Greg Wilkes (00:01):
The construction industry can be a tough business to crack from cash flow problems, struggling to find skilled labour, and not making enough money for your efforts, leaves many business owners feeling frustrated and burnt out. But when you get the business strategy right, it’s an industry that can be highly satisfying and financially rewarding. I’m here to give you the resources to be able to create a construction business that gives you more time, more freedom, and more money. This is the Develop Your Construction Business podcast, and I’m your host, Greg Wilkes.
Greg Wilkes (00:39):
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. On this week’s podcast, we thought we’d go down a slightly different angle because I know a lot of you are really hungry to grow your businesses, and many are looking for different revenue streams. I connected with Johnny Millard from UK Fire Door Training at the UK Construction Week last year, it was a great event for us both. We had a bit of a chat, and it was really fascinating to learn all about what Johnny Millard was doing with this company and how really it can potentially offer a great revenue stream for many different construction companies. I thought we’d invite Johnny onto the podcast today, and we’ll do a little bit of a deep dive into who his company is, what they do, and how it might benefit you. So Johnny, really appreciate your time coming on the show.
Johnny Millard (01:24):
No problem, Greg. Thank you very much.
Greg Wilkes (01:26):
Brilliant. Good stuff. Johnny, first of all, you can give us a little bit of a better introduction. Do you want to explain who your company is and what you really do?
Johnny Millard (01:35):
Yes, sure. I might give a bit of a description of how we got to where we are today by giving a little bit of history about myself. I actually used to be a secondary school teacher. I was a history teacher for about five years. Wasn’t really for me as an individual. My dad’s a carpenter, I was more drawn to working with him in the business rather than in teaching. The opportunity came up one summer, I think it was 2019, to make that transition. It was around about this time, so this is obviously post Grenfell, that we noticed there was a gap in the market for fire doors. We’d been asked by a lot of people to get fire doors signed off on projects that we were on. We were paying these people 400, 500, 600 pound a day. We said, “Well, why don’t we go and do it ourselves?” Between September 2019, I went from being a secondary school teacher, and by the November I was a fire door inspector. It’s a drastic, drastic change. We created AJM Fire Safety, which is our other business, and that was a fire safety, predominantly within fire doors compliance business. Being an educator, being in a teaching environment, it became very apparent to me very early on that the standard of training within the industry was, in my opinion, not up to what it should be. A lot of the courses were quite bland, very boring. They were dictatorial. They were very much a case of you press play, you listen. When I was a teacher, if I’d have said to my bosses, “Don’t worry about the upcoming scheme of work, I’m just going to do a voiceover and a glorified PowerPoint, and I’ll just press play at the beginning of every lesson” I wouldn’t have been in that profession for very long at all! It’s not a very good way to learn. So, through doing what we did with AJM Fire Safety, I learned a lot about fire doors. Then I went, “well, why not do our own training?” And that’s precisely what we did. We decided to create high quality courses that are sold at a reasonable price. They’re more interactive, we give lifetime access to the materials, we provide ongoing support to all of our learners. Through that process, we believe that we are offering a more high quality product, high quality service and that our learners are (I think the best way for me to put it is) their knowledge retention is higher, their learning experience is greater. Again, I’ll just return back to the price. There was a lot of courses on the market that were 1000, 2000, 3000 pound. You go to university, you’ll spend 9,000 pound in a year, but you’ve got access to libraries, world class lecturers, equipment, ongoing support. If you’re writing essays, you can have feedback on the essays that you’re writing. Why should a course cost, 50% of that, let’s say that course is four or five grand, but you’re not getting half a year’s worth of university experience? You’re getting an online course that you press play on. For us, it was about providing high quality courses at a reasonable price. That’s what we’ve built over the course of the last two years, is a system, a culture of greater learning, greater opportunity, and providing that to our customers.
Greg Wilkes (05:22):
Yes, you can certainly see that on your reviews on your website, people that are reviewing the courses, that they’re obviously hitting the right spot. I know I’ve been on some dreadful courses in my time. I think I did an electrical course that was about five days and a plumbing course. What else did I do? SMSTS Health and Safety course. To be honest, you pay through the nose for some of these things and the teaching is just shocking <laugh> it’s absolutely shocking sometimes, not in every case. You’re pulling your hair out and thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait for this to be over.” What is it that makes yours slightly different? Is it the interactive element? Is that why you think your quality’s slightly better?
