The renewables industry is alive and well in the east of England as HVR discovered when it visited one of the region's leading m&e firms
The wide open spaces of East Anglia's fenlands have seen many battles over the years.

The Romans tried to tame them, English rebels used them as sanctuary from William the Conqueror and the Duke of Bedford brought in Dutch engineers to drain them in the 17th century. He met with violent opposition from local resistance fighters - the Fen Tigers.

Today, this fragile ecosystem is still a battleground, but now it is for conservationists trying to preserve thousands of vital species and fighting to roll back the impact of climate change. And here innovative building services engineer Gowing & Hunt is hard at work developing a business built on environmentally-friendly solutions.

The 33-year-old Cambridgeshire company is well into its second incarnation having started out as a domestic heating and plumbing firm. Founder and managing director David Gowing started the business from home in Little Downham and, at that time, his wife Mary was a psychiatric nurse.
'When I decided to give that up to work with David in contracting, people said I probably wouldn't notice much difference!' she says.

Today's company is almost unrecognisable, apart from the fact it is still firmly a family company - daughter Joanne and son Tim are key members of the management team. It is now a fully fledged m&e design and build contractor with an annual turnover of £4million. It employs 16 full time engineers on site and nine support staff in its expansive head office in Witchford near Ely.

It is particularly active in the education market, where it often has to take on staff during the summer holidays to deliver school refurbishment projects. Retirement homes and commercial offices are also proving healthy sources of on-going work.

Offsite

It has also expanded into renewables and is delivering a number of projects using off-site prefabrication, including the building services for Rochester Prison and a number of police stations in London. Work is due to begin on these projects in the near future.

Gowing & Hunt joined the HVCA in 1998 to mark its establishment as a full service contractor and Mary, who is finance director, is now chairman of the association's Eastern Region and sits on its managing council. The company also joined the Electrical Contractors' Association (ECA) this year to reflect further expansion in that side of its work.

'It was Cambridgeshire County Council which recommended we join the HVCA as a good way of raising our profile and ensuring we would be regarded as a significant business,' recalls Mary. 'The legal and contractual advice the association provides has been particularly helpful to us over the years.'

However, her particular passion is training and much of her work with the association is focused on the need to increase the pool of talent available to contractors. She is also a director and trustee of sector skills council SummitSkills.

'People can get a bit fixated on apprentices but the truth is it is difficult to get people of the right calibre to come into the business at any level,' says Mary. 'There is a big skills gap in the 30 to 40 year-old age range created by lack of recruitment during the last recession.'
However, young recruits do have their particular problems, according to Mary.

'Many lack basic life skills and find it hard to take responsibility. This is a huge issue on site, particularly in the area of health and safety if they are not used to doing what they are told.
'Employers should not have to instil people with basic reading and writing skills - we can't be the saviours of the education system.'

She is sceptical the 2-year NVQ courses on offer are enough to give apprentices the necessary
grounding in building services engineering. 'NVQ 3 should be seen as the minimum requirement. Time spent learning on site is vitally important and different to learning how to pass exams.'

Urgency

She is worried the shortage of quality people will make it hard to satisfy growing demand from end-users for renewable and low carbon installations.

'There is plenty of potential in renewables but they have to be done properly. We need to be training people now so we are ready when we come out of the recession. To do that we must have nationally-accredited courses and qualifications for renewable technologies. There has been a lack of urgency over this vital issue and it should have been given more attention when the recession started.

'A national accreditation scheme is essential to make sure installations are carried out to a professional standard by professional firms working in a professional industry.'
One solution to the difficulties in recruiting large numbers of skilled staff is to use labour agency workers and manage them closely. To this end, the company supports the competent person schemes and all its senior staff have completed the training provided by BESCA - Building Engineering Services Competence Accreditation. Gowing & Hunt is, therefore, able to press ahead with its own plans for further expansion post-recession.

'We are pricing more work than ever but a lot of it is on hold because clients can't get the funding,' says Mary. 'However, once the economy starts to move again the floodgates will open and we need to be ready.'

Despite concerns about skills levels, renewables will play a major role in that future. Tim Gowing, who joined his parents at the firm five years ago having worked as a quantity surveyor, PQS, main contractor and with another sub-contracting firm, is developing this side of the business and believes the market is set to change direction when the economy recovers.

'A lot of the renewables specialists operating in our market are not used to working in construction,' he says. 'They want paying upfront, for example. There are also too few of them so prices are artificially high. It needs to become more competitive because a lot of end users can't afford the solutions being offered.

'We have got ourselves into a bit of a hole over payback periods and clients often have unrealistic timescales for recovering their investment but, even so, technologies like photo-voltaics are too expensive to justify on any projects we have looked at.'

He believes too many barriers have been created which have prevented more m&e contractors becoming involved in the market. The restructuring of the Microgeneration Certification Scheme is a step forward and it will be essential to have more renewable projects delivered by mainstream contractors.

Credentials

The Welney Wetland Centre in the heart of neighbouring Norfolk's fenland was an opportunity for Gowing & Hunt to prove its renewable credentials. Literally on the firm's doorstep, this striking educational centre developed by the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust is the centrepiece of the conservation effort in the fens.

Obviously, the client wanted to take a highly environmentally sensitive approach to providing services for the building that houses a major display of wildlife and fenland history, alongside teaching resources for school parties from across the region.

Gowing & Hunt designed and installed the mechanical services. A ground source heat pump forms the core by providing low temperature heat for underfloor heating from 16 boreholes drilled to a depth of 75m. Rainwater harvesting is another feature. Heat recovery ventilation has been provided for the kitchen and core occupied areas.
Its experience on this kind of project is proving invaluable in developing the firm's understanding of the available technologies.

'Ground source heat pumps are excellent but they are not the solution in every case,' says Tim. 'They are restricted by ground conditions. Welney was ideal because there is plenty of space and the ground is moist which makes it ideal for heat transfer and reduces the risk of ground freezing. However, air source heat pumps are more likely to feature in a wider range of projects as they are easier to apply.'

The secret, according to Tim, is to make sure you have a good grasp of all aspects of a project so you can ensure the right technology is chosen for the application. That is why the management team at Gowing & Hunt are so determined to establish the company as an all-round m&e firm with a good grasp of low carbon design fundamentals.

'We are a family firm and see no reason in changing that for the sake of it,' says Tim. 'We feel the rapport we have built up with our clients should stand us in good stead as we seek to expand our range of services. Clients are looking for suppliers they can trust because they have difficult choices to make. We believe the experience we are gaining makes us well placed to be one of those firms.'

www.gowingandhunt.co.uk