Euro trainers behind Bahrain F-gas move

BAHRAIN: Two top European training companies have helped Bahrain to establish an F-gas certification scheme and have assessed the teachers who will be the assessors of the future.

Twenty-two teachers and assessors from multiple nationalities and different languages working in this small island in the middle of the Arabian Gulf completed a five-day workshop at the end of April

It was organised by Italian training centre Centro Studi Galileo (CSG) in association with Business Edge, the UK-based training provider. Business Edge has been working with CSG since 2011, certifying nearly 1000 Italian contractors ahead of Italy’s implementation of the certification system.

The United Nations Environment Programme, the Bahrain Supreme Council for Environment, the Bahrain Society of Engineers and Bahrain Excellent Center in Ministry of Education were partners of the project which seeks to build a training course programme and certification scheme based on the European F-gas regulations.

All the participants came from different regions, Arabic countries, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. The candidates successfully passed their theoretical test to a high standard. On this occasion the theoretical test followed the Italian certification scheme and was applied in a way to follow the proposed constituted Bahraini law on refrigerant management.

CSG reports that the candidates also performed well during the practical tests but a few best practices needed some improvement. In particular this related to tighter and stricter leakage control and tightness of the system, while performing good brazing and refrigerant recovery techniques.

Global training

In an ongoing global training project, Centro Studi Galileo training director Dr Marco Buoni is working alongside UNEP, local and state governments and environmental agencies to develop and expand a programme for training in the Gulf Region.

Dr Buoni recently met with colleagues from UNEP and representatives from Tunisia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar with the aim of creating the first blueprints for official national certification schemes for each of these countries. The adoption of such a scheme is intended to promote the uptake of training for the refrigeration, air conditioning, energy efficiency sector and the safe management of equipment containing greenhouse gases in the Gulf Region.

As well as authorities from Bahrain, Dr Buoni also met with collaborators in Kuwait and Qatar, where he discussed plans and recommendations on moving forward with the national certification schemes.