The firm
Two engineers, a unit in Tyseley, and a rule about answering the phone
Setpoint was started in 2006 by Ray Aldridge and Neena Chowdhury after eleven months of subcontracting to a national that never once told a customer why an engineer was late. Fourteen engineers later, that is still the thing the firm is organised around.
Kings Road Works
A workshop, not a call centre
Unit 7 is a two-bay former press shop off the Warwick Road, with a stores mezzanine, a brazing bench and enough yard to get a van and a scissor lift out at the same time. It matters more than it sounds: we hold our own common spares — contactors, fan motors, expansion valves, the four board types that fail most often — so a first-time fix does not depend on a wholesaler being open.
The out-of-hours desk is a rota, not a service. Between 17:00 and 08:00 the phone rings to whichever of the four senior engineers is on call that week, on their own handset. They can see the site history and the asset register before they have finished saying hello, and they are the person who will attend. Nobody has ever taken a message here.
“The thing that actually changed was the reporting. I stopped having to ring anyone to find out whether the leak checks had been done, because the certificate arrived the same week as the visit. Three years in and I have never once had to chase a document for an audit.”Estates Manager · independent school group, Solihull · contract since 2023
Everyone who might turn up
Named, with what they hold
Not one of the nine competitor sites we studied while building this names a single engineer. Ours are all here, with the qualifications that are actually checkable, because an accountable person is worth more than another manufacturer badge.
Ray Aldridge
Director. Apprenticed on supermarket packs in 1995, ran the refrigeration side of a national for six years, and has never worked anywhere with a call centre.
- F-Gas Cat I · 31 years
Neena Chowdhury
Director, contracts and compliance. Writes every schedule, audits the records quarterly, and is the reason the response matrix is published rather than negotiated.
- IOSH · BESA · 24 years
Marcus Bill
Lead engineer, VRF and chillers. Holds the Digbeth, Aston and Solihull rounds. Knows which roofs need two people and which landlords take a week to find a key.
- F-Gas Cat I · Gas Safe 219476
Tomasz Wisniewski
Controls and BMS. Recovered 19% of one customer's cooling spend by fixing time schedules nobody had opened since 2011 — no new plant, no capital, one afternoon.
- Trend · Tridium · BACnet
Joyce Oyelaran
Ventilation lead. Runs the kitchen-extract programme and signs off every TR19 Grease certificate the firm issues.
- BESA GHT · 12 years
Dev Prashar
Commercial heating. LTHW plant, commercial boilers and pressurisation. Carries the gas ticket and the combustion analyser that goes with it.
- Gas Safe · ACS commercial
Hannah Lisowski
Out-of-hours coordinator. Holds the rota, the site histories and the escalation list, and raises the credit note when we miss.
- Since 2019
Seven more engineers
Two apprentices in year three at South & City College, and five time-served engineers across refrigeration, ventilation and controls. All directly employed.
- All F-Gas certificated
Accreditation
Our numbers, not our suppliers'
Every one of these is checkable on a public register without ringing us. That is the point of publishing them.
| What | Number | Body | What it actually certifies |
|---|---|---|---|
| F-Gas company certificate | 12084 | REFCOM | Legally required to install, service or decommission stationary RACHP plant containing F-gas. Renewed every three years. |
| Gas Safe registration | 219476 | Gas Safe Register | Commercial heating and catering competencies, per engineer, on the same company registration. |
| Company registration | 05781142 | Companies House | Registered in England and Wales. Accounts filed to date. |
| VAT registration | GB 872 4419 03 | HMRC | — |
| BESA membership | M/4471 | Building Engineering Services Association | Owner of SFG20 and TR19. Members are bound by its code and audited on entry. |
| SafeContractor | SC/118204 | Alcumus | Health and safety pre-qualification. Most managing agents filter on it before reading a quotation. |
| CHAS | CH/60912 | CHAS | As above, for public-sector frameworks. |
| ISO 9001 / 14001 / 45001 | QMS-88104 | UKAS-accredited certification body | Quality, environmental and occupational health and safety management systems. |
Insurance
- Public liability £10m Certificate issued on request the same day, not "on award of contract".
- Employers' liability £10m Fourteen directly employed engineers; we do not use self-employed labour on contract sites.
- Professional indemnity £2m Covers the design and specification advice in our condition reports.
If something goes wrong
- Tell Neena, in writing or not complaints@setpointms.co.uk or 0121 314 6600. Acknowledged within one working day.
- Ten working days to a written answer including what we found, what we are doing and what it costs you, which is usually nothing.
- Then BESA Unresolved complaints against a member can be taken to the association. We will give you the reference and the contact rather than making you find them.
Around the estate
The plant we look after is mostly older than the buildings' tenants
Come and look
The stores are open to anyone thinking of contracting with us
If you want to know whether a firm can genuinely fix things first time, the honest test is whether they hold the parts. Ring ahead and Ray will walk you round the racking.