Ringley can provide 3 types of Asbestos Survey as well as interim monitoring

• Asbestos Management Survey (former Type 1), is mainly presumptive. Its purpose is to locate, as far as reasonably practicable, the presence and extent of any suspect Asbestos containing materials in the building, which could be damaged or disturbed during normal occupancy, including foreseeable maintenance and installation, and to assess their condition.
• Without architectural information about asbestos use, an asbestos management survey forms the bedrock of an asbestos management system. They are used to identify asbestos in premises and, if asbestos is located, establish a material assessment score that is used to go on and create a priority risk assessment.
• Management surveys are non-destructive, in that only minor (and discreet) disturbance of the building fabric occurs, normally to check beneath surface coatings (paint or wall coverings) or from sampling suspect materials. They are not therefore designed to locate asbestos hidden behind surface materials and a more intrusive survey will be required for that.
• Asbestos Pre-Refurbishment Survey (former Type 2), are normally required prior to commencing building refurbishment work. As refurbishments normally involve significant disturbance, or demolition of parts of the building fabric, a greater level of intrusive inspection is required. In order to do this, some damage is inevitable during the survey process and careful planning is required, to ensure that all affected areas are included and premises are vacated and safe to work in. This form of survey will usually require samples to be retrieved and tested in a laboratory.
• An essential part of this planning is an up to date scope of work to make sure that the areas involved and only those involved are subject to intrusive inspection. Where occupants need to return before the refurbishment commences, thoughts should be given to ‘making good’ any damage caused.
• Depending on the findings, the use of an asbestos removal contractor may be required to facilitate an inspection behind existing asbestos containing materials (ACMs) as they may themselves hide further ACMs.
• The objective therefore is to catalogue all asbestos within the affected area and quantify it, whether this is to form the basis of an asbestos removal programme, to amend the refurbishment specification, or a mixture of both.
• Asbestos Demolition Survey (former Type 3), includes asbestos removal- usually carried out prior to refurbishment in a building or pre-demolition. It includes full access sampling and identification.
• Although similar in nature to refurbishment asbestos surveys, demolition asbestos surveys are fully intrusive and will require access back to the shell of the building throughout. The location, condition and extent of all asbestos within the premises should be recorded, as far as safely and reasonably practical to do so. However, given the inherent dangers sometimes encountered, specialist access equipment or contractors may be required to facilitate the inspection.
• Due to the extent of the intrusive inspection required, the premises must have been fully vacated before the specialists embark on site.
• The objective of this type of survey is to provide the location and quality of asbestos containing materials for the basis of and safe removal specification. Then the planned removal will need to be registered with the Local Authority, via the Health & Safety Executive (HSE).

Background legislation

The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974, the Management of Health & Safety at Work Regulations 1999, the Defective Premises Act 1972 and Control of Asbestos at Work Regulations 2012  all place legal duties on employers or landlords to protect their employees or tenants in issues of Health and Safety. As a result of the latter, new legal duties have been put in place to manage asbestos in non- domestic premises and the common areas of residential premises. “Common areas” would typically include hallways, stairwells, lift shafts and roof spaces.

Components of the Asbestos Report

• Desktop exercise to identify likelihood
• Agree a strategy/scenario of probability depending on the age of the building, etc.
• Research other experts etc, who have worked on the building.
• Inspect target areas.
• Identify asbestos (blue, brown, white and cement based).
• Send samples for testing at a laboratory.
• Write up a strategy.
• End product including drawings identifying the type of asbestos position and risk.

Further information can be obtained from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) asbestos pages and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).