Why Gas Engineers Were Struggling In 2025 w/ TomKat Gas Training

We've lost jobs in the past for £5. I would say 10 years ago customers would get 3 quotes. Now they're getting 30 quotes and still not happy, and they keep finding somebody who fits their budget. If you think you worth it, charge it. It's as simple as that. Things like admin, things like marketing, all these things what the company might have been doing who you worked for, you're now responsible for it all. So So the challenges you've got of balancing life and business is massive, and you need, in my opinion—

this is the Field Rocket Podcast. I'm your host, Tullik Priest, and today I'm joined by Derek Robbins, better known as Tomcat. Derek is an experienced gas engineer who also runs a training center based out of Manchester area offering ACS, boiler breakdowns, and many other courses. His YouTube channel, started during COVID and has over 50,000 subscribers. Welcome to the show, Derek.

Thanks very much for having me. The pleasure's all mine.

Yeah, it's good to have you on board as well. If you haven't watched one of Derek's previous episodes, here's a little reminder of the story.

Okay, so I started my apprenticeship with my dad way back in 1983. Then we had a big fallout. Me and my father when I was 22, over money, like you do. And then I started working for a big manufacturing company called Oxley Threads, who manufactured sewing thread. So really, I was a commercial engineer up until 1999 when I joined Manchester City Council. Now, the work we were doing at the council was basically upgrading the homes and we were also getting ready for the Commonwealth Games as well, which were being held in Manchester. Then I started teaching as well at local colleges in '99, and, uh, I was in a serious car accident in 2008, and they said I would never work on the tools again, and I was probably struggling to work for people. So that's how I ended up setting up my my own training school. Uh, it's called Tomcat Gas Training, and the reason why it's called Tomcat Gas Training is because my son's called Thomas and my daughter's called Catherine. So that's where the Tomcat comes from. Some people think we look after cats, but no, we look after gas engineers. So that's a brief history and how I got into the trade.

Today's episode is going to be all about the biggest challenges that tradespeople face throughout their careers. In a sentence or two, why should people care about this conversation?

Well, the challenge is what gas engineers are going to have going over to heat pumps is going to be massive. So hopefully any information what's given here is going to help them massively to overcome any problems they may get doing the switchover from heat pumps to boilers. And whether they're going from employed to self-employed. They've also got massive problems doing that.

What kind of advice would you give to somebody who's employed and looking to move to self-employed? They're good with the trade, but then they're kind of struggling with the rest of it, like the business side, etc.

Lots of preparation beforehand. Now, I served my time working for my dad. My dad was an amazing engineer. People, he worked in food factories mainly, and they would wait for him for 12, 18 months to get on the job. He was amazing at his job, but he couldn't run a raffle, never mind a business. He thought the money when it was in the bank was his, and he just spent it. He was awful. So one of the things I thought of was, if I ever do run my own business, I'm I'm not running it like my dad did. The major things is time. It kind of takes, engulfs you, it takes over your life when you go from employed to self-employed. People don't really understand what's involved. Things like admin, things like marketing, all these things what the company might have been doing who you worked for, you're now responsible for it all. So the challenges you've got of balancing life and business is massive, and you need, in my opinion, is get the right people around you. If you are amazing on the tools, stay amazing on the tools. Get somebody in if you can who does all the admin for you, does get bookkeepers in, get accountants in, use them. Lots of guys use software and stuff like that to help them, but it's all time, and time is precious with your family. My first marriage virtually ended because of the amount of time I was putting in work. I was working full-time, and then in the evenings I was going teaching at colleges, and I was doing 4 nights a week and then working at weekends. You need a healthy work-life balance to get through life, in my opinion. Hi, Producer Alex here, wondering if you knew that you aren't subscribed to the channel. More specifically, 93% of you are not subscribed, and we really appreciate you tuning in right now, but you're missing out on even more interesting content. You're already this far into the episode, so why not subscribe to the Gas Engineers Software YouTube channel? Because showing your support genuinely makes a difference. It's free, takes a second to click, and helps us continue to make the content that you want to listen to. Speaking of, let's get back to it.

How do you kind of like transition though? Because you're, you're saying get all these people in, but then right at the beginning, you are struggling to get the money in, get the work, you know, there is some serious juggling involved.

