Virtual Inspections Explained By An Ex-Gas Safe Inspector w/ Terry Sawyer

Terry Sawyer, a former Gas Safe inspector with 15 years in the field, explains the three types of inspections: face-to-face, group sessions, and virtual exams. Virtual inspections are open-book scenario tests on unsafe situations and technical bulletins. He covers what fails you, how to prepare with calibrated analysers and manufacturer guidance, and why engineers often guess under pressure instead of finding the right information.
Chapters
You're feeling under pressure, you've been inspected about losing your livelihood. How common is that for that outcome?
It can happen. You're more likely to have your registration suspended until you can prove otherwise. Basically nothing worse than turning up to an inspection and saying, you got analyser? And they go, yep. And you say, is it calibrated? No. So you say, well, have you been doing gas work then? Oh, I'm really sorry, I'll get it done tomorrow. That, although it's a minor thing. Yeah. A lot of places now do like the 1-hour turnaround, you know, so there's no real excuse.
Like what's the best way to prepare for like the virtual ones?
The virtual ones, it's quite difficult. Now, as long as you've got— I say, as long as you've got—
this is the Gas Engineer Podcast. I'm your host, Tullik Priest, and today I'm joined by Terry Sawyer. From inspecting installations across London to guiding engineers through inspections, Terry is a highly experienced gas engineer with over 15 years on the tools and a former GasSafe inspector. Welcome to the show, Terry.
Thank you for having me.
Gas Safe inspections have long been a nerve-wracking part of the trade, and many engineers still aren't sure what to expect or how to prepare. In today's episode, we'll be covering everything you could possibly need to know by step-by-step guide for inspections, including the virtual ones. I didn't actually know you could have virtual inspections. Are they new?
Um, yeah, well, say new, they've been around for a few years, obviously after COVID and things like that. Obviously a lot of face-to-face stuff wasn't, uh, wasn't being done. So obviously a lot of things went virtual and the virtual inspections, yeah, they became a thing. So they've been around for a few years now and yeah, not much different to a different, you know, there's 3 types of inspections, one of them being your face-to-face with your inspector at a job when it's just a one-on-one. Another one is basically you can be invited to, it's normally like a hotel or conference type centre where you could have maybe 100 engineers in one room room. And that's a different type of inspection. So the virtual one is like the hotel type version where you're all in one room, but you can sit at home, comfort your own home, and you basically do your virtual one, which is again with other people doing their virtual one at the same time. So you're just doing it from home instead.
How does it actually work? Because I had kind of a vision that you'd be holding your camera up and working around.
So it's not an inspection in the sense of when we do our one-on-one, face face inspections at a property. It's focused on knowledge of unsafe situations and regulation changes, things like that, things that you might not know unless you kept up to date with your technical bulletins, basically. So yeah, it's open book. You can have your unsafe situations, you can have your technical bulletins, everything to read, but you're basically just answering questions scenario-based. You read through the scenario and then you answer the question. It's really quite basic, but I always find you don't have that individual, the personal experience of being able to go through your answers that you get wrong. Most people I speak to are not big fans of the virtual inspection. If you're not particularly good on computers or not very computer literate, then it's not an ideal way to do your inspection.
Because it kind of sounds almost like a, almost just an extra exam.
It's pretty much, it's pretty much what it's like. It is pretty much what it's like, and it's aimed at engineers that have been inspected before. So it's aimed at any engineer that's had a face-to-face inspection. So generally low risk, low, you know, engineers that don't really crop up too much to GasSafe. So it's aimed at them, but Yeah, I mean, I know people that have done them and I never sat in on one. There's normally an inspector or someone from Gas Safe basically overseeing the whole thing so they can watch you whilst you're doing your test. But I used to do a lot of inspections because the engineer had failed the virtual one. They get given a second chance. If you fail that one, it triggers an inspection, a face-to-face. So I often see a lot of people who had either missed one of their virtual ones, so they didn't get the email, they couldn't log on. Or something like that, technical issues, and then they've done their second one and they failed it, then it would trigger a face-to-face. And you'd see them and they were absolutely brilliant, absolutely fine. They just, for whatever reason, didn't like the virtual one.
