It is well known within the industry that trained installers often face delays when entering the heat pump market, with many struggling to secure their first installation job and build up a solid pipeline of heat pump installations.
To address this first installs problem, this project is offering air-source heat pumps to selected newly trained installers to install in their own home. The project is focussed on installers who are in senior roles within small or micro businesses, or who operate as sole traders. By providing these professionals with heat pumps in their own home, we aim to assess whether firsthand experience can speed up the frequency of retrofit heat pump installations, boost installer confidence and increase customer attraction.
We aim for the insights gained from this project to enhance both existing and new initiatives, to build an active and skilled workforce prepared to meet the growing demand for heat pump installations.
This project will provide us with greater knowledge of how to support heating engineers as they enter the heat pump sector – an area where there is currently little insight. By investigating the role that an in-home first install can play in encouraging plumbing and heating professionals to move into the sector, this pilot project will provide insights into the challenges that they face and how these can be overcome.
We aim to gather insights that could, for example, inform useful updates to the MCS certification scheme or improvements to heat pump training delivery. The project’s findings may also interest manufacturers looking to support installers entering the heat pump sector, or local and regional authorities aiming to meet their net-zero targets and encourage industry development in the area.
If the UK is to meet its current net zero goals, the low-carbon heating industry must expand. To achieve this growth, we need about 27,000 new heat pump installers by 2028. We believe that facilitating the first installation for plumbing and heating professionals can encourage more to enter the marketplace.
An extensive review of existing literature and discussions with stakeholders in the sector reveal that newly-trained installers face several challenges as they transition from training to securing their first few heat pump jobs. For instance, many installers struggle to attract their first customer and achieve MCS certification with their initial installations. Additionally, they often feel uncertain about their practical skills and may even still have doubts about the effectiveness of the technology.
We prototyped and are testing an intervention that directly addresses these challenges – giving newly-trained installers a heat pump to install at home. In doing their first installation at home, installers will have a way to practice their skills in a low-pressure and familiar environment, build confidence, achieve MCS certification with their successful first install and use their own heat pump to attract customers.
In partnership with SNIPEF, we will recruit about 20 heating professionals who have not yet installed heat pumps before their training. After they complete the training, they will begin designing their home installations, and will then be provided with a heat pump.
We will establish a control group of newly trained installers who will not receive a heat pump to install at home. This approach will help us understand the typical career trajectories of heating professionals post-training, which is currently not well documented.
To measure the impact of the intervention, we will compare installers’ experiences across these two groups. We will measure different outcomes that relate to the installer’s journey into the sector through qualitative interviews and short surveys at different intervals (for example, every four months during one year).
In collaboration with SNIPEF, we are currently recruiting plumbing and heating professionals in Scotland to take part in the project. They will attend training on heat pump installations this summer and design their in-home installations. Alongside these activities, we are putting together a scaling group which will hear about the project on a regular basis and advise on its trajectory – namely identifying which findings are most needed for the sector and how to effectively scale.
We are aiming to finish recruiting participants and arrange training sessions from June 2024, after which point they will start thinking about their home installation. We plan to give the heat pumps to installers during the summer months. We will then conduct a first round of interviews in autumn 2024 and a second round in spring 2025 to learn about the participants’ experiences, after which we will conclude the project and disseminate findings.
If you are interested in knowing more about the project or are interested in being a member of the scaling group, please contact our project inbox.
If you are a plumbing or heating professional in Scotland, and a member of SNIPEF (or interested in becoming one), and would like to know more about how you can be involved in the project, please contact Richard Campbell.