Yeah, massive. It's preparation. How long? So I was, I was working at Manchester City Council. And I thought, I need to get away. I need to set stuff up myself. And I was lucky that one of the other guys at the council who ended up being my business partner, Andy Beazer, he's also got a training center in Southampton. We could bounce off each other. And his dad was also very good with accounts. So he did all our accounts. So for us, when we started off, it was all— we spent 12 months literally 12 months prepping it. Who's going to do this? Who's going to do that? And what we're going to do? And it's all about preparation. And if you can't prep, wait till you can, because that is the issue. Because there's nothing worse than your wife or your husband leaving you because you're not at home. It's horrendous. So it's a balance, and it's a, it's a massive learning curve as well.

Do you think training schools should be, uh, you know, When they're teaching on the skills, kind of on-the-job skills, but what about the rest of it? You know, like tax, managing cash flow, all of those kind of things. Should that be included in the course?

No, not as part of the course. The course is all-consuming itself, especially the managed learning program, the gas course, Become a Gas Engineer. It just takes— that takes over your life. Prepping for exams, practical, going on site, earning money as well. If you're not in the trade doing your job, it's massive. But yes, I do think there's loads of people out there to help. This is where social media comes in. This is where YouTube comes in, where you could, instead of strolling through TikTok for hours, you could book yourself on a little course online and stuff like that. To help you manage your business. Cash flow is what kills most self-employed people. That's the biggest killer.

Are you talking about, like, for example, you've got money in the bank, you spend the money, but then April comes around, or whenever your tax end is, and then the taxman says, sends you a bill. Is that kind of cash flow, or what other elements of, like, I just want to make it more detailed as opposed to just the word cash flow.

Yeah, well, yeah, your tax return, your National Insurance contributions, all that stuff. The way we do it is separate. We used to do it, we don't do it now, but it was all about separate accounts, taking out a percentage of what you've earned after you've paid everybody and place it in your tax account. So when that time of the year does come around, you've got that money, but you've got to be disciplined so you don't touch it. So you put it in this separate account, you don't touch it, and then when you need to pay anything, then you, you've got the money there to pay it out. That's, that's the way I did it. I mean, Andy did it right at the very beginning. Obviously, the way business has grown now, we don't really need to rely on that. But when you're first starting off, yeah, money is— money gets tight, it gets Stressful, very stressful.

So if you're kind of like transitioning from a different career, you're doing your training, you do your GAS, what kind of, what's the kind of the next steps from there?

What do you mean, guys coming into the industry from when they're not in the industry?

That's correct, yeah.

It's so if the managed learning program is a minimum of 6 months and a maximum of 2 years, most, I would say vast majority, 95% of our trainees take between 12 months and 15 months to complete because the portfolio is the biggest stumbling block for them coming into the centre. We do it over— they come into the centre for 1 week a month for 8 months. So they can't do it any quicker than 8 months at our place anyway because of the way we do the training. That's not a problem to them. That's not a problem getting the time off work. A lot of guys, I don't know how they do it, but they do things like night shift and then they come into the centre and it's incredible what they do to get into the industry. So that's the time it takes and that's what they've got to put aside. And then while they're doing that, they've got to be doing, like, say, the portfolio, and then they've got to think about the career change itself. How are they going to do that? Where they're going to work for somebody or where they're going self-employed? A vast majority of our trainees go self-employed.

Okay, so that's quite— well, ideally if they have skills they can bring from another industry or whatever, those business skills, then they're fine. But, um, you know, if you are learning, say, all of the gas and then all of the business skills all at once, and then suddenly you need to make money, um, it's, it's, it's quite a mountain— could be a mountain to climb.

Oh, it is a mountain to climb. It's a massive mountain to climb. These— the guys who come to us, they're so dedicated in what they want to do. The ones who aren't dedicated drop off in the first week. Some of them go after 3 or 4 days, they go, oh, this isn't for me, I didn't expect it to be like this, and they drop off. But the ones who— it's their goal, that's what they want to do. They spend hours learning the learning the job, and then after they've completed, then they've got to learn business as well if they don't already know it. It's a huge commitment, huge.

Is this kind of why— because it does seem to be a pattern that you get people that are self-employed— oh, sorry, employed, they go self-employed for about 18 months or so, and then they go back to being employed again.

