071:Bird Control & Bird Proofing: IRATA Rope Access for Large Pest Control Jobs | Jim England

0:00 Hello and welcome to Pest Perspectives episode 71 and this week I had now there's a lot of confusion this week as to who was coming on a hot contention between Jim and Daniel Lucas so what happened was everyone I for some reason I've been doing all sorts recently with dates and everything and i was chatting to him about the podcast on the 7th of july and i somehow just put him for this week and jim messages me on whatsapp well are we still having that i was like oh i've messed up it i'll fix it i'll fix it so i fixed it but yeah so this week we've got jim england on but also just so everyone knows the podcast is now sponsored by powered now they currently help sponsor the podcast because it although i love doing it and i really do love doing it it's not free to run this software costs a few hundred quid a year uh i've got a new microphone you can see it there it's one of them ones i use on instagram and stuff i think it's better uh i had a blue yeah i've still got my blue yeti but i don't i don't like him but um yeah so powered now they're a job management software system if anyone wants to check them out they do you can do all your normal pest reports on them as well so there's a link in there will be a link in the bio

1:28 after but not not during facebook doesn't like that so i don't drop links in there and just to follow up on beauties and boosters last week he announced that pest perspectives podcast is going to be at Pest Tech. So just to let you all know, as he didn't really go into what I was doing or anything, it's going to be on the seminar floor. I don't know which level it is or I'm not sure, but it's booked in for 3.15 p.m. till 4 p.m. So if you're still there, there'll be a live debate panel. I'm still forming the panel and discussions will be beyond common pest control industry related problems but um yeah so more more news on that in the future so this week we have on jim england from he's the ceo of protex if i said that right that's correction protex with an x yeah because there's a few similar sounding names out there and then with c or with t or so yeah we're protex with a with an x so based in the london area but work all over up and down scotland wherever wherever there's birds oh sorry the dog's barking in the background she's probably probably seen a squirrel in the garden so uh she's on the payroll as well so how are you doing anyway well let's just say i'm glad i mean don't get me wrong i love a bit of sunshine but last week um we just had to a couple of days we had to just well we just had to cool it off.

3:11 I think I'm getting old. Just the heat, you know what they say? No, it was ridiculous. It was. It was so hot. And especially in the area that we were working, we was working on a plant deck of a hospital. So you've got all the air cooling machines and they're pumping out hot air, which it was like, we're just like, no, you know what? It's like any inclement weather where it's too hot, too windy, too icy. You have to just cool it off, you know. So, yeah. We had a couple of days of just not doing a great deal, really, apart from sitting in front of the fan.

3:47 Yeah. Still got my little fan here. I haven't put mine down here today because I think I can cope today. I can. Yeah, no, it's a lot better. When I'm hot, I'm hot. Even people see me rubbing my head over a towel. I'm not bothered. Even on video, I'm not, you know, you're hot, you're hot. Yeah, no, it was scorching. but yeah no so yeah it's it's been a busy year so far you know um thankfully lots of work coming in so can't complain you know never complain of being being too busy i did once i remember years ago when i first started and i was like swiss this phone would stop ringing because it was at the time just really busy and i was on my own and be careful what you wish for because it stopped ringing and I went for a couple of weeks of really quite sort of, I was thinking, blimey, you know, it was a fledged, just started out.

4:44 So, yeah, be careful what you wish for. Yeah, that's a good tip, that is. It is. So, do you want to tell people how you got into the industry, kind of, how you got into it? Yeah, I mean, in a kind of, I mean, I never, it wasn't anything that was ever on my radar, you know, as a young man. it was um i left school i left school at 15 actually i didn't really hang around for too long at school it wasn't my thing um and my dad had a stone cleaning business we used to restore old buildings and i did that for about the first six years after leaving school and recession kicked in this was in 91 so given my age now so in fact this is podcast 71 and that's the year I was born.

5:36 So it's rather apt. So, yeah, so did the stone cleaning for about five, six years. And then dad said, look, there's no work. People weren't spending money getting their buildings cleaned. So my brother went off and became a London taxi driver, did the knowledge and drove a black cab. And I joined the London Fire Brigade. And I thought it would be really exciting um I suppose thankfully in a way it's not exciting because really you don't really want to be active because that means that obviously you know you're dealing with you know people that are in uh in danger or their properties are burning or whatever so um but you know I was 21 and I wanted a bit of excitement a bit of adventure and it just wasn't for me it was a lot of sitting around um and so I then decided also to become a London cabbie drove a black cab did the knowledge and uh but always with the view to using it as a platform to do something else okay and quite late in life my dad got involved in the pest control industry um just by chance conversation with someone and i was chatting to him one day and he said oh you'd love it because when we were growing up my dad would take us we used to have ferrets we'd go out catching rabbits We'd go out shooting, fishing.

6:57 It was a bit like growing up with sort of Ray Mears or Bear Grylls as a dad, you know. Oh, okay, yeah. We'd go wild camping. I remember one time we went wild camping and my dad picked a load of mushrooms and he served them up to my brother and I and we ate them. We said, you're not having any, Dad. And he was like, no, no, go on, I'm all right for now. And he basically waited for about half an hour to see if there was any adverse reaction, which there wasn't. Oh, wow. So we were the guinea pigs.

7:27 So, yeah, in a very long-winded answer to your question, it was really a chance conversation with my dad. We were on a journey and he said about, he said, do you know what? He said, if I was a young man, I was 30, 31 at the time. And he said, if I had my time all over again, he said, I would have definitely gone into pest control. He said, you will love it. So that piqued my interest. and I went out with him to get some on the job experience and probably like a lot of people in this industry a lot of people you talk to in pest control are very passionate about it and I don't know what it is I don't know if it's the you know the detective sort of side of it you're problem solving you know yeah you are and I really enjoyed it and then I realized quickly that it's quite involved there's a lot of legislation there's a lot of red tape quite rightly quite understandably so i got in touch with the bpca um and did some training with them and at the time uh the main trainers that they were using were two fantastic trainers who a lot of people will know um adrian mayer being one of them i don't know if you ever came across adrian but adrian was very passionate about urination pillars what mice can cause him he'd get really excited about urination pillars and another great trainer at the time um was clive bows and and clive was a again a fantastic trainer brilliant guy very like knowledgeable he was more onto the cockroaches, bed bugs, you know, that sort of thing.

