VVS Företagen - The Swedish Association of  Plumbing and HVAC Contractors

We have been entrusted with the task of identifying, exemplifying and pursuing the most important issues of the heating, ventilation and plumbing (HVP) companies.

Trust does not come easy; it´s something you have to earn. VVS Företagen currently have the confidence of more than 1,400 companies and 20,000 employees in the HVP sector to act at their employers' organisation and to pursue sector issues as the trade association for the HVP sector. Thanks to this great trust, we represent more than 75 per cent of the turnover within the HVP sector, enabling us to act with great effect in a large number of areas. This gives us the opportunity to bring about change and improvement for our entire sector.

We identify

Our holistic perspective and bird’s eye view enables us to objectively identify sector issues and requirements. This covers everyting from training initiatives to lobbying for the updating of regulations, or focusing on issues that need to be put in the public spotlight.

As an employers’ organisation we identify issues that are important and of interest and which facilitate the work of our affiliated companies. Recent issues have embraced areas such as work environment, training, salaries administration, recruitment and arbitration. 

Within some areas we produce effective tools by which to facilitate the daily run of things, in others we choose to work hands-on to create awareness that is of benefit to our entire sector.

Internal dialogue is crucial if we are to identify the needs that exist, both as an employers’ organisation and a sector ambassador. We therefore keep continual contact with all our affiliated companies. This chiefly takes place via our ten regional administrators, but also through member surveys, conferences and seminars.

On top of this we are active in the area of business intelligence, which enables ut so create a holistic view of needs and opportunities. This we do within our own sector as well as from a technological, corporate and societal perspective. We also promote customised training for business leaders, HVP engineers, administrative staff, service engineers, project managers etc.

We bring to the fore…

Bringing about change, improvement and development often requires turning our attention on a phenomenon or issue of importance. This could involve attracting attention from our own sector, or from the surrounding business world. Quite often we turn our attention inwards to highlight sector issues that need discussing, remedying or focus. This sometimes involves outreach by which to influence decision-making and societal requirements. We also collaborate with other sector associations and interest groups to get more force behind our arguments.

In external campaigns we put the spotlight on our sector and its significance for a well functioning Sweden.

VVS Företagen also publishes a magazine, VVS-Forum, issued 11 times a year whit a readership of more than 50,000. We also print four special supplements on various themes.

We pursue...

To effectively bring about change in crucial issues you need a mandate. We have one. Through their membership, our members show their confidence in us to work on issues of a shifting nature that are vital for the development and future of the sector. We constantly strive to live up to this mandate by pursuing issues on a large variety of contexts.

As employers’ organisation

VVS Företagen is employer’s representative in three collective agreements – HVP Agreement (Swedish Building Workers’ Union), Refrigeration Agreement (Swedish Building Workers’ Union) and Salaried Employee’s Agreement (Unionen, Sweden’s engineers and leaders).

In addition, we work to support our members in a range of areas and endeavour to focus on current an vital issues. The areas in which we work are chiefly; negotiations, work environment issues, professional training, salaries and salary systems, insurance consultation, general advice, and issues relation to recruitments and terminations.

As an employers’ organisation we also actively strive to secure future skills by directly influencing training curricula and sitting on various committees and inquiries on the sector’s training needs. We are a referral body for the Ministry of Education and Science, which gives us great opportunity to influence the skills and resource flows for the future HVP sector.

Together with Swedish Enterprise we pursue issues such as a simple pension system, the local business climate and the Public Procurement Act. 

As a sector organisation

The HVP sector is a key sector in keeping our society functioning. HVP stands for heating, ventilation and plumbing. We install nitrous oxide pipes in hospitals, ensure that sprinkler systems work, and install everything from separators in car washes to water and wastepipes in buildings. Plumbing is another area that is not only a large issue in Sweden but throughout the world, so important that in fact the UN made 2008 a special year of sanitary. These are just a few of the reasons why we pursue vital sector issues with all the power we can muster.

We implement a large number of projects every year and supply economic forecasts and key ratios. We also work with occupational training courses, business law, handbooks, templates and consultancy.

This is where our lobbying and outreach play a vital role. We have drawn up sector regulations that we call Safe Water Installations, we conduct surveys on related issues such as legionnaire’s disease, we sit on inquiries, and compile replies to referral agencies and take part in interest groups throughout the country.

We also actively collaborate with a number of other players to get extra weight behind our proposals. The Swedish Association of Refrigeration Contractors and Swedish Ventilation are two of our partner organisations in pursuing vital issues. We also work in close harmony with the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.

Safe Water Installations

Safe Water Installations are the sector regulations for quality assurance. A Safe Water Installation is an installation carried out in compliance with current installation norms, by authorised fitters and work leaders employed by a certified HVP company and where statutory inspections are carried out with a certificate provided to the client.

Sector regulations were introduced in September 2005 and are drawn up by the HVP Authorisation and VVS Företagen in consultation with suppliers and insurance companies.

We are nationwide

Our head office is located in Stockholm and we have eight offices throughout Sweden; Falun, Gothenburg, Malmö, Stockholm,  Sundsvall, Umeå, Växjö and Örebro. Please contact our regional administrators if you want to know more about VVS Företagen.