Johnny Millard (06:02):
Yes. What I would say is that we’ve brought modern teaching techniques to the construction and fire door arena. It’s not revolutionary, what I’ve done it’s not necessarily reinvented the wheel. It’s just applied good educational techniques to that sector. It’s a good question because it’s things like…On our on our lesson, it’s broken down into lessons and sub lessons, and there’ll be a little bit of text to read, but it’ll be no more than a short paragraph. It’ll be broken down, and then there’ll be a video, and then there’ll be a task related to the video. Let’s say it was a sequence of how to install a fire door frame. Then at the end the question will be, ‘write a summary of the video or write a summary of how to construct a fire door frame’. You are allowing the user to be engaged with the content. They’re actually doing a lot of the learning themselves. Then there’s a lot of content where it’ll be things like, ‘fill in the missing word’, drag and drop tasks. People could put two and two together and they’re learning through the action of doing something. They’re learning through the action of picking something up and moving it over there rather than just mind numbing reading or mind numbing listening to somebody read that out to them. Of course, they can re-go over these tasks more than once. Fill in the missing word tasks. Some of these drag and drop type tasks involve images as well. The frame is a good example. I could tell you what a miter joint is, I could tell you what a half lap joint is, but it’s much better to have the pictures of a miter joint and a half lap joint and get the people to drag and drop them into the correct areas. It allows learning to be done much, much quicker because you’re not reading 10 minutes worth of stuff, you’re just visually seeing it. Knowledge retention is much higher. There is something, I don’t know if many people are unaware of this, but there’s a thing called the ‘forgetting curve’ in education. I could teach somebody something, but after 30 days, their knowledge retention will be as low as 5% to 10%. After a year, it’d be around about 1%. In other words, if you had one day of learning, if you went on a one day course and paid a lot of money for that one day course, after a year, you’re going to remember 1% of it. It may not be a 1% that’s particularly useful. It might just be something that you picked up on the day, that stuck in your mind because it jogged your memory of something. Whereas if you repeat an action, this forgetting curve starts to get shallower and shallower over time. That’s where the lifetime access comes in. When people are repeating those tasks, they’ve got the access to the ongoing support via email and telephone that allows them to maintain and retain this knowledge over a longer period of time.
Greg Wilkes (09:24):
Yeah, that’s really useful, isn’t it?
Greg Wilkes (09:26):
You mentioned earlier on that you initially got involved in the business post Grenfell. You saw a little bit of a need there – obviously an absolute terrible tragedy the greenfield terror disaster – but the positives that might come out of this, are we seeing better regulations and better standards now being adopted across the board?
Johnny Millard (09:49):
Yes, absolutely. For those who are unaware, we are recording this on January 23rd 2023. Today alone is the enforcement of Regulation 10, which is in England only, but for all residential buildings over 11 meters, there now needs to be quarterly inspections of all fire doors within a property and annual inspections of flat entrance doors, which has closed a loophole because the fire safety order, which has been in place since 2005, is very wooly. It says things for example; Article 17, which underpins a lot of what a responsible person is meant to do within a building to maintain fire safety. Article 17 basically says to have a suitable maintenance regime. Well, what does that mean? That’s every year, every month? What am I meant to do within that timeframe? Regulation 10 for fire doors has closed that loophole and added a level of specificity to how often the inspections are meant to be done. That will be enforced in all residential buildings over 11 meters. That’s a huge change. That should bring around a lot of increased focus on fire doors. More people have been able to spot the dangers with fire doors, where there are errors, where there are issues. That increased focus will no doubt, save a lot of lives. So that’s brilliant. But we’ve also got the Fire Safety Act and the Building Safety Act, which are bringing in or ensuring that products are tested, making sure that this golden thread of evidence throughout, from manufacture, supply, installation, inspection, maintenance and housing associations, local authorities, they’re expected to keep this information digitally. Again, that increased focus on traceability on testing and the products themselves, again, will only lead to more lives being saved. There’s tremendous movement there post Grenfell. A lot of this is underpinned by the Hackitt Report or the Hackitt Review, which is a post Grenfell review into what led to the Grenfell fire tragedy? What does the industry, what does the construction industry, what does the manufacturing industry need to do to ensure that this never happens again? We’re starting to see that legislation coming to falls now. There will be secondary legislation further down the line surrounding competency of installers as well. Technically at the moment, how it works for fire door installers, the inspectors say that they need to be competent. But even the definition of competency is extremely vague. What does competency mean? Technically it’s somebody who’s got relevant training, qualifications, and experience. But how much of those things? What qualifications? Yes, they’ve got to be relevant. But how long do they have to have studied for? What level does it have to be? What constitutes experience?Experience with tools, experience with fires? It’s very, very wooly. A lot of this, over the course of the next few years, is going to be more specific, more drilled down into exactly what defines competency. UK fire door training will be at the forefront of providing that to our customers and ensuring that they have that level of competency.