9:17 He'd do a lot of trials, clinical trials, you know. So if you had an infestation on the go, a big one, he'd say, oh, let me know and I'll come down. I want to try this new stuff out. He was brilliant.

9:29 And so I did the training with him at the time. And I literally went from zero to just running my own business. I had literally no one but me. and I went out there and just back then the advertising was done mostly pre-Google, yellow pages and I took a gamble and spent a lot of money and London is an expensive area at the time to advertise because what they did was they broke the book down into lots of little segments like a trivial pursuit lots of little triangles North, North East, North, North East and so on and you advertised in each area and it was blooming expensive um but it got the phone ringing um and so i was in a good position because i was still driving the black cab which was my primary source of income yeah but i was then doing the pest control jobs in between you know i'd get a few bookings and then go out and do a day of pest control.

10:41 And that helped it to grow quite organically and quite nicely. It wasn't that stressful. And, you know, I was using BPCA forums and NPTA and stuff going on. And, you know, because I've always said never guess in this game. If you don't know the answer to something, the worst thing you can do is try and guess. you know like um i mean now you can just take a photo with your camera phone and do an image search on google and it'll tell you but back then you'd have to get a sample send it off to one of the suppliers um i'll be honest with you although i love ai ai isn't that accurate when it comes to bugs no is it not i'm a bit of a lot of it comes to that yeah it makes a lot of mistakes really it calls calls back if you put in a little black dot thing a lot of it comes up as bed bunk really yeah well that's a good tip it's not it's not not currently very accurate right yeah well like i say at the time none of that existed you know i mean back then none of that existed um i remember i turned up at a job and they said oh it's german cockroaches we had them last year and they're back again and i turned out i saw these things buzzing around and i thought well that's not german in cockroach, but I wasn't sure what it was at the time.

12:05 And sent a sample off and it came back. And it turned out it was a wolf borer. Oh, okay. Living in damp timbers. So, but yeah, no, it was, so yeah, really, in answer to your original question, how did I get into it? It was just really a chance conversation with my dad, you know. And I've always, well, I've always taken his advice, you know, he's been a great mentor over the years. And, yeah, I, you know, I took his advice and, you know, like they say, never really looked back. You know, it's a great industry.

12:43 There's some amazing characters in this industry, some great people. I think you're becoming a character within the industry. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know. Well, you know, for all the right reasons, you know, I mean, what you're doing here is great. you know you're spreading you know the word the gospel of sean you know yeah well hopefully it helps people yeah i think it does yeah so um yeah also another question did your dad work for someone or did he have his own company no so what happened was um my dad was um he'd given up working for himself in the stone cleaning industry yeah and he was actually working doing maintenance for a care home and one day the guy came up from um it was rent to kill to be honest at the time to do an inspection and they were doing their rounds and walking around and you know he was chatting to my dad and my dad was very knowledgeable when he said um to my dad oh do you work in have you worked in the industry and my dad said no no no just you know he's always been very well read on anything to do with wildlife you know you'd be watching a program and there'll be some you know antelope with twisty horns and he'll say oh that's a kudu or you know something obscure um and and this guy said oh well you know at the moment i think we're we're recruiting and i think you'd like it you know so initially he had worked for rent a kill then he worked he went to work for a small family business in north london east london

14:16 north london and then um i started out and then when i got into it he um i needed to employ someone i needed a second technician and at the time he you know he said to his customers like you know because he was very popular with his customers and they were like oh you know see you in a few weeks time and he was like oh no i'm going to work with my son and a lot of people said oh well give us your details and we'll come over to you and he said no no no no no no we're not doing that um and we never approached the not one single client obviously wouldn't didn't want to grow the business like that i'm not trying to sound holier than thou but you know that just wouldn't have been very sporting um so um yeah he came to work with me and he worked with me for a number of years and then obviously older age and ill health he had to sort of knock it on the head and as you know the last time we were meant to have this yeah a few weeks back dad unfortunately ended up in hospital very well it was literally about 10 minutes before we were due to go on you know so um but no so he didn't work for anyone sorry he didn't work for himself no um he just went to work for a couple of well obviously rent a kill to start with and then

15:31 went to work for a smaller firm um and then he came to work with me and he finished off his time working, I'll say with me, as opposed to for me, you know, but, you know, so. That's nice. So, yeah, so it was good getting him on board, actually, because obviously, again, I was getting all his knowledge and his experience and the customers loved him. You know, he'd always come back and he'd say to me, I've got 20 quid in tips today. And I've never had a tip in my life. I think they might have thought, oh, poor old boy, you know.

16:06 He was probably making 100 quid a week on tips. Should have docked his wages, really.

16:16 But then, but yeah, so we, you know, we still obviously function very much as a pest control company, doing all the usual suspects. But then probably about 15 years ago, we started getting more into bird work as well. Okay. Yeah. so before we dive into that can i just ask you because i i don't think you've updated your linkedin linkedin in a while i probably haven't mate no you are the vice president of the bpca former i was a i was a vice i have served as vice president of the bpca so after i did my training with the bpca um i wanted to get more involved in the industry and so I had the opportunity to apply because the vacancy came up on the board and I was fortunate enough to get voted in and then I spent a year or so as a vice president and then I felt like I'd done my time as you know Sean there's never enough dates in the week or hours in the day to fit everything in I bet you wonder how I do the MPTA board the business and the podcast Exactly, exactly.

