A poll was recently run on DGB where installers were asked to give feedback on their standard of knowledge around Minimum Technical Competency regulations, otherwise referred to as MTCs.
MTCs have been in the industry a few years now, and have been brought in by Government with the aim of testing installers in the window and door sector to qualify for self-certification on their installations. Although these new regulations have been around for a while now, I have always had the suspicion that knowledge of the new-ish regs isn’t has good as it should be.
So, in good old fashioned DGB style, I took to the polls to find out from installers what the levels of knowledge actually were. These were the results:
There is a winning answer in this poll, but by no means is it a run away winner, with just 36% of those installers who have voted saying their knowledge of MTCs is very good.
Perhaps worryingly, the second most voted answer was installers saying that they had never even heard of MTCs. When first setting up this poll I honestly expected this answer to be near the bottom of the pile.
I think that results like this goes to show that there is a lot more educating to do when it comes to the industry’s installers. Our industry’s communication channels are infamously patchy at best, and there will be corners of our industry that will have simply never been told about these sorts of regulations.
I also believe that with results like this, FENSA were being highly optimistic about setting such a stringent deadline when it came to installers becoming MTC compliant. In June 2014, FENSA set a deadline for all installers to become MTC compliant, with all those not compliant being unable to self-certify installations beyond May 31st 2015.
The idea was good in principle, but at the time there were a strong rumour that 80% of installers weren’t compliant and to ban that much of the installer network would have caused chaos. FENSA then came up with a PAYG scheme which allowed installers to register jobs, pay about £100 and then FENSA would come and inspect and sign it off. Much to the annoyance of those installers who rushed to become compliant before the original deadline.
Anyway, point being, there is much more work to do to get all installers fully up to speed on the MTC front. Education is pushing that education to all corners is going to be key.