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You know, so that people do pass the virtual one, uh, you know, they do pass it. There's no issues with it. You know, my dad actually passed, you know, he did the virtual one and he actually passed it fine. But, um, he said it isn't his favourite type of inspection.
And you kind of alluded to it earlier that you kind of miss out on that training opportunity.
Yeah, a little bit of that and being able to answer some questions. So I did a few of the hotel inspections with groups, different groups in the morning, another group in the afternoon. I did a few of them, which I really enjoyed, actually, because it gave you an opportunity once you'd marked someone's paper, if they got a certain amount wrong, you know, near, near, they've done all right, but they just needed, you know, you'd often take them outside and have a little one-to-one chat with them about why they answered what they did. And that I quite liked because you could then explain why their answer or why they answered it, it was wrong in terms of what GasSafe wanted to see. You know, that's what the unsafe situations state, that is the answer. But you could often see why they answered what they did because common sense would say that should be the answer. But GasSafe say no. Well, that is the actual answer. So it was often good. You could have a chat with people. Some argued with you, some went, no, I don't think that's the case. Fair enough. Everyone's open to their interpretation of the regs. And it was often when they thought something should have been classified as immediately dangerous, but it was only an at-risk. They're normally the ones where they're saying, no, I wouldn't leave that on. That's dangerous.
So they were more conservative than the regulations.
Yes. Which is understandable. You know, I never penalise someone for being overly cautious, but complaints do get made because people are too cautious. You know, they cap off boilers that are only at risk and they say, yeah, but I want to sleep at night. And you go, no, I get that. I understand that.
I think you mentioned in the last one, you also need to look at the manufacturer's 100%. And whatever out of the two regulations or the manufacturer, you take the more conservative one.
So you do. I mean, manufacturer's instructions always come first. Manufacturers are the ones that have designed the appliance. They have tested the appliance. What they state goes, basically. Gas Safe regulations are more aimed at, like, especially unsafe situations. Most of these virtual and the group group inspections are focused on unsafe situations, what it says in that unsafe situations document, and basically just getting it right. You know, now, like I say, if you can justify your decision, if you've gone a bit over the top, as long as you can justify it, well, no one's really going to come down on you too hard. I mean, if you miss something that is dangerous, that will obviously go the other way, and you've not found it, and you've left something working that shouldn't be working. That's different. Then you're likely Gas Safe are going to come down on you pretty hard. But the other way around, no, it's never going to be too hard. It's just a case of explaining why that isn't categorised higher, you know, more dangerous.
It seems like a kind of an obvious question, but how would you prepare? Like, what's the best way to prepare for like the virtual ones first and then also the in-person ones?
The virtual ones, it's quite difficult. Now, as long as you've got— I say to people, as long as you've got the documents it tells you to have, you can have on hand whilst you're doing it. You can refer to the technical bulletins, you can refer to the book, the unsafe situations. As long as you've got that with you, then that's really all the preparation you need to do for that type of inspection.
Are you limited by time? Do you have enough time to refer to the documents and find—
Yeah, you've got enough time. If anyone, I mean, don't get me wrong, if anyone is in a position where they may need more time, then you can go back to GasSafe. GasSafe aren't going to penalise you for going back to them and saying, is there any chance I can have a face-to-face inspection instead? Because again, I need more time. I don't read as fast. There's nothing wrong with that. GasSafe aren't going to turn around and go, no, you're doing it. If you respond to that email, you've got an inspection on this date, this time. If you respond to that email and don't ignore it, GasSafe will be more than happy to accommodate your needs. And I think that's the thing. A lot of people see that email or claim they didn't see it and they just ignore it because they think, well, it's a virtual inspection, what does it matter? That sort of thing. And then that triggers obviously a different type of face-to-face inspection.
Yeah, one that's a different style.
Yes.
