Nuaire: Boosting Green Skills in the Housing Sector

by Chelsea Bailey

As countries and industries accelerate the transition to net zero, ensuring that a sufficiently skilled workforce is created is one of the most crucial actions that we can take to move towards a more sustainable economy. What is Nuaire doing to focus on amplifying green skills?

Green skills are becoming more essential for employers to meet their targets for sustainability, in addition to meeting government guidelines. Boosting green skills will help us move closer to net zero at a time when every action counts.

According to statistics included in the Global Green Skills Report 2022, 2019 saw a change towards greener recruitment. This is evidenced by an 8% increase in job postings requiring green skills annually from 2017 to 2022.

Nuaire is providing installers with support and guidance

Housing Industry Leaders spoke to Iain Jordan, Regional Sales Manager – RMI at Nuaire about the work it is doing to focus on upskilling the workforce and focus on energy efficiency.

Highlighting the importance of providing people with the right skills, Iain explained: “Within the housing sector, whether that is in a newbuild or retrofit setting, the most energy efficient fabric first construction principles and methods are utilised. In addition, green technologies supplement them to achieve decarbonisation goals and overcome environmental and sustainability challenges.”

However, to make sure that these green technologies work correctly and effectively, they need to be installed properly.

Nuaire provides support to its clients via 3D design input and accredited training courses. On this, Iain expressed that: “One of the greatest challenges the industry has to achieve its decarbonisation targets is ensuring that in-use performance matches design intent. From a ventilation perspective, historically as an industry, we have seen many poor installations which effect the performance of the ventilation system employed.”

Therefore, the courses that Nuaire has endorsed and have been accredited to offer are industry recognised and help ensure installers are provided with guidance to improve the standard of installation, set-up, commissioning, documentation and handover.

Training opportunities are needed to drive technology innovation

To guarantee that the industry has the talent available to meet the increasing demand for green skills, effective training needs to be made both available and attractive to people.

Housing Industry Leaders also spoke to Megan Bennett, Senior Marketing Executive at Nuaire.

Megan revealed that Nuaire is focusing on training and progression: “We work closely with local colleges, and we send them the availabilities that we have. We try and get as many people in as we can. 5% of the workforce are apprentices, and for example, one person started new as an apprentice and has been here for 23 years, he is now one of our main board directors.”

With over 40,000 product lines to choose from, Nuaire has plenty of solutions.

Iain added that he believes that making upskilling a key priority, will be key in tackling the loss of local talent: “One of the advantages of apprenticeships is that it helps keep talent local, rather than talented young people deciding to move away because the opportunities don’t exist locally.”

Sustainability is at the centre of Nuaire’s product development

Nuaire launched its Sustainability Strategy last year, in a bid to minimise its impact on the environment by 66% by 2025 and reach net zero by 2050.

Megan stated that concentrating on sustainability and upskilling is everything that Nuaire is about: “It is the ethos of the whole company and the company that we are part of (Genuit Group). We are trying to find the most sustainable products that we possibly can at the moment.”

Megan Bennett

Explaining this, Iain told Housing Industry Leaders that its products sit within decarbonisation schemes: “We are proud to be a specification-led manufacturer, with compliance and energy efficiency driving our product development. The systems we have selected for decarbonisation schemes, most commonly Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR), work perfectly with a fabric first approach to provide effective ventilation whilst reducing the impact on the heating load of the home.”

Amplifying green skills must be an industry priority if we are to meet our net zero targets.

If the housing sector doesn’t provide the necessary training opportunities needed, the sector’s workforce risks being future-proofed.