Yeah, a lot of my friends who are in the industry who I probably taught 25 years ago, 20 years ago, and they still stayed friends. A lot of those set up their own businesses. And then as we've got older, they've gone in. I've got quite a— well, I've got two really close friends who work at Cadent now, so the emergency service gas. So used to be Transco. They decided business, running a business, getting— we're all getting nearly 60. It's a bit too much then. Let's go and work for some. So I get quite a few of my mates have been self-employed for years and then just thought, I need to slow down. I can't really slow down if I'm working for myself, so I'll go and work for somebody. And it's a good plan. They've done really well out of it.

Yeah. So at the end of the day, 5 o'clock or whenever you finish, you actually finish. You're not thinking about work in the evenings and the weekends. Um, just, uh, just kind of like a side— why do you think— this is a bit of a tangent, but why do you think in the country there seems to be like a lack of, um, gas engineers? Why do you think the actual, like, the prices that the engineers are charging seems to be so low? You know, we have a shortage of engineers and you would expect higher prices, but for some reason that doesn't seem to be the case.

Definitely agree with that. Yeah. We're on a slippery slope to nowhere. So yeah, I don't understand it myself. I was, when I was doing on the tools all the time, I was looked in our local area as too expensive. And we didn't get the combi-combi swaps. It was very rare we did combi-combi swaps. We did the big houses. So the rich and famous, we've done works with loads of them because that was kind of our niche. So Yeah, it's what some of the— some of the prices I've seen them charge for swapping a combi, I was like, what are you doing? What? You're devaluing yourself. And that's— you've got to look at when you come— when you go self-employed and you're working for yourself, you've got to think, how much— how do I value myself? How much do I need to charge a day? Now, somebody worked it out not long ago that gas engineers need to charge— I need to make £150 a day before they actually make any money for themselves. When you're looking at van insurance, public liability insurance, your van costs, your flue gas analyzer calibration, buying new tools and your equipment, it's a massive amount of money. And lots of gas engineers seem to be devaluing themselves to get work, and it's, it's one of those things that just doesn't— I don't understand why. It makes no sense. It's a fantastic trade in its It's a skill. We should be classed as highly skilled, which we are, highly skilled technicians. I know if you're just a plumber, that's how we get, you're only a plumber.

Just kind of talking about like the difference in prices. What would you say to kind of engineers that are worried about, you know, losing work if they raise their prices?

Try it. Like say, don't undervalue yourself. Now we've lost jobs in the past for £5. Customers don't— well, I would say 10 years ago customers would get 3 quotes. Now they're getting 30 quotes and still not happy, and they keep finding somebody who fits their budget, and they'll find somebody in the end who will do it. And this is probably why when you go onto social media and you see what engineers put on, oh, look at the state of this job, you know, the standard is sometimes quite shocking, whether they are gas engineers or trained gas engineers, or whether they're just charlatans, I don't know. But, um, have a go. It's— you've got nothing to lose. Increase your prices. We did really well out of it charging above the average from where we were working. That's how we really— I suppose my commercial background got us into a lot of the stuff as well. But like I say, we ended up working for quite wealthy people who didn't bat an eyelid about what we were charging. It was just about the standard of your work. If, if you think you're worth it charge it. It's as simple as that.

Yeah, I think if you turn up presentable, you're on time, all the basics, and there's no callbacks, you know, everything works, everything's been checked, you know, you will attract those customers that, you know, value that. So it depends what you work for. Like, if you, if you're going for the cheap prices, you know, you might end up with a collection of customers that, you know, value just the lower price, and then you are you know, on a treadmill there.

Yeah, yeah, I can, I completely agree. It's, uh, like I said, it's a slippery slope to nowhere.

So it's just those business skills, pricing skills, marketing skills that are just kind of missing, um, to, to actually, you know, put the prices up a little bit more.

Yeah, things change. Social media has changed a hell of a lot over the last 5 years. Talking in chats and stuff like that, talking to other engineers and the plumbers merchants. Even when guys come into the training centre to do their reassessment and when they get their break times, they bond, they're always talking to each other. And one of the things they always bring up is, how much do you charge for landlord reports? How much do you charge for servicing? What do you charge for a boiler install? And when I'm listening to them, what they charge, I was thinking I was charging that 20 years ago. What What's happened?

Yeah, hasn't changed.

No, hasn't changed at all. Everything's gone up in prices of materials, but actual labor costs in our industry has pretty much stayed stagnant.

