ACR professionals can attend a City and Guilds briefing event on June 3 designed to inform prospective and current F-Gas training assessors.
The London event will provide an overview of the F-Gas regulations, the content of a new City and Guilds qualification and detail assessment requirements for those wanting to become F-Gas assessors.

City & Guilds is developing a new qualification to help refrigeration engineers meet new legal requirements for F-Gas regulations. and will be launched by City and Guilds this summer.

The existing City & Guilds 2078 Handling Refrigerants qualification meets the current legal minimum requirement to handle refrigerants. The 2078-01 Handling Refrigerants qualification will enable individuals to continue to practice until a yet-unconfirmed date in 2011 before achievement of the new F-Gas qualifications becomes mandatory for all individuals working with F-Gas.

City and Guilds stated on its website 'We strongly advise that the new 2079 qualification is undertaken as soon as possible as there will be limited training provision and a high demand from existing workers'.

The qualification is likely to be called 'the City & Guilds Level 2 Award in F Gas and ODS Regulations'.

There will be four different versions of the qualification to reflect the different work activities that relate to F Gas. These are:
Category l - covers service, maintenance, installation, commissioning and leak checking of stationary RAC equipment
Category ll - covers activities on equipment with a charge of less than 3kg (6kg if hermetically sealed and labelled)
Category lll - recovery activity
Category lV - leak checking.

Each qualification will require candidates to achieve both a theory and practical assessment.
The practical test will assess subject areas such as:
Brazing pipe jointing, pressure testing, refrigerant charging, inspecting for leaks and refrigerant recovery. The theoretical assessment includes assessing state of refrigerant, monitoring system performance for indications of refrigerant leakage and knowledge of equipment record keeping.

The theory assessment will be undertaken on City and Guild's online training site GOLA. City & Guilds recommends refrigeration and air-conditioning centres who wish to seek approval for the 2079 qualification, to apply for GOLA approval now, via the Gola website.

All centres have to apply for a new approval for the 2079 qualification. As well as having the capability to deliver the assessments detailed above, centres will need to have an occupationally competent assessor and internal verifier.

To book email customer.events@cityandguilds.com