The conference will explore refrigerant safety and the importance of risk assessment with a programme designed to leave delegates with a deeper understanding of both their legal responsibilities and accountabilities, as well as compliance requirements with regulations and procedures should an incident occur.

While refrigerant safety and risk assessment has been addressed by the IOR in the past, the industry’s latest developments have made this discipline more topical than ever.

The move away from lower toxicity refrigerants such as R404A and R507 is prompting more and more cooling professionals to consider switching to either a flammable refrigerant, carbon dioxide or ammonia. Whichever route is followed, a clear understanding of risk assessment methodology is vital.

In addition to this, written proof of a competent and a meaningful assessment is now essential to comply with the recent changes in the laws, codes of practice and standards. The International Standard on Quality Management Systems, ISO 9001, has adopted a greater emphasis on risk, taking the definition for ISO9000:2015 that risk is the “effect of uncertainty”. All these factors show that there’s never been a more important time to be implementing robust risk assessment processes, especially in light of recent court cases and incident investigations.

The conference will begin with a keynote paper from Maurice Young of Maurice Young Consulting, outlining why risk assessments are needed. This will be followed by six different papers explaining how, if risk is not assessed at each stage, it can lead to deadly outcomes but, if managed properly, it will protect both people and business.

Papers will deal with various aspects of risk assessment, including an overview of refrigerant safety and risk assessment for flammable refrigerants. Other topics will include hazards and personal responsibility, point of work risk assessment guidance, the challenges and requirements of working at heights, working on installed systems and working on air conditioning systems.

The full programme is available on the events page on the IOR website.

The audience will be drawn from all sectors of the RACHP industry, including designers, installers, end users, operators, retailers and contractors. Over 100 people are expected to attend the conference, and the programme is designed to allow maximum input from delegates with chaired question panels and networking breaks.

Visit ior.org.uk/events to secure your place. The IOR is running an early bird rate of £85 plus VAT, available to members only, until 13 May.