Greg Wilkes (13:29):
Yes, fantastic. How big is the industry in terms of what you cover? If someone wanted to get into fire inspections or installing fire doors, what is that covering? Is that schools or flats or can you give us a bit of an example of what areas they might be getting into?
Johnny Millard (13:47):
Yes. The number of properties and the types of properties are limitless, absolutely limitless. The vast majority of work probably would be in places like; high rise buildings, social housing, where your local authorities provide housing to people within the community. But you’ve also got hotels, schools, which you’ve mentioned. I think there’s something like 6,000 schools in the country (I can’t remember if that’s secondary schools or primary schools and secondary schools). You think every single one of those schools has got to have an average of say, 20 / 30 fire doors. You start doing the maths. There’s just so many doors out there, so many fire doors out there. Three story houses, apartment blocks, they’ve all got fire doors in them. Every single year in the uk there are 3 million new fire doors manufactured and installed. Quite frankly, there isn’t enough inspectors to go around and check all of them. You mentioned hospitals. We’ve worked in mental health units. There’s a bigger group of charities now that provide support to young people, vulnerable young people. They are regulated by Ofsted and Ofsted are very hot on them having fire doors. You could actually, wiithin fire doors, focus on a niche within a niche. You can focus on housing associations, you can focus on hospitals. Fire doors themselves is a niche within the construction industry, but there are niches within the niche. They’re very, very lucrative. Let’s say you became a fire door inspector and you became the preeminent top person in the country at anti barricade, anti ligature doors that are within a mental health unit setting. You can make a tremendous amount of money and in the process contribute to saving lives, which I think is phenomenal.
Greg Wilkes (16:07):
Yes, that’s fantastic, Johnny. As an example, I don’t know if you know the answer to this or not, but say you were going to go into a school and you were going to inspect all the school doors. There’s probably going to be some of them that are going to fail and need upgrading. You’ve got all that potential work there too. But, say you won one school contract and you went in there and inspected it, what are the regulations around how often that school has to be inspected?
Johnny Millard (16:33):
Yes. This is where that wooliness from the legislation comes in. A school, even now, comes under the fire safety order Article 17. They need to have a suitable maintenance regime. That’s quite vague. What people would point to is BS double 9 double 9 or BS 9999. That makes reference to having six monthly inspections. If you have a fire door inspection done every six months, I’d say you are within the legal parameters, unless now you’re in a building that’s over 11 meters, as we’ve mentioned with Regulation 10. It’s that sort of six monthly inspections. What this allows people to do is set up an ongoing contract. You can come in, “We’ll come in twice a year” or even you could set up a contract over the course of five years, and that means you’ll be there for 10 visits. There’s a big movement now towards data tagging doors as an inspector, tagging the doors with RFID pins or QR codes on the doors. Providing a service to their customers and their clients that allows them to maintain their stock digitally. If you go into a building and inspect all the doors, point out all the faults, get the work done, and then maintain that contract, again for a lot of people who are in the construction industry, it’s that bread and butter and it allows you to plan for the future because you know that that contract is going to be live in year one, year two etc. We’ve seen a tremendous amount of companies, not just in fire doors, but those ongoing contracts are so vital to the long-term success of a business and those opportunities are also there with fire doors.