17:30 I can imagine. It's like spinning plates, you know. It is. You're constantly, you know, you're sort of trying to keep them all going. And I just felt that I wasn't giving it my full attention at the time, you know. So I stepped down. But I had a great time and met some, again, some great, great people who I've kept in touch with over the years. And yeah, that was an interesting time and I'm glad I did it. and I'm sure you're getting a similar you know thing through your connection with NPTA another great organisation obviously on the board of directors so you helping a lot of i learned now because a lot of pest controllers think oh it's it you know when you go in you don't know everything's so easy playing and it's not when you get to the other side it's not everything's not as simple because going in you think ah I can this this that that and you realize that you've got it's a lot it's not as easy as you think it's going to be but I enjoy it I do yeah that's good and I think you bring if you bring your passion to that to that role that you're doing yeah which you clearly do then you know it's it's a win-win in it you know because when I don't mean to be I always said to them that I because I always give my opinion whether you like it or whether I know it's going to be popular or not what you see is what you get hey I do bring things up and they're like you know oh I didn't see that you know things a different a different opinion and because he says oh we don't we don't want the thing the main thing he said was we don't want a nodding duck you know you just sit there and don't talk I definitely talk yeah yeah yeah

19:22 Yeah, I mean, like you say, you've got to be, I think you've got to be like that just in life, you know, whatever it is you're doing. Just if you don't like something, you know, don't hold back, you know, be polite. But, you know, I mean, how many times, you know, I think it's maybe a British thing, but, you know, you might be in a restaurant and the food isn't great. And, you know, the waiter or waitress comes over and says, oh, how's your food? And people go, oh, yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah, yeah.

19:49 But I won't. And I'll say, well, actually, to be honest with you, it's not good. It's not brilliant. You know? Yeah, I can't. Although I can do that on the floor, I've never done that. I have. Oh, I've done it plenty of times. Oh, he will. He'll easily do it. No filter, eh? Dad, good old dad. He will, yeah. Yeah, I've got one like that. Yeah. Yeah. But no, you are right. That is what British do. Yeah, yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's all right. Yeah, it's great. A lot of them, though, I've seen it happen.

20:17 They don't know what to say to you when you do it. They have to go and get someone. Because no one ever says it. The way I see... The way I see it is you'd be doing a disservice to them if you didn't tell them it was bad, because how can they improve? You know, if it's bad, it's bad. And if they've got it wrong, then, you know, then it's like credit where it's due. You know, if someone does a good job, if I turn up to look at a job that someone's done and the client says, oh, well, you know, I'm not sure.

20:44 And I'll look at it and I'll say, to be honest with you, they've done exactly what I would have done. Yeah. But similarly, if it's bad, I'll say, yeah, you could have done it better maybe. You could have done this, could have done that. But no, I think you've got to tell people how it is because otherwise, you've got to be true to yourself. Exactly. Yeah. Hello, Jason. Thanks for popping in, mate. And Adam, thanks for popping in. I've messed the algorithm up, you see. Usually I'm on a Tuesday. I've messed it up a lot of people don't come on even though I've advertised it so yeah that's good because I did want to mention it because you're on the you had it on your LinkedIn you might want to you might want to edit that slide and put former because it does say is there a date on there?

21:41 no it just says I am the Vice President of the British Press Control Association oh sorry no no sorry i left due to work commitment but wish to board the association of vessels ah see didn't read it properly oh so sure school by error yeah i'd be worried then exactly but uh yeah no i wasn't doing a um what's his name the author um oh god politician i think it was a politician also reading your linkedin i hear you've been on TV? We did, you know what, we did a spate of TV stuff a few years back now.

22:21 Probably did about four or five appearances on the BBC News on the breakfast sofa. First time I went on, I'd never done any media stuff and I got asked, would I like to go on and talk about a chap that had drowned a squirrel? um he'd caught a squirrel in a cage trap and he had drowned it and quite rightly he was prosecuted because his neighbours saw him do it and he got fined about 1500 quid okay so i got invited on so i've gone down to the bbc this was at wood lane at the time this is going back a few years before it moved to manchester and uh i'm sitting in the green room waiting to go on there's another chap there sat there with me and he said um oh what are you here talking what are you going on to you going on the uh the sofa and i said yeah i am actually yeah just going on in a minute he said oh so am i what are you talking about i said squirrels he said so am i i said oh okay then so he said what do you do then i said um pest control and he said and his friendly demeanor changed instantly he just went so you kill squirrels i said well if they go into people's homes then we're obligated you know we can't release them we have to you know and uh and then they went right lads you're on i'm like oh no they did that on purpose yeah like good cop bad cop you know so um squirrel lover squirrel killer um i mean it and i'm trying to style it out you know but um It was quite, well, funny when I look back on it.

24:00 But then, yeah, we did a few... Did you ask him, though, what would you do if you had squirrels in your loft, chewing up your wife? Well, I said, look, if we've got squirrels in the loft, we're governed, you know, imported animals, et cetera, blah, blah, blah. You know, I said, we can't take them up the road and let them go because we'd be prosecuted. We're governed by legislation, you know. So, yeah, basically, I did – what else did we talk about? Oh, Super Rats. I think there was a guy who'd caught a rat, and he had a picture of it on, like, a litter picker.

24:37 But when he's on it by the camera like that, it looked like it was about three foot long, you know. And then we did Rats at Downing Street on the ITV News at 10. And then we did a few programs. We did a program called Dirty Britain, which went out on ITV, and that was following us around for about four episodes over two seasons.

25:06 And then we also did a program with Sarah Beeney called Help My House Is Infested. Okay. And we went to this one property, and this guy said he had a rat issue. And I said, how long have you had it? he said oh well since i've lived here really i said well how long you lived here you went 23 years i was like i thought like yeah i thought he was gonna say like six months yeah so um so yeah you meet all sorts don't you in this game well yeah i mean see every every did you going on tv did it boost your business in an in work did you get any more work out of it at all it's hard to say i i you know what it can be a double-edged sword because like you know i remember one lady phoned up and and she said uh oh i saw you on the television do you do you get rid of squirrels and i said yes we do madam and then she launched into a load of abuse about what horrible person i was you know so you've got to be careful with um with with with anything like that because it it can be a good thing but it can also it can also blow up in your face you know no yeah i'll get that i was just hung up did you hang up you want me did you just hang up on that i would have done uh yeah i i might have uh i might have goaded her a bit no i wouldn't have done no no i um no i would yeah i think it was just like yeah so i'll put you through to our hanging up department you know yeah just just got just just got to go to a new squirrel job i've got to go bye

26:53 i've got to go we've got a rush on squirrels at the minute but I live in quite an old house and I had a squirrel getting in at the back there some squirrels getting in at the back of the house so I popped up one of the old good nature traps you know and over about four days took out seven so they chose the wrong house on that occasion they did good natures I find they even work for me I find they work or they don't and I usually have more luck with the WCS traps. What happened with the Kania traps?

