Something else that became apparent, was random situations that may arise and are almost impossible to plan for (or avoid). One example being that I was shouted at by a guy sitting outside a café drinking from a bottle of vodka when we were walking out from breakfast in London. Paul and I were laughing at the time and the man said to Paul that he “shouldn’t let me laugh at him” (meaning Paul), to which I just nervously laughed again because I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not because we hadn’t even seen him prior to him shouting and then he started to get up, waving his vodka around and shouted at me to not laugh at him either! We ran across the road, jumped in the van and did ‘the off’ as quick as we could and this was all before 08:00.
Many of our team have relayed similar stories over the years and we have a clear lone working policy and non-confrontational guidance in place. As a result of this there are actually some sites that we won’t allow lone working on at all, such is the level of risk to our team. Unfortunately during certain projects it can be known to encounter rude and offensive members of staff or more often tenants who don’t appreciate necessarily that our engineers are there to ensure their smoke ventilation systems are working effectively and safely – in fact we recently attended a site to find a police notice on the door saying it was unsafe to enter.

Life On The Road: Just driving around this country, but particularly London and larger cities, becomes another daily challenge for many of our smoke ventilation engineers, not to mention how difficult it is to park anywhere near the actual site you’re working on. Our engineers are often required to have heavy tool bags with them as well as ladders so that they can correctly diagnose and repair problems swiftly, to the benefit of all. Paul and I were recently asked to park three miles away from a large shopping centre and it took extensive negotiations to explain to the person behind the registration desk why this would be impossible (given everything that we needed to carry and potentially come back for if further repairs were required). Fortunately, the guy was amenable on this occasion but I know the team encounter less approachable and understanding characters regularly who just seem to enjoy their moment of power over an engineer who’s literally just trying to keep people safe and be as cost effective for a customer as they can. Something we look to consider in advance of all of our engineer site visits, of course, is travel and access, however sometimes these things simply crop up on arrival, so give a thought to all those wasted man hours of finding a suitable spot or navigating a new way to access the site safely.

Then consider, that is all before you actually get to site. Once there, you can encounter a mixed bag of what to expect. On occasion they’re fantastic well maintained sites where it is apparent that the responsible person for the building really cares about the tenants and the building itself (Here you immediately know that it’s a nice place to live or work and this covers the private and public sector buildings). There are however many that leave a lot to be desired in terms of how the tenants behave within them and how badly they are maintained. I know that any Smoke vent engineer will be able to regale many, often unbelievable, stories of the kinds of things they have encountered in buildings from drugs being stashed in dry risers and the police being totally disinterested, used syringes strewn around, spaced out people in the corridors, tenants belongings or rubbish being stored in smoke shafts or throughout the corridors, aggressive tenants, vandalised smoke systems, very poor and sometimes dangerous, installations and systems that clearly haven’t been maintained properly, often for years, batteries that haven’t been changed for years etc etc.

Much of the vandalism relates to the tenants themselves endeavouring to cool their buildings down because they get so hot. This is often because the smoke vent system is not being operated as it should be. I suspect this is because as tenants move on, things become lost in translation and people don’t understand how the system should work or the impact of their touching the components on the successful functioning of the system.
On a recent project I was asked by a resident how the system was meant to work and I was able to explain what the residents were doing wrong and why this was impacting on the overheating of the building. She was very engaged and I knew she had taken on board what I’d said. A few weeks later Paul and I were driving past and decided to pop in and see if we’d been listened to. It was great to see that almost all of the residents had taken onboard the advice and the communal areas were significantly cooler than when we had been there previously.
I’d love to be able to have this kind of engagement with all the sites we visit, as it would make such a difference to the residents lives not to mention the environment. It’s not something that we could write and publish though because there are so many different systems which work in different ways so unfortunately there are just too many variable factors with a smoke ventilation system that simply doesn’t allow for a blue print or ‘How To…’.

Overall my personal experience of time spent on engineer visits to install, service or maintain smoke ventilation systems, has shown me that our entire team (but also many other smoke vent engineers out there) work to such an incredibly high standard and really do overcome real obstacles in their day to day role – even as we established just getting to a job let alone what they have to overcome when they get there.
So, if you’re someone that employs a competent smoke vent company, please do bare this in mind when questioning costs or the necessity of certain works. Indeed if you live and/or work in a building and come across these unsung heroes, please remember they’re just there trying to keep you safe.