I recently attended the annual spring general assembly of AREA – the Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Contractors’ Association – in Vienna.

As the representative of the HVCA’s Refrigeration & Air Conditioning group at these meetings for some years now I have had the honour and the privilege of helping to protect the interests of UK contractors when dealing with EU policy and regulation.

I’ve met some very interesting people from contracting companies around Europe and made some good friends during the process. But the main thing I think I’ve learnt to accept is that across the continent there are so many different viewpoints on almost every conceivable subject that the EU concept of harmonization is probably a pipe dream at best.

In reality there are so many nuances with translation, not to mention the basic desires and ambitions of each nationality, that true harmonization as defined in the F-gas Regulation can only be realised by accepting that we are different, agree to disagree and simply recognise each other’s competencies as good enough once we level the playing field a bit.

The high levels of training and competence among some of the other EU countries put us to shame at the moment. European countries with high levels of competence are Holland and Hungary (both having had mandatory registration schemes in place for several years to make sure all engineers are fully and properly qualified), also Germany because they place high value on vocational skills. I understand that Sweden and Norway have good levels of qualification too.

But being different isn’t a bad thing anyway.

If everybody was the same and thought the same, there would be no progress as there would be no bold inventors and pioneers to break the mould.

Looking at our industry’s past and present there are enough examples of pioneering individuals to fill this page. From the oft-called “godfather” of modern refrigeration Willis Carrier to the modest giants of today like Forbes Pearson, we all owe a debt to those that have changed the face of our industry forever and to those that continue to push the boundaries.

For my part, especially when at AREA meetings, I find the open exchange of thoughts between refrigeration engineers to be extremely useful in broadening my understanding on a professional and personal level. It’s also clear that we can make a real difference to our industry.

As long as we work together.