If you're in this situation and you're a gas engineer, what could you actually do to kind of get out of the cycle?

Value yourself more. Lots of guys I see when they come to the center as well, they've got really nice vans. They're well signwritten, they're smart in the uniforms, they present themselves really well, then they charge next to nothing to go and do jobs. I just don't know how they do it. I don't know how they make a living. But I think it's the area where you live as well. If you live in an affluent area, you're going to charge more. If you're living in a city, you're going to charge more. Where we are, countryside, there is quite a few engineers. There's quite a few training centres. So the prices are low, especially compared to like the London prices, what you see being charged there. We're probably a tenth of what they charge.

Yeah, but London has its own kind of special things that, you know, it's tricky to get around, tricky to park, you know, just the basics of just getting on site is challenging.

It can be as bad here, especially Manchester. I think every time I go into Manchester, I get a fine for going in a non-existent bus lane. But anyway, I stay out of Manchester.

You've worked with countless engineers. What are kind of the biggest kind of training gaps do you kind of see?

When reassessment guys come into the centre, they all seem to struggle with the same things in the assessment. Pipe sizing, purge volumes, gas rating, because they use apps. They use apps for everything now. Everything seems to be an app. But when they come into the centre, they can't use apps. Because they can't use a mobile phone in the center. It gets, you know, they have to put it in this box we have so they can't access anything off the internet. And it's a big shock to them when they come into the center and say, right, we're going to do pipe sizing. And they go, can I have my app? No, you can't have your app. You'll have to learn it. And I think apps have kind of, yes, they're a fantastic tool, but they've stopped engineers progressing with their job. You know, I find it, I'm teaching it day in, day out, and it's not hard. It's incredibly easy. Easy. And we've even done experiments with apps as well to see how quick we can do it longhand to how we can do it with an app, and we always win with the longhand. So apps cause problems for engineers coming in. And then guys, when they come in for the reassessment— when guys come in for their initial assessment, or guys come in to do training, they don't really realise how much you've got to use these things. You know, using basic tools and stuff like that. We've had guys come to the centre wanting to be gas engineers. They've never picked a hammer or a screwdriver up.

How did they decide to become a gas engineer? They just kind of picked it out of a hat, or money?

They just think it's a better standard of living. They see engineers driving around in fancy vans and stuff like that, and they think, I want a bit of that. So they must think it's all— it must be about money. They've think they're going to get a better life and a better standard of living from being a gas engineer, even though they've never touched any tools on it. That's a challenge training them, massive challenge training them, because being, you know, Dad being a plumber, commercial engineer, his kids, me and my brother, were constantly with him. My dad was amazing at doing bricklaying and plastering and general building because that's what he had to do in his apprenticeship, and me and my brother both picked it up. You know, working with wood and stuff like that. It's things we just— I just find natural because that's what I've done as a kid.

You've kind of been exposed to it and you've seen it.

Don't get that. So when they come into the centre and they say they've never touched a screwdriver, they don't know the difference between the screwdrivers. These are the things you don't expect to teach in a gas course.

Do you have the time and resources to do that? Because the course is there for gas and, you know, there's a I would imagine there's an expectation of a certain level.

Yeah, yeah, we— the, the way it's programmed out and the way the, the weeks are done, yes, we do, we teach them pipe bending and soldering, but a lot of the time guys who come into the industry are already plumbers, so that they help massively as well. They help train the guys who've never done it. So the guys who have, who've transitioned in from plumbing into gas, into the gas industry, they help massively in our center, taking— I always kind of pair those up, guys who, who are in the trade with guys who have never been in the trade, and they, they help each other massively. So, but yeah, there's nothing in the course whatsoever for, you know, this is how you use a hammer, this is how you use a screwdriver. There's nothing like that. They're expected to do that on their own.

Anything you want to kind of add else you think that might be useful about just like challenges on the trades?

The major challenges for for the plumbing and gas industry is the changeover to heat pumps. That's our biggest challenge, actually getting the engineers interested in doing it. That's our challenge. We've been running the heat pump courses for 18 months, and at the very beginning, we had spaces for 12, and we were getting 5, 6 into a class. Nobody know— nobody. We might have one person might ring up and say, oh, you're running the free heat pump courses. So there's no— there doesn't seem to be the demand at the moment for the engineers to cross over. They're too busy doing what they do to even think about going over to the dark side of heat pumps.