27:33 I think, did the guy who make them pass away or something? I've never had them. My friend's got them because apparently you can buy them second hand off eBay. They are still on the trap approval order, but they don't make them anymore. He said they're really good. I'm not sure if the chat... I think they were Canadian. And I think, I mean, maybe some of your viewers or listeners will know the answer to that one. They probably do. Yeah, I heard that maybe he passed and maybe the business folded under that.

28:06 I don't know. Maybe. I'm not sure. But they were brilliant, Sean. Absolutely brilliant. Easy to set. And there was no ambiguity with that trap. It was pretty lethal. Yeah, I mean, he said, he said on the trap approval list, you can use it. You've got to find some second hand if you want them. It's a shame someone, there you go, maybe someone listening might pick up the mantle and start reproducing them. Because they're quite a simple design. They're not that complicated. They're very easy to set.

28:42 So, you know. Yeah, we use WCSs and fen traps. Fen traps, yeah. Yeah. still get used to yeah the old fingers i'm not broken broken i think but yeah run a set sometimes yeah yeah you gotta uh gotta watch what you're doing gotta stay focused you definitely have so you gotta make sure as well to remember to take off the safety catch you know yeah i think everyone's done that because i put them in the quill boxes as well sometimes and what i do is i put a little get a little screwdriver once it's set in there then i do it like i do it like that you flick it off yeah yeah yeah yeah wise move i think yeah but um so how did you go from obviously working with your dad to expanding the business do you have a lot do you have a lot of technicians that work for you doing because you mentioned you do all kinds of pest control no so we we do general pest control um and like i say the bird side of it was the the thing that really um i've been really focused on now for probably about the last 15 years so the the bird side of it is something that um we started to get inquiries about bird work and um we we started doing it and you know i know self-praise is no praise but we found that we were you know we were we were good at um then we got in touch with uh some of the big national firms

30:18 and okay inquired if they were looking for any any subcontractors and we we worked with uh the two big names out there for a number of years um and then about five years ago i stepped away from both of them because it just wasn't it wasn't working out for us it wasn't it wasn't a good mix I felt so what what we do now is we're a lot of a lot of we obviously we get our own work organically for our own customers but we we do a lot of work with a lot of you know companies out there from sort of sole traders through to you know bigger companies that might employ 20 30 40 50 staff um but obviously we're going under their banner you know we don't turn up with protex so the vans aren't signed so we don't turn up in a signed van um because that wouldn't be practical um and so if we if you gave us a lead and said oh jim look i've got this client who's got a bird issue it's a warehouse that I look after come and have a look at it for us we turn up and I say hi my name's Jim from Oakham Pest Control and we go in effectively as part of your organisation so we got some praise there oh thank you Adam cheers mate very nice I've paid him a lot of money to say that he's sitting next to me but yeah no

32:07 no like I say and what we do as well Sean is obviously we don't discuss anyone's business outside of so if we look at a job I mean it happened only a couple of weeks ago we looked at the same job for two companies and I told both companies look I'd already looked at it for one company and then a second company contacted us and said look I've got this job at this location I said I've already looked at that and they were like oh who for and I said well I can't say but it's another another pest control company um and what we did was um we said look this is our recommendation and this is our this is our cost whatever way you want to sell it whatever way you want to mark it up we're not interested that's nothing to do with us um obviously one company won it one company didn't ultimately we got it because we were looking at it for both companies um and um so yeah so what we do if you if you called us up and said look jim i've got this job can you come and look at it what what we do is like i said we'd turn up under your banner um look at what's needed look at what access is needed is it ropes Is it Mew?

33:26 Is it Tower? Is it whatever?

33:30 We would then put together effectively like a package. So, right, Sean, if we was doing that job for ourselves, if we were going direct to the client, we'd charge them 5K. This is all hypothetical, but we'd say it's about a 5K job. We'll do it for you for four. If you price it at five and a half, you're still being reasonable and competitive. so you know basically you affect it and you haven't got to get involved other than just making that initial passing on that initial lead um and what we have had on several occasions and again this isn't trying to sound holier than thou but we'll be on one building working and the neighboring property the facility manager might come out and say oh we've also got that issue can you give us a cost we don't then go in with a pro text card we say to that person well give us your email and i'll get the office to message her and i'd call you up and say sean listen you know we're doing number one smith street the company number two want the same job doing here's the guy's details or the lady's details give them a call um the way i see it two things one we would never have generated that lead were we not doing that job for you yeah and secondly if you come back a few days later to check on your job and we're hanging on ropes on the building next door you might be oh all right all right that's uh that's a bit of a coincidence you know so you know and obviously you're going to reward us the work anyway okay we wouldn't make quite the profit that we'd make if we was doing it direct but you know it's it's fair isn't it you

35:17 know i like that because i'm i don't know how the world works but i imagine there's a lot of companies that would just do it for their own company 100 100 yeah yeah i think the key to any whether it's business or whatever it is you're doing just don't be greedy you know just just just you know everyone can have a share of what's out there but just don't kick the backside out of it you know so what kind of when you when you do this stuff for companies and you work with them What kind of work are we talking?

35:48 We're obviously talking commercial. Literally, it can be both domestic and commercial. It can be like a small balcony, or it could be a block of flats with 100 balconies, you know, or it could be a large warehouse facility or whatever you know I mean the other advantage as well the other advantages as well is if for example as I've said, we're a general pest control company as well as doing bird control. Now, again, if we turned up at a site to do a bird job and we noticed that the perimeter boxes were looking a bit shabby, which is an age-old favourite, a lot of people try to win business, but going, oh, look at this thing, there's a cobweb in there.