Greg Wilkes (18:40):
That’s fantastic. That makes such a difference, doesn’t it, if a company can predict what they’re going to be secured to earn over the next few years. That sounds great.
Greg Wilkes (18:50):
Who would typically come on your course, Johnny? Do they have to be a carpenter or what are the types of people that you are bringing onto your courses?
Johnny Millard (19:01):
The best fire door inspectors (and I wasn’t one of these, so it was a tremendous learning curve for me) the best fire door inspectors are former carpenters. They understand the timber, they understand how things are put together, they understand how to fix the problem. If they understand how to fix the problem, they’ll be able to provide really good advice on the remedial works and how to inspect properly inspecting the door. So it’s former carpenters or current carpenters for the fire door inspectors that are one of our key customers. We get a lot of people who are fire risk assessors. They’re in the fire safety industry, and they are looking to add another element to their company. They do fire risk assessments already, and now they want to add something to do with fire doors so they can give their clients a wider repertoire of services. We do get some people who are looking to move from one industry to another. We are very cautious in making sure that they are going into this with the right intentions. I think I was extremely unique in the sense of being a history teacher in a secondary school and becoming a fire door inspector. Not many people will make that transition. The only reason that I was able to do so is because my dad, his company, it’s a carpentry contractor. My knowledge of timber was able to grow through working in that environment. I’d really point out, if you don’t have a background in timber and carpentry and joinery and you don’t know of anybody who does, it is going to be a struggle because you need to understand those elements. It’s not to say you can’t do it because it’s definitely doable, but it’s not something I’d say “drop what you’d currently do and move over to this”. You have to respect the laws, you have to respect the craft of joinery and carpentry in order to be successful at this. If I’m being honest, we are talking about small businesses, sole traders here, but over the course of the last year we have worked with all sorts of companies. We’ve worked with large housing associations, transport for London, we’ve worked with Taylor Wimpy, Equans who used to go by the name of Engie. We’ve worked with individuals, small companies, medium sized companies who are turning over somewhere between 10- 50 million, all the way up to a hundred million and way up to your government kind of industries, TFL, local councils, and then your multi-billion house builders and commercial builders. It’s a bit wild really, because you can be speaking to a very large corporate company, and then the next minute you are speaking to an individual who’s looking to have a career change or add another string to their bow. It’s really good to have that vast difference in the people who we speak to. I thoroughly enjoy that.
Greg Wilkes (22:28):
Yes, I bet it is. I’m not sure whether you’d know the answer to this or not, but do you ever get to hear of examples of someone who might have initially took a course with you a couple of years back, and you’ve seen their massive business growth through contract won and things. Have you got any examples of that?
Johnny Millard (22:46):
Yes, I think a good example of that, we’ve got a gentleman called Jeff, who (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say his surname! <laugh>) He basically was a fire safety company and decided to do our course, added that extra string to his bow, was able to offer an extra service to his clients, and has gone from strength to strength. He’s now taken on three extra inspectors and within the London M25 catchment area is now one of the leading fire door inspection companies. The profit margins are really there in terms of inspections. You aren’t lugging around loads of tools, you’re not driving a van all day. In many cases you’re working in a nicer, warmer environment. Effectively, with these clients that you pick up (in fire door inspections in particular) it’s ongoing, it’s easy to price, you can figure out a bit of a system and it’s a less of a headache for people who work in that industry than for example: a carpentry contractor. Things don’t turn up, the skip might not be picked up on time, there’s a delivery that doesn’t arrive, somebody lets you down at the fixings, whatever it might be. Theres none of that with fire door inspections and even within fire door installing, fire door maintaining, there’s a finite amount of things that can go wrong. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong with fire doors. But it’s just fire doors. You’re not dealing with the joists and the roofing, first, second big kitchens…It’s more specific. The industry is in growth significantly at the moment. I tell what the big one is, companies who have won a contract and then their client says to them, “What training have you got with fire doors?” And they go on this meandering path to try and figure out what course or what training they need to do. Then they find us, and they realise actually this process is a lot simpler than paying thousands of pounds for a UCAS accredited scheme. It allows them to get that high quality training, reasonable price. We’re finding a lot of companies who were perhaps in that £500k – 1 million turnover, it’s allowing them to pick up contracts that are setting them on that road to 2 million, 3 million, 5 million. That’s really, really good to see when we find those kind companies, fire doors becomes a big part of their growth plan.
