What is Integrated Pest Management Podcast Transcript

Below is the transcript of our recent podcast:  What Is Integrated Pest Management?  You can listen to this podcast here.

Neil Foley

Hello, everybody. Welcome to Abate Pest Management's Podcast series. I'm delighted to have Carl Hoult with me today, who’s technical manager here at Abate…how are you Carl?

Carl Hoult

Yeah, very well, thank you, Neil. Good morning. And we're going to talk about IPM I believe…

Neil Foley

Yep IPM-  Integrated Pest Management. It's a term that I hear you and others use quite often. I thought it would be useful just to explore it and what it actually means in reality. So where did the term actually come from, Carl, have you any idea?

Carl Hoult

Well, for myself, who's been in the business a while now, it's always been there for me, if I'm being honest. When I first joined Abate way back, I was handed a big manual and right across the front said IPM. So that was day one for me.

And I'll be honest with how professional pest controls got over the decades, I don't really know how not to do IPM, and as most of us don't. So broadly speaking, IPM is a broad approach, which could be chemical, non chemical, environmental, sort of manipulation and control. Communication has to be sort of gained by both parties to sort of remove the pest problem, whether it's the interest or the infestation. And that, I think, how explain this to a lot of people, especially when sort of domestic customers is as far as having a pest controller, say you've got old Bob down the road doing your pest control in your house, and he's fantastic. He killed 200 mice that year. Well, that's not good pest control. He's good at killing, but that's not pest control and that's just immediate eradication. Whereas someone who sort of would do this through IPM would be find out why the mice are so interested, resolve that particular problem there, and then basically proof and manage the site to stop reinfestation.

So that's that kind of how it works. Does that make sense?

Neil Foley

So IPM isn't just for commercial sites, it's actually the underlying principle regarding pest management. I hadn't quite fully appreciated that.

Carl Hoult

Great example. Sort of any technician out there will come across as far as you go to someone's house talking domestically, and they've got a big rat problem and within seconds you know they've got decking, they've got chickens, possibly, they got bird feeders, and it's a case of, well, let's look at we don't want to be killing all day. Pest control isn't about killing, it's about obviously just managing the environment. So as an example, with a chicken feeder, with a chicken coop, can we get that on a concrete base? Can we do plating around the bottom? Can we stop the access of them rodents getting to the food?

Neil Foley

So you're not just saying you've got to get rid of the chickens, otherwise you're always going to have a rat problem?

Carl Hoult

Absolutely not. I've dealt with many schools where sort of people who sort of don't use IPM type pest control have come along and said, I can't do pest control because your chickens okay, which is very sad for both parties there. So going back to the chicken coop, can we proof it? Can we make it sort of as far as obviously making it difficult for the rats to get to restrict their access and then also as far as the timing of the feeding, do you have to leave bird feed around all day for the rats to come? Again, there's lots of good bird feeders outside, chicken feeders out there, which obviously reduce spillages and things like that. So it's really looking at the problem, which is rats getting to the feed.

Neil Foley

So the rats are looking for the food source. And so what you're trying to do is to make that as difficult as possible for them.

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. They've only got so much sort of effort and activity they can spend on this in a day. And this list might push them away and find an easier food source. And also when and when obviously people are getting at this time of the year when it's winter months, a lot of rats coming up to the building, both mice and rats do we need the bird feeders there? We all love feeding our birds, but while you've got a rodent infestation, let's just stop feeding them, resolve the problem and then go back. And this comes down to communication and cooperation with the customer.

Neil Foley

So integrated pest management from a domestic viewpoint I get, from a commercial viewpoint because I know we do a lot of food and manufacturing and distribution sites. Is IPM the same principle?

