Sector — higher education
University Fume Cupboard Testing & Servicing
Compliance across a whole estate rather than one laboratory at a time. Asset-referenced certification, phased replacement, and visits programmed around research and teaching.
Why universities are different
The problem is scale, and an estate nobody has a complete list of
A university does not have a fume cupboard problem, it has a few hundred fume cupboards of differing ages, across several buildings, bought by different departments in different decades. Teaching labs, research groups, engineering, biology and chemistry all use them differently.
The first job is usually knowing what you actually have. We survey and record units against asset numbers, so the estate can be managed as a programme rather than a series of individual call-outs, and so the person answering an audit can find the certificate for a specific cupboard in a specific room.
The second is sequencing. Access windows differ by department, research groups cannot always release a unit on request, and replacement usually has to be phased across budget years rather than done at once.
Asset-referenced records
Every certificate tied to a unit and a room, so a large estate stays auditable.
Phased replacement
Condition data to support a capital case, and supply through our sister company.
Standardised monitors
One alarm type across hundreds of units simplifies training and spares.
Vacation and out-of-hours
Programmed around teaching terms and around research that cannot pause.
What we do
Services for higher education
Compliance
One overdue certificate is an estate-wide problem
COSHH Regulation 9 sets a maximum interval of 14 months between thorough examinations. On a single unit that is easy to manage. Across several hundred, spread over buildings and departments with different access windows, the interval is the thing that quietly slips.
Managing the schedule is therefore most of the value. We hold the programme, flag what is coming due, and work to a 12-month cycle so a delayed department does not push a unit past the legal limit.
Testing is to BS EN 14175, with BS 7989 and HSG258 applied to LEV and extract systems.
University FAQs
More on our full FAQ page.
Yes, and it is a common starting point. A survey records each unit, its location, make, model, condition and extract arrangement, which gives you an asset register to manage the programme from. Site surveys are free.
That is usually the sensible arrangement — one contract, one schedule, one set of rates, with visits sequenced to suit each department’s access. Individual departments can still raise their own orders if that is how your finance system works.
We can give you condition and performance data per unit, which is what a capital case needs — which cupboards are sound, which are being kept going, and which are approaching the end of economic repair. Replacement itself comes through our sister company.
Yes. Teaching laboratories are usually done in vacations; research areas are programmed around the group’s own schedule, out of hours where necessary.
Start with a free estate survey
We will tell you what you have, what condition it is in, and what is due when.