36:40 Then basically, you ultimately, you could end up losing that client because the company that would come in to do the bird job have also niched your general pest control contract. Yeah. You know? So, you know, we would always, like I say, just, you know, be fair and open. but yeah, it can be literally, it can be like a small balcony. I mean, obviously you've got to look at where the job is in relation to where we are. So we're based in the Southeast. So it wouldn't be viable to go to Leeds to do one balcony.

37:21 But next, I mean, next week I've got to look at, not next week, the week after, you know, I'm going up to Scotland going up to Darlington going up to Cheshire Stockport to look at bird jobs because they're quite large installs so it would be staying away from home for a few days I'm still very much on the tools I still I couldn't sit in an office and do admin I'd last probably not even a day Do you have someone do that for you then in the office? Yeah, I have two or three people doing admin because I'm not an admin person.

38:06 You know, if I was working from home, honestly, I'd be like sitting here now in front of a computer. Yeah. And I'd be thinking, do you know what? I think I'll cut the grass, you know, or I think I'll clean the windows or, you know, do anything other than the admin task. So, yeah, that would have worked for me. I'm not very good at admin to be fair. No, I don't know what I mean. Obviously, the closest I've got to knowing what it's like to work from home is when I've done an online seminar and you sit there with them talking to the seminar, not a course or whatever.

38:47 Speed awareness I did last. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. But I was doing like 24 in a 20. I mean, I'm not belittling it, but yeah, I was doing 24 in a 20. funny it's a bit hard so so it is a bit i mean you know and this was on a a three lane road in london three carriages wide bus lane and then dual carriageway yeah it was on made of ale basically if you know london now i was going north towards swiss cottage on the uh and and and it was um yeah i was doing 24 in a 20 and the camera got me so yeah but i bet in london they've got zero tolerance in london it's all about making that money yeah well i saw me in a former life i did drive a black cab and i'd be absolutely well they they've just pretty much shut every every thoroughfare or road you know i mean i don't know how it's meant to improve you know the traffic and the air quality.

39:52 I mean, again, people who know London, you've got Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, which takes you down through Bishop's Gate and straight over London Bridge. It is literally one road. You don't turn left or right. It's one road. And the other week I had to go to the other side of London Bridge, but to get there I had to turn off and go all around Whitechapel, over Tower Bridge, then do a load of messing around on the other side. so where I would have probably done a mile I'd probably end up doing three miles and what would have took me 10 minutes took me 40 minutes so I've heard this I've heard this through people that talk that work in London in pest control as well it's the worst part of the job in London I would say, it's the worst part of the job is getting from A to B and parking people don't realise how expensive it is to park it's phenomenal you know like in some places like Islington or places like that it can be something ridiculous like I'm kidding you not you'll want you'll put 10 minutes on the phone and it will be like literally almost a pound a minute see I've heard that I watch a lot of YouTube videos and stuff and some of the businesses just they don't give you points do they are some people just park on double yellows because it's cheaper yeah yeah i mean years ago they used to wheel clamp in london but they stopped that now um and they just but yes well it's actually more economical because let's say you're doing a rope job where you've got two technicians working on ropes you can't say to one of the lads well look you carry on working and i'll go and move the van you've got both obviously stop at that point because it's like a buddy system you know yeah

41:50 and so you then could spend 20 minutes half an hour driving around literally to find a new parking space and you've got to do that every two hours so in actual working hours you could end up losing three or four hours in a day so it's just it's just you know more economical believe it or not to get a parking ticket than it is to pay for the parking and all the times that you'd have to keep moving it. Exactly. That's right. I've just seen a few YouTube videos. Like, I watched Daniel Asheville. Who's that?

42:29 No. Asheville. It was Asheville Aggregates. Right. He doesn't do aggregates now, but he used to just park on the Double Yellows and pay the fine. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like you see all these supercars, don't you, like the rollers and the Bugattis and stuff, and they just get a ticket. Park up outside Harrods and just get a ticket, you know. So I'll just skip on to something else. So obviously you've got rope access. Your firm does rope access. Do you do the rope access? Are you trained up in it as well?

43:10 Yeah, I am. Yeah. Well, I say I am. My ticket at the moment, recently, I've got to renew because it's a three-year ticket with I-Rata. And it's a week of, well, most centres will do four days of intensive and the fifth day will be the assessment. Okay. but from for when my ticket most recently expired to now there's just been not enough days in the week to to just get out there and do a week of like literally it's be like taking a week's holiday you know um there's just not enough time in the in the calendar at the minute so but yeah later on um in a few weeks time i'll be getting re-evaluated again to to you know get my ticket back up to speed up to date and um but yeah so it's it's it's an industry that's always evolving so that's why you know every three every three years they they get you in to re re-evaluate so is that for obviously when you do rope access is that for jobs that wouldn't allow for scaffolding or you couldn't get it up is that like say yeah yeah so if you had a prison i don't think scaffolding would go down well would it no we've done a few prison jobs as well but that was for drone netting but um no that was that was mute access but yeah so what what happened was with the rope side of things up until about 15 years ago um if we got a rope job if we got a job that required rope access We would basically call up and get some guys down on ropes.

44:54 But what we found was that they were great at rope access. I mean, they'd get you up the north face of the Eiger. But they were generalists. So one minute they're cleaning windows. The next minute they're doing cladding. Next minute they're doing concrete repairs. Next minute they're glazing, whatever. and then you'd give them a, you know, a crimping tool and a hog ringer and a barrel strainer and they would be like, what do I do with this? You know, so we thought, oh, God, we're going to have to, I think, take control of this ourselves.

45:33 And that was what prompted us to start doing it in-house. So we don't generally get involved in stuff that isn't bird-related. once in a blue moon we might have an existing client who says oh look can you help us out we've got a problem with this it's not bird related um it you know it might be that event cover has blown off or something but few and far between like 99.9 percent of what we do on ropes is always a bird job you know so whether it's uh you know netting spiking whatever pin and wire whatever um we we yeah so we don't generally do anything other than than bird control really on ropes but you know but that's what keeps us sort of focused you know so um yeah because it's well that's i would call that a speciality within birth control i would yeah yeah and and that's the thing like so like i say when you come to us to do one if you like i said if you had a job sean that and I'm sure probably in the future you will do, you know, you'll come to us and say, Jim, we've got this job.