Greg Wilkes (25:30):
Yes. I imagine there’s going to be a lot that are listening to this, that this all of a sudden really sounds quite appealing because (not that it’s going to be really easy to do) but it seems like a relatively easy path to be able to get onto this and it’s not going to cost the earth for someone to come and do one of your trainings.
Say someone’s now thinking about this, maybe they’ve got a carpentry firm and they think, “Right, I want to add another string to my bow” What would be your recommendations, where do they get started in all of this?
Johnny Millard (26:00):
Let’s say you’ve got a small carpentry firm. You’re turning over about a million and you’ve picked up a contract within your local area, it doesn’t have to be just fire doors, it can be a carpentry package. And as part of that carpentry package, there’s a fire door element. First of all, we always recommend that anybody who is working on fire doors does the course. We do get some people say, “Could I do the course and I’ll sign off at the doors for my staff?” It just doesn’t work like that. The carpenters themselves need the training. Let’s say you’ve got a team of four. We’ll typically sell four fire door installation courses to that company. Providing that the numbers are sufficient, we are able to provide a little bit of a discount as well. Sometimes we’ll do a bit of a package whereby the fire door installation course can be coupled with the maintenance course and you get the second course at 50% off, as that allows a wider range of skills. One thing I haven’t really mentioned here is the maintenance course, which is huge. Fire door installation is a big industry, but those doors have got to be maintained. Typically that’s an overlooked area. Some companies like to take on that second course as well, get that wider range of skills e.g ‘how do I fix doors that may have a hole in them?’ or ‘hardware that’s been over motised, how do I fix those?’
Greg Wilkes (27:35):
Especially because a lot of these will be, if we’re talking about schools and hospitals etc, they’re going to be prone to a bit of damage and a bit of abuse. <laugh>.
Johnny Millard (27:41):
Oh man yes absolutely. In a hospital for example, trolley’s, beds, the laundry person comes through, smashes the doors, the glazing bead, the seals, they all get damaged. I’ve seen this on doors that have been installed on day one. They’re damaged by the end of the day. Those doors have got to be, legally, they’ve got to be maintained. Those opportunities are there for facilities management companies to be their specialist fire door maintenance provider. We often work with small companies. We’ll provide say three or four courses. We also do classroom training. I went down to Plymouth last year (I’m just trying to think of a good example of this) and there’s a company that we’re turning over 40 million, good size company. 20 people in a classroom over the course of two days. We went through absolutely everything, but they’ve also got that ongoing support. They opted for the online package as well so even after the classroom training, they’d got that access to the online learning as well. It can be anybody from your small companies all the way up to your medium sized companies, all the way then beyond.
Greg Wilkes (29:05):
Yes, fantastic. We’ve spoken a lot about in this podcast about the benefits to businesses and how they can grow. I’m fascinated in business owners themselves, like yourself, Johnny, what’s your vision for UK fire door training? Where do you want to take the business over the next few years?
Johnny Millard (29:23):
Yes, really good question. We’ve got big plans for UK fire door training. We are in discussion at the moment with some industry leading manufacturers so that we can have some short courses that really drill down. Our courses are an overview of everything to do with the laws, the regulations, the building regulations, how to install, how to plan a job. Brilliant. Love it. Everything when it comes to the installation or the inspection of a door, we’ll speak about, ‘how do you inspect seals?’ or ‘how do you install seals on a fire door?’ but what we want to then now move into doing, is some short courses that are very, very high detail on intumescents, the types of in intumescents, how does intumescents work, the manufacturing process, the testing process. Same with overhead closers. We had a really good day last week down at Rutland, Rutland Door Control Systems, (sorry if I’ve butchered their name, but <laugh> give or take) and they provide some really high quality CPD on their overhead closes and self-closing devices. I learned a tremendous amount, and we want to be able to provide that knowledge to our learners where they’re getting a greater understanding of how things like self-closing devices, intumescents, hardware, how it all works. We’ll have a series of short courses and what we do want to build towards is, in the long term (the best way for me to put this) is a masterclass. It’s not a one day course, it’s not a six to eight hour course that you do online. It’s a really high end, high ticket course that is hyper detailed on all of these things. Everything on the legislation, everything on the British standards, everything to do with testing. There will be certain individuals who do our courses that go, “You know what, I want to make this my thing.”