Carl Hoult

It is on a bigger scale. Hopefully I don't come across as much now as far as when you turn up to a large site, maybe sort of advanced food site, and they go, we pay you to the pest control, you sort it out. Okay. For us, it's a case of from day one we sit there and say, we can do A, B and C, but we have to have your cooperation. We have to have the ability to talk with your staff, to change people's habits. When we talk regarding like proofing, yes, a lot of doors are left open, but the doors don't leave themselves open. Half the time it's the staff members leaving the doors open. So when we do sort of pest awareness training with their staff, we often call it ‘please close the door training’ and things like this, which is half the battle, obviously keeping the site clean, removing the interest, maybe how the company sort of uses their waste. Maybe they think the site is clean. But we can see certain aspects where through inspections and with our biologists and our trained technicians we can see that they could do a lot of things better.

So its all about recommendations, we're there not just to check the boxes we sit there and to sort of change the whole culture around, obviously pest management.

Neil Foley

In essence, we're not going to eradicate pests are we? Because rats and mice and all the other pests that we deal with have been around a lot longer than we have as a species…

Carl Hoult

The fashionable word now, especially through a lot of sort of standards that BRC, and that is we use the phrase pest management, not pest control, because it sort of pushes the idea that there's something there lurking that we must control, whereas the management is preventing it. I get that. But no, it's definitely not pest eradication. You're setting a bar so high there, you're going to set yourself up for failure the moment you say, yeah, we all eradicate, all pests. So it is about the management and that.

Neil Foley

Can you think of examples of how it works really well in reality, maybe on a commercial site where you've got a really good relationship? Is that what, essentially it's all about?

Carl Hoult

I always judge the success as far as the communication between ourselves, especially the technicians, who are the face of the business and whoever their site contact is, whether it's a QA manager, facilities and things like that, when you've got somebody on the client side who's happy to take on these recommendations on board. Sometimes some of these things can be quite sort of sizable, like bird netting and things like this, where they've got large canopies, it's not just a quick fix, but then with a little bit of a discussion, maybe it's sort of the birds are coming to the site, they turn up for the food, but they stay for the harbour and that. So it's like just by reducing the food, we're already making it less favourable. It's really about the communication in that some of the sort of the on site stuff that we do isn't rocket science and things like that, but we are there, we are the eyes and the ears of our customer in there and they need to be listening to what we're telling them and showing them, really.

Neil Foley

And I guess it's a bit like our own homes, isn't it? You don't notice things after a while, do you? Because you just I don't know how the brain works, but you just don't see to see things and somebody new comes in and thinks what you're doing there?

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. And I mean, we looked at this a long time ago. Jon, who set up a Abate, he always had this thing back in his days with a very famous large company, international company, and it was, say you're doing monthly visits month one go anticlockwise, month two clockwise, because you always see it's such a silly little thing to say.

Neil Foley

Clever idea.

Carl Hoult

And I quite like it. I've said it many years as the company field biologist, and it's a case of I will always do a different route to the technicians because it just can be that slightly different angle or spend a little bit more time sort of looking under things and the rest of it. You do find a lot. You really do. So it's just good having that other person come along.

Neil Foley

Yes. And that's what the technical managers are. They the people that we're largely dealing with at these sites. Are they technical managers or FM?

Carl Hoult

Yeah, I think a lot of the responsibility ends with them. Obviously, as the companies get bigger, there's more sort of change of command, especially when it comes to resources like funding and things for these projects and that. So obviously they might sort of ignore not ignore us, but we might be less involved on the day to day running of that. But then as soon as we put through something, a recommendation, where we will have to significantly escalate, maybe it's bird netting or digital monitoring, things like this, then the technical manager will get a lot more involved because obviously you have to follow the money, basically.

Neil Foley

And I've always intrigued because I hear you and Jon and the technicians talk about keep the doors shut, et cetera, but in some of the distribution sites and the other sites we've got, that's actually really that's a tough ask, isn't it?

Carl Hoult

It is. And when we get sort of like the new sort of trainees turn up who are very overzealous, they see a door open and they freak. Basically, you've got to put yourself in the position of the customers. In a warehouse, you might have 20 to 30 forklift trucks whizzing in and out, they haven't got the time to close the doors. And it is very frustrating because our answer is simple, close the door. But they're not going to get very hard doing that. So there are products out there. They're sort of where we got electric matting now.