And for the in-person ones, what do you need to kind of do to prepare for those ones?
Again, The inspector will call you normally a couple of weeks prior to your inspection just to basically introduce themselves. And that you have an opportunity then to make sure any questions you've got, you can ask that inspector. Now, most of the time it tells you on your email when you get your inspection email come through, it will tell you, we want to see this, this and this.
Update bulletins from GasSafe. Do, like, how many do you need to actually take to the inspections or have ready for the virtual inspections?
You don't, you don't really need to know many. All I normally say to people is there's technical bulletins on, like, so, so some people keep the technical bulletin for, for the smart meters, how to read a different smart. They keep that, they actually print it out and keep it on them because they know when they come to each meter they can then just open it up and have a look and it tells them how to do it. Things like that, I would say, look, that's just sort of something that you might need to refer to quite often. But generally, technical bulletins are there just to be read. It's a technical bulletin to update you of a change in a policy, of a regulation, that sort of thing. But there are only a couple that you really need to know that you might need to refer to more regular.
And which ones would you need for the exam?
For what? For the virtual exam. Okay, so the virtual exam, they will tell you what technical bulletins you will need based on the scenarios that you've got. So based on the questions.
Okay, so that they give you pretty much the answers.
Yeah, yeah, you've got all the answers anyway. You've got all the answers pretty much anyway. It's like open book. There's nothing there, is nothing that you need to know, but from memory, it's basically you come across this situation, how do you categorize it? Yeah, and you've just got to get the right answer, basically, not the answer that you think is the right answer. That's why a lot of people fail, because there isn't the opportunity to explain yourself.
Okay, so you just tick the box and then it needs to be the right one. There's no caption.
There's no explanation of your answer, why you've answered that. Because 9 times out of 10, you'd sort of say to them, I understand your answer, but unfortunately, that's not what the unsafe situation says. In that instance, which is always a shame sometimes because a lot of people, they're not bad engineers. It's just, it's your common sense approach taking over.
But how would you, what's your kind of feeling about the virtual inspections? I kind of understand it from you need to test more people and we don't have enough resources to get everyone out.
Yeah, it's to do with numbers. I mean, it's to do with numbers, getting the inspections done because obviously GasSafe still have a target. They still have a target of how many inspections they've got to do a year. They say to the HSE, we can do this many and they've got to do that many. But obviously they've developed this way of doing it where they can get larger numbers done in small amount of time. Again, it will only apply to people who are low risk, never really had a concern, never had any names never come up. So generally, I personally, now I'm not an inspector, not a huge fan of them and I don't think I'd want to do one. I've done both types. I've had the face-to-face inspection and I've also done the inspection in the hotel before I was the inspector. So I've actually done both of them. Never done a digital one. But yeah, the one in the hotel is good. It is good. You get it done a lot quicker. They run through a few updates while you're there. So it isn't just turn up, do your exam and do your test, show me results and go. They will run through some other bits that you might not be aware of. These inspections aren't just to test you, they're also to update you because the chances are you probably don't know, you haven't read the updates. So it actually is an opportunity to run through some bits that you might not be aware of. So I think that's quite good in that sense, is that you're getting a message out to more people. You're not going to get that on the digital one.
Okay, so the digital one is pretty much just an exam. Where the other one is, and also the in-person one is more about that teaching coaching element.
And yeah, and also, you know, giving you the chance to explain yourself as well and ask questions, you know, because a lot of people do have questions.
You know, for a lot of gas engineers, they work alone. So they, you know, learning by yourself alone, you know, it does take a long time.
It does. Yeah, it does. It does. And there's, I think I said on the first podcast we done, there are gray areas, you know, there are gray areas that not, you know, Everyone knows, even Gas Safe inspectors often argue over the gray areas. And that shows you that if inspectors are discussing the gray areas and having different opinions on the gray areas, then how much more difficult is it going to be for an engineer who works on his own to be able to figure out these gray areas?
Plus, the engineers are focusing on their marketing, running the business, keeping the customers happy, as well as the regulations.
