and how.

Most people understand, my car has done 200,000 miles, it costs more to do my MOT than it does to buy a new one. Does it make sense to keep it? Put it in those terms.

David: BESA also operates SFG20, and we see very much that asset registers are pretty poor by and large. Frequently, clients do not actually know what they have anyway.

Stephen: They do not. They are often not necessarily interested because their business is doing something else. But if they understand what they have, and if it is explained that it could break down at any point and the parts are no longer available, they will understand the problem.

They still will not look at the asset register, but at least they are aware in very simple language of what is required.

David: The UK will do some changes to F gas regulations. What would you like to see in those changes?

Stephen: Recognising that there is going to be, at least in the short term, a misstep with Europe. I think we all have the same end goals, but in the short to mid term, there might not be alignment in certain aspects of it. That could create issues with things being brought onto our market which would not be available or would not be widely used in Europe.

When we start to bring the two points back together, because we have both got the same end goal, that could create a problem in the future.

David: So, in précis, the answer to that question is not too far divergent from the EU?

Stephen: Yes, I would like to see that.

David: To allow manufacturing to standardise across a bigger market.

Stephen: Manufacturing, skills, everything else. It makes sense to me to be as reasonably close to Europe, certification wise, as possible.

David: You have talked about moving forward in your role as incoming IOR president again, so you are doing your second term. What does moving forward look like for the sector over the next decade?

Stephen: I think I said moving forward together as well. It was a particular message to the IOR membership at the time, but it applies to all the associations and professional bodies I can think of, probably to BESA as well.

We have to move with the times. The days of us being purely a gatekeeper to knowledge have long since gone. I did join the IOR a long time ago so that I could get their technical papers. These are now readily available everywhere. It has all changed.

People still need good advice, but we have to think as an association about what else we can do rather than just say, you can get information from us. There is best practice, compliance, simple networking, exchange of information. We have just launched the Skills Alliance. We are looking at training and bringing people together.

It is helping the industry prepare for now and the future. We cannot stand still. Anything that stands still is going backwards, and we need to adapt and change what we offer, but also align it with what people want and need.

David: We talked very briefly at the beginning about dyslexia and how that had impacted your life and serendipitously led you to that college to do that course. How has it shaped the way you think and solve problems? Is it something you are constantly having to overcome or has it become easier?

Stephen: I never saw it as an issue until recently, strangely enough, when I saw it in somebody else in the last 10 years. We are all different. We are all completely different. I cannot run 100 metres in 10 seconds and you are not surprised at that.

We are all different physically and mentally. My reading skills and writing skills may be different to other people's, but I think some problem solving in different ways is part of the diversity of life. I saw my strengths and weaknesses for what they are, the same as everybody does.

If I had to read something, I knew it was going to be awful, an embarrassment, so I would avoid it. If I knew it was going to be a problem for me, I would mask it and hide it. Do we not all with something?

It was around 10 years ago. I was helping somebody through a mentoring scheme, a young woman who was being fast tracked, very skilled, highly developed and clearly going to be a future leader. She got into middle management and suddenly fell apart. She was not performing.

She confessed to me that she was dyslexic and her new role involved all the report writing and the things that go with middle management, and she was failing badly at this.

I said, do not worry, I am glad you have told me. It is a big company you work for. The best thing is disclosure. Go and see your HR person, explain it, they will put reasonable adjustments in place and it is something we can work together on.

To cut a long story short, she went to HR. They said, you are not suitable for the job. We suggest you either go back or leave.

David: Wow.

Stephen: Luckily, I knew the owner or MD of the company and I phoned him up and said, what is going on here? But it really opened my eyes. Disclosure is not that simple and the reactions are not always the same.

People are busy in their jobs. Managers are busy. What they do not want is somebody coming with their issues, which is another issue that we have got to face and we do not know how to handle. If somebody comes to a manager and says, I am dyslexic, I need this, what do I do? They do not know what to do. It is not part of their training necessarily.

Creating awareness, signposting and pointing people in the right direction matters. When that difficult conversation comes, they do not go, we cannot cope with this. I get such mixed feedback from people who have that difficult conversation. Some companies say, why are you telling us, we have always known you are. The other extreme is, you are not suitable, you had better go. We still get that.

David: And that still happens?

Stephen: That still happens.

David: That is shocking.