46:41 It doesn't go beyond us. We're not subbing to a third party, you know, so you come to us and the buck stops with us. We don't then pass it on because, you know, it just becomes unviable. I mean, I know when we've done jobs in the past for companies, it's gone for about four or five people before it's got to the end user. You know, you've got the client they've gone to a cleaning company the cleaning company have gone to a you know an fm company they've then got hold of the people that they use for their bird work and then they've come to us and every time that happens you've got another layer of cost and another layer of potential miscommunication you know i remember previously you know we've turned up to do jobs and you know we've been told one thing and when we get there the scope of the work is entirely changed it's like oh yeah you're doing those ledges there and you're doing that bit there aren't you and you're doing that bit over there and we're like uh not as far as i know as far as i know we're doing that bit there you know so um that's the other thing you know the less people the less chance there is for you know like you turn up at a job and it might be might not be a rope job it might be you know uh you know powered access like a mute yeah and then the client says where are the barriers?

48:01 You're like, we thought you was getting the barrier. You know, like, so it's, it's, yeah, it's better that we come and look at it with you. Or, you know, so, I mean, I've got to go and look at two jobs tomorrow for other, other pest companies, both in the sort of London area. But I'd rather go and look at it myself than rely on, you know, Google Earth or, you know, some photos that someone sent because it don't always tell you the full picture. No, you'll get a picture of the top of a building with like, you know, the area that they were working on, but then like, it might be a domestic property, like solar panels or something.

48:44 But then at the back of the house, there's a great big glass conservatory. But do you know what I mean? Yeah. So you don't see that until you turn up on the day and it's like, well, we can't do this because no one talks about that. exactly so that's why it's always better to go look at it yourself no definitely and like um that's what clive was on about last week with bee removals all about the survey going to have a look is that a job in london well from outside it looked great the chimney looked great but when you got inside chimney and they're still on stills and the actual honey was on the asbestos So he said it's a complicated job.

49:31 Yeah. From outside, it looks like it's a proper full chimney. It wasn't. Yeah. He said, so that's all about the survey. He said, you wouldn't have seen that from a photo. 100%. Yeah. But yeah, no. So yeah, like I say, I prefer to go and look at stuff. I mean, we don't charge the survey. You know, we'll come and look at it for you. um sometimes we might result to doing you know like a FaceTime call yeah with the client if it's uh you know if it's practical yeah but there's a lot of so you're not scared of heights then no I've worked at height you know like I say with the you know when we when I first started so I first started work 1986 yeah and back then health and safety wasn't a patch on what it is now 1986 1986 I started work 40 years ago so you know so um it was yeah it was a bit of a free-for-all really even then you know like there was no PPE there was no such thing as a risk assessment method statement you know I mean I'm talking big jobs I mean we we would turn up at a you know like huge facility and you'd been like on a hot day like today you know sort of trainers and shorts and a vest you know you just got on with it it's mental you know there was no yeah there was no health and safety was there i imagine that i imagine obviously especially rope access rope access and well anything like that i mean scaffolding was really dodgy i mean my granddad my mum's dad unfortunately he was only 48 he was working on a construction site this was back in 1970 um he was working in a rope cradle we used to use the old rope cradles years ago and he got in

51:25 it and it hadn't been rigged up properly and um it hadn't been weighted correctly he just got in it without really checking because there was no safety checks like there is now you know there's no tag systems where you know it says do not use um and he unfortunately he fell about six floors so So he fell about, probably about 25 metres, probably about 20 metres, which is a long way to fall. About 70, 80 foot in old money. And he survived, but he had brain damage and he died about a year later. Oh no.

52:00 So, you know, so when people go, oh, health and safety, it's a bit over the top. But it's, I was on a job a couple of years ago and we were there doing a survey and a scaffolder, nothing to do with us. It was the client had got different trades in. And I'd just left the job. And that poor chap, it was the start of January. It was the first day back after the Christmas break, about 4th or 5th of January, up in London. And the poor guy went to the edge to look, to see about where they were going to be scaffolding.

52:34 And he slipped and went over. And unfortunately, that was that. You're supposed to be clipped on, aren't you? Exactly. I mean, he climbed through a guardrail, which is obviously there for a reason. Yeah. They don't know. I don't know if there would have been an inquest and obviously the health and safety executive would have been involved. I don't know the full details, but, you know, it could have been ice. It was a cold day. Obviously, it was January, about the 5th of Jan. So he, poor chap, he was only sort of mid-50s, I guess.

53:10 and he just straight over and that was that you know so i mean fortunately now we're we're much better off with you know the safety measures that are in place but i think a lot of these accidents happen due to negligence um people just cutting corners unfortunately you know but yeah shame i imagine some sites you go on you have to you have to do like a whole health and safety training oh god yeah yeah because i'm sure you you told a story on the beauties and beasties that i remember something like you did hours and hours worth of training you had to let you go on this big scaffold and the site agent just popped up with no safety gear on to see you oh yeah that was on a hospital job yeah that was up in uh north london we was doing a hospital job and yeah it was um yeah i won't mention any names but it was a big organization and uh yeah he and quite rightly So with rope access, you have what's called a manifest of all your equipment, all your kit.

54:13 And every single item pretty much every item is serial number with its own individual unique serial number So your harness you know your descender your backup device It all be not even the carabiners And we spent about, yeah, about two, three hours in his office and he got my office to email him a copy of our manifest. And he wanted to check that every single item that we had was listed. yeah. And, and, and, and that's his, you know that's he's right you know um he's absolutely fully entitled to that and yeah and then we went up onto the roof to start we were installing some bird point and my colleague was over the side on the ropes i was connected to the anchor point connected via um uh a device called a grion which is a like a it's an adjustable lanyard for want of a better word okay and then literally i swear to you i mean honestly this guy sort of almost tapped like tapped me on the shoulder and i'm like and i've looked around and he stood right on the edge one foot on the parapet looking over the side and uh i ain't getting on and i was like what are you doing and he's like what and i said we've just spent two hours going through health and safety and you're up in there breaking every rule.