Yeah, 100%. It would probably be better. A different way of doing it would probably be to have like a yearly update, not exam as such, but something you could do from home. Went through some updates and then you answered a few questions. Now to me, something like that would get— it means that every single engineer has got to do it. Every single engineer would have to do it and every single engineer then has been given new information. You know, some people go back after 5 years and they go, whoa, that's changed. Oh, that's changed. That reg's changed. You know, and things do change because, you know, in 5 years is a long time. And I said to you, not a lot of engineers read up on the updates religiously, you know, when they get home from work. They don't turn on, you know, turn the computer and look for the regulation updates and new technical bulletins. And, you know, the Gas Engineer magazine does highlight some changes, some big changes, some regulation changes, some warnings, you know, technical bulletin updates. And not everyone reads the magazine. A lot of them just open it for the pictures, you know, the dodgy gaswork pictures and stuff. But actually in there is some quite good stuff. If you just sit there, spend 10 minutes just checking up on the updates, that's a good way that GasSafe get out these regulations.
The number of issues they're sending out now is reduced.
Yeah, I mean, that comes down to— yeah, I mean, that's down to printing, to be honest. And it used to be Obviously a lot better. I was getting one, obviously, monthly.
It used to be monthly, but yeah.
But so that's the only thing. But I think that is a good way if people read it. It's a good way to get our updates. But again, not enough engineers check updates and technical bulletins. And, you know, yeah, it can be a bit of a boring read sometimes. But there are, like I say, there are more important ones, you know, that you might come across. And the fact that people don't even realize they've got them to, you know, they've got them there to read if they have any queries or a job coming up and they can have a look at a technical bulletin related to what they've got and it might explain everything for them. And then, yeah, and then they know more than what they did.
For the in-person one-to-one, how do you kind of prepare for it? You mentioned they would receive an email with pretty much all of the instructions on it. Is there anything over and above that or what kind of things they should be looking out for?
You know what, it might— I often say, as long as you've got everything they've asked for, so you've got your label kits, you know, you've got all your labels, your important ones, the things that you might need day to day, job to job, got all your tools, analyser calibrated. There's nothing worse than turning up to an inspection and saying, you got analyser? And they go, yep. And you say, is it calibrated? They say no. And then they can't use it because it's not been calibrated. So you say, well, how have you been doing gas work then? I'm really sorry, I'll get it done tomorrow. That, although it's a minor thing, if you turn up and the inspector go, yeah, I knew this was coming up, so I popped down and got it calibrated. Yeah, a lot of places now do like the 1-hour turnaround, you know. So there's no real excuse, you know. If you haven't got an analyser for whatever reason, you know, you can't afford one yet because you're new— it does happen, you know— you can say to the inspector, look, I haven't got one yet. And if you don't know anyone— I mean, if you can't— if you can borrow one, great. If you don't know anyone, the inspector does have one. Yeah, the inspector does have one that they carry around with them for their own use, which if, you know, to do an inspection, you can use the inspector's analyser. You can ask them and say to them, look, I just can't afford one at the moment. Yeah, you can still do your inspection. You just know you can't do any gas work because you haven't got one. So there are things around that. But as long as you're prepared, all your tools are prepared, things that you might need, your discs, anything you might need to cap off gas supplies. So your stop ends, your different size stop ends, your discs for your meter, things like that. That's what an inspector wants to see, that if you turn up to a job tomorrow, you have what you need to make it safe if you find it to be unsafe, basically.
Okay. So is that focus on just that safety element?
Yeah, more than— I mean, everything else should be sort of second nature to you in terms of what you're going to be asked to do, your practical side of things in front of the inspector, going through your tightness test. Make sure you're up to date with your tightness test. I also say wherever you're going to do your inspection, make sure you are familiar with the appliances in there because there's nothing worse taking an inspector being taken to a property where you don't know the boiler and the boiler actually turns out to be dangerous. And although it's fantastic opportunity for the engineer to display that they know, yeah, that's dangerous. You've then got— you've brought an inspector to someone's house where you've now got to leave them with no boiler and they have to fill out a warning notice while you're there. So it's good in that sense. We get to see that the engineer knows how to fill out a warning notice, labels the boiler up, you know, danger, do not use, etc. So, but I always say make yourself familiar with the appliance that you're going to.
