RACES promises a new voice for HVACR engineers

UK: Former IOR president Graeme Fox is behind a new society, launched today and described as the “new voice” for engineers working in the UK refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump sector. 

Called RACES – the Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Engineers Society – the new not-for-profit organisation was created by Fox, currently a director at the F Gas Register, and Michael Smart, who originally studied mechanical engineering with the Royal Engineers before spending the last nine years gaining industry engineering experience in the dairy, transport, catering and supermarket refrigeration sectors.

Graeme Fox is better known having run his own contracting business for over 20 years before being appointed head of technical at REFCOM. Prior to that, he had been a director of AREA, the European contractors body for 17 years and president of the group from 2010 to 2014. He left REFCOM last year, and joined the F-Gas Register as scheme director. He also resigned as president of the IOR in September after widely reported differences.

RACES has been formed to represent an estimated 80-85% of the industry, which the founders maintain are currently not represented by industry bodies.

Created for installers, service engineers, design and sales engineers, educators and students, RACES says that its main driving role will be to support small businesses in their refresher and up-skilling training courses to prepare for the wider transition to alternative refrigerants.

It has been established after many months of planning, and in collaboration with an advisory board drawn from a cross section of the RACHP sector. It is backed by founding sponsors the Beijer Ref Academy and the F-Gas Register.

Michael Smart, who will assume the role of RACES MD, explained that the idea for RACES came from his frustration at the lack of representation that ordinary refrigeration engineers had in the industry from the existing bodies. 

“Many engineers, like myself, have never considered joining an industry body, such as the IOR, for example, because it wasn’t interested in what those of us in the front line were doing,” he said.

“Most of the technical guidance was either out of date or not relevant. Ordinary engineers felt they needed a different approach to representation and I reached out to Graeme to help me turn this dream into a reality.”

“The industry these days has a huge majority of small and micro businesses operating as contractors – over 90% of contractors have less than five engineers per company – that’s a massive change in the demographic from where we were 30 years ago when I learned my trade,” Fox said. 

“The requirement to send your engineers away for even one or two day courses presents a comparatively huge financial and operational strain on small businesses as against the traditional larger contractors, and we have set out to provide access to free or reduced cost access to the kind of training courses these engineers will be needing in the coming years.”

RACES has brought together an advisory board representing wholesalers, large refrigeration consultancies and contractors. 

In addition to RACES founders Michael Smart and Graeme Fox, the initial board includes Lee Downham and Howard Noble of Beijer Ref, Greg Pelling of Miramar Engineering, Vanessa Bradshaw and Andrea Burton of Derbyshire Refrigeration, Dean Skerratt of Wolseley Group, Andrew Fraser of Forest Group, James Bailey of Omega Solutions and Samantha Parris of Wave Refrigeration.

Howard Noble, innovation & marketing director at founding sponsor Beijer Ref said: “The Beijer Ref Academy is pleased to support the development of RACES. The founding principles of the society are aligned with our own passion to support engineers through training. 

This new society has identified the industry’s need to improve support services available to engineers and we believe RACES will help fulfil this.”

RACES is now organising training courses for their members to take advantage of. The plan is to hold training courses across the UK giving better geographical spread to their availability, and to support any regional groups or branches that currently exist in the sector as well as support any regional groups wanting to start up.

“We’re creating a real community for the sector here,” Michael added, “and we welcome all in our industry to join us and help us deliver what our sector has long needed.”

Joining fees for membership start at £65 and with an up-to-date technical library already in place. Further information on the newly-launched RACES website.