I think the other thing is, is that let's say, yeah, you mentioned earlier that the average age of an engineer is 55. If you are thinking about slowing down, why would you invest all of this time and energy to retrain, you know, if you're only going to work for an X amount of years left?

Yeah, that, well, this is, this is like I say, this is one of the challenges what the government's got to come across, you know, overcome training, you know, get actually getting the young interested, you know, the 16 to 18 year olds who are not academic, you know, in the past have always kind of gone into the trades. Apprenticeships out there now, nobody wants to take on apprentices. They look at apprentices as a millstone around the neck. The insurance goes up, they can't drive the vans until they're 25 because you can't afford the van insurance and public liability insurance for them. It's a massive, massive cost to somebody taking an apprentice on. Most of the apprentices we get is through the managed learning program, work with the dads. So like my— I did with my dad, my son did with me. Most of them work for their dads, and it's because it's slightly different when it's family. But as of the young school leavers, well, they're 18 now when they leave school, what do they want to do? I don't think a vast majority of them ever think about going into the trades. They want to be YouTubers.

Where does the majority of the, the new gas engineers come from then?

A vast majority of our guys are immigrants, so most of them have been here a long time. You know, they're not new immigrants, they've been here 10, 15, 20 years, and they're, they're retraining. We, you know, we get quite a few Polish guys, we get a few Germans. Who come to us and they were plumbers in their own countries. And, you know, they've tried all the jobs here to get into employment and they've suddenly realised, well, my actual trade was better. But then they have to retrain to come here. So I think in the last 12 to 18 months, I think we've had 2 guys under 20. The rest have all been 35, between 35 and 40 who are coming into the industry. So they're coming into the industry very, very late as well. So it just seems to be that the young just don't want to do the hard graft and labor of the trades. I might be wrong, but that's what we're seeing at the center.

It's kind of tricky though. You just don't know, are they not aware of it or is it like it's a viable kind of option?

I think this is where the schools have to come in as well. Now, 2 of the guys who do assessing for me work at colleges, so they're part-time with me. They come in over the weekends to do assessments and stuff, and they're working at colleges, and they get the 16 to 18-year-old boys and girls coming into the colleges to do the plumbing full-time course. So they can do a 4-year plumbing course, a Level 1 and a Level 2. They're kind of changing it all as we speak. Most of them, once they've done it, they're not coming into the trade. They're going off doing other things because they don't want the low pay of being an apprentice when they can earn more money going working in a supermarket. So that's another thing what needs addressing to actually get the young in is their payment. And again, a company is going to pay an apprentice who's just going to be sweeping up and cleaning up for the first year before they allow them to go touch stuff in people's properties. It's something I've been thinking about for a long time about how it can be changed. And I can't come up with anything at the moment anyway.

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No, no, we help as much as we can. We don't We don't ask for all the money up front. They do pay as you go, which has helped us massively. So they've not got that initial massive outlay. They can pay as they're going along. And because of the way we split it up, one week per month they come into the center, they work it around the holidays and stuff like that. They're still doing the normal job as well to earn money to feed their families. So I'm just in awe of them. You know, when I look at— when I look back at what I did, I didn't appreciate any of it. And it's one of the things where I wish I was committed when I was younger. I was, um, I was playing football up until being 19 as well. So it was— without— I got injured and that was the end of my football career. And then I suddenly woke up at 19 and thought, I need to give plumbing and gas 100% of my time now. And I wish I'd done that earlier. I wish I'd just dedicated myself to either just playing football, because it was really hard. I had to work all day and then go and train 3 nights a week, and it was— and then playing twice in a weekend as well. It was just relentless. So when at 19, when my football career was over, it was like, I can start my life now, I can do something. So it's one of the things where when these guys come in and see what they're doing, it's just like I say, massively in awe of what they're doing. Especially the guys where English isn't their first language. I wouldn't want to go to a foreign country and learn plumbing and gas. They do, and they lap it up, and the amount of effort they put in, it's just fair play to them. It's amazing, really.

Phenomenal. Well, thank you very much for coming on to the podcast, Derek. I really appreciate you coming on. And that was Derek Robin, and he runs Tomcat Training Center. And yeah, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it.

Thanks very much for having me.