At Fibre Safe, we provide top-class asbestos survey services to the Wirral, Liverpool and North Wales areas and further afield in the North West of England. Our mission is to improve the understanding of asbestos and asbestos management and increase the knowledge of how best to handle this dangerous substance. We provide services to both commercial and residential clients and strive to improve the attitude towards asbestos on the whole.
The importance of asbestos surveys can’t be overstated, and before any building work is started on a building that potentially houses asbestos, an asbestos survey must be carried out. HSE agree that the importance of asbestos surveys are paramount, and a direct quote from them reads:
‘A refurbishment and demolition survey is needed before any refurbishment or demolition work is carried out. This type of survey is used to locate and describe, as far as reasonably practicable, all ACMs in the area where the refurbishment work will take place or in the whole building if demolition is planned. The survey will be fully intrusive and involve destructive inspection, as necessary, to gain access to all areas, including those that may be difficult to reach. A refurbishment and demolition survey may also be required in other circumstances, e.g. when more intrusive maintenance and repair work will be carried out or for plant removal or dismantling.
Some people believe that asbestos surveys are only required before refurbishment or demolition work, but there are actually many different types of surveys available that focus on different areas of building management and building work.
Domestic Asbestos Survey
The housing market has been experiencing an increase in purchases in recent years, with new homeowners and people looking to renovate older homes becoming very prominent. But for households that have not been updated for a long time, you must make sure that the household is safe to have work completed on it, especially if there is a chance it contains ACM (asbestos-containing materials).
Intrusive asbestos surveys are essential in discovering whether your new home has any ACM’s and you should have one of these surveys completed before any work commences for the health and safety of yourself and the people working on your home. The survey is very comprehensive and will provide you with a detailed findings and some advice on how best to proceed if any ACM’s are found. This kind of survey cannot be conducted on a house which you are purchasing because it will damage the fabric of the building and expose the layers of building elements. Instead, a non-intrusive ‘management survey’ can be conducted on potential purchases to highlight any ACM’s which may impact on your budget and health.
Management Survey
This survey is a legal requirement for non domestic buildings built before the year 2000, and it replaces an older survey called ‘Type 2’. HSE has dished out quite a number of fines for any companies that have refrained from having these surveys carried out to discover whether their premises house any ACM’s. This will contribute towards a larger asbestos management plan which provides information about the asbestos within your building, the risks it poses and the implementation of a robust management system. Although management surveys are not a legal requirement on domestic properties, they are a requirement for the communal areas in blocks of flats and HMO’s.
Pre-Demolition and Refurbishment Survey
These intrusive surveys are conducted before any renovation or demolition work and are used to locate any ACMs which may be hidden within the building fabric which could be exposed by the contractors during their works. This is also a requirement under the construction design management (CDM) regulations.
Contaminated Land Survey
Surprisingly to some, asbestos isn’t just found in old buildings and structures but also in the form of contamination within the ground. Although it is usually as a result of burying waste or the residue of previously demolished buildings, it still gets flagged up during excavations and can stop projects in their tracks adding serious cost to the remediation works.
One of the survey services that we offer clients is our ‘Asbestos in Soil’ programme, which will identify any loose fibres of asbestos found in the soil surrounding premises. This is quite a specific requirement, so to find out more information on it, check out this page on our website.
Social Housing Survey
Fibre Safe work in collaboration with several housing authorities to assist them in conducting asbestos surveys in their social housing programmes, ensuring that the inhabitants are not in any danger from harmful ACMs within the home. We pride ourselves in compiling straightforward, easy to follow asbestos reports, and we also provide yearly asbestos checks in accordance with Regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012. (the duty to manage).
Recent Sentencing
In the news recently was a report on a contractor who had fallen foul of asbestos regulations during the renovation of a toilet block in a community centre. Unfortunately, the contractor employed unskilled and untrained labourers to carry out very advanced work on the building, which disturbed a significant amount of asbestos-containing materials in the form of insulation boards. Later, it was found that the contractor had not carried out the mandatory refurbishment survey, which would have highlighted the asbestos issues in the toilet block. As a result of this negligence, the contractor was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and 10 hours of rehabilitation activity following his dangerous actions that put others at serious risk.
Contact Our Team
To ensure that you stay compliant and safe at work, it is always best to hire true experts in the industry when working with asbestos. For information on any of our services, contact one of our team at our Wirral office on 0151 538 3084.
