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What made you want to become a gas engineer? Registered Gas Engineer talks to Saera James – whose traumatic and life-changing experience with her gas engineer husband spurred her to take up a new career – and to the training centre that helped them.

Mathew James will be welcoming a newly qualified gas engineer to his family business, SAS Gas Solutions, later in 2021 – his wife Saera. Like many busy sole traders, Mat can struggle to keep up with the demand for his work in and around Pontypridd. And Saera’s support can’t come soon enough: he still suffers the aftereffects of being shot and critically injured in a terror attack in Tunisia in 2015.

Mat and Saera were on holiday, relaxing in an all-inclusive resort as a reward at the end of a couple of years of hard work setting up their own business after he had left energy company SSE. It was their first holiday without their children, now aged 12 and six.

They were on the beach when they heard gunshots. Saera says: “Everyone started running and people were dropping left, right and centre. Mat went to run but I froze, I couldn’t move, and he rugby-tackled me to the floor.”

As Mat shielded Saera, he was shot three times, in his shoulder, chest and hip. Saera pulled a sunbed over them to try to protect him and then ran to get help. She says: “Mat said, you need to run, you need to get me help. Tell the kids I love them.”

Saera enlisted the help of the entertainment team at a neighbouring hotel, who helped Mat to safety and then into an ambulance. But Saera was not safe yet: hiding inside a hotel, she suffered shrapnel injuries to her leg and side from the explosions that continued to rock the resort.

At the hospital, Mat underwent life-saving surgery. “The bullet in his chest lodged right by his heart,” says Saera. Saera’s family were able to arrange an emergency flight to Cardiff the next evening, where they were transferred straight to hospital and Saera’s shrapnel wounds could finally be treated. Mat underwent further surgery and would spend five weeks in hospital.

Recovery from such serious injuries was slow and painful and it was a year before Mat could return to the job he loved, during which time the couple had no income.

But their plight had been noticed and offers of help started to arrive. A Facebook group set up a fund to help pay their bills and put food on the table for the family, and then a nearby gas training and assessment centre made an offer of help that would change their lives.

GATC is close by where the couple live and work, although Mat had never trained or done his assessments with them. Director John Forrest had read an article about the couple and, realising that Mat would be unable to work for a long time, decided to do something about it.

“We knew he had issues with mobility and had to convalesce,” says John. “But we said, come and train, and learn new skills so

that you’re not sat at home.”

Mat took them up on their offer and started to train in new areas, including LPG and commercial ACS, all offered free of charge by GATC. But he was still recovering and struggling to keep up with the physical demands of being a gas engineer.

Saera, who has a business and accounting degree and had always looked after the admin side of the business, started to work with him, helping him to lift radiators and boilers. Mat says: “I am unable to keep up with the physical demand of being a full-time gas engineer and we found ourselves needing to take on another engineer.

“We decided that the best way forward would be for Saera to become a gas engineer herself. She has been running the day-to-day aspects of the business for the past eight years, and has often used her acquired knowledge to enable customers to get back up and running over the phone, without the need for a call-out.”

GATC was the obvious place for Saera to train. She is enrolled on their new entrants to gas course, and although the Covid pandemic has meant that new-entrant training is on hold as non-essential, she hopes to qualify in time to work alongside Mat next winter. She plans to study for one week a month when she is able to, spending the rest of her time learning on the tools alongside her husband.

GATC’s John Forrest says: “It makes perfect sense for Saera now to take a wage out of the business rather than give it to somebody else.”

The couple want to share their work, with Saera focusing on servicing and landlords’ gas safety record checks, leaving Mat to do what he loves best – fixing breakdowns.

They plan to work together on installations. “I’m really enjoying it and I’m really excited about it,” says Saera. “I’ve never met a female engineer before. And our customers absolutely love it. They’ve said, we can’t wait to see you on your own next year.

“We’ll hopefully be able to grow the business a bit as well. I told my mum the other day, we’re going to be the next British Gas. She just laughed. We’re never going to be that big but the ambition’s there. We plan to get bigger.” ■

GATC in south Wales regularly sees around 12,000 gas engineers through its doors in tandem with its Dorset operation, Technical Gas Training.

The centre, which has 25 trainers and associates, has been affected by Covid restrictions, like many others, but for them it came on top of the devastating flood caused by Storm Dennis in February 2020.

Its three training areas were damaged as the nearby river burst its banks, causing thousands of pounds of damage. But director John Forrest says there was an upside too. “We took the opportunity to refurbish and then came out of the lockdown in May with a brand new centre.”

GATC is now in the process of expanding, creating bigger training rooms that can accommodate more people while still maintaining social distancing. And it’s also created what it says is an industry first, its Virtual Reality Emergency Procedures and Unsafe Situations. The qualification, certified by BPEC, enables gas engineers to rehearse and become familiar with a variety of scenarios without the physical risk.

“It’s immersive technology – they can see it, live it, almost touch it, but it doesn’t exist. Through the VR they go to a property where there’s a smell of gas and they have to deal with the scenario. If they don’t do it, there’s an ‘explosion’,” says John.

It’s all part of what John describes as ‘sticky training’, which is designed to be powerful and is light years away from more traditional methods. The centre aims to provide its VR training in a few months’ time when the risks posed by Covid have receded.

John and co-director Phillip Jenkins take an active role in the wider industry too, with roles on IGEM and EU Skills committees. But above all, John believes in giving back: “We’ve all had a leg-up. Every now and again, where you can, you should do something for someone else.

“The challenge for us is to leave the industry as we found it: sustainable, healthy and safe. We don’t just take money out of our business, we’re putting it back in innovative ways and trying to put it back into the industry as well. You can’t leave this earth just having taken.”

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