Sector — schools & colleges
School Fume Cupboard Testing & Servicing
Safeguard your students and staff. Testing scheduled into the holidays, documentation a technician can hand to an inspector, and DBS-checked engineers.
Why schools are different
The constraint is rarely the testing. It is the calendar and the budget
A school cannot lose a science laboratory in term time. The examination still has to happen inside 14 months, which leaves a handful of holiday weeks to fit it into — and those weeks are the same weeks every other school is trying to book.
The second constraint is money. A failed cupboard in a school is not a maintenance line, it is a capital bid that may take a year to clear. That is why we quote repair before replacement wherever a unit can be repaired, and why a refurbished unit is often the honest answer rather than a compromise.
The third is that the person responsible is usually a science technician, not an engineer. Documentation has to be readable and filed per unit, because they are the one who will produce it when an inspector asks.
Holiday scheduling
Most of our education work happens in holidays and inset days. Slots fill early.
DBS checked, every engineer
A condition of the job, not an optional extra, because most of this work is in occupied schools.
CLEAPSS-informed
The legal duty is COSHH, but CLEAPSS guidance is what schools are audited against in practice.
Obsolete units welcome
School estates run old equipment. We repair rather than condemn wherever we can.
What we do
Services for schools and colleges
Compliance
COSHH is the law. CLEAPSS is what you get asked about
The legal duty comes from COSHH Regulation 9: engineering controls must be examined and tested at intervals of no more than 14 months and maintained in efficient working order. That applies to a school laboratory exactly as it does to an industrial plant.
In practice, most schools are held to CLEAPSS guidance, and BB88 covers ventilation in school buildings. We work to all three and issue documentation that satisfies an inspection without the technician having to interpret it.
Where a unit fails, you are told on the day, with a clear statement of whether it can safely stay in use.
Schools FAQs
More on our full FAQ page.
As early as you can. Every school wants the same weeks, and summer in particular books out well in advance. On a contract we fix the slot a year ahead so it is never a scramble.
Yes, all of them. A great deal of our work is in schools, colleges and hospitals, so it is a condition of the job rather than an optional extra.
Most failures are in replaceable components rather than the structure, so repair is usually far cheaper than replacement and can be done from a maintenance budget. Where the unit genuinely is beyond economic repair, a refurbished replacement is often available immediately, which avoids waiting for a capital round.
Whoever would have to produce them in an inspection, usually the science technician or site manager. We reference certificates to each unit’s asset number so a multi-lab site can tell which cupboard is which.
Book your holiday testing slot
Free site surveys. Talk to an engineer rather than a call centre.