So make it easy for yourself, essentially.
Well, why make an inspection? You know, I'm not going to tell people have the easiest inspection, but an inspection is hard enough as it is. Because you've got a lot of pressure on yourself. And a lot of people do ring family, friends, family, neighbours and say, can I do an inspection on your house? Can I do an inspection on your boiler? I've got an inspection with GasSafe. Right. And a lot of people go, yeah, of course you can. And then you go around there and you've got to shut their boiler off. It doesn't look great. You've asked for a favour and it's backfired. So I say to them, know the appliance. Because if you know the appliance, you then are not scratching your head thinking, how do I get this appliance into service mode? Because service mode, well, if you don't know how to get an appliance into service mode, then how have you been doing— have you been testing it on your highs and low rates? So you should know how to get an appliance into service mode. So I say to people, make sure you know how to do that on that appliance. Make sure you read up on it. If you don't know that boiler, learn about it so that when you get there, there's much less pressure. If you know, yeah, I know exactly what to do with this appliance. I know how to get the case off. I know how to inspect. If you can do all of that, that takes a big chunk of pressure off you.
Yeah. You can just focus on the important parts.
Focus on the important bits and focus on the questions you're being asked whilst you're doing that. So them little things, I just make sure I say to people, make sure you're prepared for what you're walking into.
Okay, so you got all the tools. You know where you're going, you know the boiler and the actual questions themselves. Anything to kind of prepare on that side?
So again, so the questions themselves. So you will, you do as part of your inspection, your inspection is broken into two parts. So you've got your practical side of it, which is your actual appliance inspections and running through your practical tightness testing all the way through. Right. So that's part. But you also do a technical assessment. That's the second part. Second part is a technical assessment. They will be the questions. Based on your qualifications. It's normally only around 20 questions. So it's 20 questions picked from the qualifications you have. So I think we touched on this in the first podcast, but things like if you have LPG as one of your qualifications, you will be asked questions on LPG. Now, if you turn around and go, I've never done LPG, I've got the qualification, but I've never touched it. You still have to be asked questions on LPG because it's one of your qualifications. That's when people start to panic.
You could be working on it, but yeah. Okay, so you got the qualification a long time ago, never done it.
Yes.
The course, etc.
Yes. So then when you start asking, so I say to them, well, you've got the qualification, so have you got your book here? Have you got a book with all your information in it? Whatever brand book that people carry around, I say, have you got it? Because I say, you bring that, you're told to bring that to the inspection. I want to see that if I ask you a question, If you cannot answer it, I want to see you find me the answer. That's how you pass. It's being able, because even like I say, even me, I get, I often have to check. I often read up on something that I don't know. As long as I can find the answer, that's as good as knowing it.
Okay, so you don't have to memorise it. You just have to have, know roughly where it is, how to find it.
Yep.
Go and find it and interpret the, whatever it is, and then give the answer.
And that's it. And as long as you can be seen to find it without flapping, without panicking, it's all normally the information, the questions that are asked are normally all in the book. There's nothing in there that's not going to be in your book, in your manual, that sort of thing. So it's just a case of finding it, where to look and finding it. Ventilation questions. Not everyone's going to know the answers to ventilation questions.
When you're talking about ventilation, you're talking about like minimum distance, like minimum distances and all those kind of things.
Yeah. And sizes of vents and how much ventilation would this appliance require and things like that. You know, you go through these manuals, there's charts and everything of telling you how much ventilation that appliance needs. If it's this size, if it's that, if it's this type of appliance, you need 100. You know, there's so many things it could be. So I often say to people, get your book and tell me. As long as you get your book and tell me, You know, what used to drive me mad was guessing. Guessing. 20. 20 what? And they go, I don't know, 40, 50. I go, stop. I say, just tell me. No, find it and tell me. You know, so that used to drive me mad, the panic guessing. And then when they do get the answer, they go, I knew that. I actually knew that. And I don't know why I didn't say it. You know, and often these numbers are all what you remember from when you've done your initial training and your initial studying. You remember a lot of these numbers, but it's the pressure of the inspection gets to you.