55:38 He said, well, I'm the manager of this site. I said, I don't care who you are. I said, you can't stand there like that, mate. I said, you have to stand two metres back minimum. And he weren't happy about it, but I was like, no, mate, you can't have it both ways. I mean, absolutely ridiculous. You know, absolutely ridiculous. That's crazy. But then I've also done health and safety. I've sat and watched videos in a big, massive national building firm. um again won't say who but we had to do a um before you could go on the site you had to do a series of videos it took about two hours you had to watch about 20 videos and it showed you like the workplace and people doing stuff and um there was a guy cutting some threaded rod not wearing any safety goggles or anything um there was another one with a mobile tower in the middle of a room and there was no outriggers on it um there was another guy in a uh cherry pickup in a mute not wearing a harness um in a boom not a scissor yeah in a boom and there was another one with um guy wearing like steel toe cap boots and all this all the metal was exposed because like all the fronts had come off the boots yeah and i i emailed him after having spent two hours watching these videos and said look if you're going to put videos out there you you've got to get it right you know yeah and apparently the um the proverbial poop did hit the fan on that one did it um but you know if you're going to preach it or you're going to do it then you've got to stand by your you know what you're what you're putting out there yeah you definitely have it's um it's a big game though health and safety in it money you know all these

57:28 courses people do whenever i think and you've yeah for a company to get it wrong because they must have made their own videos so yeah yeah so like i say you know like i mean like people make mistakes but there was four glaring mistakes in in this probably about 20 videos that you had to watch you know um covering all different elements of you know the workplace and all the things that that can and can't go wrong. Yeah, it was quite funny because I turned up at the site and the guy asked me, oh, have you done the videos?

58:07 Have you done the enrolment? And I said, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, but it wasn't very good to be fair. I said, I spotted a few mistakes that I messaged your company about. And he was like, was that you? I was like, what? Oh, was it that quick then? And he went, oh, this was a few days. even oh my god he said yeah he said the the health and safety people were hauled over the coals for that i'm quite right you know i'm surprised no one noticed before that because i think a lot of people watch health and safety videos just nod their heads i think yeah well they're probably like this you know probably sort of next you know yeah but uh but yeah so yeah it's a minefield isn't it it's like you know anything like that hr health and safety it's it's the age we live in and you know like i say it's it's a lot better than what it used to be well it was non-existent when i started to be honest oh it was some of the things my dad's when my dad used to be a bricklayer when he was a young when he was a young man and he said that there's some of this like when you get up a building you'd be walking like um like uh what they called a wheelbarrow wheelbarrow with full of bricks right up a plank onto a building it's just the way it was he said well did you ever see that video with john notes from blue peter years ago when he went up nelson's column go on youtube go on youtube so i mean blue peter obviously i don't know if it's still around is it there's a kid you know yeah well it's been around for donkey's years you know it's been around i

59:43 think since the 60s or even maybe earlier i don't know but in the 70s they had a presenter on there called john noakes yeah and all my fellow sort of gen x uh age group will remember john noakes uh leslie leslie judd and peter purvis they were the three main uh presenters back then and they They basically steeple, they basically, on Nelson's column, Trafalgar Square, they basically lashed ladders like a steeplejack around it. But when it gets to the top, it goes out on a, because you've got the cornice that juts out that Nelson stood on, and it goes out on an angle, probably like 45 degrees.

1:00:31 And he didn't realize, he's got no harness on, no safety line, nothing. and he's climbing up a wooden ladder that's tied on with rope. So Google John Noakes Nelson's Column. I will. But also look at scaffolding, 1950s, 1960s, and it's exactly what you've just described with your dad, with wheelbarrow full of bricks and no hand-brows. He says, I never had no accidents, but he says, I could have done, couldn't I? Even when you go abroad, I mean, I was in Greece about three years ago and some of the construction sites that you go past you think god we'd never we'd never get away with that in england no you know it's all over here yeah yeah no no i mean i'll say again it's probably a double-edged sword i mean maybe people don't fall off because they they know that there's never going to be a handrail whereas we always think there's going to be a handrail yeah and if there's not and in fact that actually happened years ago on a job that my dad was managing for a construction company um someone had gone up and modified basically taken off a handrail on a scaffold yeah so they could pass stuff up easier and a guy just walked straight off the end because he was carrying a box and he didn't realize and you know and uh yeah felt to his death so yeah you know yeah so i'm more careful in general because when you broke your knee twice kind of is that what you've done yeah yeah yeah i've thrown my knee twice yeah same knee the first time it was a left knee tebby and fibula second time it was the kneecap of the left knee so my legs quite strong now i go gym and that so i've seen you i've seen you doing all your

1:02:17 squatting and stuff yeah not bad and you're still managing with the injury yeah because you you can do it you know yes but obviously you got to appreciate that i've got quite good strength when i started out and i could barely lift anything obviously i was i rehabbed myself yeah and the the i'll be honest the second time round i lost the first time i lost loads of weight and then i stacked it back up mentally i was and then i did it the second time since the second time i've been gym gym gym focused yeah gym the gym the weightlifting not you i know what you mean i know what you mean so yeah i've never i've not gone off course really since then well that's what i need to do but it's just fine i'll say it's finding the time i mean it's a bit of an excuse i think you've got to make the time i even did an article for the for the mpta on on um fitness to do with mobility yeah because of people the job we do you have to go in lofts etc and your mobility and all that last year yeah a lot of manual handling you know if you're doing bed buds you're moving all the furniture the bed it all helps like the gym does it does so i did an article on it for the mpta newsletter so i'm not sure how many read it or not but i did that

1:03:39 that i might do a new one this summer maybe i don't know do it yeah so maybe gear it up around the industry so like you know lifting mattresses and bed bases because some of them can be bloody heavy some of these big mattresses can weigh a blooming ton well they can they can so so yeah i don't attend to do another break i can't you don't what oh god no i mean i broke my femur i ended up in hospital with nine weeks with a broken femur um i couldn't it's um i was if you're gonna break it yeah i was in there for a week i couldn't i couldn't stay in there for nine weeks i'd have to get my missus to get me home i can't my wrist my finger my thumb three ribs i was just very accident prone when i was younger just that's that's the trouble when you've got a brother that's five years older and him and his mates and they'll say go on i bet you won't jump out of that tree you say i bet i will so yeah i was always picking up injuries nine weeks though in the hospital must have been torture i was only a kid yeah i had my leg in traction so you're you're literally laid in bed and your leg was sort of up at an angle and you had weights.