Neil Foley

Is that called the rat mat?

Carl Hoult

The rat mat, yes. I think Killgerm supply us with that, a big manufacturer and it is fantastic. It's basically sort of cattle fencing or horse fencing, but for the ground, it won't stop anything coming in on a pallet because they'll sort of …

Neil Foley

The forklifts can go over it….

Carl Hoult

Forklifts can go over it, people can go over it. But the rats and the mice, as they approach it, they detect the electricity in there. Originally may just give them a little bit of a shock and send them on the way, just like I said electric fencing would. But it's been hugely successful. It was originally sort of, I believe, produced for the vintage car market to stop sort of damage happening there.

Neil Foley

Mice and the rest of it.

Carl Hoult

Didn't really take off. I think then agriculture took it on with protecting their sort of combine harvesters and things full of pipework being chewed up, and now we're sort of throwing it everywhere in the warehouse and distribution sector, which is brilliant.

Neil Foley

So did many clients take that advice in terms of use the rat mat?

Carl Hoult

I mean, everybody agrees it's good and then it's a resource issue and then.

It comes down to resources for the amount of visits you can reduce on these things as far as because obviously the price of fuel nowadays and everything else, it's a long term investment where you'll get your money back and things like that. But you have to have that initial upfront like any business. We've all got our budgets.

Neil Foley

What else can people do to the keep your doors shut?

Carl Hoult

Keep your doors shut, as you said.

Neil Foley

Doesn't necessarily help because I can't do that. Other than the rat map, what else could I do?

Carl Hoult

So proofing is one of the big ones. I mean, I think this came sort of from Rentokil. We have a lot of ex Rentokil staff with us and I believe they used to teach a system called the ERD, of pest control. And if I remember rightly, it's exclusion, restriction and then destruction, which is sort of older way to teaching. But we've now come back to this more now than ever with nontoxic and the importance of proofing and things. So the idea is you exclude them from getting into the premises in the first place, you restrict their interest in there and then obviously then finally you come to the part where you may have to obviously destroy the infestation and that I'm sure there's a lot of people that are going, you've just hold the, ERD completely wrong.

Neil Foley

But it all makes sense.

Carl Hoult

But it's how I learned it and it's worked for me. We've done okay. So, yeah, I mean, the first thing is you look for the easy wins if you turn up on a site, maybe it's a feed mill and there were piles of feed everywhere. It's fair game for the pigeons, it's fair game for the rodents and it's just an absolute, obviously. So let's address that. And you'll always often get things always short on staff at the moment in the standing up and it's like but then as long as you can come to an agreement with the customer saying, well, if this is how your site is going to be, these are the shortfalls we're going to have. It's comes back to communication at the end of the day.

A lot of these sites are naturally messy through their own production and things like this and you just have to have an understanding and that you can't have pest control turned up and then suddenly it's all gone away because you're paying them a bit of money. But no. So once you address the sort of housekeeping and just the general sort of hygiene of the site, then you obviously can sort of escalate to your proofing.

And there may be just sort of holes in the walls and things. They've even going to the doors because obviously a lot of human traffic, forklifts and the rest of it, they may sort of find an easier way in. Rats aren't going to willingly put themselves in dangers and that's where sort of spending a lot of time initially on the initial surveys,  field biology and the technician spending a lot more time, less checking boxes and checking the building for the weaknesses and you go from there. So once you've sort of closing that container, that's building from sort of ingress points, then you can focus. I mean, there's no point putting an expensive rat mat down and then suddenly you've got peppered full of holes down the side. And then once it comes to that, then eventually you should then just fall back on hopefully your routine visits and the occasional call out where someone's seen a rat run across the yard or whatever.