Yeah. Is there any time pressure?
No, no.
Does it matter how long it takes you to find it? Obviously within reason.
No. Yeah, within reason. But generally, again, some inspectors won't give you any help. Other inspectors will say, have a look at this, have a look at this page, or I'll see them looking for something. But when your brain's going 100 miles an hour and you know you're being watched and you're trying to find a number, it's very easy to skip straight past the page you're looking for. So I'll often say them, I've just seen it. I've just seen them go past what I'm asking. And I'll say to them, go back to page 50. And then they see it and they go, yeah, after they've read it. But it's that again, it's that pressure sometimes. It's not there to catch you out. The inspections are not there to catch you out. They're there for you to prove that you know enough that you will be safe working on these appliances and working in people's houses and testing gas appliances. And things. It's like I say, you're not supposed to know everything off the top of your head. It's impossible in this industry. You're just supposed to be able to find it if anyone asks. That's what people forget.
Yeah, it is funny, that pressure you put on yourself when somebody's looking over your shoulder.
Yeah, it is. But because again, I said before, it's your livelihood, it's your life. You're being inspected on what pays your bills. And to think that if you don't pass, I'll lose it all, it puts a lot of pressure on. But again, it's not about, you know, if you fail, you get another crack at it. You know, you're not— that's not it. You're not getting your registration suspended if you fail it. Depends on how badly you fail, it will depend on what GasSafe do next.
You know, what are the kind of the likely outcomes? Like, for, like, if you did it, was it a small fail or a big fail? Where does it kind of go from there?
So if it's just an ordinary inspection where, you know, just a business inspection, then it can lead to like what we call a competency inspection. So that's like the next one up. So this is now testing you on your competency. This is where it becomes a little bit trickier. You know, you're not— there's a few more things, few more questions. It's a little bit more on your case to get it right. You know, so competency is that if you're a probationary, you know, this is your first inspection, you've only been recently registered Gas Safe. It really depends on the likelihood. It's quite obvious within the first 10 minutes, 15, 20 minutes of meeting a new engineer if you are going to be signing them off at the end of that inspection or asking to see them again. Now, what would often happen is we would often, if straight away you'd say to them, look, you need a little bit more training, you don't know enough, you've not been doing long enough. And that's generally the guys that haven't had the opportunity to go out and learn more. After they got qualified.
So the recommendation would, would be them to join a company or to work with another engineer?
Yeah, or even go back to the training provider and say, look, can you, can you offer me any additional training? You know, I just need to be a little bit more— now I'm qualified, I just need to be a little, little bit— I need to have a little bit more base knowledge, you know, before I take on the, uh, yeah, the world, basically.
How many, like, what's the likelihood of people losing their— you know, I'm just trying to answer that question. You know, you're feeling under pressure, you've been in you're inspected about losing your livelihood. How common is that for that outcome?
It's not very common, to be honest. And I say this to a lot of people, it can happen. You're more likely to lose your registration if you ignore emails, ignore inspections. If you have very little regard for gas savings, you're more likely to have your registration suspended until you can prove otherwise, basically. But in terms of how bad you'd need to be an engineer, it's not a case of, right, you didn't pass, you know, you're far from good enough. It would be a case of, right, we're going to put your registration on hold until you can prove to us that you can do better. Same as like complaints. I mean, if you did something, if you did something that was dangerous, if you left an appliance that was dangerous, you would be asked to rectify it and then that would probably trigger a competency inspection. You'd rectify something and then it'd give you then that opportunity to explain why you left something like that. But again, this is rare. This is rare. Some companies, bigger companies, have a lot more complaints because they're a bigger company, but they don't lose their registration. If they can prove that they've dealt with it and they can prove that they can do it right, they're given the opportunity. You know, that sort of thing.
