Improving school ventilation on steam

'Communicating with your customers is essential'

There is progress in improving ventilation in school buildings. Wouter Wijma, managing director of Ned Air, notes that after the summer and autumn vacations, the Christmas and spring vacations are also being put to good use in tackling educational buildings. "There is now plenty of delivery, production and planning for upcoming deliveries. I do hope that the manufacturers will have sufficient staff in the future to maintain production capacity."

"School ventilation is still one of Ned Air's main focus areas," Wijma said. "And then it's nice when the SUVIS scheme finally starts to take effect. We are in full production for delivery during the upcoming vacation periods. You still see deliveries, unfortunately, synchronized with school vacations. After the breaking and chopping, we come in with our installations and the installers can create a healthy learning environment in the school rooms."

Vacation Work

Following the fall vacations, the Christmas vacations are now mostly booked up. "And even before the February vacations, installers can already start planning, to install our units." However, Wijma marvels at this holiday-oriented planning. "In my opinion, you can also work perfectly well outside the vacations. This does require some improvisation with, for example, a so-called tropical schedule, but it allows you to work from two o'clock until about eight o'clock. Installers can spread the work out more, do more jobs and thus create more fresh schools. However, as long as the school boards stick to the vacation schedule for renovations, we unfortunately have to stick to it. "This also applies, for example, to the multi-year program of the Graafschap College in Doetinchem. Wijma: "We are completely renovating the climate systems of this twenty-year-old school complex in phases, in collaboration with fitter Alferink. Here, too, we are only using the vacation periods to tackle the central systems piece by piece. Everything is being tackled, from the air handling units on the roof to the ducts and grilles in the classrooms. This is another project co-funded with SUVIS. In any case, the customer is satisfied: we just landed another great follow-up job for the school."

Planning

For the colleagues in Ned Air's work preparation department, Wijma says it is hard work. "The supply problems are still there, so efficient planning is of great importance. On the other hand, communication with the market and thus communicating with your customers is essential. You can count on deliveries being delayed when yet another part arrives late. Suppose you have to deliver in the center of Amsterdam, that a permit has been arranged for six weeks from now and it doesn't work out there, then I can imagine that you can count on a little less understanding. Fortunately, we notice that the market madness is waning. In fact, with decentralized units, we no longer have any delivery problems at all at Ned Air." 

What does remain is the lack of good technical personnel. "Throughout the industry we are short of people," concludes Wijma. "Rough money is being paid for technically trained personnel and nowadays even installation companies are buying personnel away from manufacturers. It puts the robotization of production lines into high gear. For now, we will continue to make and supply beautiful, smart, quiet school ventilation units for creating fresh schools."