STAFF TEAM BLOG

Kristian Nettleship, BPCA Membership Support Officer, talks about meeting Dike Harrison Ayomide (Harrison) at PestEx and taking him out on a member visit to show how UK pest management works in practice.

I met Harrison on the last day of PestEx.

He was chatting with Lorraine, asking about how we support members. Not just ticking a box either. Proper questions. How we do things, why we do them that way, and what sits behind it all.

You can usually tell quite quickly with people, whether they’re just being polite or whether they actually want to understand it.

Harrison definitely fell into the second group.

PestEx, but through someone else’s eyes

He’d come over from Nigeria, representing the African Pest Control Association. Long way to travel, so you’d hope it was worth it.

To be fair, he didn’t waste the trip.

He’d recorded most of PestEx on his Meta glasses. Which meant at various points you were having a conversation with him while questions were quietly being fired into his ear from somewhere else. Took a bit of getting used to.

But it summed him up quite well. Always switched on. Always asking something.

He mentioned a few of his colleagues were a bit jealous he’d made it over. I can see why, and I wouldn’t be surprised if next time there are a few more African delegates walking around next PestEx.

Getting out of the exhibition hall

While chatting at PestEx, Harrison expressed interest in seeing how we do things first-hand. I had a member visit lined up that week anyway, so it made sense to bring him along.

Watch back Harrison's interview at PestEx.

We went to see a company working in food production; the sort of place where pest control isn’t optional and you don’t get much room for error.

We also had Paul Westgate from Veritas there, supporting on the technical side.

From the minute we got there, Harrison was into it. Questions about processes, documentation, how things are checked, how often, what happens if something’s not right.

That’s always a good sign: means you don’t have to drag people through it.

Where things start to differ

We got into a good conversation about the differences between working in the UK and working in parts of Africa.

Over here, expectations are pretty clear. If there’s a cockroach in a building, especially in food production, that’s a problem. End of.

In Africa, it’s not quite the same. Pest pressure doesn’t really drop off. You’re dealing with insects all year round, so the approach leans more towards control than total eradication.

It’s not about one being better than the other. It’s just different circumstances.

But it does change how you think about things. What’s acceptable, what isn’t, and how far you need to go to get there.

Attention to detail

The thing that really caught his attention was the detail.

The member we visited had everything laid out. Proper folders, clear records, procedures for everything. You could pick it up and see exactly what had been done and why.

It’s easy to forget that’s not the case everywhere.

Over here, we’re used to it. It’s just part of the job. But when someone sees it fresh, you realise it does stand out.

It’s not paperwork for the sake of it. It’s how you show what you’ve done, how you stay consistent and how you avoid problems further down the line.

You could see him taking that in as the day went on.

A slightly unexpected highlight

Towards the end of the visit, we were standing in a car park just off the high street, wrapping things up.

A cyclist pulled over, looked Harrison up and down, and asked him where he could get a pair of trousers like his.

Harrison didn’t miss a beat. Said he could sort him out, but he wasn’t sure how practical they’d be on a bike. Fair point!

Observers around the world

We’ve got quite a few Observer members around the world who look at what we do and how we do it.

Sometimes in the UK, we don’t really think about that. We spend more time comparing ourselves to other industries or picking holes in what we’re doing.

But when someone travels that far, asks that many questions, and goes away with something useful, it reminds you that what we’ve built here does carry weight.

Harrison took a lot from both PestEx and the site visit. The event gives you the overview; getting out on site shows you how it actually works in practice.

There’s already been some talk about the African Pest Control Association engaging more with us, maybe looking at Observer Membership and digging into our standards a bit more. We can’t wait to build on that new friendship.