Specifier Guidance for Kitchen Extraction & Ventilation Work
The useful question is not simply “has it been cleaned?” It is whether the original requirement has actually been answered.
These guidance pages are written for facilities managers, estates teams, responsible persons, property managers, consultants, insurers, brokers and other professionals who need to turn a report, recommendation or maintenance requirement into a clear commercial instruction. They explain the issues that should remain visible before appointment, during delivery and when the contractor’s evidence comes back.
A maintenance instruction can lose important detail before it reaches the contractor.
A fire-risk assessor may identify grease accumulation. An insurer may ask for evidence of cleaning. A contractor report may record inaccessible ductwork. A facilities team may inherit an old certificate without knowing what part of the system it covered. Each of those situations can lead to the same vague purchase-order description even though the underlying problem is different.
Specifier Guidance is designed to preserve that context. The aim is to help the person arranging the work understand what information to assemble, what questions to ask and what should remain visible after attendance. It is not a substitute for technical inspection, professional advice or the judgement of the competent contractor.
The document should tell you what happened—not merely that someone attended.
Good close-out information helps the organisation distinguish the completed system from the parts that could not be reached and the actions that still need another decision. That distinction is important because an attendance, an invoice and a certificate do not automatically prove that every part of the intended system was accessible or addressed.
The reports, access and evidence guides therefore work together. The first explains how to read the action created by an existing contractor document. The second deals with physical access limitations. The third focuses on the records that should come back after work.
A professional recommendation should not be rewritten on its way to procurement.
An insurer, broker, risk engineer or fire-risk assessor may use wording that reflects a particular policy, risk assessment or professional judgement. The person procuring physical work should preserve that wording and use it to build the contractor enquiry rather than turning it into a new technical conclusion.
For fire safety, the wider legal duty remains with the appropriate dutyholder. Government guidance says the Responsible Person must carry out and regularly review the fire-risk assessment and maintain appropriate fire-safety measures. BESA’s TR19® Grease is a technical specification for managing fire risk associated with grease accumulation in commercial kitchen extraction systems; it is not itself the Fire Safety Order.
The contractor, scope and building need to fit each other.
Specifier Guidance does not try to create one national cleaning specification that ignores site conditions. Instead, it separates the information that can be standardised from the technical assessment that remains site-specific.
That distinction becomes especially important in multi-site procurement. An estate can standardise contractor checks, required report fields, escalation routes and the information supplied before attendance, while still allowing different systems to have different access arrangements, operating profiles and technical needs.
Words matter because they determine what people think they are buying.
“Canopy clean”, “duct clean”, “TR19”, “ventilation clean” and “certificate” are often used loosely. That can create significant scope differences between a client instruction and the work a contractor has actually priced.
BESA currently separates TR19® Grease from TR19® Air. TR19® Grease addresses fire-risk management of grease accumulation in commercial kitchen extraction systems. The March 2026 TR19® Air specification addresses internal cleanliness and hygiene management of general ventilation systems and now references the Vent Hygiene Register framework. BESA also operates the Vent Hygiene Register with Grease and Air categories.
The system-scope and terminology guides are intended to help clients describe the actual equipment and requirement clearly enough for the appropriate competent specialist to take over the technical assessment.
Already have a report, recommendation or contractor requirement?
Send the information you have. EC Cleaners Network can help organise the commercial requirement, identify missing information and connect it with potentially appropriate independent specialist capability. If a professional adviser made the original recommendation, that recommendation remains theirs.
EC Cleaners Network is operated by Search and Submit Ltd. Specifier Guidance provides general commercial and procurement information only and is not fire-safety, insurance, legal, engineering or technical advice. Search and Submit Ltd does not inspect, clean, test, survey, design, remediate, certify or technically approve kitchen extraction or ventilation systems, does not determine legal compliance and does not guarantee or accredit independent contractors. Technical assessment, physical work, measurements, testing, reporting, certification and professional conclusions remain the responsibility of the relevant appointed competent persons within their own scope.