Two of Direct Air’s newest engineers entered the new year with F-Gas certifications!

We last spoke to Adam during National Apprenticeship Week 2023 in our ‘Meet Direct Air’s newest Compressed Air Engineering Apprentice‘ blog when he had just started at Direct Air. Adam is now continuing to progress in his engineering role. Josh joined Direct Air later in 2023 and has been progressing in Service Engineer training ever since.

In order to continue progressing, both the engineers are completing courses such as this F-Gas one, developing their skills and knowledge further. Let’s see how the two of them found the course…

About Adam & Josh

Adam went from Military to Maintenance in January of 2023 when he joined Direct Air as an Engineering Apprentice. He now has one year of valuable experience in air compressor servicing behind him.

Josh joined the company later that same year in July of 2023, extending the department even further as Direct Air’s new Trainee Service Engineer, after saying goodbye to the Royal Navy Submarine Service. He’s been moving forward in the Service team ever since.

Adam and Josh recently enrolled onto the F-Gas course and completed it successfully, with both engineers exceeding the 60% pass rate.

What did the F-Gas course involve?

The F-Gas course consisted of one day to complete the theory side. During this, we were learning about the refrigerant system before beginning the practical part of the course.

After learning the knowledge, it was time to put the skills into play by carrying out the practical. Here we learned how to reclaim refrigerant and put it into systems, as well as refrigerant fault finding. Being trained in how to gas and degas safely and efficiently was a really important step forward for us.

Finally, we had to go through the assessment in order to complete the course. To do this, we carried out the practical tasks again but this time we were being assessed on our abilities. During the assessment we displayed that we are confident to braze purge, pressure test and run the system afterwards. On top of the practical, we had 40 questions to answer about everything we had learnt throughout the course.

How has the course helped you to progress in your career?

Having this certification under our belts benefits our development and career progression as now that we’ve successfully completed this course, were able to carry out a wider range of jobs moving forward.

Our new F-Gas skills mean that we can attend customers sites when servicing and degassing of dryer machines is required. Maintaining an efficient compressed air supply is about more than just the compressor, as other components involved in the system are just as important – such as dryers!

Have you got any other courses lined up?

After being so successful on this course, we are looking forward to continuing our education by moving onto the next! In 2024 we have a Nitrogen Generation course lined up, as well as an Air Treatment course and Electrical training too.