Greg Wilkes (31:42):
They want to be an industry leader in it, an authority.
Johnny Millard (31:44):
“I want to be within that top 10 people in the country, top 20 people in the country. I want to be hyper knowledgeable on this” and we’ll provide that. That’s something we’re going to be working on throughout 2023. Probably won’t be launched in 2023 if I’m being honest. It’ll probably be sometime in 2024. Confidence on the part of the client. That’s something that UK fire door training can’t currently provide. We don’t have UCAS, but we will do. What we don’t want is the industry to be a closed shop where it’s only affordable to people / companies that are turning over minimum 5 million to afford the £8,000 per year, plus £8,000 for an application, plus the audits. You’ve got to take on a member of staff to oversee this. We want to get to a position where the industry is not closed off, more open. There’s a tremendous amount of high quality carpenters out there, who are sole traders or it might be them and two other people that they work with as a small gang. They’re not currently able to afford those prices. We want to be able to open up that opportunity to take on a UCAS accredited scheme for the whole industry.
Greg Wilkes (33:04):
Yes, that’s fantastic. We’ll watch this space Johnny, and it would be fantastic to see that and it’ll be transforming the industry won’t it, once you achieve that. Certainly exciting times for you ahead. If anyone wants to get involved in this now, Johnny, where’s the best place to find you and what’s your website details? Where should they contact you from?
Johnny Millard (33:24):
Sure, no problem at all. Our website is ukfiredoortraining.com and you’ll find all the information on the course is there. If you want to give us a telephone call, I think the best place to go would be ukfiredoortraining.com and that’s got absolutely everything that you’ll ever need there. Actually, I’ve got one other thing that I will be adding as well regarding your last question, Greg, about plans for the upcoming year. We’ll be introducing support via artificial intelligence, so people will be able to get access to 24/7 support via effectively like a chat bot/ response bot where it’ll be trained on all the things to do with fire doors and speak back to them in language that they understand. I think that’s going to be a really exciting thing, because nobody else has anything like that really.
Greg Wilkes (34:17):
No, and at the moment it’s all over the in internet, what A.I’s are going to potentially do and it’ll revolutionise so many businesses that jump on board and get on it. It’s fantastic that you’re thinking that way already Johnny.
Johnny Millard (34:33):
Personally I think it’s tremendously exciting and there’s a lot of opportunity there and if you jump on that train now and say it’s not a fad, it’s not something that you dismiss. I think the construction industry is a little bit guilty of shunning technology. Where other industries are taking it on (technology); manufacturing and agriculture, the construction industry is just a little bit behind and it’s catching up now. Example: tracking jobs through artificial intelligence, conversing with clients and using artificial intelligence the right way, that’ll really set you apart from your competitors as well.
Greg Wilkes (35:20):
Yes, exciting times. I’ll look forward to seeing your developments there Johnny, I’ll be following that clearly. Thanks for your time today, Johnny, really appreciate it. You’ve covered a lot there and I think there’ll be a lot that are listening to this that will certainly be interested in pursuing that a bit further and seeing if that’s a another string to their bow that they can add. So really appreciate your time. Thank you.
Johnny Millard (35:41):
Now you’re more than welcome. Thank you very much Greg.
Greg Wilkes (35:43):
Can I just ask a quick favour? If you are getting some value out of our podcast, I’d really appreciate it if you could just quickly go online, make sure you subscribe and leave us a review on the platform that you’re listening on. That really helps our rankings and just helps other construction business owners find out about the show so they can improve their businesses too. So let me just say “thanks” in advance.
Greg Wilkes (36:09):
If you’d like to work with me to fast track your construction business growth, then reach out on developcoaching.com.au.