Neil Foley

And it's quite a difficult juggle, isn't it? Because for a lot of the technical managers and the other people that I know you're dealing with, pest control is a small part of their job, isn't it? It's not a major part is it…

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. And this is once again putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. Obviously we're not going to see sort of really conscientious technicians, obviously their world is pest control when they turn up on site, the most important thing is to solve that problem. But the poor facilities chap will have the gas engineers, the aircon engineers, even the guy delivering the vendor machine, he's got all these things going on. So you have to pick your battles at the end of the day and things like this. So once again, it's knowing your customer. Get a good communication going, obviously help them as much as we can and when we get to a point where he's outside the contract and that have that conversation and go, look, we can take more responsibility on, but it's going to cost at the end of the day and I think it's fair of any business structure.

Neil Foley

Yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?

Neil Foley

Because I can imagine it would be very easy to be not holier than now, but just to say we just need to do XYZ without an understanding of the commercial pressures and other issues that the technical managers have probably got.

Carl Hoult

Absolutely. And I think that's all in the secret to our success we've got so much experience with here, we've heard and seen it all and I said it's quite nice when we get sort of staff from other companies when they sort of had that and then we sort of sit there and tone them down a little bit. Just put yourself in the shoes of that, that's absolutely no sort of knock against their characters. It's just great to sort of sit there and just show how we approach this, which is when we're asking for their help, we have to have understand what their challenges is as well because they certainly won't care too much about ours most of the time.

Neil Foley

And it is empathy, it's the definition of empathy, isn't it? Walk a mile in somebody else's shoes, isn't it?

Carl Hoult

And I think I said we've done very well through that, because when we do these sort of annual reviews on that, I mean, most of them now, it's got so little to do with the actual pest control, because we know their company, we know that there are problems and that we've already addressed them. And then half the time it seems to be just to sit down and have a catch up and then sort of talk about what's coming in the future and things like this, which is probably a whole subject for another podcast.

Neil Foley

So integrated pest management isn't going anywhere as a term, because it actually sums up really well what we do, isn't it?

Carl Hoult

You can't improve on it at the end of the day, there is going to be changes coming to the UK, but we're already seeing changes in UK as far as restrictions and loss of products. And then all that will happen is we'll just find another tool. If we lived in a world where they banned trapping, or even if rats and mice became protected, that'll never happen. But if that ever happened, then all you'll do is you have to put the emphasis on good housekeeping and…

Neil Foley

Still work with it.

Carl Hoult

You sell the tools you've got at the end of the day, isn't it?

Neil Foley

We used to use DDT, didn't we, to kill everything back in there, way before you were born.

Carl Hoult

Way before that.

Neil Foley

But we used to use that and lo behold, now look where we are.

Carl Hoult

Well, I've got a little pest book because I'm a bit of a geek like this at home and it's over 100 years old. It is just a listing of basically every animal you can possibly imagine, how to bludgeon them and how to kill absolutely everything. And I mean, it's even talking about mustard gases and things like that. How to sort of sit there and mess up flocks of birds and all sorts of things. It is truly archaic. We have come a long way.

The changes I've seen in just the last ten years, as far as attitudes to nontoxic monitoring, digital trapping and digital monitoring, and the rest of it, it's been fantastic. We really are going in the right way. And I speaking to one of our senior technicians yesterday and even himself was sitting there saying, you have to have an empathy with the environment and the wildlife, otherwise you'll never be a good pest technician. I think he sums it up nicely if I’m being honest.

Neil Foley

It's moved a long way, as you say, from killing. It’s even moved a long way from control, isn't it? It's about management.

Carl Hoult

Yeah, sort of on a very cartoonish side as far as pest control is great. You get to kill stuff. I mean, I haven't heard of someone say that seriously in a long, long time, because that's not who we are. Nobody enjoys it. And if you did have someone who turns up your door wanting a job just to go on and killing everything, I might send them down the road to the next company…

Neil Foley

I don't blame you. Well, it's been fascinating. Thank you very much indeed, Carl.

That's been really useful and I've learned a lot.

Until next time everybody, goodbye.