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For engineers who get that email to say you've had a concern raised against you, I often say that it's a horrible email to get, you know, it's a horrible email. But I often say, you know, go respond to it, speak to GasSafe, deal with it, you know, follow their instructions. Do they want to meet you at the site? Because sometimes it can be very minor, and most gas inspectors are not going to give you a hard time because of of, you know, something you did wrong. It might be a building regulation, not a GasSafe regulation, and they're not going to give you a hard time just calling you out to rectify, you know. Yeah.
And most of the concerns, are they kind of like a misunderstanding, or are they— they tend to be quite serious, or where do they come from?
It's a mixture. It's a mixture, really. Some of them are where, you know, some— someone else, they've had a different engineer come around, and this engineer said, oh, that's not right, you should call GasSafe. You know, sometimes it's blown a little bit out of proportion. Sometimes, you know, genuinely something's been done pretty bad. Yeah, it was sort of right, Gas Safe went out. It needed highlighting. This engineer needed highlighting because if they've done that once, they've probably done that more. You know, they've done it again. So yeah, so it does vary. Some of them we've had before and I had and I said there's absolutely no reason for Gas Safe to get involved. But once a complaint's been made or concerns been made, you have to be to deal with it, to check it out, that sort of thing. But a lot of the time it might be we've come away and gone, yeah, there's no further action. The engineer doesn't need to worry, that sort of thing.
Because both of these, the inspections and the concerns, they are threatening your livelihood.
Yeah, it's a horrible feeling. It is a horrible feeling. And fortunately, I have had it in the past, but fortunately, like many years ago, but it turned out to be sort of not a false alarm as such, but it wasn't actually a gas safe matter. But it's horrible getting that message sent over, that email sent over to you saying your business has been brought up in a concerned case. That's horrible because you are thinking, oh, I'm in trouble there.
Well, no, it's fair enough, especially if you have a lot of pride in your work.
Yes, right.
Anything else that'd be useful for people with an upcoming inspection? It'd be useful to know.
Well, to be honest, hopefully what we've said already would put people at ease. If you don't feel ready, that's another thing. If you don't feel ready, then let's say you're not doing any gas work, you're new to it, then you can speak to Gas Safe and just say, look, I don't think I'm ready yet. I'm doing a bit of additional training. You can put it back. What you don't want to do is jump into an inspection where you are underprepared because that could end up coming off worse than if you actually spoke to GasSafe and said, look, I'm happy to voluntarily suspend my registration until I'm ready for an inspection. You can do that. I used to speak to people all the time who just said that they haven't got enough work on or they're working doing something else for the time being because of money. So I'd often say to them, look, well, if you're happy to voluntarily suspend your registration until you're ready, and then you can ring up GasSafe and we can reboot you back in. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that if you don't think, like I say. But generally, as long as you should know how to do a tightness test, anyone who's having an inspection should know how to do a tightness test from start to finish because that's your bread and butter. That's what you should be doing on every job that involves touching the gas. Doing a gas safety inspection, it's good practice. It's good practice to do a tightness test and know it and know it inside out because you might find faults. A lot of people do. A lot of people do find faults with doing a tightness test. It might not be nothing to do with the actual tightness test itself. It might be to do with the gas meter regulator. Regulator's faulty, you know, ECV's faulty. You know, they're sort of things that sort of do get overlooked quite often, especially when people are rushing. But if you know all of that, you know how to do the process, and then you can move on to the appliances, then yeah, generally that's— it's all methodical as long as you have that way of doing that process of how you would do them checks, in what order, you just stick to it basically. And that's all you need. That's all people need to, need to understand. And it hasn't got to be rushed. That's another thing. It hasn't got to be rushed. There's no time limit. It's just showing that you can do it and do it safely. Yeah, exactly.
No, that sounds very good. Thank you very much for your time. Really appreciate you coming on, Terry. Very good information. Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
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