01 May 2006
Chris Ward

If you have responsibility for maintaining a building, or control access to one, then you're probably a dutyholder under Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations. If so, you probably had an asbestos survey carried out when the Regulations came into force two years ago. That was what you needed to do to comply with the regulations, right? Wrong.

The consequences of this mistake can be serious. Not only is there real potential to put your staff, contractors and site visitors at risk, but you may also receive an unwanted visit from a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspector. 

In the 12 months following the introduction of Regulation 4 in May 2004, the HSE issued 137 prohibition or improvement notices concerning asbestos, many to businesses who had failed in their "duty to manage", including poor or inadequate surveys, use of incompetent surveyors, failure to carry out assessments and lack of management plans. During the same period, there were 16 prosecutions covering similar offences plus incidents of workers not being informed of the presence of asbestos.

Several thousand people still die every year of asbestos-related diseases in the UK and the figures are expected to continue to rise until around 2015.

The basics

Regulation 4 requires dutyholders to:

• find materials in their premises likely to contain asbestos
• presume materials contain asbestos unless there is strong evidence that they do not
• make a record of the location and condition of any known or presumed asbestos
• assess the likelihood of exposure
• prepare a plan to manage the risk.

A survey should have satisfied the first three requirements, as long as you are sure whoever carried it out was competent and suitably qualified (we will come back to the fourth and fifth items later.)

Anyone carrying out asbestos surveying and sampling should have appropriate training (holding a British Occupational Hygiene Society P402 qualification in asbestos surveying and bulk sampling, for example) and experience, should be able to demonstrate independence, impartiality and integrity and should have good quality control procedures.

The simplest way to check any surveyor meets these conditions (without playing detective yourself) is to check they are certified by the national accreditation authority UKAS, to the international standard ISO 17020. To clear this hurdle, any lead surveyor will have:

• a P402 qualification
• a minimum of six months' experience of surveying for asbestos
• experience of the type of survey required (Types 1, 2 or 3 as defined in the HSE's MDHS100 guidance document)
• been audited on a regular basis to confirm their continued satisfactory performance.

UKAS accreditation for surveying is still not mandatory, though the HSE strongly recommends dutyholders use accredited organisations.

Next steps

Once you have a good quality survey report, the next step is to carry out a priority assessment, which will take account of factors such as:

• maintenance activity
• occupant activity
• likelihood of disturbance
• human exposure potential.

This will almost always require your input as a dutyholder, but it is a good idea to involve the original surveyor who is likely to know the details of the Regulations and guidance notes.

You should now have a comprehensive materials assessment for all asbestos in your building plus a detailed prioritisation assessment for each item. Combining these two assessments gives an overall risk assessment and provides you with a priority list for action. You should also know what areas have not been accessed. What next?

Whatever else you do, don't simply file and forget the data. Whether in hard copy or electronic form, you need to refer to the information before any work is carried out and update it after any asbestos remediation is completed.

The next stage is preparation of a management plan. Again, your surveyor/consultant will usually be able to help but, whoever prepares the plan, it should cover:

• what needs to be done and when
• who is responsible
• procedures to prevent staff or visitors accidentally disturbing asbestos containing materials
• how people will be informed of these procedures
• what training is needed and for whom
• how the procedures are communicated and enforced
• regular review to ensure the effectiveness of the procedures
• what to do in the event of an emergency.

In most cases, material containing asbestos in poor condition will have to be repaired or removed.

If the material is insulation, coating or board you will almost always require the services of a licensed asbestos removal contractor. Usually, you will have already completed a Type 2 survey (which involves taking samples of the asbestos). This will locate all asbestos materials (as far as reasonably practical) without damaging the fabric of the building.

It is vital to carry out a Type 3 survey before allowing any major refurbishment work or demolition work to go ahead. This will involve accessing all areas in a building even if it means damaging the fabric.

Return visit

Materials containing asbestos should be re-inspected at least every six to 12 months to ensure they have not been damaged or that their condition has not deteriorated.

Re-inspections do not have to be carried out by a UKAS-accredited laboratory and may be carried out "in house". But be cautious - if you've paid good money to have your premises surveyed by a competent, professional firm, do you really want to entrust the task of updating the data to someone with much less experience and no formal qualifications?

Conservative estimates put the number of different asbestos-containing products in the thousands. Even if a member of your staff is armed with a report directing them to the area where a particular material is located, you would need to be sure they will always be able to recognise it.

Anyone re-inspecting asbestos will have to be sure not to disturb it. Take the scenario of an asbestos board above a lightweight suspended ceiling. Do you remove a ceiling tile to inspect the board? What happens if there is asbestos debris on the  tile? Or high-risk asbestos in close proximity?

Anyone tasked with re-inspection will need appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) including respiratory protective equipment (RPE). Operatives must  be trained in the use of their PPE and the RPE must be face fit-tested (a mandatory requirement). The equipment must be thoroughly checked and maintained.

If the job involves working at height or in confined spaces, a whole new set of precautions will be needed (see In Too Deep in last month's HSW).

You need suitable and sufficient risk assessments to cover the proposed work and emergency procedures in case of accidental damage to asbestos-containing material. This could include the availability of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) vacuum cleaners for minor clean-up work and a plan for isolating an area, should it become contaminated as a result of the work.

Someone will have to be responsible for updating the original data or report. You have to decide if you are comfortable with someone with limited or no asbestos surveying experience changing or updating data supplied by a UKAS-accredited company.

Let's not forget the purpose of all this work - to protect employees, contractors and visitors to site from exposure to asbestos. Managing asbestos in premises is an ongoing process. It's not all about getting an asbestos survey report that can be made available if someone asks to see it. It's about making sure people are not exposed to asbestos now or in the future.

While the best way to do this will undoubtedly depend on the size and nature of a given site and on the maintenance and refurbishment activities that are planned, one thing is for certain: you're likely to be managing asbestos on your site for many years to come, so choose your partners and procedures carefully.

Chris Ward is a business unit director for Bureau Veritas Hazardous Materials and has been involved in consultancy for over 20 years.
www.bureauveritas.co.uk

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