Advising and giving technical support to Gas safe engineers

[tone1]

Hi all,
1st post-- The company I currently work for has had a complete re-vamp of its engineers/plumbers etc. In my current role as "team coach" (yeah I know...) I am there to offer technical support and help etc wherever needed to our plumbers and drainage engineers, no problem as I have been doing this successfully for some years now. Now with the re-vamp it wants to offer positions (and rename these roles) as "Technical area support Engineer" which will include our field gas engineer subcontractors. I have not touched gas for a few years now as it is strictly plumbing work we carry out, and I know I am not allowed to. My question is, if anyone has to advise or offer technical support to gas safe engineers should he/she have a 'teaching' qualification in gas work rather than just be gas safe also?

thanks for reading and hope you can advise please

 

[Rickster123]

No I think they need to be extremely experienced and knowledgable in all aspects of gas work with all up to date acs qualifications.

welcome to the forum!

 

[tone1]

Many thanks with your reply, large companies....unfortunately just think that whoever gets these new roles will fit in! No-one who is applying for the new roles offered has ACs qualifications, this is something I can go back to upper management with, cheers.

 

[kirkgas]

There is no requirement to have attaching qual to be a gas supervisor ( you don't need a teaching qual to be a gas assessor just A1 qual, ( I can hear all the snide comments coming hahaha)
However if a company introduces a Management System which includes a chain of command to ensure gas engineers have all info to hand to ensure they work competently I think that person would need to be at least as qualified as the people he is advising, and should have relevant experience in a supervisory capacity, if someone passed CCN and elements today and then added Warm Air ( which I don't have) then they would be more qualified but would they be more experienced? And the answer is no, so its not just a paper trail, and lets be honest nothing will matter until advice given and taken leads to a problem which will then start an investigation which must ensure the person giving the advice is competent to do so

 

[kirkgas]

Many to add to above post, that responsible person for gas isn't a role that should be taken up without due consideration to the actual responsibility, I used to do that role and had 35 guys working under me, and It was my job to keep the MD out of jail in the event of an accident, so it involves fully understanding the gas regs, the contract requirements and being able to fight your corner in big business eg the contract managers start cutting prices so the guys need to cut corners to make money, the gas supervisor must be able to stand up to this and ensure there is enough time given to do the job properly, at an HSE investigation the gas supervisor will be in court arguing why he thought it was acceptable for a service guy to do 15 jobs per day, and if his only answer was " cause they cut the guys money" then prepare for jail time

 

[tone1]

Thank you again, these posts just underline my thoughts, not just being able to supervise but deep involvement in understanding of all gas regs, which I am quite certain no one has that would be eligible to apply with the company reshuffle. I think I need to bring all your comments to upper management before they make their choices, and I have to add that engineers will be assessed by managers that have not touched a spanner....I will be steering clear and just go back to plumbing repairs!:Angel_anim:

 

[Pssst]

It sounds like an appalling situation and a gross misjudgement of higher management that they would seek to recruit a team coach for a bunch of gas chaps and that it hasnt entered their heads that the team coach should be at least on a parallel technically and professionally as the gas chaps he is going to coach.

You may as well give ME a job teaching the UK Olympic Judo team !!

 

[Robert Tyrrell]

You may as well give ME a job teaching the UK Olympic Judo team !!

Judoka then?
I used to teach Judo, Karate, ju-jitsu in my spare time, and art at secondary school now I just teach kendo.
Seriously though, good advice. As with most management initiatives, they haven't really thought it through. It probably just looks like a good way of saving costs to them and if they aren't going to end up in prison then what do they have to worry about?