Stephen: It is, but it is out there.

David: Young people who want to come into the industry and have a neurodiversity issue or dyslexia, what should they do?

Stephen: I always say be upfront, disclose it as early as you can without making it the headline. It is just part of who you are. You do not put on your CV, I am dyslexic, in bold at the top. It is just part of who you are.

There is more support now in schools, although patchy, but better. Within higher education, there is often support. What happens in higher education and the workplace is quite different. The workplace is very different to the education world.

There is a big wake up call for the person who has been supported through higher education and reasonable adjustments are put in place. Suddenly they go to their new company and have to have that conversation, but the support is not there because it is not the focus of the company.

David: And as an employer, if somebody comes who is neurodivergent, what should they do?

Stephen: First, there should be no knee jerk reaction. They should listen, take it on board and reach out to somebody who can help them. There are lots of agencies out there that can offer support. It is a legal compliance issue to make reasonable adjustments and assess the workplace.

Everybody is different. You do not just say, this person is dyslexic, they had voice recognition, so we will give it to everybody who is dyslexic. Have an individual assessment. Treat the person as an individual because you want to get the best out of all your employees. Find out what will work for that individual, give it to them, and they will shine.

David: World Refrigeration Day. Why did you found World Refrigeration Day and where is it going?

Stephen: Every dinner I ever sat at, or every event when people get together, we always say we are not understood. We are the hidden industry. We have had this conversation even in this conversation. We remain hidden and it is not good for a whole manner of reasons.

In the past, when we needed to raise awareness, we would organise a conference and talk to ourselves, tell each other how important we were, and we would all agree. The idea of World Refrigeration Day was to reach out and challenge ourselves.

It is proving more difficult than I thought because our companies, associations and marketing teams are geared to customers and internally to the industry. We are not generally geared to speaking outside to our next door neighbour, our MP or the person walking in the street with a dog.

World Refrigeration Day is a standalone thing. It is not tied to any association or technology, but it belongs to all of us. It is so that we try and challenge ourselves to speak to the outside world in whatever message matters to whatever audience.

Seven years on, it has evolved. There are those who have understood it and do get into the newspapers, contact their MPs and so on. There are still those having their traditional trade show on the day because it is a celebration. Let them celebrate it because it is worth celebrating, but that was not the intention.

David: So it is for the wider public, not just the industry itself?

Stephen: It is for the wider public. Do my children know? Does my mother know? Are they interested? No. So how do we get that? We have to change our message.

We cannot go and say, here is a picture of a plant room, is it not exciting? Internally, we can, because that is what we do. But we have to completely change our messaging.

With refrigeration, as soon as we start to promote what we do, it is back to hard hats, nuts and bolts. We have to change the messaging about what we do and our role in society.

David: So the outcomes of refrigeration rather than the actual nuts and bolts of it.

Stephen: Absolutely. When I lived in Singapore, I had to do a presentation to a university. It was a trade day or industry day. Different professions went. There was a barrister before me, a doctor, a lawyer and all these things.

Everybody was interested in these high profile jobs because they are glamorous. You were only allowed three slides. My first slide showed all the places in the world I had visited and I said, what do you think I do? Airline pilot? No.

The next slide was people I had helped generally, feeding people, people in hospitals. Saint? No. The third slide, I put my genuine actual wage packet, my payslip, without edits, on the slide. I was earning more than the other professions, as it turned out.

That different messaging was exactly what we do. We travel, we fix things, we help people and very often we get well paid for it. We do not put that message out. We put out, we spend hours on site, and is this dirty compressor not exciting?

David: Both things can be true. Final question, you are king of the industry for the day. What one thing would you change to make it better?

Stephen: Only one thing? A sense of belief in ourselves. We have really got to believe and understand who we are and what we do. There is still this tendency to play ourselves down all the time. We do not really own and feel proud of what we do.

As soon as we get into that meeting, we are the ones who say, well, I am just. I think it would be to ban the word just. I do not mean go out and blow our own trumpet too much, but just own our place in society.

David: Stephen Gill, thank you very much indeed.

Stephen: Thank you.

David: That was Behind The Built Environment podcast. Join us next time for industry discussion and perspective. Do not forget to subscribe to the podcast, like it, review it, and until next time, I'm David Frise and this was Behind The Built Environment.