Spotlight on Gas Safety: Martin Garbutt
Gas Safety Week 2021 took place from 13-19 September, so we took the opportunity to catch up with some of our members, asking them about their careers so far, their thoughts on gas safety and what the future of gas, and specifically gas safety, looks like to them. Martin Garbutt is the Head of Gas Policy & Investigation at HomeServe.
Martin’s career in the gas industry began in the mid-1980s, when he was unable to join the armed forces; “with nothing else on the horizon, I reluctantly started to help within the family business as a heating engineer”, he says. “After two weeks, I was hooked. I started college and completed my qualifications and finally left with a HNC”.
He then joined the local council as a gas fitter and spent eight years working in and around Huddersfield and, by the time he left, Martin was looking after a group of gas engineers. In 2002, he joined CORGI and spent eight years working with the regulator, before leaving and entering into the private industry, where he started to work closely with the complaints departments – identifying that he “enjoyed getting into the cut and thrust of the detail”.
“I now work for a multi-international business as the UK’s Heat of Gas Policy & Investigation”, he says. “I’m now a fully qualified Gas Incident Investigator (GL8) and hold a level 7 qualification in investigative practices. I sit on a number of industry panels within IGEM and also spend some of my time with apprentices in our inhouse academy. This work is very rewarding as it allows me to give something back to the new starters within the industry as they commence on their own journey”.
Explaining why he chose to become an IGEM member, Martin says: “I became a member of IGEM while working in the private sector. To be honest, I hadn't thought about membership until I discussed the matter with my manager and friend Keith Needham (former Head of Technical at IGEM). Keith persuaded me that it would be beneficial for my career, so I decided to apply and was very surprised when I was accepted as IEng status.”
“Being a member of IGEM has opened a number of doors for me - initially sitting as a member of the Gas Utilisation Committee, then joining the Large Business Forum, finally by becoming a member of some IGEM standard committees. These opportunities have allowed me to learn (every day is a school day), develop new skills, gain a better understanding of subject matter but also provide an opportunity to give something back and be part of the system to make the industry safer”.
On how his role supports safety, Martin says that being part of IGEM’s Large Business Forum has allowed him to have input into the work to create risk assessments for when work is undertaken on a property or dwelling that could affect a gas fitting – “the position I hold allows these messages to be circulated through or inhouse engineers and through our network of contractors to ensure that the safety message is passed on to our customers”.
“We constantly work to improve the skills, knowledge and training of our workforce to ensure that, as far as is reasonably practicable, gas work is undertaken in a safe and competent manner. We investigate incidents to establish what the root causation was and learn from the findings to prevent recurrence. The message of gas safety is sung at every occasion through the business and with our contractors”, he adds.
The most vital part of gas safety? In Martin’s opinion, it’s competence – “this isn't simply about the job in hand it's also very much to do with understanding your own limitation and when to step away and say 'I don't know'”.
So, moving forward, what does gas safety look like to Martin? It’s all about competence – which he says is a combination of practical skills, knowledge, experience and training to undertake the job in hand safely: “unfortunately, you can’t learn all that in a few weeks in a training centre”, he says.
“It is vitally important that engineers hold all of these qualities and businesses need to understand that training is continuous throughout the engineer’s career. It is important that, as new technologies appear, engineers are trained to undertake that work safely. This would be more than a simple training course because it will be important to ensure that the training has been absorbed, understood and can be exercised correctly by the engineer”.
In terms of the future of gas as a whole, Martin says “hydrogen is an extremely exciting prospect and it holds great potential for the future of the gas industry, as well as the environment”.