1:05:04 So you had like a pulley. And I had that for about a month and then they x-rayed my leg and went, oh, we ain't set it properly. We've got to re-break it. So they had to re-break it and reset it. So that was another five weeks. Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't good. So I fit better ways of spending nine weeks. Mind you, well, no, I shouldn't say. I wouldn't mind nine weeks now, not doing a great deal, but I wouldn't want to get through that. I thought that when I break my breaks. It's bored after a week. I was bored.

1:05:38 Are you a gamer? Did you play games or anything like that? I don't so much anymore. I've got an Xbox Series X, but yeah. I did get bored of that too. I've never got into it, but yeah. I can imagine that would help though, while away at a time. But yeah, I think daytime telly, I think, would finish most people off. I don't watch actual normal TV. I watch Netflix and YouTube and stuff. Yeah. You get more efforts on that now than anything else. Yeah. You do. Yeah. But yeah, so thanks for coming on, Jim.

1:06:11 It's been good. No, Sean, I really appreciate the invite, and I feel very honoured that I've had the chance to sit here with you and have a chat. Yeah, no, it's been good. So do you want to tell people if they want any bird to work with you, bird work-wise, where to find you, and I will drop the links as well. Yeah, by all means, if that's okay, yeah. So we're Protex Pest, so you can email us, info at protex, P-R-O-T-E-X-P-E-S-T.co.uk. The landline number is an 0208 number, 361-7467. Yeah, if you get any inquiries, like I say, total discretion.

1:06:50 We don't, you know, we don't discuss anyone else's business with anyone. so there's complete and total you know confidentiality and we would never put images up on any of our social media unless we had prior consent where it was like a collaboration where if you said you know yeah we worked with Jim last week and you know they came in and did this bird job for us but otherwise we wouldn't put it up because if we post something and the client sees it and he's like hold on a minute that's not oak and pest control yeah and that's my building yeah so um yeah we wouldn't do anything like that but yeah like i say just um or go on linkedin search me jim england protects pest and if you go on to the amount of times i get people messaging me saying jim what are your details how can i contact you well if you go into my um uh what do you call it your uh your profile there is all my contact details on there, including my mobile number.

1:07:54 So you can just look us up on LinkedIn and you'll find us on there. Yeah. Visit my website, it says there. Yeah, www.protexpest.co.uk Probably needs a little bit of a revamp now. Probably, you know, that was a few years ago. But it still does the job, you know. But, um, but yeah, I appreciate the plug. Thank you for letting us do that. No worries. It's all about, you know, sharing your knowledge in podcasts. I'm sure it will help a lot of people because they might reach out to you and think, I'm going to try and see if I can offer anything bird-wise, you know.

1:08:35 Well, you think, Sean, I mean, with regards to, say, like, I mean, I don't know what the national average is for the treatment. What would you say is the national average cost for treating a wasp nest, would you say, up your neck of the woods? What, 100 quid? 80 quid? 75? We charge 100 for that. So say 100 quid, right? So that's 100 quid. You call me up and say, Jim, I've got this bird job. And for a phone call, you're going to make 1,500 quid. Yeah. That's, to put it into context, that's 15 wasp nests, which is three a day.

1:09:12 You know, that's three wasp nests a day for Monday to Friday. Is that right? You know? and you've got all the headache of having to go out and get ladders out and get on your B suit in a hot loft. Or you can just pick up the phone and go, Jim, got a bird job here. Do you know what I mean? That sort of puts it in the context. I'm going to make a page on my website for it. Well, if you need any images for it, like any rope access images or any bird net installations that we've done, you're welcome to use them.

1:09:45 Oh, cheers. I might make a page that way people know I can offer it I won't put how it's done but I'll just put we can do it yeah it's like a lot of people out there they might use companies to do fumigation they might use field biologists they might use heat treatment you know there's lots of scenarios where people subcontract I had heat treatment a few weeks ago where Richard Barry had on I don't know if you know him I don't no he just hate treatments you know yeah he was on so what I say you know so yeah there's lots of situations it's not like you're doing anything underhand it's just something you don't offer but you can you can still facilitate it exactly so but yeah thanks for coming on I appreciate it not at all no thank you thanks for giving us the opportunity mate no worries I'll let you do the sign off whatever way you do it yeah but uh thanks everyone for coming on next week we will have daniel lucas from css best services and i won't get it wrong but the week after something really interesting people if you're listening um there's a project in new zealand called wellington it's called wellington predator free 2050 and they're coming on from new zealand they are it's a project to wipe in a certain area

1:11:11 of new zealand to watch the capital isn't well wellington yeah well to wipe out the rats the stoats all sorts and they've got members of the public like literally they've got hundreds of traps and systems down actively wiping the writing parts because they're all about the natural the natural natural birds etc are being wiped out so they're wiping yeah it's a yeah it's a it's going to be a good lesson it sounds ambitious but yeah oh it is it is ambitious to tell you but they've been working on it a long time they have they've actually convinced local residents to come into their gardens to and fro whenever they want keep that cost out yeah yeah i'm going to ask them what the pest control companies think to it though as well yeah well that's it yeah i'm gonna yeah That sounds interesting.

1:12:05 I'll try and tune in for that one. You're a busy man. They're always on demand if you ever want to listen to some of them. But yeah, so thanks everyone and I'll see you all a good next Tuesday. Back to normal. Right, thanks everyone. Cheers Sean. All the best mate. Take care. Bye bye mate.